Kidderpore

Khidirpur or Kidderpore is a neighborhood of metropolitan Kolkata (Calcutta). Located in the central-west part of the city, it is bounded by the Alipore in the east, Mominpur in the south, Hastings in the north, Garden Reach and Metiabruz in the south-west, and the Hooghly River in the west.HistoryThe gateway of Kidderpore is at the crossing of Diamond Harbour Road and Gangadhar Banerjee Lane. At that place a roadside restaurant dating from the British era remains, named "Panchubabu's Shop" or "Panchubabur Dokan", one of the landmarks of Kidderpore. The area is also home to quite a few dargahs of Sufi saints like Syed Baba and Shah Warsi Baba.A number of soldiers killed in World War II were buried at the Solana Muslim burial ground.In the field of Indian literature, this part of Kolkata produced three jewel poets. They were Rongolal Bandhopadhyay, Hemchandra Bandopadhyay and Michael Madhushudan Dutta.EtymologyOne of the oldest parts of the city, Kidderpore has many legends associated with respect to the stoical origin of its name. It is said that some British could not converse in Bengali. Whenever they passed by, their asking in broken Hindi for the directions to the port where their ships used to dock sounded somewhat like 'kidder-port'. More plausibly, the name is a corruption of Khidrpur or Khizarpur, Khizr/Khidr being the guardian saint of the seas to the fishing communities of Bengal. Another theory points out that the port probably got its name from Lord Kyde, a 19th-century engineer who designed and supervised the building of the lock gate that connects the nearby port to the Hoogly River.