Unusual problem hints at change in city’s historically inclusive diversity

Sometime in the later half of 1930s, when Subhas Chandra Bose was elected as the Mayor of Calcutta, the city Corporation gave permission to a Hungarian to sell pork, chicken and beef under one roof. The licensee Kalman Gohari opened the meat shop in 1937 and ran it for more than three decades, till he passed away. Earlier this January, the Bengali family that used to run the Kalman Cold Storag (with a missing ‘e’), which used to sell pork and beef under one roof, decided to turn the establishment into a store for ladies’ dress material. The demolition of the shop began almost immediately, on Friday afternoon.

Unlike many iconic food stores in Kolkata, Kalman was not making a loss. Rather the opposite. “Our customers and profits were steady,” said Agamani Dhar, the owner. Joy Ghosh, the manager, also a family member, explained, “An unusual problem started over the last year. Hindu workers refused to touch the beef and Muslims the pork. This never was a problem over the last century.”

The problem turned acute as Mr. Ghosh took ill last October. “The old workers, who used to process the raw meat, were retiring, and the new workers were refusing to touch the meat,” he said. Ms. Dhar admitted that she was “not adept” in handling the shop during the absence of her uncle, Mr. Ghosh.

That, however, offers little solace to Arup Chatterjee, a retired management consultant who was introduced to Kalman many moons ago by his late father. An emotional Mr. Chatterjee, a connoisseur of cold cuts, was hugging Mr. Ghosh and shouting “Happy New Year” and “Kill him [Ghosh]!” alternately on Friday, as the shop was getting demolished. “During Christmas and New Year there used to be a 100-metres long queue outside shop. [It is] foolhardy to shut a shop like that for some manageable management problem,” Mr. Chatterjee said.

Kalman would supply to elite members-only clubs and celebrities in the city. They, too, are upset. Actor and film director Anjan Datta was quoted saying: “The variety of Kalman’s meat also tells a story — a story of the city’s inclusive character [where] no one’s really an untouchable.”

Kalman, which is perhaps the smallest shop on Mirza Ghalib Street, off Park Street, was bought from Kalman Gohari’s family by Ms. Dhar’s father Bishnupada Dhar, the shop’s accountant, in 1969. Lined with enterprises selling long-playing records, old books, gramophones and dress materials, Mirza Ghalib Street (the erstwhile Free School Street) is perhaps Kolkata’s most cosmopolitan hub. While more than 50% of the buyers are from Bangladesh, it has both sellers and residents from different communities, States and even countries. Ali Mohammad from Jammu & Kashmir’s Baramulla is one of them.

Every winter, Mohammad comes to sell walnuts in Kolkata and stays on the Mirza Ghalib St. “I was so fond of Kalman’s salt meat,” he reminisced. “Though they sold pork [yet], I used to pack a few pounds [of beef] each year while returning [to Baramulla],” said Mr. Mohammad.

NGO worker Sonamon Basu and engineer N. C. Thomas were also “deeply saddened” when they visited the shop on its last day. So was Nikhilchandra Lodh, the shop’s oldest worker, attached with Kalman since 1972. “It could have survived…” Mr. Lodh said, without elaborating.

Mr. Chatterjee, however, was not ready to give up. As he offered a guided tour of the raw meat joints in the area, adjacent to the city’s central New Market, he said, “There is hope left in the world of pig meat.”

“This is Baldwin, known for the best pork stuff, and it is running as good as it used to run more than a century back, when Baldwin Saheb launched it,” Mr. Chatterjee said, buying his weekly stock. “But they are all pork and there is no beef,” he added.

Realising that the ‘magic wand’ — the beef selling license paper obtained by Kalman Gohari nearly a century back — was still with them, Ms. Dhar said that they are not “shutting completely.” She added,“We will get processed beef only on basis of orders on phone in small amounts.”

Maybe Kalman Gohari, who rests in the Lower Circular Road Cemetery about a kilometre south of the shop, “won’t be very unhappy with the arrangement,” said Nitish Pandey, a tax consultant and Kalman customer, insisting that the owners should now start offering a home delivery service.