The Well-Fed Bong

My last trip to Kolkata was unexciting foodwise; what with flight delays, traffic jams and work there wasn’t enough time left for anything useful, but on the way to the airport, I stopped at an old favourite – Rahmania . Rahmania has been at this Park Circus location for ages (people say a hundred years) but now the building that houses it (and the other great – Shiraz ) is being reconstructed into some anonymous multistoried matchbox. Shiraz moved across the street, occupying the space that used to be Tandoor Mahal many years ago but Rahmania stays put. Its space is much reduced, the cracked walls propped up with rickety iron scaffolding while the restaurant plies its business, there seems to hang an air of defiance and desperation over it all. The kitchen is dispersed into the newly built concrete pillars of the building being constructed in a bizarre ritual of co-existence. The place seems smaller than it used to be, and some of that already tiny space is now taken up by storage o...

I visited the streets of old Delhi after many years. One goes to Delhi quite often, but nowadays towers of Gurgaon divert attention from the fabulous treasures of Chandni Chowk. This time, however, an accommodation website pointed me to the Maidens, a hotel situated in the quaintly named Civil Lines and appropriately full of chandeliers, heritage certificates and directions to the nearest Metro station. Nowadays, visiting old Delhi isn't what it used to be. Nadir shah or the Mongols had to climb mountains and kill a million people, but I discovered (with some help from a uniformed doorman) that nowadays you could step out of the hotel, pop down some escalators, get groped by some khaki and swishy minutes later you're hearing Chandni Chowk platform is on the left hand side. Inspired by an article in the Mint about nahari joints, I decided on a pass to Chandni Chowk (where I’d gone the last time in search of parathewali galli), head on to the next stop - Chawri Bazaar - and then...