Gautaman Bhaskaran, Hindustan Times
Author Chennai
March 25, 2010
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Flashback: Flury’s glorious daysStephen Court on Calcutta’s famed Park
Street that turned into a towering inferno last Tuesday has been a
historic symbol, and the tea-room, Flury’s, that adorned the
99-year-old heritage building, was even more iconic. Stephen Court,
built by penniless Armenian refugee-turned-millionaire Stephen
Arathoon, was among the innumerable stately mansions that along with
magnificent churches and expansive garden houses made up the Calcutta
(as it was then called) of the 1960s and 1970s.

On the one hand, the city was a picture of languidness. Tramcars
rambled along what seemed like cobbled streets, the driver shooing
away men and animals from the tracks with his foot-bell. Weather-worn
buildings stared down at hand-pulled rickshaws as they struggled to
move through smoke-belching motorised traffic. Calcutta’s football
fanatics gorged on spongy `rosogulla’ and triangular `singada’ after
they had argued silly over their Mohan Bagan and East Bengal heroes,
while the babus of the Writers’ Building, the State Secretariat,
debated American atrocities in Vietnam over small mud cups of syrupy
tea.

Away from this cacophony of babus culture and streetcars lay another
Calcutta, the swinging city, whose focal point was the posh Park
Street. Its ritzy night spots like Moulin Rouge, Macomb, Blue Fox and
Trances offered live music and sizzling cabaret. Pam Crain crooned,
and so did a 20-something silk sari-clad Tam Bram, Usha Uthup, who
became a rage at Trincas with her sexy voice and sensational songs. A
few yards from Trincas across Park Street lay Flury’s, Calcutta’s only
tea-room. Founded by J. Flurys and his wife in 1927, it served
traditional European confection. It soon became the rendezvous of the
young and the old, who savoured its exotic cakes, creamy pastries,
rich puddings and the world’s finest chocolates. Its tastefully
enriched interior recalled the romance of the Raj, and this sense of
timelessness lingered when I began frequenting Flury’s in the early
1970s.

Gautaman Bhaskaran

The haunt of girls and boys from the nearby Loreto and St. Xavier’s
colleges, Flury’s played the perfect Cupid to longing love and racing
hearts, perhaps scandalizing the morals of the institutions. For
decades, when St. Xavier’s refused to turn co-educational, the Loreto
girls remained the Xavierians’ most important link with the opposite
sex. Over Flury’s aromatic beverages and tea-cakes many love stories
were written – and erased.

The tea-house was also the den for Calcutta’s artistic brigade.
Satyajit Ray made a rare appearance for his piece of pastry there,
when he chose to miss his regular `adda’ at The Coffee House in
Central Calcutta. Professors from Xavier’s, like Lal and Vishwanathan,
discussed the finer nuances of the English language in the decorous
ambiance of Flury’s, and, perhaps, looked the other way when they saw
courtship between the two rigidly missionary institutions. There was
then Mrinal Sen, the media-made rival of Ray. Sen’s garrulousness
rattled the tea-cups all right.

Stephen Arathoon’s daughter herself must have stepped into Flury’s for
her cup of coffee. She lived in one of the flats in Stephen Court till
her ripe old age as a witness to the bond her father first established
with a street that got its name from a deer park which was once stood
there.

The fire perhaps burnt down the lingering traces of that link.
(Gautaman Bhaskaran grew up in Calcutta’s halcyon days)