Howrah bridge is one of the busiest bridges in the Kolkatta

There are only a few bridges in the country from where whenever one passes through feels differently. When in beginning of 1980s I was research scholar with History department in BHU, I visited Kolkata frequently to collect materials from National Library. Whenever I crossed Howrah Bridge, renamed Rabindra Setu on June 14, 1965, it attracted my attention, inspiring me to get snaps but in absence of camera I could not do the same of this unique cantilever bridge with a suspended span over the river Hoogly at that time. Recently, I succeeded in getting some snaps there. Despite construction of three other bridges-Vidyasagar Setu, Vivekanand Setu and Novedita Setu, Howrah bridge is still one of the busiest bridges in the Kolkatta as well in the country from where several lakh people and vehicles pass through daily.  When commissioned in 1943, Howrah bridge was the 3rd-longest cantilever bridge in the world, behind Pont de Québec in Canada and Forth Bridge in Scotland.  It has since been surpassed by three bridges, making it the sixth-longest cantilever bridge in the world in 2013.  The uniqueness of this bridge is its structure as it does not have nuts and bolts, but was formed by riveting the whole structure. It consumed 26,500 tons of steel, out of which 23,000 tons of high-tensile alloy steel, known as Tiscrom, were supplied by Tata Steel. The bridge has been shown in numerous films, such as Bimal Roy's film Do Bigha Zamin (1953), Richard Attenborough's Academy Award winning film Gandhi (1982), Raj Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), Nicolas Klotz's The Bengali Night (1988), Roland Joffé's English language film City of Joy (1992), Mani Ratnam's Bollywood film Yuva (2004), Pradeep Sarkar's Bollywood film Parineeta(2006),  Sujoy  Ghosh's  Bollywood film Kahaani(2012), Anurag Basu's Hindi film Barfi(2012),Ali Abbas Zafar's Hindi film Gunday(2014) and the recent Dibakar Banerjee's Detective Byomkesh Bakshy.

@Ramesh singh special correspondent at The pioneer varanasi