Whether we buy something in a place we visit or not, we always come back with something—a phrase, a recipe, a moment of connection, or alienation. On my last trip to Kolkata, I came back with an odd item: junction box envy.

Walking down Mirza Ghalib Street, I chanced upon an electrical junction box, on which was painted a verse by Ghalib. True to my "excitable visitor" nature, I immediately took and shared a picture of myself with it, and learned there are a few dozen of them in the city that commemorate its thinkers, merchants and artistes with little paintings and quotes. A wine glass denotes India's most influential male romantic role model for gents, Devdas, and by extension his creator, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. There are junction boxes dedicated to the cinema of Satyajit Ray near his home, as well as RD Burman, Mahashweta Devi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Usha Uthup, among others. We can call them capsules of the city's history, but they really are the inner life of a city—the eclectic, electrifying life-worlds of culture, the lives and stories of a city that shape the imagination of its dwellers, permanent or temporary. A poetic history of a place.