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Delight was not just a restaurant

By Bhaskar Phukan

The name of the restaurant was �Delight�. True to its name, the restaurant had an aura of delightful positivity about it. It was on the lines of contemporary restaurants of Calcutta (Kolkata) of those days that catered with a standard of service maintained and with an added amount of decency in its maintenance. The Assam-type building that housed the eatery spelt an intricate style of superior Assam-type architecture with carefully and articulately done-up interiors. To add to that were the furniture, decorative paintings numbering a few and the rest that makes a restaurant a delightful place for all.

If you are curious to know what I am writing about, the answer is I am here to let the readers know about a restaurant that existed at Panbazar, where a commercial building named �Kalpataru� exists. A great poet and equally reputed writer Navakanta Baruah was a Professor of English literature in Cotton College. Thanks to my friend Pradip Acharya, who was a junior colleague of Navakanta Barua, through whom I had the opportunity of coming close to the great poet and to become close enough to interact with him in a friendly manner. It was once, during our talks regarding this restaurant, I remember him saying that Delight as a restaurant had its beginning during the World War II and the year was either 1940 or 41. He too had great memories about the restaurant and mentioned about the quality coffee the restaurant had to offer, along with other delicious dishes.

Many of my seniors whom I approached for some inputs about food items and dishes the restaurant offered, most were in praise for its quality of sweets, especially rasamalai. Besides, dishes prepared from chicken and fish, the restaurant had one popular item Mughlai Parotha.

Besides a reputation in regard to the food served there, the restaurant had also acquired a glamour quotient because of its clientele. Most contemporary writers, poets, filmmakers and persons engaged in creative activities had Delight as the place where they preferred to meet one another. And that was one reason why Delight did not remain at being just a place where you eat or sip a cup of tea or coffee; a visit to Delight meant something more than that.

During the period when the restaurant was at its peak of popularity, I was too young to grow a habit of visiting restaurants, but was fortunate enough to have a few occasions of having a treat or two at the restaurant, courtesy my parents and relatives.

One incident related to Delight is still fresh in my memory, though it occurred during my early schooldays. I got an opportunity to watch shooting of a film and that too in the restaurant I am writing about. We four friends (all were students of sixth standard of Cotton Collegiate School) were moving around in the Panbazar area during school tiffin hours. There was a shooting of a film going on inside Delight. The place was barricaded to prevent the crowd from intruding into the same, but we somehow managed and entered the �action area� where the real business was going on. Late Phani Sharma, an icon in the world of Assamese film and drama, Moazzin Ali, another popular comedian, and few others were at the shooting. The film was Ito Sito Bohuto, a comedy film, which was released a year or so later.

A number of short stories and novels have Delight in their backdrops, with leading lady and the leading man meeting each other in this restaurant. Late Nirode Chaudhury, a novelist, a short story writer and a journalist with whom I had the opportunity to work as colleagues in The Assam Tribune during my two years stint as a journalist, used to spend his creative hours sitting at a corner table of Delight.

There was also a connection between the restaurant and Hiren Bhattacharjya, the popular poet. Two of Hiruda�s friends once took him to Delight for a treat. The two friends, both were businessmen, got drawn into a discussion and Hiruda, who got terribly bored from their tedious conversation, tore apart the empty packet of Charminar and after borrowing a pen from Guptababu, the manager, wrote a poem on the blank side of it.

People mourn death of near and dear ones. Mourning for the demise of a restaurant is not something one generally hears about. But yes, death of Delight on a day in 1968 was mourned by those who had become an inseparable part of it.

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