C is for College Street

Hi folks!

Today I’m going to take you on a trip to one of my favourite places in Kolkata. College Street, which is also called Boi Para or Book Colony. Any book lover who has lived in Kolkata or been there will invariably gravitate towards this stretch of road that has been recognised as one of the famous landmarks of India.

The primary attraction of College Street is, of course, the books. It is India’s and Asia’s largest book market. Also, the second-largest second-hand book market in the world! So, you can easily imagine what a bibliophile’s heart experiences on a visit to this mecca of booklovers. One feels almost like Aladdin in the Cave of Wonders with books and bookstores almost spilling onto the road left, right, and centre!

What’s interesting is that books are sold not just from actual brick and mortar stores. The footpaths play host to dozens of wooden cubby-hole shops so stuffed with books, it’s a miracle they don’t collapse under the weight. There are also transitory vendors who sell right on the footpaths. Of course, between them, they make it almost impossible to walk on the pavements, but one visits College Street for the books not the pavements, so that’s all right.

And what don’t you find there if you just have the patient and tenacity to look! Rare books being sold at throwaway prices, first editions discarded carelessly, books that are now out of print, books in foreign languages…the list goes on. I remember my first visit to College Street. My mother had taken me there in search of the Vyakaran Kaumudi, a book of Sanskrit Grammar by Shri Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. Yes, THAT Vidyasagar. We couldn’t find it in any regular bookstore. Ultimately, it was one of the footpath-dwelling vendors who produced a well-loved copy from among a pile of other second-hand books.

There are, of course, freshly minted books as well. Textbooks and reference books, novels and poetry, bestsellers and unknown gems, travel guides and coffee table books, new releases and all-time hits, books on Kolkata and books about the world, popular subjects and obscure topics—you name it, you got it here. Here’s a picture of my haul during my last visit. As you can see, it’s a pretty eclectic mix. And this was from a single bookstore on a day when almost all of College Street was closed.

Interestingly, the store from where I got these books was in the same lane that houses the famous Coffee House that I mentioned in my A for Adda post. It is not the only major landmark of the area, though. The College Square Park (whose new name is Vidyasagar Udyan) and Swimming Pool are also on this very street. I visited those in the company of my husband once. We travelled by Metro Rail to M G Road station and walked the rest of the way, taking a shortcut through the Calcutta Medical College, whose main entrance is on College Street. He was quite familiar with the locality since his own alma mater, the Goenka College of Commerce and Business Administration, is nearby. Ironically, we didn’t visit it during that visit. I only visited it on my last trip there.

There are many other prominent educational institutions on College Street, many of them established in the 19^th century. Most famous of them is probably Presidency University (earlier Presidency College and even earlier Hindoo College) established in 1817. The abovementioned Medical College and Hospital, established in 1835, which was the first college of European medicine in Asia. The University of Calcutta, established in 1857, the first secular multidisciplinary university in South Asia. Bethune College (est. 1879), City College (est. 1881), Surendranath College (est. 1882), IISWBM (est. 1953), Hare School (est. 1818) are some other reputable institutions of Kolkata that reside on or near this 1-1.5 km stretch of road.

One of the prominent non-educational landmarks of College Street is Paramount, a traditional sherbet shop that is over a century old. Then there’s the Thanthania Kalibari, one of the oldest Kali Temples in Kolkata (est. in 1703, even before the city of Calcutta was born), where Goddess Kali is worshipped as Maa Siddheshwari. The Boi Chitra Gallery and the Ashutosh Museum of Indian Art are a couple of places art lovers can check out.

Some other landmarks nearby include the Jorasanko Thakur Bari, the ancestral home of Rabindranath Tagore that is now a museum and the Marble Palace, which is a private museum originally built as a mansion in the 19^th century. Both the Kolkata Police Museum and Police Headquarters (popularly known as Lal Bazar after the neighbourhood where it is) are also near College Street. Even the Writers’ Building, which served as the centre of British power in Bengal for over 200 years, and operates as the state secretariat since independence, is not very far from College Street. Two of Kolkata’s best-known markets are also a stone’s throw away – Bow Bazar, known for its jewellery stores, and Bara Bazar, known as a wholesale market where you can get anything under the sun.

Of course, no mention of the locality would be complete without the mention of the infamous Baiji Para or red-light district in Bow Bazar. Officially known as Gour Dey Lane, this locality was frequented during the British era (and later) by babus wishing to spend time with the Baijis or “dancing girls”. There are many centuries-old houses here that served as abodes for generations of these ladies of the night until recently when a large number of families were evacuated due to work on the Metro Rail for fear of subsidence. Now the lane is a construction site for the KMRCL.

If you’ve read Ageless Feud, you would have come across some of these landmarks already. Manik’s visit to Bara Bazar is a major turning point of the story, for instance. The Marble palace is another landmark mentioned in the book. You will come across several more of the places mentioned here in Fair Game, Book Two of City of Kaali, including but not limited to the Coffee House and Lal Bazar. How do they figure into the mystery Manik is caught up in? That you will have to find out by reading the book when it’s out later this year!

Which of the places mentioned in this post are you curious to find out more about? Which of them do you guess will feature in the series? Let me know your guesses in the comments and keep watching this space for more stuff about Kolkata, the City of Kaali (pun fully intended)!

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This post is a part of Blogchatter A2Z Challenge 2026