Rare photos of Calcutta in the 1940s: A foodie’s diary

Calcutta’s preeminence as the Mecca of Indian street food has a lot to do with it being the former capital of the Raj, and the cosmopolitanism it foisted upon the city. The tipping point for street food, however, came when Calcutta played an important role in allied military operations during WW-II. Someone had to feed the babus who had packed off their families to the hinterland and who were working tirelessly to help the Raj defend the Empire. Then, there were the American GIs and British troops, plus thousands of others who had arrived in the city from across Bengal and elsewhere as cheap labour? In stepped, for the most part, the street food vendor. The visual documentation of those eventful times by Glenn S Hensley, photography technician with the US Army Airforce, in the summer of 1944, bears testimony to that. The photographs were originally compiled by calcutta1940s.org. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)

Food sellers near Esplanade and Tram terminus Calcutta
The vendor here is, in all probability, selling along with some dry snacks the famous British drink Vimto. Originally launched as an herbal tonic that gave the drinker ‘Vim & Vigour’, Vimtonic (as it was known then) soon became known simply as Vimto. In the early 1920s Richard Goodsir, the Indian representative for Kiwi boot polish, brought a few samples of Vimto concentrate with him to India for local bottling firms to sample. By 1924 Vimto had become a registered trademark in the country. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)

Parched corn seller
Maize, a prolific American vegetable introduced by the British, soon got Indianised by being roasted on charcoal and generously smeared with lime juice, black salt and chilli powder. It’s no surprise that in Bengal mustard oil became a value addition over the years. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)

Food seller along Calcutta streets
Kathi kebabs, made Bihari-style, is Calcutta’s best-known street food, which it gifted to the rest of India wrapped in a flaky paratha. The kebab gets its name from the use of bamboo skewers. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)

Fuel seller, Calcutta
With the proliferation of street food vendors, the enterprising migrant’s wife augmented the family income by selling cow-dung cakes as fuel for the makeshift open kitchens. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)

Bread sellers — or deliverers — Calcutta street
The French East Indian Company arrived in Bengal in 1688 and set up base in Chandernagore on the Hooghly. With them came the loaf of bread, or the ‘pau-ruti’. Innumerable bakeries dotted the Calcutta landscape, with warm breads fresh from wood-fired ovens delivered to the doorstep. While it is presumed that the word pau is derived from the French ‘pain’ for bread, popular lore has it that tons of dough were kneaded with the pau, Hindi for feet, and hence, the name. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)

Open air meat stall near the intersection of Weston and Bentinck streets
The best meats were most naturally sold in the central parts of Calcutta, which had the highest density of Muslims, many of whom had come with Wajed Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh. Many of these stalls still exist. They supply meat to the area’s innumerable Muslim eateries, and are celebrated for their food, especially during Ramzan and Eid. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)

Food sellers near Esplanade and tram terminus
Migrants from Bihar and UP were referred to as Hindoostanis by Bengalis. They carried with them their spicy chhole, which became the Bengali’s much-loved ghoogni, a boiled, squishy chickpea concoction, redolent with the piquancy of onions, green chillies, fresh coriander and a twist of lime. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)

Ice-Cream Freezer
One morning in 1833, the American ship S.S. Tuscany docked at the port. It carried ice, packed in felt and fragrant pine dust. An Ice House or Baraf Ghar was built for regular supplies, and the more affluent rushed to buy iceboxes, which were wooden contraptions lined with zinc. This ice was then used to make ice-cream in wooden ice-cream makers that required a combination of ice and rock salt to form a refrigerant that quickly froze the ice-cream mixture. (Text: Pritha Sen; Image: Glenn Hensley/Creative Commons)