Malda
— — the river the sultans kept coming back to.
Not only on a wall.
“A district town in northern West Bengal, on the west bank of the Mahananda. Most travellers come for the ruins outside it: Gauda and Pandua, the brick-and-laterite capitals the Bengal sultans built and abandoned between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. In late spring the orchards around the town fill with Fazli and Himsagar mangoes, sold by the basket from roadside stands.
Malda, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Malda, also written English Bazar, is the headquarters of Malda district in northern West Bengal, India, sitting on the west bank of the Mahananda River about 350 kilometres north of Kolkata. The town grew up in the eighteenth century as a river port for English and Dutch traders moving silk and indigo. Its present population is around 324,000 (2011 census). Malda serves as the staging town for the medieval ruins of Gauda (Lakhnauti) twelve kilometres south and Pandua eighteen kilometres north, successive Bengal Sultanate capitals built in brick and basalt between roughly 1200 and 1565.
Malda is one of India's most celebrated mango districts, with around 31,000 hectares planted across the floodplain. The principal cultivars (Fazli, Lakshmanbhog, Himsagar, Langra, and Gopalbhog) ripen in sequence from mid-May into July. Fazli, the largest, is the local namesake and comes in basket-sized fruit upward of a kilo each. Roadside stands open in the orchards along the Mahananda once the first Himsagar comes off the tree, usually in the second week of May, and the town's wholesale markets run through the monsoon into July.
Malda Town station sits on the Eastern Railway main line between Kolkata and New Jalpaiguri; the express trains take six to eight hours from Howrah. From the town a hired car reaches the Adina Mosque, the Eklakhi mausoleum, and the Bara Sona Masjid at Gauda within an hour. The Archaeological Survey of India maintains most of the ruined monuments and charges a small ticket fee at the principal sites. Cooler season runs October through February; the mango harvest runs May through July, which is hot and humid.