The soy-laced aftertaste of Calcutta’s old Chinatown

Kolkata loves to mythologise its own pluralism; yet here, in the diminishing footprint of India’s Chinese-origin community, “Desi-Chinese” is not branding rhetoric but the residual articulation of alived history embedded into quotidian food practice.

- RUDRANI CHATTERJEE

Tiretta Bazaar, then, is no frozen postcard from a more cosmopolitan yesterday, but a functioning micro-ecosystem negotiating shrinkage, reinterpretation, and the incremental appropriation of acommunity’s culinary customs.

Better identified as Calcutta’s Old Chinatown or Cheenapara, Tiretta Bazaar is anthropological evidence of the city’s appetite for hybridity.

The early-morning food economy here, much like elsewhere in Kolkata, does not rely on aesthetic allure to validate its relevance.

The faint vinegar in the air, the disciplined warmth of pepper, and the unfussy geometry of dumpling folds operate as cultural text.