Appearance: Sprightly 309-year-old.
Oh, Calcutta: To coin a phrase.
So why are they changing the name? Well, when the state assembly of West Bengal voted on it, information minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya explained that 'we have not only just freed ourselves from colonial hangover but also rendered justice to history'. The new spelling is also how the locals pronounce it.
And the significance of tomorrow's changeover date? Calcutta was established on August 24, 1690.
By which Indian patriot? Erm, Englishman Job Charnock, of the East India Company.
Ah, one of the Mumbai Charnocks, presumably. Or perhaps he was from the Chennai cadet branch? You're skating on thin ice. If Indians want to change the name of Bombay and Madras to Mumbai and Chennai, they have every right to do so. Just like Calcutta and Kolkata.
So all Calcuttans want to be Kolkatans? Not AV Iyengar. He thinks it's 'cockeyed'. But then, he's the president of the Tollygunge club.
I dare you to name some other great city institutions: The Royal Calcutta Golf Club. St Paul's Cathedral. The Victoria Memorial. The Royal Calcutta Turf Club ... if you're going to snigger, I'm stopping.
Okay, a proper question: is the city as awful as they say? Absolutely not unless you earn your living as a rickshaw puller or similar. For folk with a few rupees, it is stimulating, gorgeous and filled with the most argumentative, fun-filled, cussed, giggling, hospitable people in the world Bengalis.
Give us a typical Calcutta joke: 'We have plenty of Banerjis and Chatterjis, but not much energy.'
Didn't Kipling call it the City of Dreadful Night? He never lived there.
And didn't Gunter Grass describe its people as 'white-shirted maggots in a shitpile with Victorian excrescences'? Yes. But he actually went there for six months.
Don't say to a Kolkata wallah: 'I absolutely agree with every word you say, Mr Ganguly.'
Why not? Because he'll reply, 'But look at it another way.'
