Story of a Street
Park Street: the past and present

swati mishra

Every neighbourhood forms a definite part of the memory and identity of a city. Several historians and urbanists have talked of a city being a theatre of memory. What makes up this memory are both the tangible and intangible elements that existed (or still exist) in the cityscape.

My friend and I took up a project to study the changes in local culture of a place due to globalisation in the summer break of 2010. We were pursuing graduation in Political Science and International Relations from Loreto College that is located at Middleton Row in Park Street, Kolkata. The neighbourhood of Park Street was the obvious choice for the case study because of its popularity and history. Little did we know, this would turn into a journey of discovery of the cultural riches that we were not aware of before or had completely overlooked in spite of going there nearly every day, for the past three years.