Will The Dragon Dance Again In Kolkata’s Chinatown?

Kolkata’s Chinatown, the oldest in India, has been in decline for decades. An ambitious revival project now aims to alter the community’s future

- Kathakali Chanda

Much before the rest of the city begins its Sunday, a lane behind Lalbazar, the police headquarters in central Kolkata, stirs awake with the clank of cookware and the aroma of food. The sleepy pavements on either side of Chhatawala Galli spring into action as makeshift stalls—a few rickety tables and chairs—are propped up. Someone dunks a long-handled ladle into a simmering pot of fishball stew and stirs it. Somebody else keeps plates of momos ready. As day breaks, the din of visitors rises, and huddles form around items on sale. A man in his twenties haggles for speckled pork sausages, while his companion bites alternately into a pau (a steamed bun with a filling of chicken, pork or shrimp) and a crunchy spring roll. Shutterbugs snake through the crowds, capturing what could just be the last images of a decades-old tradition.

Welcome to the Chinese breakfast market in Kolkata’s Tiretti Bazaar, home to the oldest Chinatown in India. (See box on how the community settled in Kolkata.) The home-cooked Chinese meals served here come with spoonfuls of nostalgia. And for many of those who have frequented the market since childhood, nostalgia is perhaps all that remains.

“The Chinese breakfast market hardly has any Chinese people these days,” says Sam, 70, a third-generation Chinese who has been coming to the market for the last 20 years.