Kolkata's 'Big Ben'

London's iconic clock tower now has a replica in the West Bengal capital

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The journey from the airport to the city of Kolkata cannot be called extraordinary by any stretch of imagination. As you drive along the Kazi Nazrul Islam Sarani, popular as VIP Road, the chaotic urban planning makes for a jarring sight. But don't avert your gaze just yet. Wait until you reach the juncture between Lake Town and VIP Road. A surprise awaits - in the shape of "Big Ben".

This clock tower at Lake Town, which is designed after the iconic clock tower at London's Westminster, has been inviting surprised reactions. A businessman on a visit to the city recently tweeted: "I was leaving Kolkata for Delhi and drove past the Big Ben."

Like the original Big Ben, the Kolkata clock tower has four giant clocks facing the cardinal directions. Christened "Kolkata Time Zone", it has been built by the local municipal body as a part of the drive to beautify the city. "We decided to build something vertical and hit upon the idea of a clock tower," says Mriganka Bhattacharya, the South Dumdum Municipality chairman.

The 135-feet tower was built at a cost of about Rs 1.36 crore by the Anglo Swiss Company. The gigantic clock faces on the tower have a diameter of 12 feet each. To create the Big Ben-like façade, the external structure has been fabricated with fibre reinforced polymer, which has been cast into hundreds of blocks and then installed with utmost accuracy around the tower. "We wanted it to look as close to the original structure as possible," says Bhattacharya. Around the tower is a walkway.

Building replicas of famous landmarks, though frowned upon by the purists, is not a new phenomenon. Bangladesh has built a clone of Taj Mahal in the capital city of Dhaka. The Japanese have a replica of the Statue of Liberty in the city of Odaiba. China attracted controversy as it went on a spree of urban mimicry, copying as many as 56 landmarks around the world, including cloning the entire Austrian city of Hallstatt in the Guangdong province.

"This idea of imitating a structure from a different city is clearly faulty," says Debashish Das, who teaches architecture at Jadavpur University. "All the landmarks in a city have their history and a cultural background; there is a reason for their existence," Das feels that by simply replicating a landmark that has no historic link to the area nothing meaningful is added to the city.

Bhattacharya says the idea to build a replica of Big Ben was inspired by Chief Minister's Mamata Banerjee's dream of turning the city into London. "Big Ben was an obvious choice," he says.

So, while Kolkata might still be far from boasting of London's infrastructure, it can show off a slice of the British capital.

BIG BEN, LONDON

Height: 96 m
Floors: 11
Number of clock dials: 4
Diameter of clock dial: 7 m each

'BIG BEN', KOLKATA

Height: 30 m, with 24 m of concrete piling at the base
Floors: 10
Number of clock dials: 4
Diameter of clock dial: 3.6 m