Sudder Street is a street in Central

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

and famous for cheap hotels. Foreign tourists often prefer the living places in this street during their stay in Kolkata.

Localities

There are a number of cheap eateries, foreign currency exchange kiosks and travel agencies in Sudder street. The area around Sudder Street is notorious for drug peddlers, who supply contraband drugs at cheap rates.

Landmarks

The street starts exactly opposite the Fire Brigade Headquarters on Free School Street and ends towards the entrance of

Indian Museum The Indian Museum in Central Kolkata, West Bengal, India, also referred to as the Imperial Museum at Calcutta in colonial-era texts, is the ninth oldest museum in the world, the oldest and largest museum in India as well as in Asia. It has rare ...

Chowringhee Road Chowringhee Road (also spelt ''Chourangi Road''), located in the Chowringhee neighbourhood of Kolkata, is the arterial road running from the eastern fringes of Esplanade, Kolkata, Esplanade southwards up to the crossing with Lower Circular ...

. The famous Elgin Fairlawn hotel is situated on Sudder Street. There is also a building on the turning of Hartford Lane off Sudder Street where Nobel Laureate

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...

lived for a while and penned a few poems.

History and nostalgia

Famous poet Rabindranath Tagore's elder brother

Jyotirindranath Tagore Jyotirindranath Tagore ( bn, জ্যোতিরিন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 4 May 1849 – 4 March 1925) was a playwright, a musician, an editor and a painter. He played a major role in the flowering of the talents of his you ...

and his wife

Kadambari Devi Kadambari Devi (5 July 1859 – 21 April 1884) was the wife of Jyotirindranath Tagore and daughter-in-law of Debendranath Tagore. She was ten years younger than her husband, whom she married on 5 July 1868 (২৫শে আষাঢ়, ১২� ...

lived at 10 Sudder Street. It is well known how Rabindranath came to write his profoundly moving long poem "Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" in a fit of sudden illumination that had all the qualities of an epiphany. in the morning at Sudder Street, Rabindranath had a joyful feeling. His sorrows had been totally removed by the morning sun rays coming from all the directions. In his excitement he created Nirjharer Swapnabhagna. "Aji e probhate robir kar ...". which was incorporated in '' Prabhat Sangeet''. Sometime in 1881-82 Rabindranath lodged with his brother Jyotirindranath and Kadambari at 10 Sudder Street, Kolkata, just behind

. Here, as he later recalled in Jibansmriti (My Reminiscences): "One morning I happened to be standing on the verandah looking that way. The sun was just rising through the leafy tops of the trees. As I gazed, all of a sudden a lid seemed to fall from my eyes and I found the world bathed in a wonderful radiance, with waves of beauty and joy swelling on every side. .... That very day the poem 'Nirjharer Swapnabhanga' (The Awakening of the Waterfall)".

Localities

Landmarks

History and nostalgia

References

See also