Sudder Street

January 26 celebrations on Sudder Street

Sudder Street in the late 19th or early 20th century.

Sudder street is a street in Kolkata famous for cheap hotels and 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 on Chowringhee Road There is also a building on the turning of Hartford Ln. off Sudder St. where Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore lived for a while and penned a few poems.

history and nostalgia

Famous poet Rabindranath Tagore's elder brother Jyotirindranath and his wife Kadambari 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 Sadar 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 provate rabir 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 the National Museum. 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)"