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Monthly trips to Calcutta, Howrah Station and New MarketMost of our shopping was done at the department store of Whiteaway and Laidlaw on Chowringhee Road and at New Market, a covered market with hundreds of stalls where everything was available. Venturing into New Market was a shopping experience unsurpassed for the bargaining encounter of customer and merchant, both exhilarating and exhausting! The crisp and aromatic Firpo’s Restaurant was the place to have lunch topped off with a dish of Magnolia ice cream, the only brand deemed safe to eat. At the end of the day there would be the just-in-time dash in a horse-drawn victoria, fighting heavy bus, bicycle, rickshaw, pedestrian and animal traffic, across the Hooghly River pontoon bridge, to Howrah Station. Once there, red-shirted porters would take our packages and lead the way through the crowded concourse and waiting hall to the platform where our train, either the Bombay Mail or Madras Mail, waited. They would find our reserved first class compartment, stow the packages inside and then complain vociferously about the payment, pointing out that the established rate printed on their shirt patches was not correct. The conductor/guard, in a dark blue uniform with brass BNR insignia, wearing a white topi, would blow his whistle and wave a green flag. With a long return whistle from the engine, the train would begin to move and with increasing speed leave the busy platform, clatter across the railyard, pass the signal cabin and rush into the smoky dung-fired dusk toward Khargpur and home. Photo: Chowringhee Road and the Calcutta Maidan (open parade ground): Photo:
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