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Christmas memories from the City of Joy

If you are from Kolkata then the biggest day of the season of Yule isn't quite complete without having a cake and eating it too.

It's the time to tuck into the perfect roast for a Christmas lunch, wherever you are and a hearty and merry Christmas to you. But if you are from Kolkata then the biggest day of the season of Yule isn't quite complete without having a cake and eating it too.
That's how it has been for millions of people for decades in the City of Joy. And at the heart of this endearing bake story in the city's New Market area has been Nahoum's, a century old, rundown, nondescript-looking confectioner.
Up until at least the late '90s, the queue every Christmas eve in front of this bakery, founded in 1902 by Nahoum Israel Mordecai, a Baghdadi Jew, would tell you why Christmas in the erstwhile British capital to me then and many others was about pure love that overrode all human barriers of race, religion, and language.
And the underlying theme was more delectable than the rich plum cake itself they made with currants and raisins. That of Hindus - both local Bengalis and the firmly settled Marwaris alike, besides Parsees and Buddhists, queuing up at a Jewish-run shop for rich fruitcakes made by Muslim chefs to celebrate what is quintessentially a Christmas festival! Just like their mid-night mass attending Anglo-Indian and Syro-Malabar counterparts. No questions asked, no answers sought. You would give the dough and you would get the bake!
Times have changed since as has the city and its perceived heritage. The Jews who flocked to Calcutta in thousands during the first half of the 20th century have all now gone back leaving behind barely a handful of their descendants. One of them still looks after Nahoum and Sons, as it is officially known, albeit moth-eaten by time today and a pale shadow of its former self. Memories of crowd jostling to get in may have faded in distant memory for many including Nahoum himself but the waft of a freshly baked Christmas-special plum cake should still stir up enough nostalgia of a time when times were generally good, love was abundant and Christmas a happy excuse to count all the blessings.
I haven't seen a Christmas in Calcutta for years now but I am told the store still stands at the same location where nothing much - from its teakwood furniture to old-fashioned glass displays - have changed. Nor has the food on offer although everything around it has. I just hope the essence of the Christmas I always knew and celebrated in the city hasn't changed too although my friends from the city rarely give me that belief on WhatsApp these days!
-abhishek@khaleejtimes.com