Those of us who were influenced by British morals, manners and social graces in the middle of the 20th century discovered for ourselves a paradisiacal kingdom. Our lives straddled two cultures ? both eastern and western ? and it was easy to move from one to the other without any effort at all. This was specially marked in the matter of cuisine. There was always a Brahmin Oriya cook to prepare our lunch and for dinner it was invariably a Christian chef, familiar with roasts, savouries and delicate puddings.

In those days leisure was not a rare commodity so we didn?t have to rush through our meals and end up with acute indigestion.

One had a prodigious capacity for consuming food and our Bengali lunches ran to more than four or five courses, beginning with shukto and ending with alubakhrar chutney. My grandmother was fussy about what she ate and if there was a slight variation in the quality of cooking, there would be hell to pay. A meal was meant to be savoured in a dignified way without any threatening deadlines hovering in the background.

Our Oriya cook specialised in posto, mochar ghonto, succulent potoler dolma and lobster malai curry. He was just as proud of his work as we were and sitting down to lunch was a delightfully protracted affair. Home-made kamala lebur payesh was always a great draw.

However amazing it may seem, our teas at 5 pm were accompanied by mohan bhog, jeebhey gaja, gokul pithey, chandrapuli and malpoa made in the house. In those fabulous days every large household was blessed with a competent and ladylike bamundidi. She was often a widow whose culinary prowess was never in any doubt. I don?t remember where we recruited them from but my grandmother knew which sources to tap to obtain the services of such a woman. The sweets mentioned above were the products of her creative talent and none of our bamundidis ever disappointed us on this score.

The Christian chef got into his stride in the evening with a four course dinner adorning our table which left us vulgarly replete. A heartwarming soup was followed by steamed or grilled fish and then it could have been chicken quennel, boiled or fried with parsley potatoes and fresh beans. The pudding often turned out to be the most exciting item on the menu. Who could resist Tipsy Pudding or Date Puffs and custard or the silky chocolate souffl??

When grandmother threw her special dinner parties for Europeans, I remember a savoury item served after the dessert. Angels on horseback, celery on toast, sweet corn and prawns on toast titillated our palates. No other age set such store by spaciousness.

Our birthdays never went unrecognised. The celebrations were subdued but meaningful, without any touch of razzle dazzle. The birthday boy sat down to lunch with the ladies of the house annointing his forehead with sandal paste and placing a garland of marigolds round his neck. At the same time bamundidi blew the conch shell from a distance and the charming ritual neared completion. The delicacies were served on a silver thala ? beginning with macher muror dal, cauliflowers, meat curry, date chutney and finally a rich bhater payesh. It was a gourmet?s delight.

In the evening a few relations and friends would be invited to tea. There would invariably be asparagus rolls wrapped in damp linen, an enormous birthday cake from Flury?s with candles stuck on top. The usual Bengali sweets including amritis found their place on the tea table as well. A connoisseur of Bengali sweets would know how hypnotic amritis were.

The Raj days saw a plethora of servants in upper class households. It was quite honestly a Golden Age for minions and we had a mixed bunch of them serving in different capacities. The old retainers lent our house a lot of dignity. They knew our moods and habits and seldom put a foot wrong. In the event of any problem concerning lights and fans, they seemed to know how to tackle them without much prompting. In those days replacements were easily available and whenever anyone went home there was always a stand-in or ?badli?. At no point in time were we ever understaffed. I couldn?t figure out from which invisible pool they were brought to us.

All the servants were provided with godowns and except for the Muslim drivers, their meals were cooked in our kitchen. A cycle was provided for our sarkar babu who obtained our provisions from the bazar every morning. Calcutta?s streets used to be most cycle-friendly with no lumbering minibuses anywhere on the scene to cause murder and mayhem. It was a self-sufficient world we inhabited which an outsider would need a passport to enter.

What lubricated our system was an abundance of good films in elegant cinema halls. As children we were brought up on Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, Walt Disney, cowboy films and animal films like Lassie and National Velvet.

There was never a shortage of good wholesome laughter which blew the cobwebs away and stirred our joie de vivre. It?s a pity insensate violence and relentless sex have become the staple diet today which leads to mental aberrations and disordered fancies.

Later on we were entertained by Bob Hope, Norman Wisdom, Jerry Lewis and Danny Kaye. Intelligent fun had carved out a niche for itself. There was no TV to seduce us nor were radios always at hand.

Metro and Lighthouse enriched our lives with a host of colourful images moving in a procession before our eyes. It?s sad to think that these perfumed cinema halls are now being boarded up, having fallen on evil days and lacking the sort of patronage that once gave them life and energy. One never felt unsafe on the streets of Calcutta. I remember seeing elderly Parsis sitting on the Maidan, in the ?40s, in folding chairs, on hot summer evenings. It looked as if a round table conference was in progress. There were no ghosts to haunt hem, no anti-socials on the prowl. The Strand was visited by heaps of people well after sunset, taking in the fresh river breeze and enjoying the dancing lights on the water in a perfectly tranquil atmosphere.

A street-smart generation has come up now, hot and frenzied, cluttering up its mind with banalities. Calcutta is turning into a concrete jungle at the mercy of landsharks, pimps and touts. The changes that have come about couldn?t be more oppressive.

?The Sea of Faith

And naked shingles of the world?.