As Yuletide draws near, listen not for sleigh bells but the rustle of crinoline skirts and the merry clink of champagne glasses in the First City of the East. Turkey is in the oven and plum cake is the flavour of the season, the aroma of both savoury and sweet swirling about the streets of Town Calcutta, the capital of British India. Gents in bow ties and bowler hats, and ladies in lacy finery, cruise the aisles in the ‘Hall of All Nations’ – the earliest department store in the ground floor of the Great Eastern Hotel, the grandest hotel in the exotic East started by hotelier David Wilson, or Dainty David, about a decade or so ago.
For last-minute purchases on Christmas morning, they send the khidmatgar for a quick visit to Kasaitolla and the Chitpore Bazaar because the new Municipal Market in Chowringhee is still decades away. And, for a couple of weeks now, fairy candle lights have been twinkling in the city’s newest Cathedral at the Maidan, as carollers usher in the spirit of Christmas, the most universally celebrated festival in the world.
The year is 1857, and the Europeans in Kolkata are pulling out all the stops to make merry. The Great Revolt is still being fought in far-off places like Jhansi, Lucknow, and in the Awadh countryside, and the English are at their most vulnerable. The East India Company is rapidly losing control over their most prized territory – India – and the British Crown is about to take over. The power and glory of the John Company or the Company Bahadur, as the East India Company is popularly referred to, is definitely waning in the subcontinent.
However, what is definitely not diminished is the Christmas spirit. Calcutta Town has not been directly impacted by the Great Revolt, although morale is at an all-time low and there is nothing like some Christmas cheer to lift sinking spirits. The Christmas Eve edition of The Bengal Hurkaru published from Calcutta provides a fascinating insight into the mood in the city. The front page carries advertisements of shipping firms offering voyages to London and Australia during the upcoming new year.
Prominently positioned is an announcement of the arrival of consignments of coveted Stilton cheese! An important example of the early periodical press in British-India, The Bengal Hurkaru (1795?-1866) is one of the first English-language newspapers published from Calcutta. The loan word ‘hurkaru’ is an inaccurate Bengali derivative of the Persian word ‘harkara’ (messenger). By 1833, The Bengal Hurkaru had a circulation of around 900 copies, largely due to subscribers from the military and European mercantile classes, with fewer subscriptions among Indians.
It is known as a liberal newspaper with a humanist view towards education and other social issues. To return to our story, it’s Christmas Eve and a large advertisement of purveyors D Wilson and Company (David Wilson & Company), owners of the Great Eastern Hotel, reveals that its Hall of All Nations has plentiful stocks of Christmas fare – turkey, ham, beef, and a wide variety of cakes, sweets, and biscuits. Sometime later, William Walker, a Scottish-born Australian writer, who goes by the moniker ‘Tom Cringle’, writes a series of letters under the heading ‘Jottings of an Invalid in Search of Health’: “During Christmas and New Year, Hall of All Nations constitutes one of the greatest sights of Calcutta.
A ragged beggar may go at one end with a week’s growth of stubble on his chin, and rags on his back, but let him possess the universal medium, he may be shaved, have his hair cut, get a hot bath, fitted with new cloths cut in first style of London, new boots, new hat, and, oh a new sensation, a good dinner. And should he be a family man, he can buy a new crinoline for his wife, together with bonbons and toys for his children. It has its coffee room ‘Jerusalem’, billiard room and dining rooms… they also make all sorts of cakes and ginger nuts and bake excellent bread.”
On Christmas Eve, in the late afternoon, the who’s who of Kolkata from the English side of the town, and the Maharajas, Rajas and Baboos from the traditional part of the city, drop in for a customary drink on the ground floor of the Great Eastern Hotel riding their carriages, palanquins, Brownberry carts and buggies.
After they toast to the Christmas spirit and toss back a few, they proceed to their respective private parties in homes shimmering with wax-candle-powered chandeliers. For the city’s elite, and for its ordinary citizens, there is no better elixir for a despondent disposition than some Christmas tipple. Savour this famous 19th-century jingle that captures the bonhomie around Christmas:
To Wilson’s, or to Spence’s Hall On holiday I stray.
With freedom call for mutton chops, And billiards play all day.
The servant catches from afar the hukum, ‘Jaldi jao, hey khidmatgar Brandy, Sharab,
Bilayetai Pani (soda water), Jaldi lao’.
Adding clever marketing spin to the prevalent mood is the advertisement inserted by Wilson’s Hotel (nickname of the Great Eastern Hotel) in the Hurkaru. Obliquely revering to the Revolt, it reads: “It is our hearty hope, that we may with our numerous Friends, join to celebrate a MERRY CHRISTMAS notwithstanding the heavy misfortunes that have befallen the Indian Empire since we last met to discuss the right good cheer which had been provided for all India AND its Inhabitants, in that Monster Establishment, THE HALL OF ALL NATIONS…… to usher in with great glee, A HAPPY NEW YEAR.”
Inside, the newspaper carries detailed reports of the military operations during the Revolt, including the relief of war-torn Lucknow, with lists of casualties and accounts of guns and ammunition seized from the Indian soldiers who have rebelled. Several military promotions are also announced to fill the places of those killed recently. Apart from being newsworthy, these reports are also moraleboosters, a salve for the English recovering from defeat.
Offering a peep into everyday life in Calcutta are local news items published in the Hurkaru – the early closure of grog (liquor) shops because of the festive season and the extended hours of the butcheries in Garanhatta; week-long performances by the famous Italian opera singer Signora Ventura, along with the concert of the Town Band; and a performance by Blackface minstrels from the New Orleans, America. In an interesting twist, a decade or so later, Calcutta even starts printing its own version of the Christmas card – devoid of the traditional European imagery dominated by the Nativity, snow-clad landscapes and robins bearing flowers.
These unique cards, while celebrating the Christmas season, draw on the distinctive flavour of the city. They are printed and distributed by Thacker, Spink and Company from cartoons drawn by George Darby featuring, for instance, the city’s recently established municipal New Market in Chowringhee, the Foo-FooTasha Bands and palki ghari. Cut to the present day and the troubles wrought by modern concerns, such as SARS -CoV2 as well as pneumonia viruses, two on-going global conflicts, the climate crisis, food shortages, and a series of natural disasters, but the tradition of Christmas celebrations continues.
Kolkata is returning to her seasonal antidote, immersing herself in the sights and fragrances of her Christmas – plum cakes from the century-old Jewish confectioners Nahoum, carollers singing in the not-so-new Cathedral in the Maidan, delicious delights in and around Park Street decked in LED lights and a whirlwind of retail therapy in the still new New Market. Merry Christmas!
(The writer is a reputation strategist, columnist, and a Kolkata history-buff.)