“Calcutta’s really improved.”
The first time I heard this, I was pleasantly surprised. It isn’t often that the city which has been your home for almost 36 years and has been run down by almost everyone, including a Prime Minister, is praised.
“Calcutta’s changed.”
By now I was curious – and a bit irritated. I felt cheated because I hadn’t been back to the city in what seemed like ages, except for flying, infrequent visits to check on ailing parents or attend a wedding… moments where the preoccupation of the task at hand prevented me from really absorbing what seemed like a shifting streetscape.
“Calcutta’s looking good.”
Sure, I told myself, there are more shops than I recall, malls and multiplexes are multiplying like rabbits, but have the people changed? Has the चलता है attitude progressed to a दौड़ेगा mindset?
So, on a recent visit that took me back to Calcutta on work and compelled me to stay at a hotel because I couldn’t stay with the family for various reasons, I ended up soaking in the city at almost every level.
“Welcome to the Taj Bengal, sir. Is this your first visit to us?’ whispered Payel at the reception.
“We’ve upgraded you to a small suite sir, enjoy your stay, do let me know if there’s anything we can do for you”, she continued as she escorted me up to Room 303.
The first time I heard this, I was pleasantly surprised. It isn’t often that the city which has been your home for almost 36 years and has been run down by almost everyone, including a Prime Minister, is praised.
“Calcutta’s changed.”
By now I was curious – and a bit irritated. I felt cheated because I hadn’t been back to the city in what seemed like ages, except for flying, infrequent visits to check on ailing parents or attend a wedding… moments where the preoccupation of the task at hand prevented me from really absorbing what seemed like a shifting streetscape.
“Calcutta’s looking good.”
Sure, I told myself, there are more shops than I recall, malls and multiplexes are multiplying like rabbits, but have the people changed? Has the चलता है attitude progressed to a दौड़ेगा mindset?
So, on a recent visit that took me back to Calcutta on work and compelled me to stay at a hotel because I couldn’t stay with the family for various reasons, I ended up soaking in the city at almost every level.
“Welcome to the Taj Bengal, sir. Is this your first visit to us?’ whispered Payel at the reception.
“We’ve upgraded you to a small suite sir, enjoy your stay, do let me know if there’s anything we can do for you”, she continued as she escorted me up to Room 303.
303? The Enfield rifle from the Commando comics! Or Jeetendra advertising that virility capsule that almost vanished later thanks to Viagra? Little did I know then that I would soon be waging a war within the precincts of the Taj…
I dump my bags and head off to meet the people I have to meet. And that’s when the mood-change becomes palpable. Here’s an evangelist who’s struggled to get professional and family-run businesses to migrate to the Internet and when you speak to him, you hear not despondency but optimism. He could have been in Bombay or Bangalore – not Delhi mind you, he’s far too genteel to survive there. After protracted negotiations that are going nowhere, we decide to go for lunch – if all else fails in Calcutta, seek out food and much will be forgiven.
Waldorf on Park Street has changed: they don’t make the fried fish I used to get packed and scamper home with in the pre-microwave days so that we could have it really hot! It isn’t even called Waldorf any longer and is now branded as Marco Polo. The food is good, the prices reasonable (presumably) and the buffet has variety. What more could you ask for in a business lunch? A paan perhaps, and even that is just round the corner.
The car makes its way down Chowringhee and you notice someone protesting about the ban that’s been announced on Calcutta's rickshaw-pullers. This is Esplanade, the Hyde Park of Calcutta, once ruled by a sea of red flags protesting at everything that could be considered an agenda. Only this time, there is a small stage, a lone politician making a speech and a crowd of five (that’s right, just five) in attendance. Either there are other, more persuasive speeches being made in the vicinity where the crowds have flocked or the rickshaw-wallah has sensibly chosen to go and earn his daily wages instead of wasting time here.
In fact, the attitude is clearly that of moving on and not wasting time. At advertising agencies, publications, even a Government-run office with an officer swamped in a sea of dusty files jostling for space with two desktops in the same room, the clear signal being sent out is one of catching up with lost time.
Yes, things have changed.
At Oh Calcutta, the celebrated Bengali-cuisine restaurant that opened some time ago amidst scepticism, it is difficult to get a place for five on a Thursday afternoon. The place isn’t just packed; it’s packed with Bengalis stuffing Bengali food down their throats and paying for it through their mustard-oiled noses. Apparently, there’s also a Bhojohari Manna that serves similar fare which is lapped by residents only. We Delhi-ites get a few odd glances – but because we’re the only ones minus any warm clothing while the locals are all huddled up in their winter warmest. The mall where the restaurant is located has a serpentine queue of people booking tickets for Salaam-e-Ishq which will be released the next day. The elevators are crowded with a youngster pushing his way in and a didi-ma (grandma) jostling her way out (if there’s ever an exam before granting migratory rights to Calcuttans seeking a transfer to Delhi, these two will surely be elbowing each other to top the list)… yes, Calcutta’s changed.
But nothing is as certain a sign of change as Oly’s (or, to the uninitiated, Olympia) the bar on Park Street where the advertising crowd used to be found without fail. In fact, rumour has it that a particular agency almost shut down because its managers would be found at Oly’s from the moment it opened to the time it halfheartedly downed its shutters. At first, Oly’s looks the same: the laminated walls haven’t changed, Dansberg beer is still available (God bless Danny Denzongpa and his Yuksom Brewery), the चानाचूर tastes the same but something’s missing. After a while it hits you: where’s that empty, extra glass that would be plonked down on the table into which would go a copy of every bill recording every round of drinks you’d order just so that you didn’t lose track of your own creditworthiness?! It was a ritual that made Oly’s unique. Now even that’s gone.
You cross the road and notice a new-look Flury’s with the same old hot-cross buns and, worse, the cross waiters who are probably paid a bonus to be surly. Next to it stands MusicWorld and on its steps sit teenagers out of college and office-goers as well waiting for their dates to appear. Calcutta’s looking young.
Somebody wants चाय, someone else is hungry and it’s just 7.30 in the evening. Is Azad Hind Dhaba still around, I ask? The locals look at me as though I’m an idiot – I may as well have asked does KC Das still make rossogollas? So we head off to the dhaba that used to be our haunt after late-night pitches in search of tight-fisted clients in the early 90s. While I was away, MF Husain has been here, I notice, and amidst the red laminated tables, right next to the kitsch Pepsi tiles on the walls hangs an original Gajagamini painting by the eccentric bare-footed artist. This was his gift to Azad Hind Dhaba. Again, nothing seems to have changed except that no one speaks a word of Punjabi or Hindi – all you hear from the waiters is Bengali but, mercifully, the food remains incorruptible north Indian.
By the way, I’m told Nizam’s has been bought by a Marwari whose first initiative was to stop making beef rolls. I’m also told that he’s thinking of renaming it as Agarwal’s! Can someone confirm this please?
Back at the Taj, the Chinoiserie still exists – minus the fried ice-cream though. Instead it has a rat scuttling across the floor. “Can’t be,” I mutter to myself but there it goes again. The waiter apologises and I wonder whether I should continue eating or just retire hungry.
At breakfast the next morning, I find a tiny cockroach under the milk dispensers. I am horrified. So are the chefs. They apologise profusely, the Sous Chef gives me his business card (as though that atones for their sloppiness) and fails to convince me that there is a pest-control operation that happens three times a week. I decide to skip breakfast.
On my last day, at breakfast again, I discover another cockroach in the same milk dispenser – only this one’s bigger. More horror, more apologies but nothing else. Not even a complimentary bottle of wine or meal at some other pest-free eaterie in the chain. Nobody takes me seriously anymore.
Evidently the Taj has changed: they’ve become worse at house-keeping but better at apologising. I tell myself that it must be the proximity to the zoo that keeps bringing in these creatures despite the hotel’s best efforts and wonder if other guests have woken up to find a giraffe looking in through the window.
Has the Coffee House changed? The puchka-wallahs? The roll and chow-mein stalls? The mini-buses? JU?… I don’t know because I have to leave and can’t change my ticket.
But at least, I know that I have to come back. And that won’t change.
Cheers!
I dump my bags and head off to meet the people I have to meet. And that’s when the mood-change becomes palpable. Here’s an evangelist who’s struggled to get professional and family-run businesses to migrate to the Internet and when you speak to him, you hear not despondency but optimism. He could have been in Bombay or Bangalore – not Delhi mind you, he’s far too genteel to survive there. After protracted negotiations that are going nowhere, we decide to go for lunch – if all else fails in Calcutta, seek out food and much will be forgiven.
Waldorf on Park Street has changed: they don’t make the fried fish I used to get packed and scamper home with in the pre-microwave days so that we could have it really hot! It isn’t even called Waldorf any longer and is now branded as Marco Polo. The food is good, the prices reasonable (presumably) and the buffet has variety. What more could you ask for in a business lunch? A paan perhaps, and even that is just round the corner.
The car makes its way down Chowringhee and you notice someone protesting about the ban that’s been announced on Calcutta's rickshaw-pullers. This is Esplanade, the Hyde Park of Calcutta, once ruled by a sea of red flags protesting at everything that could be considered an agenda. Only this time, there is a small stage, a lone politician making a speech and a crowd of five (that’s right, just five) in attendance. Either there are other, more persuasive speeches being made in the vicinity where the crowds have flocked or the rickshaw-wallah has sensibly chosen to go and earn his daily wages instead of wasting time here.
In fact, the attitude is clearly that of moving on and not wasting time. At advertising agencies, publications, even a Government-run office with an officer swamped in a sea of dusty files jostling for space with two desktops in the same room, the clear signal being sent out is one of catching up with lost time.
Yes, things have changed.
At Oh Calcutta, the celebrated Bengali-cuisine restaurant that opened some time ago amidst scepticism, it is difficult to get a place for five on a Thursday afternoon. The place isn’t just packed; it’s packed with Bengalis stuffing Bengali food down their throats and paying for it through their mustard-oiled noses. Apparently, there’s also a Bhojohari Manna that serves similar fare which is lapped by residents only. We Delhi-ites get a few odd glances – but because we’re the only ones minus any warm clothing while the locals are all huddled up in their winter warmest. The mall where the restaurant is located has a serpentine queue of people booking tickets for Salaam-e-Ishq which will be released the next day. The elevators are crowded with a youngster pushing his way in and a didi-ma (grandma) jostling her way out (if there’s ever an exam before granting migratory rights to Calcuttans seeking a transfer to Delhi, these two will surely be elbowing each other to top the list)… yes, Calcutta’s changed.
But nothing is as certain a sign of change as Oly’s (or, to the uninitiated, Olympia) the bar on Park Street where the advertising crowd used to be found without fail. In fact, rumour has it that a particular agency almost shut down because its managers would be found at Oly’s from the moment it opened to the time it halfheartedly downed its shutters. At first, Oly’s looks the same: the laminated walls haven’t changed, Dansberg beer is still available (God bless Danny Denzongpa and his Yuksom Brewery), the चानाचूर tastes the same but something’s missing. After a while it hits you: where’s that empty, extra glass that would be plonked down on the table into which would go a copy of every bill recording every round of drinks you’d order just so that you didn’t lose track of your own creditworthiness?! It was a ritual that made Oly’s unique. Now even that’s gone.
You cross the road and notice a new-look Flury’s with the same old hot-cross buns and, worse, the cross waiters who are probably paid a bonus to be surly. Next to it stands MusicWorld and on its steps sit teenagers out of college and office-goers as well waiting for their dates to appear. Calcutta’s looking young.
Somebody wants चाय, someone else is hungry and it’s just 7.30 in the evening. Is Azad Hind Dhaba still around, I ask? The locals look at me as though I’m an idiot – I may as well have asked does KC Das still make rossogollas? So we head off to the dhaba that used to be our haunt after late-night pitches in search of tight-fisted clients in the early 90s. While I was away, MF Husain has been here, I notice, and amidst the red laminated tables, right next to the kitsch Pepsi tiles on the walls hangs an original Gajagamini painting by the eccentric bare-footed artist. This was his gift to Azad Hind Dhaba. Again, nothing seems to have changed except that no one speaks a word of Punjabi or Hindi – all you hear from the waiters is Bengali but, mercifully, the food remains incorruptible north Indian.
By the way, I’m told Nizam’s has been bought by a Marwari whose first initiative was to stop making beef rolls. I’m also told that he’s thinking of renaming it as Agarwal’s! Can someone confirm this please?
Back at the Taj, the Chinoiserie still exists – minus the fried ice-cream though. Instead it has a rat scuttling across the floor. “Can’t be,” I mutter to myself but there it goes again. The waiter apologises and I wonder whether I should continue eating or just retire hungry.
At breakfast the next morning, I find a tiny cockroach under the milk dispensers. I am horrified. So are the chefs. They apologise profusely, the Sous Chef gives me his business card (as though that atones for their sloppiness) and fails to convince me that there is a pest-control operation that happens three times a week. I decide to skip breakfast.
On my last day, at breakfast again, I discover another cockroach in the same milk dispenser – only this one’s bigger. More horror, more apologies but nothing else. Not even a complimentary bottle of wine or meal at some other pest-free eaterie in the chain. Nobody takes me seriously anymore.
Evidently the Taj has changed: they’ve become worse at house-keeping but better at apologising. I tell myself that it must be the proximity to the zoo that keeps bringing in these creatures despite the hotel’s best efforts and wonder if other guests have woken up to find a giraffe looking in through the window.
Has the Coffee House changed? The puchka-wallahs? The roll and chow-mein stalls? The mini-buses? JU?… I don’t know because I have to leave and can’t change my ticket.
But at least, I know that I have to come back. And that won’t change.
Cheers!
