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...