Scores of pedestrians walking down Lyons Range had their hands over their ears but Ranjan Thakur appeared Zen-like as he worked his way down a stubbled cheek with a razor, indifferent to the cacophony a few feet away.

Ranjan is the silver-haired barber in the front-page photograph in Thursday's edition of Metro that shows an earthmover pulling down a portion of Writers' Buildings while he goes about his job like it's just another day in office.

Pushing 70, Ranjan is a Lyons Range veteran. His father used to make a living cutting hair and shaving beards at the very spot where he operates, opposite Block A of Writers'.

"I first came here with my father. I was a kid then, barely two or three years after Independence. There were still many Englishmen around, though I am not sure whether they were Writers' employees," Ranjan recalls.

Six decades have gone by but not much has changed for the friendly barber with roots in Aurangabad district of Bihar.

His shop still doesn't have a roof. The tools of his trade - scissors, comb, razor, shaving cream and aftershave lotion - are placed on the concrete slab of a building. A chair for the customer with a mirror in front, tied to a grille with a string, are the only luxuries.

"Regular visitors to this area know me well," Ranjan says. "Several of my customers today got me clippings of the newspaper picture featuring me."

Ranjan, barely 5ft tall, is unmistakeably old-world in his crushed but spotless white kurta-pyjama and hair, moustache and beard to match. His regular customers are mostly drivers and security personnel in the building adjacent to his makeshift shop.

Lyons Range has several landmark structures, one of which is the Calcutta Stock Exchange. Just where the road ends and meets Netaji Subhas Road stands the head office of Allahabad Bank.

In its heyday, the Calcutta Stock Exchange was such a busy place that the dalals (brokers) had to sit by the roadside. Ranjan vividly remembers how the older dalals would fight with any new rival trying to set up a business.

"The police would come sometimes and arrest the dalals for fighting on the road," he recalls.

In his book A History of Calcutta's Streets, P.T. Nair writes that Calcutta's first English theatre was located in the north-west corner of Lyons Range. "The first English theatre in Calcutta was established in 1745. Near the Old Court House (where stands St. Andrew's Church or Scotch Kirk), in the north-west corner of Lyons Range, stood the theatre..."

Lyons Range is named after Thomas Lyon, the British contractor behind Writers' Buildings.

Ranjan, who has seen the world go by from his perch for six decades, can't recall any major construction activity in Lyons Range until the demolition of Block A of Writers' Buildings began a few months ago.

While work continued within the complex, the demolition job became visible to the world only after the tin barricades were pulled down and a "rock-cutter" deployed on Wednesday.

Ranjan isn't bothered about what Writers' will look like after it is rebuilt. If he is worried about anything, it is his livelihood.

His business has suffered since Wednesday because of the demolition activity across the road. "People are crowding the pavement where I sit to see what's going on and that is hampering my work," he complains.

He is even more concerned about his three sons. Two of them are unemployed and one is learning haircutting skills to keep the family tradition alive.