COMING HOME TO Christmas
Yuletide
festivities resound the colonial past from Park Street to Bandra
KOLKATA
A couple of years ago, the appearance of a statue of
Santa Claus clad in typical Bengali ‘baboo’ attire — dhoti and kurta — on
Mother Teresa Sarani (though people still prefer the older name, Park Street),
probably marked how Kolkata has broken away from its colonial hangover. But
then the observation of Christmas in the city, which has its antiquity rooted
in colonial Calcutta, was never strictly religious. Even today, people of other
faiths join their Christian neighbours in the midnight mass. St Paul’s
Cathedral, a Protestant church, is one of the best places to join the prayers.
Queuing up for fruit or plum cakes at Nahoum’s, Flurys, Saldanha’s and the
reinvented Lalit Great Eastern Hotel’s bakery still remains the norm. Kolkatans
in the know hunt up their Anglo-Indian friends and acquaintances to partake of
the home-made wine, the kulkul (sweet snack) and rose cookies made especially
during this time of the year.
In fact, celebrating Christmas in Kolkata has become
more inclusive. A couple of weeks before the festival, the lanes around New
Market are choc-abloc with hawkers selling Christmas trees, fairy lights, Santa
Claus paraphernalia — from statues to attire to caps, glistening stars and
tinsel toys — to decorate your home and Christmas trees. Leading restaurants
invite their clients, sometimes even underprivileged children, for elaborate
cake-mixing ceremonies.
Those who want to wallow in nostalgia, may visit the
re-energised Bow Barracks, with a pre-dominantly Anglo-Indian population. The
spruced up buildings, with their fairy lights and dazzling stars reflect the
Yuletide cheer. But the biggest draw in Kolkata now is the public celebration
on Park Street. A large stretch of the road is decorated with bright, artistic
illuminations. Allen Park wears the look of a fairground, with an elaborate
crib display, stalls selling traditional Christmas and local fare. Look out for
the stalls set up by the Anglo-Indian families where you can taste homecooked
dishes. Wafting above the din are snatches of carols in English and Bengali,
rendered by various groups at the public stage inside the park.
MUMBAI
While for most cities, it is the nip in the air that
signals Christmas is not far away, in Mumbai, on the shores of the Arabian Sea,
it is the delicate smell of baking wafting from the East Indian ‘gaothans’ and
the sprucing up of the wayside crucifixes that remind you Yuletide is not far
away. Christmas celebration in Mumbai is an interesting melange of colonial and
local culture, considering the city was once ruled by two European countries,
Portugal and Great Britain, in succession.
Among the East Indian families, preparing for the
festival is as important as celebrating it. Individual households and community
groups build beautiful cribs depicting Nativity scenes. Even competitions for
the best crib and the star are organised. Most households engage in the making
of an array of traditional sweets and savouries, including kulkuls, biscuits,
date rolls, guava sweets, and ‘thali’ sweet, to be shared with friends and
neighbours. Home-made wine is also popular. Many families still enjoy a family
lunch on Christmas Day, the table loaded with traditional dishes made with the
special ‘bottle masala’. As Christmas approaches, parishioners in different
parts of Mumbai take an active part in decorating the local church and even
holding Christmas markets. Church choirs prepare for the great day while carol
singers usher in the mood with their melodious tunes, singing the favourite
numbers in English, Marathi or Konkani.
Uttara Gangopadhyay
TL24DEC17
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