Tourist in your own city: Fun, food and travel in College Street on a rainy afternoon

Weekends are funny things. You stay at home thinking that you will finish a lot of work and end up sleeping and wishing you had actually spent your day doing something more meaningful. Thankfully, you have friends who share the same wavelength and I got a call from a friend and his wife who wanted to spend the Saturday afternoon in old Kolkata’s most happening place, College Street.  This street houses the headquarters of the Kolkata University and the famous Presidency College among other institutions and hence the name. We have explored the place a zillion times before, but then College Street, with its vestiges of a Kolkata of the yore, has a charm that never fades.

I had reached a bit early, but you can never get bored here, as the streets are lined with stalls having thousands of books which you can see, leaf through or buy. Along with new books, a lot of stores also sell old books, priceless treasures at throwaway prices, and those who have visited old book shops would know that there is nothing that rivals the musty smell of old books!

We started with Paramount, the iconic shop that is well known for its sherbets and syrups. Set up in 1918, it has been doing brisk business since and on entering the shop you find a board with a list of eminent personalities who have been their patrons, and it contains most of Bengal’s famous sons, including Subhas Chandra Bose, Meghnad Saha, Satyajit Ray and Amartya Sen. Sourav Ganguly finds a mention on the top, the living legend that he is. The most famous drink is the dub (green coconut) sherbet, which is essentially the sliced flesh of tender coconut dipped in iced coconut water. The drink soothes you like no other and you can also use a spoon to eat the soft coconut pieces. The smiling host is sure to strike up a conversation with you and you can also pack sherbets to be taken home. There are a lot of other sherbets and syrups you can try out and some of the popular ones are green mango sherbet, rose malai, kesar malai and mango mania.

Now that we were refreshed, we decided to take a tram ride. Trams in Kolkata move on concretized tracks which are open to all cars and vehicles and you can usually flag down a tram when you decide to hop into one. There are two compartments, the first and the second class, with the distinction being that in the first class compartment you have seats in rows and big fans on the ceiling. The best part of the tram ride is that it moves rather slowly and when it picks up speed on finding some empty road, it rings a bell to alert pedestrians and by getting into one you are transported right back to a Kolkata a few decades back. The conductor in a khaki uniform asks you for a ticket and when a stop comes or someone wants to get off, he pulls and a rope that rings a bell to alert the driver and the tram screeches to a grinding halt. We rode for a distance through the rain-washed streets, took another tram and were back in College Street.

Next on our minds was phuchka, the Bengali version of Golgaoppa or Panipuri, which, as many of us would swear, is far tastier than its counterparts. The easy way to indentify a good phucka seller is to see the crowd around his stall and as you approach he hands you small bowls made of saal leaves. Then he makes the phuchka, by taking out hollow crispy spherical puris from where he stores them, makes a hole in it with his fingers and then fills it with a mashed potatoes seasoned with a variety of ingredients that include spices, chillies and lemon juice and then dips it in a container of tangy tamarind water before being serving it.  He will ask you how much chilli and salt and lemon you want and customize the mixture accordingly and you are served in turn , one by one and just as you have bitten into one of the phuchkas and relished its taste, you find your bowl refilled again.  

The phuchkas eaten, we were still in the mood for some more food. So we headed towards the 108 year old Dilkhusha Cabin, famous for its Fish Kabiraji which is fish fillet coated in beaten eggs and breadcrumbs and deep fried. Your Kabiraji is served with a fork and a knife and after cutting through the fluffy exterior, when you take a bite of the fish, you realize why people have been frequenting this place for over 100 years.

We asked the waiter what else we could order and he ran off the names of the items so fast that we had to ask him to stop and he recommended the mutton braised cutlet, a dish the British gave Kolkata, which now is called as a breast cutlet, but is so tasty it is that you do not stop to actually wonder about the name.  A cutlet is similar to a Kabiraji, expect that there is no fluffy egg coating to the patty. Like the Kabiraji, it is served with a rather pungent mustard sauce and onions.

By now, we were full and our next stop was at Montu’s Paan Shop. This shop has taken the art of paan making to a different level, there are paans named Rasaraj, Badsahi, Dilkhush, Monerekho and the popular Benarasi. Different ingredients go into each paan, a mixture of spices, gooey liquids, nuts, cardamom and other stuff and you can see the guy immersed in his art as he adds them in appropriate quantities before folding it and offering it to you. He tells  you that making a paan is an art and all the ingredients need to be added in the right quantities for the right taste. We tell him we will come back again and know more from him about his art.

By now it was dark and we went back to our homes tired but happy.  A rainy day afternoon, well spent!