Crossings
A STREET, as the lady almost said, is a street is a street. Ask the postman who delivers mail to 7, Lok Kalyan Marg. Or ask the Calcutta foodie who still swears by Mother Teresa Sarani - though, of course, he doesn't call it by that name.
Those not acquainted with their Neruda, Derrida or Manik da know the street merely as the road that connects Park Circus to Chowringhee. Those who know the city hold that it is not just a street, but all that Calcutta once was.
The street popped into the news a couple of weeks ago when social media sites started to hyperventilate about a Park Street restaurant called Mocambo. The restaurant - known for its Surf 'n' Turf, a dish that boasts of meats and seafood, all in one platter - didn't allow a would-be diner in. The diner said it was because she was accompanied by her driver. The restaurant denied her allegations. But her posts on Facebook went viral - and Calcutta immediately split into three and a quarter.
One section stood by the complainant, holding that the driver should have been allowed in. One lot asked the protestors if they'd ever shared a meal at the dining table with their domestic help. The third lot said there was nothing wrong if Mocambo wanted to keep the driver out - they would do so themselves. And just a tiny section wanted to know why Mocambo was being described as a fine dining establishment.
The Mocambo debate continues, but it has established one abiding truth - that nothing troubles Calcuttans more than a slur on their street to beat all streets.
There was, indeed, a time when Park Street was the symbol of cosmopolitan Calcutta. The city embraced travellers, traders, rulers and soldiers and the food legacies that they left behind. The eateries that lined the road doffed their collective caps to the city's ever bubbling cauldron.
By all accounts, those were exciting times. A book called Hutch recounts how at the Grand, just a perpendicular road away, Grenada-born Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson was a much feted black pianist. Among his lovers, the legend went, were Lady Mountbatten and the Maharajah of a princely state of Bengal. He sang in the hotel in the early decades of the 20th century, and was wooed by men and women alike. In A Princess Remembers, Gayatri Devi speaks fondly of Calcutta's grand winters in Park Street.
But that was then.
These days, the Street, which once dazzled during Christmas and the Pujas, is lit through the year with blue-and-white candy stripes that speak of changing times. The old musicians - band leaders of the Sixties and the Seventies that the rest of the country looked up to - are almost all gone: some are retired, and quite a few are playing the electric harp up there. Many of the iconic restaurants have downed their shutters, too.
Of course, quite a few of the old favourites are still around - and seemingly doing brisk business. Mocambo has crowds waiting outside, with or without their drivers. Peter Cat serves chelo kababs that would surprise any self-respecting Iranian. And waiters continue to totter unsteadily on their feet at Olypub, carrying mixed grill platters that Billy Bunter would approve of.
Meanwhile, new restaurants have been replacing old ones, offering all kinds of cuisine. But nostalgia is always on the menu - and still the most sought after.
Elsewhere in the country, you'd be forgiven for thinking that tetrazzini is some kind of an antibiotic for a stomach bug. In Calcutta, everybody knows that it is a chicken and mushroom dish in a butter and cheese sauce that came to the city along with American soldiers during World War II. Very delicious, says Mocambo on its menu card.
But while restaurants come and go, the stories carry on forever. Long after Sky Room downed its shutters, the Park Street restaurant is still spoken of in hushed whispers. Did you ever have its prawn cocktail, Calcutta denizens will ask you, and look pityingly at you when you confess that you never saw the restaurant, let alone its prawn cocktail. But you must know that Indira Gandhi loved it, and that prawn cocktails packed in ice would be sent all the way to New Delhi for her? No? Aah...
Sky Room may have elegantly burped its way out, but nostalgia, clearly, still rules. So much so that a restaurant has come up on the EM Bypass which seeks to underline the street's food and music. The menu has all the old favourites, from devilled crabs to tetrazzinis, and in case you've still missed the point, a gentleman croons Autumn Leaves while you dig into your Chateaubriand.
What's it about Park Street that so captures the imagination of the people? Well, it has to be said that when Delhi was still a hick town, when tandoori chicken was an epicurean's delight in the national Capital, there was Park Street in Calcutta. Connaught Place was yet to come up as a foodies' hub, and Delhi's Khan Market, now celebrating world cuisine, mainly sold stationery, keds and cloth to the middle-class neighbourhoods in the area. Bombay had its restaurants, but no street as exalted as Park Street. And Chennai and Banglaore were, well, just Madras.
But cities change - as cities are wont to. Delhi is arguably the leader when it comes to restaurants today; Mumbai and Bangalore are a close second. Even Chennai and Hyderabad may have outpaced Calcutta.
Calcutta, too, has changed. Along with industry, the young have moved out. Meanwhile, glitzy malls have come up in other parts of the city, housing restaurants big and small. And Park Street, despite all the lights, is draped in sepia tints.
Perhaps the time has come to call it by its old name. Once upon a time, it was known as the Burial Ground Road.
Bishakha De Sarkar
