Share Bazaar ki chai?...Ho Jaay!!!

My early morning trips to Calcutta’s central business district, Dalhousie, to photograph the heritage structures in the area, brought me, one fine Sunday morning to Lyon’s Range. Right behind Writers’ Building, Lyon’s Range gets it’s name from Thomas Lyon, architect, who designed the Writers’ Building. The street contains, among other things, the Calcutta Stock Exchange.

 

The Calcutta Stock Exchange, on a particularly beautiful Sunday morning.

Writers’ served as the State Secretariat for the West Bengal government until recently, and therefore, was a good place for many roadside food vendors to set up shop. Me, and my friend Amartya, found most of the shops shut, it being a Sunday morning, and the shop owners, who lived right there, asleep on benches infront of their shops. Not so for a couple of tea shops. Coal fires were burning, tea was bubbling in giant vessels, and bread was being sliced, and prepared to be toasted. Who was all this for we wondered? For Dalhousie on Sunday mornings is as deserted as a graveyard.

  

Share Bazaar ki Chai.

We were urged to try some tea. It was famous, we were told. “Share-bazaar ki chai” (the tea from the Share market/Stock Exchange) was something people came from far away to savour. The tea was served in earthenware tumblers, as opposed to the normal “kulhar”, and I must say it was rather good, albeit, at 15 bucks a pop, somewhat high-priced. Very little or no water had been added to the milk, which had been slightly thickened, the tea leaves were of a decent sort and mounds of sugar had not been added, hence the final product was not syrupy sweet.

This process of pouring the hot tea from one mug to another, serves multiple purposes. The sugar mixes uniformly, the tea is aerated, leading to a characteristic taste, and a foamy head is formed, not unlike beer, which many customers demand.

But who, we wondered, would come here on a Sunday morning for tea? We were answered in a few minutes by a non-stop procession of Audis and Mercs. Some of the richest people in Calcutta it seemed, favoured the tea and Sunday breakfast from Lyon’s Range. There were Marwari businessmen, in their gym clothes, here after an early morning round of squash or badminton, their wives in tow, there were youngsters, here for a final sip of tea before they hit the hay after a night of hard partying, there were entire families, parents, children, ayahs, all enjoying tea, buttered toast (with sugar sprinkled on top), and various other fried items. Fruits, it seemed, were also available.

The Sunday breakfast and "adda" in full swing.

The Secretariat has shifted recently to Nabanna, and the shop-owners say this has brought a 40% decline in sales. But Sunday mornings remain as busy and bustling as always. Another culinary curiosity in a city which doesn’t surrender it’s secrets easily.