Kolkata, once Calcutta, has produced many writers, poets and filmmakers. So many, that often the city is imagined to belong to the intellectual middle class embedded in a world of art. Kunal Basu's new novel, Kalkatta, shatters that comfortable reverie by taking you to a place inhabited by vultures hovering around goat blood, waiting for meat. Around them live people, desperately wanting to belong to that imagined Kolkata, and ultimately become the real Kalkattawallah, as Basu puts it, and fall prey to vultures of aspiration. For this, Basu takes us to Zakaria Street.

Kalkatta throws light on the influence of the Communist party on the city. Pic/AFP