BOOKS: SWEET AND SOUR
by Dilip Bobb
India Today
August 4, 2008
Based on real life stories, a book manages to capture the mood of
the period when the Chinese lived and flourished in Calcutta.
The Last Dragon Dance: Chinatown Stories by Kwai-Yun Li Penguin Price:
Rs 199, Pages: 122
Calcutta has played host to a number of emigre communities attracted to
the city for reasons of economics, history, politics and geography. The
most visible were the Chinese, the Armenians and the Jewish community.
While the Jews and Armenians were relatively affluent and concentrated
in the area around Park Street, the Chinese, numbering some 30,000
the largest took up jobs that came naturally to them and the
locals shunned: leather tanneries for shoemaking, hairdressing,
furniture-making and eateries.
(It was at his Calcutta restaurant on Park Street that Nelson Wang
invented Manchurian Chicken.) Calcutta was probably the first city in
India to have an official Chinatown where tiny outdoor stalls manned
by oversized women served up some mouth-watering Chinese cuisine.
It was even called Sun Yat Sen Street. A large number of Chinese
owned or worked in the tanneries in Kangra which supplied shoes and
leather goods for the row of shops in Bentinck Street while the rest
migrated to Bow Bazaar in north Calcutta, a lower middle-class enclave.
By the 1950s, they had become an integral part of the city’s cultural
and commercial landscape while preserving their distinct identity
and customs.
The Indo-China conflict and West Bengal’s economic decline that started
in the late ’70s proved a turning point for the community. Hostility
and mistrust forced a gradual exodus, and the closure of the tanneries
by the state government in 2002 for environmental reasons proved the
final nail in the coffin.
Today, there are less than 3,000 Chinese left in the city. Marx and
Mao clearly did not make for compatible bedfellows. Kwai-Yun Li was
one of those who left Calcutta for Canada when she was 22, eventually
to become a writer.
She was, however, born and brought up in the city and this is her
account of the Chinese emigr e experience in Calcutta, based on real
life stories and anecdotes.
Though a slim volume and somewhat disjointed, Li manages to capture
the mood of the time through the lives and experiences of families
and individuals who were representative of the Chinese community,
some sweet, some sour.
Belonging to the latter category is her account of the trauma the
Chinese community went through in the aftermath of the Indo-China
conflict when midnight knocks by the West Bengal Police were an
everyday occurrence.
Many of them were deported to China and others were interned in
special camps on suspicion of being spies for the Chinese government,
even though none of the Chinese living in Calcutta had any interest
in the politics of Mao Tse Tung and Chang Kai Shek.
Largely, however, the stories are to do with the personalities
and idiosyncrasies of the people she writes about aunts, uncles and
friends, while accurately bringing out the unique flavour of the city
in that era.
Although a subject of limited interest, Kwai-Yun’s effort straddles
the line between fact and fiction, and much like Nelson’s famous
Manchurian Chicken, has been adapted to suit the Indian palate. But
unlike Nelson’s creation, it is unlikely to find acceptance beyond
what is now Kolkata.
NEW RELEASES
Italian Khana by Ritu Dalmia Random House Price: Rs 750, Pages: 239
A celebrity restaurateur-chef who specialises in Italian cuisine,
Dalmia’s first cook book answers all questions about cooking authentic
Italian food in Indian kitchen along with details about regional
specialties and accompaniments.
The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage by
Alexandra Harney Penguin Press Price: $15, Pages: 336
An engrossing tale of Dickensian industrialisation, the book explores
the hidden price tag for China’s economic juggernaut. Packed with
sympathetic portraits of Chinese workers, it is a perceptive take on
the world’s workshop.
Trees of India by Pippa Mukherjee Oxford Price: Rs 195, Pages: 99
A part of the four-book Nature Guide series, it is an introduction
to everything you wanted to know about common Indian trees. Others in
the series include Butterflies of India, Fishes of India and Seashore
Life of India.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
