Our Fair Calcutta

Our fair Calcutta, Golden Calcutta
What has she done to your fair name
Oh, Aamaar Shonaar Kolkaataa?
Our fair Calcutta, Golden Calcutta
What has she done to your fair name
Oh, Aamaar Shonaar Kolkaataa?

Oh, my Golden Calcutta
You're a city for all seasons
Now the whole world is talking about you
For all the wrong reasons
All they talk about are those slums
All they know about are those nuns
The City of Beggars, they call you
While the City of Letters you are

Our fair Calcutta, Golden Calcutta
What has she done to your fair name
Oh, Aamaar Shonaar Kolkaataa?

The Western Media focuses on your poverty
They start to annoy
Someone is writing best-sellers on your misery
He's calling it Joy

What about us, the High Society?
They should write about us, we make this City
Our social clubs, with Johan Strauss waltzes
Our Racing tracks, with thoroughbred horses
A vintage automobile, tea with chamomile
A colonial bungalow, poetry by Tagore
Now that is the real Calcutta

Our fair Calcutta, Golden Calcutta
What has she done to your fair name
Oh, Aamaar Shonaar Kolkaataa?

Let's make a few calls to our friends in high places
And thwart her plans, before she defaces
The genteel name of our grand old city
Let's badger and bully our Municipality
To cancel permissions and start litigation
Before she destroys our fair reputation
With homes for people with tuberculosis
Leprosy, AIDS
And extreme halitosis
We must save our city from her hypnosis
We must save ourselves and our family names
And our real estate prices from this
Charitable psychosis

Our sweet Calcutta, Mishti Doi Calcutta
We shall remove this blot on your name
You shall not be an object of shame
Grand old Dame, we'll protect your fame
Oh, Aamaar Shonaar Kolkaataaaaaaaaaaaaaa