Monthly Archives: October 2013

Kolkata’s streets are paved with bhar. Fragments of the handmade clay cups crunch underfoot on sidewalks, collect monsoon rain in blocked gutters and brighten dull gray train tracks with their dusky orange glow. Bengal’s dairy delicacies, lassi and mishti doi, are stored and served in bhar, but the earthenware shards littering the roads are most often remnants of piping hot cups of chai.

Years ago, bhar was the standard vessel for chai around the country. After slurping down the last sips of their brew, customers would ceremoniously smash their bhar against the ground, returning the clay to the earth from which it was made. It was the perfect model of sustainable consumption. But with the introduction of plastic, chai wallahs around the country abandoned bhar in favor of cups made of the cheaper and supposedly more hygienic material. Former Railways Minister Lalu Prasad attempted to revive the tradition in 2004 by mandating that chai be served in bhar in railway stations and on trains, but his effort largely failed. Today, the chai wallahs who walk the aisles of India’s trains sounding their trademark nasal call of “Chai! Garam chai!” carry plastic.

Read More

Bakra Eid is a time to spend with family, in prayer and, as the name would suggest, with goats. The Muslim holiday honors the prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail in obedience to Allah’s command. Jews and Christians may remember the punch line from Sunday School: at the last minute, Ismail was replaced with a lamb, and father and son were left to feast on delicious kebabs together in the desert. Known as Eid al-Adha in Arabic, or Feast of the Sacrifice, South Asians call the holiday Bakra Eid – bakra means goat in Hindi and Urdu.

We were fortunate enough to celebrate Bakra Eid with our friends the Hussains in a Muslim neighborhood in Kolkata. The first item on the day’s agenda after the morning namaz was slaughtering four goats in honor of each of the household’s women. After the kurbaan (sacrifice) was performed on the Hussains’ terrace with the blessings of the local mosque’s imam and the help of a neighborhood butcher, we settled down to a hearty breakfast of goat brain curry, chicken stew, potatoes, and paranthas drenched in ghee. To aid digestion, we sipped sugary tea and listened to the sounds of the street – goats bleating before the inevitable, crows cawing as they contemplated how to get a piece of the action, and kids screaming with joy like the ones we witnessed sitting on a cow to hold it down for the butcher’s blade.

Read More

Durga Puja may be the world’s greatest street party. For five days, Kolkata completely shuts down to honor the Mother Goddess Durga and celebrate her victory over the evil buffalo demon Mahishashura.

Throughout the city, thousands of elaborate structures known as pandals are constructed to house larger-than-life idols of Durga slaying Mahishashura, flanked by her children Ganesh, Lakshmi, Saraswati and Karthik. Many artists spend all year coming up with themes for these pandals, which provide audiences with far more than a temporary temple – they transport visitors to other worlds with their captivating designs, from a typical Bengali village to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts.

Read More

For the better part of the twentieth century, IBM made its name selling commercial scales and punch card tabulators, and later, mainframe computers and calculators. But disruptive times called for the company to change business models and it adapted to become a leader in IT and consulting services.

Call Shivnat Rai Jadav the IBM of Central Kolkata. For the first 50 years of his professional life, Shivnat delivered milk to homes and businesses in and around Bara Bazaar, a vibrant patchwork of narrow bylanes and back alleys where over 50,000 merchants make a living right on top of each other. “We had cows and buffaloes here,” he waves his arm at the surrounding area. But ten years ago, Kolkata Police enforced a ban on urban grazing and Shivnat was forced to move his herd across the Hooghly River to the suburb of Belur seven kilometers north. 

Read More