“Other than dessert, I don’t think there is anything you can’t do with ilish,” declares Subhajit Bhattacharya who, along with his business partner Amit Ghosh Dastidar, has founded an initiative called ‘Lost & Rare Recipes – Kitchen Tales’. As the title suggests, theirs is an
‘Go Green’ is a catchy slogan in itself, and we have perhaps become used to mouthing it without really meaning it, or knowing how to go about it. But if we were to follow the example of Natabari 2 panchayat in Coochbehar, we could, perhaps,
“Where have the 50 million mangroves gone? Last year, there was big talk that they would be planted. How many have actually been planted?” that’s what West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had asked outright at an official review meeting recently. Banerjee herself inaugurated the
On May 16, the day the Government of West Bengal announced a preliminary 15-day semi-lockdown, the number of new Covid-19 cases as reported by the Health & Family Welfare Department was 19,117. That brought the total number of active cases in the state up until
When Bengal braces romantic Kalbaishakhis or Norwesters in summer and pre monsoon, the thunderstorms bring along with them the fun of falling mangoes in orchards dotting the landscape of Bengal, famous for its mangoes and sweets alike. If Satyajit Ray’s Apu and Durga epitomized the
Walking or driving through Kolkata’s BBD Bagh area, the magnificent General Post Office (GPO) building is hard to miss. It has been part of the city landscape forever, or so it seems. In reality, the GPO was only designed in 1864 by Walter Grenville, but
The ancient settlement of Jaynagar-Mojilpur stands at the gateway of the Adi Ganga in the Sunderbans. Most Bengalis know the twin towns for ‘Joynagarer Moa’, a seasonal sweet made of date-palm jaggery and Kanakchur ‘khoi’ (popped rice, akin to popcorn). That apart, Joynagar-Mojilpur is also
Who else but Rabindranath Tagore can come to the rescue of our battered mental health in these times of crisis? And why not? After all, he himself witnessed deaths of near ones over and over again to diseases that do have a cure today. His
It was French journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr who in 1849 first coined the saying, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they remain the same). He could easily have been talking about what is said to
In around 1820’s, an ambitious Moira (sweetmeat maker) named Ramchandra Das from Debrajhat village in Burdwan-Khandagoshi arrived in Calcutta, then a melting pot of adventurers, businessmen, bootleggers and people from all walks of life to try his luck in this burgeoning city on the banks