Howrah Bridge: A magnetic pull of the steely wonder for filmmakers

In India's cinematic imagination, the imposing structure always evoked romance, thrill and awe - three ingredients of a crowd-pleasing Hindi movie

Character actor Om Prakash, playing the tangewala Shyamu in Shakti Samanta’s Howrah Bridge (1958), took a wide-eyed passenger on a quick tour of Calcutta, ending the ride on the titular cantilever, the exact site where the super-hit crime drama had opened with the discovery of a murder most foul. This is where it all began.

The number that Shyamu crooned on the way in the voice of playback singer Mohammad Rafi, Suno ji ye Kalkatta hai, may have vanished into the black hole of time, but the imposing steel structure — the bridge was commissioned 15 years earlier,