Word: calcuttas
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...Bengal when a police Jeep intercepted his Mercedes to deliver a message: "There's been an accident in the house. Return immediately to Delhi." Instantly, Rajiv told his aides to rush to the nearest airport. At 12:30 p.m., while Rajiv waited for a helicopter to take him to Calcutta, he switched on his transistor radio to hear the BBC relay the news that his mother was in critical condition. Some of the Congressmen in his party burst into tears, but Rajiv told them, "Don't worry. She's tough...
Scarcely five hours after the assassination, Rajiv Gandhi arrived from Calcutta aboard a special airliner that had been sent to fetch him. Only then did he learn that his mother was dead. The security protecting him as he stepped down from the aircraft was unprecedented in the country's history. Sharpshooters were positioned all along the route to the hospital. He was greeted there by sobbing Cabinet ministers, but he remained outwardly cool. Only recently he had said that he did not expect to take over his mother's role for "a long, long while." He had added...
...less pity." The London that impressed him in 1819 as a metropolitan inferno had just over 1 million inhabitants, hardly more than today's Bronx. Yet though London has swollen tenfold since then, it has been overtaken by still faster-growing hells: not only Mexico City but Cairo, Calcutta, Shanghai and others. By the end of the century, according to the U.N., at least 22 cities will have populations of more than 10 million, and 60 will have more than 5 million...
Efforts at improvement regularly turn sour. Calcutta began in 1972 to build a subway that was supposed to open its first 2.5 miles this year and eventually carry 2 million people over ten miles of track. So far, costs have soared from $140 million to $700 million. Though many streets have been dug up and mountains of dirt piled in the Maidan Park, only half a mile of track was scheduled to become operational this summer. Then a June storm flooded the whole system and postponed its opening to the public. "When the thing is completed, it will not solve...
Basu, a democratically elected Marxist, remains remarkably optimistic. He has started building a modern port at Haldia, 45 miles south of Calcutta, which will also include an oil refinery and fertilizer factory. He hopes to build a ring of 17 small satellite cities outside Calcutta, each with self-supporting industry. But perhaps his greatest ground for optimism is that central Calcutta has finally stopped growing...