Dawn was gently breaking on the Ganges. Soon shafts of sunlight fell on the weather beaten mansions on Park street, fading in their glory, a pale replica of their former grand selves but still majestic. Calcutta is one of the last remaining bastions of the colonial British and the city has preserved some very ‘preserve-able’ slices of the British Raaj. The clubs with their sprawling lawns and tennis courts and long verandahs where sahibs and memsahibs of today’s Calcutta, take tea at 3 pm consisting of wafer thin cucumber sandwiches, fine Darjeeling tea and pastries. The samosas, if any, are small and dainty and always served along with spotless napkins. Yours truly returned for a short trip to the city of his youth, where age is but a number. This is perhaps the only metro which has not grown beyond recognition and just as well. Calcutta’s images are – the slow moving tram cars winding their way through many of the busiest streets, the hard carts pulled by rickshaw wallahs (though many scoff that this is an inhuman form of transportation), the Bengal, Calcutta, Saturday and Tollygunge clubs and then of course an institution called Flurys, which can be both English or French. Founded in 1927 by Mr and Mrs J Flurys, it’s perhaps the only place east of the Suez (or was at least for a long time) where authentic creamy pastries and Swiss chocolates could be bought and eaten. But Flurys romance doesn’t begin and end with the menu. It is indeed a valuable background score but the charm offensive is the old world grandeur. Almost every couple over 50 lives on memories of dates at Flurys and passes them down to their children and grand children. And yes, it does breakfasts. If there is a permanent home for my all time breakfast ruler ‘Eggs Benedict’, Flurys it is. The perfectly poached eggs on two halves of a muffin placed over strips of crispy bacon. And then there is coffee with perfectly whipped cream heaped like a mini mountain on the coffee and then stirred. Meanwhile the hunt for Bengali food is like looking for the sea in Goa, there are some places that just do it better. Not necessarily in order of excellence are Kewpies, Bhajo Hori Manna and Oh Calcutta. (Yes, they are names of three of the most well known Bengali restaurants in Calcutta). So lunch was had at Oh Calcutta. And from sit down to the last burp with a sweet pan inside you, that’s all you need to or want to say – Oh Calcutta! We started off with prawn cutlets, moved to bhapa ilish (steamed hilsa), moved swiftly to dab chingri (prawn stuffed in the hollow of a coconut ) and of course the fluffy puris with kosha mangsho (thick mutton gravy). There is another great Calcutta love and passion. It is arguably the home of live music in India, having nurtured and preserved. Orient Express, Crosswindz, Hip pocket and other legendry bands perform at Some Place Else at the Park Hotel where every day has a band playing a different genre. And over the years, many of Calcutta’s legends whose voices and instruments have resonated across the country and the world have sung and played here like Lew Hilt, Usha Uthup and Nandan Bagchi. If other cities in the country are fighting to preserve the old, in Calcutta the “old” hugs you gently in every street corner. In a second hand book shop in Free School street, you can still unearth a Long Playing (LP) record of Tchaikovsky’s piano concerts or a much-thumbed copy of the Das Kapital, first and last word on communist economy, philosophy and politics. It’s truly the last of the great cities of the sixties where you hear stories of a long line of traffic not moving because the traffic cop and the first driver in the line are having an argument and both are quoting Rabindranath Tagore to buttress their arguments. It’s classic in its madness. And that is what is Calcutta’s greatness.
