1. To pick up second hand books, don't go to the famed College Street to con the stalls lined up along the Calcutta University and Presidency College walls. It will be a very safe walk: No motley band on roadside dharna will force you off the sidewalk; nor will an anarchist procession urgently beseech you to contribute immediately to the revolution imminent. But it will be a dull walk, for the fat do-it-yourselfs guides to success and the US will oppress you.
No, don't go to College Street for second hand books. Go instead to the Calcutta Club or the Royal Calcutta Golf Club. Either potter, or saunter about. Lean over the bar. Sit in a wicker chair and eat a club sandwich. Then sneak up to the members' lending library. Apart from a fantastic collection of adventure stories to choose from, you might just find an antique edition. Pocket it.
As genteel glares or polite frowns smite your conscience, walk away like the Agarwals and Rampurias who've been there and nonchalantly done that.
2. Quizzing is very respectable. People will quiz you; you are expected to quiz in return. So here's a quiz question. What's common to every Calcuzen? What is it every house has? What can be bought on every street? What is this 'it' even you will find has become part of your baggage? Answer: A bottle of Gelusil antacid anti-flatulent syrup.
3. If near the Insurance Building at the S N Banerjee Road - Chowringhee crossing, if near this patently colonial crumbling edifice a young woman bundled in calico shapely dark mutely meets your eyes, or beckons you, realise the come-on comes from an environmental refugee from the Calcutta hinterland surviving.
4. Cut through all the advice you get, which you will get, asked and unasked.
5. The tramcar is not a metaphor for Calcutta! It is a snooze, a trundle, a non-TNC marketed non-diesel non-aggressive non-expensive very public form of city travel. It will transport you.
6. Severely bracket your work ethic. Gaze leisurely at the Writers' Building; then check out the clerks sitting around the Esplanade "lake" opposite. Stare into the dirty still waters. An epiphany will light you up; namely, that the true function of the tea stall is to sip and stall. Period.
7. Victoria Memorial is a must-visit. But not for the marble pile old Calcuzens disparagingly compare the Taj Mahal to.
Avoid the gravel-strewn approach to the fond memorial. Walk around it. You will find tents of sarees put up at the base of century-old tree trunks. You will find, though not hear, young Calcuttans densely entwined in and around the thinning shrubbery silently organically coupling.
The specious struggle for existence gets especially intense on benches, where you will find the male young thing sitting with his beloved's head on his lap staring into nothing. Closer inspection reveals the newspaper shielding the beloved's head from the hot sun emitting discreet rustles.
Since this kind of thing carries on for hours, there can be only two conclusions. One, young Calcuttans are intensely botanical. Two, they have invented the 22nd use of newsprint.
8. Stub the belief that a journey however brief has a beginning and an end. Sitting sweltering in a cab not moving, savour the fact that a journey however brief can also be an endless middle. That, without being taken for a ride, you are but a drop in the smoky mystical SAT (Sea of Ambassadors Tootling).
9. This is the heart of the matter. Praise the Tagore. Never, never say you evince great and abiding interest in that timeless nineteenth century novelist, what's his name, uh, Chatterjee, Bonk'im.
10. Dive into the lane beside the Calcutta Museum on Chowringhee Road. A short walk will bring you to the Sky Café. Roll, pop, swig, loll, gaze, pump, haze, fly.
11. Multi-storied buildings crowd out this little graveyard on Park Street. At the entrance you will find a memorial to Job Charnock, the first feverish Brit laid low by mosquitoes in this region of the world. Who classified the infinitive 'to die' as a transitional verb event?
12. Post-Calcutta, stress counselling is recommended. The ulcerous pace of the rest of wherever you come from will cause not only burning unrest, but also seriously scar the lining of the somnolence you learnt to stomach.

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