Temporal Spaces in Calcutta

Neha Gupta is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She is an urban researcher who focuses on urban information systems and digital infrastructures.Avishek Ray teaches at the National Institute of Technology Silchar. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination: Representation, Agency & Resilience (Routledge, 2022) and editor of Decolonial Travel: Vernacular Mobilities in India (Routledge, 2025). In 2021, his academic excellence was recognized with the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship.

Temporal Spaces in Calcutta: Digital Networks in the Wake of the Pandemic offers a timely provocation for questioning how we understand the dynamics of urban space. Neha Gupta and Avishek Ray’s exploration of the role of human-digital interface in the conceptualization and navigation of cities helps us understand critical shifts in urban placemaking. The remit of their innovative approach is far-reaching. It urges us to bring the traditional repertoire of political theory in conversation with emergent publics and public spaces, and it asks urban historians and theorists to unlearn the frameworks of representation that we use for analyzing cities.Swati Chattopadhyay, Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara; Author of Unlearning the City: Infrastructure in a New Optical Field (2012).The impact of digital cultures on the urban experience in India has brought about profound transformations, reshaping how people navigate, interact, and construct their environments. For digital humanities in India, this pioneering study presents vivid case studies of urban mobility, establishing itself as a groundbreaking contribution to the field. Through the analytic lens of digitality and drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted before and during the pandemic, Neha Gupta and Avishek Ray explore emerging connections in the city of Kolkata, where place-making unfolds at the intersection of online platforms and physical spaces. Their research offers a compelling and thought-provoking examination of how digital mediation is fundamentally redefining the contours of 21st-century urban life in India. Maya Dodd, Director, FLAME Centre for Legislative Education and Research, FLAME University; Co-editor of Practices of Digital Humanities in India: Learning by Doing (2024).

• Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Uber Spaces: Regimes of Legibility Chapter 3: Cycling Spaces: Local Provisioning, Networks, and Jugaad Chapter 4: Cafe Spaces: “Personal Touch”, Mediated Digitally Conclusion