Echoes of Old Kolkata In a city that remembers throughwhispers... of trams... tea... and timeworn stone...
One man tuned more than just pianos.
He tuned a city’s memory.
His name was... Harry Hobbs.

He arrived in Kolkata in 1883...
A 19-year-old piano tuner from London...
Not to conquer.
But to listen.

Over the next seven decades, Harry Hobbs chronicled this city in motion.
Her gossip and grandeur.
Barmaids and barristers. Mango fish... and music halls.

And through it all, he wrote.

Not as an official. But as a man with a pen... dipped in wit and curiosity.Eighteen books…

In *The Romance of the Kolkata Sweep*...
In *John Barleycorn Bahadur*...

In *Talkee, Talkweewalah*…

He served stories by the dozen.
A barmaid who once vaulted over a hotel bar... to slap a guest square acrossthe face.
Imported American ice... melting before breakfast could be served.

Fried mango fish and *Machher Dim*, roe of carp as caviar, Babu weedings,

In Hobbs’ world... every tavern, every street of the city had a tale. Everycorner... a secret.

He became Municipal Commissioner.
A respected hotelier. A keeper of memory.

Bengali Novelist Sankar met him at Spence’s Hotel.
Historians quoted him. The *Statesman* mourned him.

Hobbs died in Kolkata... in 1956.

On his tombstone? Just five words:

*“His pen... was his sword.”*

So next time you walk past Esplanade...
Or the old building of the Spence’s Hotel...

Or, a city bar…

You might…hear him.

In the echo of a tram...
The clang of a bar glass...
Or the whisper of a piano note... long gone.

This was *Echoes of Old Kolkata.*

This is from the book [Harry Hobbs of Kolkata and Other Forgotten Lives] byDevasis Chattopadhyay.

Thank you for listening.