Of sweet history and delectable sandesh

The place is dingy, dark and very, very old. And yet, very quaint. It appears to be from a different era. From a timeless Bengal. Even as I try to adjust my eyes to the surroundings, the delightful smell of sandesh caresses my nostrils. It feels rather unusual to realize that I am standing at a very special place. A place which is steeped in history.

‘Girish Chandra Dey and Nakur Nandy’ is an age-old sweet shop – 172 years to be precise – located in the nostalgic bylanes of North Kolkata. In looks, it might come across as an ordinary, almost nondescript, sweet shop. But there is nothing ordinary about ‘Nakur’, as the place is fondly called. Behind its ordinary façade and visage, lies a place which has managed to tickle the sweet tooth of generations of Bengalis over the decades.

Set up in 1844 by Mahesh Dey, who had come to Kolkata from Hooghly, Nakur is located in the Hedua area (near Bethune College) and specializes in making sandesh of countless variety. After Mahesh Dey, it was his son Girish Chandra Dey who took over the reins of the shop. Girish and his son-in-law Nakur Nandy then took the shop to the next level and within no time it became the favourite of countless Kolkatans. Incredibly, even after all these years, they have managed to set up an extremely loyal customer base and still do brisk business.

The shop’s forte lies in its sandesh, of myriad kinds. And interestingly, despite the overwhelming pressure of competition these days, Nakur – which has now been declared a heritage location – has stuck to its specialty and have never even attempted to dabble in other, fancier sweets.  

“Our ‘secret’, if you want to call it that, is our quality. We have offered the premium quality of sandesh to our customers for years and people return to us for precisely this reason,” says a confident Partha Nandy – the fifth generation of the Nandys managing the shop. Even as he speaks to me from the workshop, he keeps giving instructions to his labourers; some are busy preparing balls of chenna (cottage cheese) for the sandesh and some are busy packing the completed sandesh on boxes and arranging them on the sales counter at the front of the shop for customers to see. The small area next to me has a wall that is adorned with countless photo frames, all very old, of Indian gods and goddesses. Multiple worn out shelves having old, dusty papers of some kind are positioned below those frames.

On my opposite end, there is a shelf which has rows of dark brown-colored chocolate sandesh, one of the shop’s many famed specialties. I am told that it is filled with thick and oozy jaggery syrup. The tempting item is one of the most sought ones of the shop these days.

Image courtesy 
Girish Chandra Dey and Nakur Nandy

Just like the chocolate sandesh, Nakur, from time to time, keeps trying to introduce other novel sandesh varieties. ‘Sonkdek’ (cake in sandesh form), Black Current Sandesh, Apple Sandesh, Butterscotch Sandesh, Green Apple Sandesh, Mango Sandesh, Mango ‘Kulfi, Mulberry Sandesh, White Chocolate Sandesh, and at least a dozen types of chocolate sandesh, are some of the unique additions to Nakur’s menu which have become extremely popular. Then there are the other traditional ones like karapak (hard baked sandesh) and narampak (soft baked sandesh), golapi pera (prepared with kheer and rosewater), and chandan sandesh (made from sandalwood oil), among a host of others, which the shop specializes in.

Incidentally, they had even experimented with ‘Wine Sandesh’ once, where they filled the centers of different sandesh with wine, rum, and vodka. However, the authorities objected to this, stating that they are a sweet shop and to sell sandesh having alcohol in them, they would have to attain a permit. The experiment was hence shelved. But the makers are still determined to charm their customers with attractive varieties.

Despite the stiff competition they face in the way of modernized sweet shops which have sprung all over the city, Nakur has remained staunch towards its original location and refuses to branch out or even refashion their shop. In fact, even the boxes where the sweets are packed in are simple, white ones; bereft of any glitz just like the place itself. Their attraction, they believe, lies in their timeless tradition of simplicity. Customers like returning here not just for the soft and colourful sweets, but to get a glimpse and feel of the old-world

Bengal as well. Perhaps it reminds them of simpler times. When a visit to the nukkad sweet shop was an event in itself.

Among the shop’s many idiosyncrasies, is a wide grill covering the sales counter which was installed for security purposes during the Naxal menace in Bengal several decades back. Nakur decided to keep the grill even after the threat had subsided and soon it became a part of their persona. Today, it adds to its flavor of olde worlde charm. 

Image courtesy 'Outlook India'

But behind the charm and traditions, there are some concerns as well. Sandesh shops, feels Partha, are region oriented, and are bound to be very limited in the days to come. “Sandesh shops are primarily limited to Bengal. They don’t enjoy the same popularity outside. So I don’t know how long such shops will be able to sustain in the years to come,” says Partha with concern. Then there is the problem of manpower. Partha feels that they need good machines to make sandesh on a large scale and in a specific manner for better results. “Unfortunately, there are no specialized machines for making sandesh. We will have to have it custom-made, which requires a lot of capital. So this is a big issue for us. A good machine would have helped us sustain better.”

Despite the hurdles, Nakur still enjoys immense venerability in these parts. Generations of people have grown up relishing their varieties of sandesh on special occasions. And even today, the shop keeps winning new fans over with the distinctive softness and flavor of its sweets. Partho refuses to divulge the ‘special’ technique by which they prepare their sandesh – it’s their inside secret, after all. Regardless, there is no denying that Nakur p presents a unique quality of sandesh that can’t be found anywhere else.

It is precisely for this reason that they were the main confectioners in the wedding of Bollywood superstars Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. Even the local IPL team, Kolkata Knight Riders requested them to prepare a ‘sondek’ for them during their 2012 tournament victory celebrations. Filmmaker Satyajit Ray, too, was known to be extremely fond of their sandesh and a host of stars from the Bengali film industry stars have a weakness for Nakur today.

I look around the shop one final time. Everything here seems so ancient and yet so charming that I wish I could snuggle up in one of its corners quietly and leave behind the oddities of the present world. I thank Partha Nandy for his valuable time and bid him adieu. He offers me a sweet - a newly invented sandesh in the shape of a paan and having a chunk of orange-colored maava inside. Now I am no connoisseur, but it is absolutely delectable; very soft and sweet and just melts in the mouth. As I allow the sweet taste of the delicacy to invade my mouth, I offer my thumbs up to Partha for this pleasant parting gift.

It has been a unique experience, this. As someone who simply cannot do without sweets in his life, visiting Nakur and exploring its rich history and tradition up so close has been an enriching experience.

As I move away from the place, I notice a 50-something woman at the counter holding the hands of a little girl, probably her granddaughter. The woman is placing her order while the girl looks on at the array of colorful sweets at the counter with wide-eyes. Perhaps, the love for Nakur will be passed on from one generation to the other and the legend of the shop will live on for years to come, I reflect with hope. The lingering sweet taste of the soft sandesh in my mouth only reinforces this feeling.

Narayan Debnath – The ‘Comic’ Legend From Bengal

There is a distinct musty, old-world charm about the room. The windows, the doors, and the moldy walls remind of a quaint world, of a timeless Bengal. This is exactly true of the occupant of the room as well.

His working table lies in a mess, stuffed with various drawing material: bottles of black ink, a few brushes, and a dusty old drawing board.  Clad in his typical Bengali traditional attire of dhoti and lungi, Narayan Debnath might be in his nineties but his love for drawing comic strips remains as intense as ever. 

Renowned all over Bengal as the icon of Bengali comics, Debnath is the creator of celebrated comic characters like Nonte Phonte, Handa-Bhonda, and Batul the Great, among a host of others. For generations of children in Bengal, Debnath’s works have served as a great source of entertainment on idle afternoons. He is also credited to be the person who introduced the habit of reading comics in Bengali culture. Debnath’s works are now being translated into English to reach a wider audience and are, expectedly, finding quite a few takers.

Narayan Debnath

Born and brought up to a family of goldsmiths in Shibpur (Howrah, West Bengal) in the late 1920s, Narayan Debnath took a fascination to illustrating and cartooning from a very early age when he designed patterns for gold jewelry.  His father, thankfully, saw his knack of making excellent illustrations while he was still a young boy. To further hone his illustrating skills, he prompted a young Debnath to join the Indian Art College in Moulali, Kolkata after his schooling. It was during this period that Debnath did his first professional work: making illustrations for local film posters. “I used to draw the titles of many a film in my own creative ways. After that I also got the job to draw advertisements which used to appear during the interval time of movies,” reminisces Debnath.

With time his works got noticed and he got the job as an illustrator in Deb Sahitya Kutir - a leading publishing house in Kolkata in the late 1940s. Here, he went on to draw many an illustration for children’s books, like Bane Jangale and Bagh Bhalukker Deshe or the Tarzan series in Shuktara, a children’s magazine. However, it was comics that he was destined to create for life.  In the early 1950s, the editors at Shuktara asked him to draw a regular comic strip for them. Though Debnath was initially taken aback, as he had no prior experience of drawing comic strips, he took up the challenge with vigor. The rest, as they say, is history.

This was how the now famed comic characters of Handa Bhonda, Nonte Phonte and Batul the Great were born. First to come was Handa Bhoda which was an instant hit. The series features the adventures of two goofy friends, Handa and Bhonda – the former is extremely impish and always gets the latter in trouble. Their comical misadventures connected to the readers and Handa Bhonda still remains immensely popular. After its super success, Debnath was requested to create more such comics and thus came the emergence of Nonte Phonte – a series focused on two friends, quite in the lines of Handa Bhonda, who also do social service – and Batu the Great.  “It was great fun drawing them; I used to take inspiration from people around me, especially when I used to visit the marketplace. It was a sea of unique and funny characters and situations, and my comics have a blend of all those in many ways” says Debnath smilingly. 

Though he went on to create a few other comic series like detective mystery Kaushik Roy, Shukti-Mukti, Bahadur-Beral, and the likes, none quite enjoyed the success of Honda Bhonda, Batul and Nonte Phonte. By his own admission, his favourite remains Batul the Great which he really relishes drawing. “It was in 1965 that Batul was created. He is a huge boy with an overlarge chest and arms and very thin legs. He was in the mold of a superhero which I exploited as the India-Pakistan war happened in 1971. I made him fight on our side and made him throw tanks and boulders at the enemy, thus helping us achieve victory,” chuckles Debnath.

However, Debnath got so involved in creating comics that the illustrator in him slowly faded away, a fact he rues but can’t do much about either as he simply doesn’t have enough time for them at this stage.

His comics, however, got so popular that television channels made an animated series on a few of them, something which Debnath doesn’t quite approve of.  And neither is he a fan of today’s new-age comics. “Today’s comics have lost the innocence that was once associated with them.  There is too much violence which creates a negative impact on children.  Comics are to entertain and to laugh about,” says Debnath with a tinge of annoyance. 

Myself with Narayan Debnath at his ancestral home in Howrah, Kolkata

Debnath got a further boost in his popularity when a book titled Narayan Debnath: Comics Samagraha (By Lalmati Publications), consisting of all his famous works, including some unpublished ones, was launched at the Kolkata Book Fair in 2011. What’s more was that the Executive Board of the Sahitya Akademi chose Debnath's Comics Samagra for its Bal Sahitya Puraskar for 2013. It came in quite late in his life, but the acknowledgment was well-deserved indeed.

The book, incidentally, has been created by a local fan Shantanu Ghosh, a manager in a Pharma company who has been collecting all his strips with pains for more than a decade. “I was the greatest Narayan Debnath fan and collected all his works from a very young age. By the 7^th standard, I had collected about 60-70 pages and by 2008 had made around 1000 pages. I had great difficulties in collecting them all; I even cut out strips when I used to get my tiffin break in the office. I approached many publications but got rejected. Finally, Lalmati accepted. The response to it was phenomenal and it continues to sell extremely well,” says Shantanu excitedly.

At 92, Narayan Debnath certainly is not getting any younger. Troubles with arthritis and other myriad ailments have weakened him considerably and he can barely walk and talk with comfort. However, the passion for creating new ideas in his comics is still thriving. His wife, unfortunately, passed away a few years back and all he has with him now are his three grandchildren and his work.  “I will never get tired of this. I can’t think of giving this up. What else shall I do then? This is the only thing that keeps me going. This is who I am,” says he.

Narayan Debnath’s comics are still thoroughly enjoyed by scores of children across Bengal. All of his popular comic strips, in fact, are also published as separate comic books. There is a certain innocence, simplicity, and charm in his stories that connect to his readers, something you will very rarely find in comics these days. One sincerely hopes that in this computer age of video games and digital comics, this ‘comic’ legend from Bengal would continue standing tall and keep creating his magic that would enthrall readers for generations to come.

                                                                                                                  

Oh Calcutta! My Calcutta! – The Prelude

I have always had a conflicting, sort of a love-hate relationship with Calcutta. Always.

As a child, life was filled with some delightful memories of wandering around the lanes of the quiet neighbourhood of Shovabazaar (in North Kolkata) where I grew up in. Back then, I wasn’t allowed to go out with friends and hence made acquaintance with the different alleys of Shovabazaar and its surrounding areas. The sondesh, the bazaar, the maath (playground), the bandh days, the many festival celebrations; all of them contributed in making my life pretty charming back then. What helped the most were the Durga Pujas where my entire neighbourhood would transform into something magical, something unrecognizable and would leave me enchanted and thirsting for more on those four remarkable days.

A gorgeous painting by artist Ananta Mondal which captures a beautiful essence of Calcutta

Things began changing, though, as I grew a little older. Aided by a group of school friends, mostly Marwaris, who would constantly ridicule anything and everything Bengali and an elder brother who had begun despising every darn thing about Calcutta – the traffic, the transport, the job situation, the food and what not – I too began slowly getting influenced by this notion. I too began finding faults in everything wrong with my city and would scoff and even get exasperated at the locals who seemed to be living their life here with much ease. 

What did not help matters was that by this time I had found love in another city – Udaipur, my nani ghar. The unconditional love and affection I received there and the barrage of memories I created made me feel that this was the city I deserved to be in, not Calcutta. Every time I would return from Udaipur to Calcutta on my summer holidays, I would feel miserable and while entering the city would loathe it to the core of my heart. I blamed Calcutta for taking me away from my wondrous world of Udaipur and would find satisfaction in deriding it for everything.

Things took a turn for the worse when, just after finishing my school, my mother got seriously sick. The next two years of my mother’s ailment were the darkest days of my life and Calcutta too bore the brunt of it. Several issues cropped up in the family and seeing my mother’s distress I yet again began blaming Calcutta for it, very savagely. I believed that the city was a dark omen for my family and had shed its ominous shadow on my life. I remember going out during the Durga Puja that year and feeling absolutely despondent from inside. I was not being able to enjoy any aspect of the city then and was convinced that I and Calcutta were now broken up forever.

A few months later my mother passed away. And things changed. Very peculiarly this time.

After my mother’s passing, I went into my shell and for a good 12 – 15 months just refused to meet any of my friends. After contemplating about shifting to a different city for a while, I gave in as the idea did not feel prudent. Curiously, it was during this period that I found my love for Calcutta in its truest sense.

This is a phase that I have never discussed with anyone but it actually helped me reconnect to my city and also enabled me to get over my grief. To combat the loss I had faced, instead of meeting my friends, I decided to meet Calcutta. I would leave my home – I had shifted to Behala by then – in the morning and go about wandering in different nooks and corners of the city. My usual route would be to walk along the entire stretch of Rabindra Sadan to Chandani Chowk – about 4 Km – and explore different places each day. After having a light snack at Haldiram’s, I would take a round of Metro Plaza (a shopping arcade in Maidan) and then walk towards Park Street. Here, I would spend an hour or so in Music World (a large music shop which is no longer in existence) listening to various music albums and then proceed to the Oxford Bookstore right across the street. Here again, I would spend a good couple of hours browsing through different books and soaking in the quietness of the place.

On other days, I would get down directly at Park Street and walk straight towards Free School Street (also known as Mirza Ghalib Street). It’s a bustling lane filled with various hotels and an array of shops. I especially enjoyed visiting the second-hand bookstores and the dusty, old record shops which took a lot of my time. And after having a delightful sandwich from a small shop located right at the end corner of Free School Street, I would enter Esplanade. This was the place which allowed me to completely let free. Sitting at Hogg Market, strolling through the insides of the massive New Market , spending time at a couple of small book shops right below the Sreeram Arcade, and eating puri sabzi at a shop nearby, I found peace like never before. The mango juice shops and the Chinese shoe-wallas in Bentick Street further helped my cause.

No matter how much time I spent in these places I never got bored and kept coming back and kept discovering new places and things to love and connect to. Spending some of my late afternoons at the banks of Babughat made me realize then that I was falling in love with Calcutta again. Like a man who, in order to heal his ailing heart, goes and finds love in the company of a woman, I went into the arms of Calcutta to let my wounds be healed.

Things went smoothly the next few years as I entered a new college and made new friends. Along with them, I savored the various places I had discovered and along the way, also came across new places to fall in love with; one of them being the entire stretch of Gariahat and Golpark where an assortment of items, including second-hand books, are sold by pavement shops and which really caught my fancy.  

Those were the golden days between Calcutta and I. So much so that for close to six years in this period, I did not even visit Udaipur and was not really missing it either. But then, as in the past, things changed again soon.

Some issues surfaced at my workplace and a phase of struggle began. Also, immediately after, my brother, along with his family, decided to leave the city for good and shifted out of here because of his own professional issues. This left me alone with my father in my house and a period of frustration and loneliness followed. Health issues, along with the endless political matters plaguing the city, for which I had developed a keen interest by then, began gnawing at me. Yet again, I found a reason to hate Calcutta. Yet again, I began contemplating ways to get away from the city.

But over time I have begun to realize that the more you hate something, the more you let something posses your mind negatively, the more it will get to you. Over the past few months, I have attempted to shed this baggage of hate that I had developed for Calcutta and am beginning to take little steps towards appreciating it for what it is and falling in love with it all over again. This, here, is one of those first steps.

Through this series on my blog, I attempt to explore Calcutta - the different hidden and magical facets of it - and bring it out. For as long as I am here, why not try to take this journey which may help me see my city in a new light? I believe Calcutta holds a lot of magic beyond its Howrah Bridge and Victoria Memorial and much beyond its deep-rooted political culture. The kind of magic that perhaps resides in its dusty lanes and is often overlooked by its residents. That is the kind of magic I wish to tap into.

I don’t know yet what shape this series would take. To be honest, with the stories I plan to uncover, I wish to take a ride with you. A ride where I, along with you, can be charmed by this beautiful city. I just pray that in between I do not find reasons where I begin to hate the city again. No, I am quite tired of that feeling.

This is the city of my birth. This is the city which I have loved and hated with equal measure at different times. And this is the city which I promise to make you all fall in love with. Because Oh Calcutta! My Calcutta! our trip is not done yet. In fact, I feel it is just beginning…

Aroma of leather and a flavour of Indo-China fusion in Kolkata’s nostalgic lane

Being tall has its privileges. However, it has myriad disadvantages as well. Having unusually tall feet is one of them. I come from that breed of people who have suffered throughout their lives for being ‘extraordinarily’ tall. As I touched my teens, getting a good pair of shoes was such a massive hassle that it’s difficult to explain in words. Shoe shops in my city generally tend to keep shoes that have sizes ranging from 2 to a maximum of 10. Blessed as I am with my wonderful height, my feet, unfortunately, had reached the 11 plus mark by my late teens. And thus, finding shoes of my size was next to impossible in my city.

I have endured terrible embarrassments because of this. Whenever I would enter a shoe shop, the staff there would just look at my feet and give me a smirk which would denote to them saying something like this: “We keep shoes for humans sir, not ogres.” I have also tortured my poor feet by forcibly putting on shoes of size 10 on them for a fair period of time in my life; as it was the maximum size that is available in most shoe shops. It resulted in me coming back home with terrible feet pain. There have been times where I felt like rushing back home just because of the uncomfortable pain the shoes would cause and would really envy my friends who easily brought swanky shoes and showed them off pompously. I had lost all hope. I thought that I am destined to a life of feet misery.

And then I found Sen-Fo.

Located in the nostalgic neighborhood of Kolkata’s Bentinck Street, Sen-Fo is one of those rare shoe shops (if not the only one) in the city which houses shoes and sandals that range from size 11-14, apart from the usual ones. The entire lane of Bentinck Street, in fact, has many shoe shops that have been there for several decades and are a vital part of Kolkata’s nostalgia. It is only Sen-Fo, however, that caters to the need of people like me.

I remember coming here with my father in my school days to get my school shoes. That was a long time back, but even then there was something about the shop that captivated me. The friendly ‘Chinese bhaiyas’ who worked here perhaps made me feel rather at ease. Over the years, I moved on in life and forgot about the shop. But perhaps it was fate that has made me rediscover Sen-Fo and its exclusive charm.

Myself in conversation with David Chen at his shop's back office

The shop, which has been in existence for more than 75 years, is quite small as compared to the other more renowned ones, but still keeps sufficient variety on its shelves that attracts customers from around the city. However, it is the large-sized shoes that really makes Sen Fo unique; at least for people like me. The shop’s owner, David Chen, is a happy-go-lucky and amiable person who elaborates further on why they keep these large sized shoes. “It was my father (the previous owner of the shop) who actually started keeping these shoes that ranged from size 11-12. When I took over, I too realized that there are people who are struggling to find large sized shoes. Hence, I continued the tradition to help the need of the ‘deprived section’,” says David with a smile.  There was also an instance a few years back where a backpacker from Germany had visited Kolkata and was in dire need of a size 14 shoe but could not find it anywhere. Having lost all hope, he tried his luck at Sen-Fo and David got his shoe specially made. “He was elated at getting the shoe and even though I wasn’t there when he received the shoe, he had promised to spread the good word about my shop in his country,” chuckles David.  

David got into the shoe business at an early age; after his father expired in the late 80s and he then took over the shop’s reigns. Since the shop had been operated by his family through generations, David didn’t take much time to excel at the business and establish goodwill. But didn’t he have any intentions to modify the business to something else? “Not really,” he says matter-of-factly, “Shoemaking is an art. It requires proper study and thankfully there have been many people in our community who are very skilled at it and hence it has passed on from generations. I thus thought of nurturing that skill and expanding it.” He further states, “If somebody comes with me with a special request for a shoe, I just can’t say no to him. I take it as my responsibility to serve him.”

Apart from the aroma of leather, there is another flavor that you can savour at Sen-Fo; the unique feel of Indo-China fusion. The 52-year-old David Chen is an Indian with Chinese descendants. Born and brought up in Kolkata, David’s family moved in from the Canton province in China to the city about eight decades back. He still has a few relatives in China whom he visits sometimes. However, he considers himself a true-blue Kolkatan or ‘Khaati Kalkatiya’ as he likes to say. “I might have Chinese looks, but I am as Indian at heart as anybody else from here,” says David simply. Incidentally, most of his staff- the friendly ‘Chinese Bhaiyas’- too are like him, Indians with Chinese descendants.

David claims that he has more Indian friends than Chinese and he likes it that way. He is one of those rare individuals who are privileged to enjoy the flavours of two vastly different cultures. He relishes Indian food like Butter Chicken and Sambhar-Dosa with as much gusto as he enjoys the Chinese delicacies like Noodles and Fried Rice. Today he has imbibed a lot of the Indian culture in him and wishes to take some of the finer things he has learned here to his own culture. “I wish people from my community looked at death differently. We tend to take it as a bad omen which is sad. We should learn to respect death. I wish I can change that,” adds David a little philosophically.

David Chen at his shop

It is these simple yet sensible traits in David that you will find striking.  He is at complete ease with his staff and the customers alike as he looks over their needs. The shop, however, is not a mean for him to mint money. It has provided for his and his family’s needs but David hasn’t let it become the focal point of his existence. He enjoys the smaller pleasures of life and hasn’t thought what the future holds for his shop. “Perhaps my daughter may close down the shoe shop and use this space for her own needs. I am open to it,” says David before getting into a deep conversation with one of his staff.

As I placed another gleaming black leather sandal on my feet from the shop’s racks, I pondered over David’s last words. What if he really closes down the shop? I wondered. For me, an honorary member of the ‘deprived section’, Sen-Fo is like a haven and heaven at the same time. It has given me the pleasure of shopping for and wearing trendy shoes and sandals when none other could provide for it. Coming out of my thoughts, I noticed that the sandal fit perfectly. Yet another of my prized collections from Sen-Fo!

As I bid David adieu, I wondered if I would ever find another shop that would house shoes catering to my size. Perhaps yes. But it would definitely not have the unique blend of Indo-Chinese flavour in it. And neither would it have those friendly Chinese Bhaiyas.