Watch Charulata

Satyajit Ray's first film: a boy and his sister in a Bengal village, and a train through the kash field.

Apu leaves the village for school in Benares and then Calcutta, while his mother waits.

Apu marries a stranger when her groom fails to arrive, and the trilogy closes on his son.

Two neighbours in 1962 Hong Kong fall in love by never saying so.

Visit Kolkata, capital of West Bengal. Explore the Victoria Memorial (white marble monument with museum and gardens), cross the Howrah Bridge (iconic cantilever bridge over the Hooghly River), browse the Indian Museum (oldest and largest museum in India with diverse collections), and try street food like puchka (crispy hollow puris filled with spicy tamarind water) at Park Street.

Kolkata's clay-modeller quarter builds ten-armed goddesses all year, then floats them down the Hooghly.

Four families and a mother's search for a husband for Lata in 1950s India; 1,349 pages.

Read the Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the Mahabharata epic