Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Contributors -- 1. Introduction: Calcutta in History and Historiography -- Ordering the Urban Space -- 2. The Flute (1932) -- 3. Calcutta on the Threshold of the 1940s -- 4. A City in Mourning: 7 August 1941 -- War, Famine and Unrest -- 5. The Elusive Chase: 'War Rumour' in Calcutta during the Second World War -- 6. Japan Attacks -- 7. When Mill Sirens Rang out Danger: The Calcutta Jute Mill Belt in the Second World War -- 8. Protest and Politics: Story of Calcutta Tram Workers 1940-47 -- 9. Emergence of Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti in the Forties-Calcutta Chapter -- 10. Famine, Food and the Politics of Survival in Calcutta: 1943-50 -- Communal Relations: Solidarities and Violence -- 11. On a Birthday (1946) -- 12. A Different Calcutta: INA Trials and Hindu-Muslim Solidarity in 1945 and 1946 -- 13. The Role of Colonial Administration, 'Riot Systems' and Local Networks during the Calcutta Disturbances of August 1946 -- 14. A City Feeding on Itself: Riots, Testimonies and Literatures of the 1940s in Calcutta -- 15. Calcutta and its Struggle for Peace: Anti-Communal Resistance, 1946-47 -- Postcolonial Transition -- 16. Calcutta, a City in Transition: Expectations and Anxieties of Freedom, 1947-50 -- 17. Visually Imagining the City: Urban Planning in 1950s Calcutta and Surjyatoran -- 18. Building Bijaygarh: A Microhistory of Refugee Squatting in Calcutta -- 19. Becoming a Minority Community: Calcutta's Muslims after Partition -- 20. I Had a Dream One Night (1929) -- 21. Time in Place: Urban Culture in Decades of Crisis