The Sikhs of Kolkata: A dhaba’s closure reminds the city of its warm bond with the community

It has barely been a week since the shutters came down on The Dhaba, the iconic 86-year-old Punjabi restaurant on Kolkata’s Ballygunge Phari Road, but Preetpal Singh, one of its three owners, is enjoying his regular cup of contemplative chai at another Punjabi institution in the morning. At the 90-year-old Balwant Singh’s Eating House in Bhawanipur, the biggest Punjabi hub in Kolkata, it is business as usual. Khulhars with steaming saffron-infused chai do the rounds, as celebrities, politicians, stars and entrepreneurs go about their morning ritual in the shadow of the busy gurudwara. The banter is often in chaste and colloquial Bengali.

Preetpal Singh, the youngest of the three brothers who were till recently owners of The Dhaba, refuses to talk about the complications that led to the establishment shutting down. He is aware of the outpouring of nostalgic anecdotes on social media about the restaurant’s most loved dish – The Tadka. Singh says it could have been invented by his ancestor Sardar Gurcharan Singh in the 1930s, but it was only in the ’70s that it gained cult status.

For the uninitiated, this dish is simply the Punjabi maa ki dal, or mixed whole lentils that are simmered to a soft, paste-like consistency and served with a tadka of choice – scrambled eggs, chicken or mutton keema or brain. For anyone in Bengal, the tadka or “Torka” served with kulcha, naan or plain roti, is synonymous with Punjabi cuisine. What makes this dish special is the fact that you are unlikely to get the Torka anywhere outside the state. It was a dish created to please a famously discerning palate.

There are a few hundred restaurants serving Punjabi food in the city that has always had a special place in its heart for the community that has been living here from the days of the freedom struggle. Some of them fought alongside Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and came to the city when he set up the All India Forward Bloc in 1939. Legend has it that some of the oldest dhabas, such as The Dhaba, also supported the revolutionaries. Many decades later, the city would also be one of the safer places for the Sikhs who were being massacred elsewhere in the country. There were just a handful of deaths in Bengal in the 1984 riots, and this was instrumental in bringing the Bengali and Sikh communities closer.

A massive influx of Sikhs happened during the Partition. One of the hundreds of families who found a haven in the commercial and cosmopolitan hub that was Calcutta at that time, was Rawel Singh Longani’s grandfather who arrived from Peshawar with his family. It took them a few years to find their bearings and once the political dust settled down, the migrants found their groove.

A host of Punjabi eateries sprang up in the neighbourhood of Bhawanipur, Jadu Babu’s Bazaar and Hazra Road and shops and establishments came up to feed them and the large, growing families. Tinny Da Dhaba in Golpark (related to the Singhs of The Dhaba), Sharma’s Tea House and other unostentatious restaurants began to cater not only to the migrants but also to college students and young professionals on a tight budget.

The Longani family grocery shop was one of the ’50s establishment. The shop dealt in homemade paneer, pickles and typical Punjabi wadis and papads from Amritsar. Rawel Singh Longani remembers how as a kid he began to notice more Bengalis coming to their shop for pickles and papads even as they began to supply to restaurants and catering businesses across the city.

Many of the Punjabi restaurants eventually recreated the feeling of a highway dhaba, in a more “family-friendly” environment. The fare they began to serve was a nod to the culinary legacy of their host city while sticking to the traditional, robust flavours and techniques of Punjabi cuisine – meat with palak (palang saag in Bengal that managed to stand in for the sarson and bethua saag), palak cream, chicken dishes with fancy names such as Chicken Afghani and Anarkali with boiled eggs as an add-on, fish tikkas, chicken bharta and of course the Torka.

Among the pioneers of North Indian food were the Ghais, who opened the iconic Kwality restaurant in Park Street sometime in the late ’40s. Besides their signature dishes, they incorporated local elements of fish and some continental dishes meant to appease the Bengalis with a colonial hangover. On the street known for its European restaurants and clubs, the food at Kwality was conspicuous and an instant hit. According to Pooja Khanna Sehgal, a Punjabi born and raised in Kolkata, with roots in Amritsar, Kwality and Amber were the only two restaurants serving the most authentic Punjabi food in the city. “We looked forward to the fish tikkas that Kwality served on Thursdays,” she said, adding how she would recommend the Torka and the saag meat at the now-defunct The Dhaba to anyone.

Food entrepreneur Saibal Mukherjee, who worked with the Kwality group for nearly a decade, feels strongly about the restaurant’s role in introducing North-Frontier cuisine to Kolkata. “Kolkata at that time was a great place for starting any kind of business,” he said. “The food at Kwality is perhaps the most authentic and a reason why connoisseurs favoured this restaurant over any other place. The food at most city dhabas is a watered down, sweeter version of what you would get here.”

Even if Kolkata got its first taste of homely Punjabi food in an upper crust environment at Kwality, the Torka with its more humble origins was not yet on the menu.

The origins of the Torka are hotly debated. Some believe it was first served at the rustic dhabas along the highway that were always busy with truckers driving down to the city and to the North East. Heritage food expert Pritha Sen believes the Torka was born out of a desire to appease the fussy Bengali who could not conceive of a meal with just dal and roti. “The dhaba owners quickly realised that the maa di dal that was staple in their kitchens was not moving as well as they would have liked,” said Sen. “And the enterprising Punjabis, who were working on a lean budget quickly took a cue from the Muslims who used to add eggs to whatever they served at the Mughlai eateries. And that is how the egg tadka emerged.” She added: “You add a boiled egg to anything – biryani, champ or dal – and you have one happy Bengali.”

Even if privileged Bengalis liked to dine at the Park Street restaurants and the Raj era clubs or sip high tea at Flury’s, the average Bengali was still struggling to make ends meet in post-Independence and partitioned India. Eating out was a luxury but the homely, bustling kitchens of the modest Punjabi dhabas with their generous portions and even more generous hosts, began to attract them. Tandoori chicken, tikkas and chana kulcha were becoming popular during family eat outs, as was the delicious dry fruit, flowers and fruit-based drinks served at another Punjabi legend – Ralli’s – that was founded by another enterprising migrant Ralli Singh Arora in 1898. The affordability and sumptuous servings were the other attractions.

There is another school of thought that places the earliest Torka in the kitchens of the Punjabi establishments of Bhawanipur and elsewhere.

According to Indraneel Majumder, CEO of a resort organisation and a hospitality industry veteran, the dish had its origins in Bhowanipore and Hazra Road Punjabi restaurants. “That was where the Punjabis conducted their auto and spares businesses. That’s where the burly truckers and businessmen went for their own food. But Kolkata was rapidly moving southwards and Hazra Road junction was not able to cut it for many a requirement.” Majumder quite liked the Hazra Road humble Punjabi restaurants and had “tasted nectar in the dal tadka and paneer palak they made”. But the one at the Ballygunj, The Dhaba, was another level, he says.

Rawel Singh Longani’s earliest memories of the Torka are at Kaka Singh’s Dhaba and Ishwar Singh’s Dhaba in the Bhawanipur area. “My grandfather would often ask me to fetch a kulhar of egg tadka dal for rupees three only. It was the best I have ever had – even though my wife makes a fantastic one at home.” The secret to the buttery consistency of the dal (whole urad dal) lay in simmering it overnight, he says, with plenty of ginger.

The Torka has since then become a staple at every Punjabi restaurant – new and old. Right from the critical and popular favourite Sher-e-Punjab in Kolaghat, 80 km away, to the more upscale Rang-de-Basanti Dhaba in Salt Lake and Jessore Road, it is there on every menu.

But only the discerning will tell you how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

According to Majumder, the Dhaba’s tadka stood out from Amber or even Zaranj because of the ghee used to steep the flavours and the simmer form of cooking. The earthy aroma was there in all the tandoor items too. “It came from the way they cured the innards of their tandoors,” said Majumder. “The smear that they used to mature a tandoor created that aroma. And I sincerely believe that they left the dal to soak overnight around those tandoors to soak in the aroma. I came to know of this little trick when I was opening Big Max back in 1988 in Little Russel Street opposite The Park. The cook in charge told me that all the dhabas did this. Whether the others did it or not, The Dhaba practiced it and I could see that.”

Rawel Singh Longani agrees. “You get that unique flavour also at Sher-E-Punjab, where they still used the old-style ovens,” he said. “They also make their own paneer and their cooks are all from Kashmir or Punjab. The difference shows.”

The egg tadka dal was not the only dish that the Punjabi restaurateurs and dhaba owners devised to win over the hard-nosed Bengali client. Chicken bharta, a dish created to cater to the cost-conscious diner who could not afford a whole chicken, was another innovation peculiar to the region. According to Pritha Sen, the bharta – a dish with shredded chicken in a creamy gravy – was also a way to make the most of the leftover chicken pieces in the kitchen. Most importantly, it was golden yellow in colour – something that appealed to the Bengalis who were more used to the turmeric-infused gravies in their kitchens. The chicken bharta, a top draw at the popular Honey da Dhaba restaurant in Kankurgachi, works well as a fulfilling main dish meant to be shared by a family, with rotis or naan or kulcha on the side, says manager Harpreet Singh. Elsewhere, a quirkier innovation is the doodh cola at Balwant Singh’s Eating House – a bizarre concoction of milk and Thums Up that is the star of their menu, alongside the lassi and the puri sabzi and chai.

The second and third generation Punjabis have moved out of the city. Most of them settled abroad or elsewhere in the country. But food remains the community’s biggest connect with the city. And the humble bowl of the Torka still rules the Bengali heart – a gift from their brothers from the North, who realised very early on that the best way to win over the Bengali who took pride in his intellectual heft is by talking to his tummy.