An Anglo-Indian Christmas in Calcutta 

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from ‘A Taste of Time: A Food History of Calcutta by Mohana Kanjilal—a compendium of Calcutta’s food and cultural journey. This excerpt is a mouth-watering description of how the Anglo-Indian community celebrates ‘Bara Din’ aka Christmas with their own Indian twist. This excerpt has been republished with permission of Speaking Tiger Books.

Despite the huge exodus of Anglo-Indians after India’s Independence, Calcutta’s community remains robust and very active. This becomes especially evident during their celebration of Christmas. The quiet lanes of Bow Barracks lined with their legendary three-storeyed red brick buildings sporting green window frames are completely transformed during the festive season. The usual calmness characteristic of the place, broken now and then with a faint trace of an Elvis Presley or John Lennon number playing in one of the houses on any given day, is replaced with joyous revelry that begins two days before Christmas and continues up to the early hours of the first day of the following month. 

While the entire place is decorated with streamers, balloons, lights, paper snowflakes, silver bells and Chinese lanterns, a beautifully decorated big Christmas tree takes centre stage here. A crib is set up at a corner and every flat has a shining star on its balcony. The grotto where the local residents pray is spruced up and decorated. Members of the locality bake cakes and cookies and make home-made wines for residents and visitors alike. Plenty of kiosks selling a variety of food are put up in every nook and corner. Carol singers mingle with the crowd and children can be seen enjoying pony rides or their turns at the merry-go-round. 

For the senior citizens, there are rounds of bingo, musical chairs and dancing. Street parties, gift shops, housie games, baskets of goodies and feasts are arranged by the residents of the area. The atmosphere is enlivened with live music and revellers are not averse to breaking into jigs every now and then. Various programmes like Christmas Balls and football matches are organized. And the best part of the entire revelry is that Santa Claus arrives, not in a sleigh pulled by reindeers, but in a hand-pulled Calcutta rickshaw, digging into his toy bag and showering everybody with candies.

In Bengal, Christmas is also called ‘Bara Din’ (Big Day) by the locals. Christmas is a day for family reunions in the Anglo-Indian homes of Calcutta. The Anglo-Indians celebrate Bara Din with home-made wines and cakes. While many Anglo-Indian families rely on the local roti-wallah (bread man) for readymade Christmas cakes, most prefer to make their own ones. They mix the ingredients at home and then take the mix down to the local bakery for baking. Minakshie Das Gupta, Bunny Gupta and Jaya Chaliha elaborate in the chapter ‘Bawarcheekhana’ in their book, The Calcutta Cookbook: A Treasury of Recipes from Pavement to Palace (1995), ‘Christmas cake with Anglo-Indians [….] is a matter of personal pride. Many kilograms of cake mixture according to an old family recipe are handed over to the local rotiwala (bread man) three weeks before Christmas. Baked in half pound bread tins, cakes are exchanged between family and friends. The ingredients: karamcha—the Calcutta cherry, a sour fruit, preserved and coloured a brilliant red—manufactured by the Kabuli dried fruit sellers in the New Market; petha, crystallized white pumpkin, another ingredient is now added liberally as it is the cheapest of the preserved fruits; green cardamoms are added to cinnamon and finally a generous measure of rum poured into the mix. The daily dousing of the cake with rum makes for a merry Christmas’ (p. 207)

Wine-making is a tradition for Anglo-Indians and each family has its own stock of recipes that has been passed down through generations. The variety of homemade wines made from fruits is plenty like grape, blueberry, litchi, raisin, ginger, cherry, beetroot, gooseberry, apple and kala jamun (Indian blackberry). Wine-making is an integral part of the Anglo-Indian Christmas celebration and Bow Barracks has its own list of wine-makers from within the community. By the time December arrives, the wines are bottled and ready for consumption. Anglo-Indians begin gifting them to family members and friends a few weeks before Christmas. Those visiting are served home-made wines and cakes. On Christmas, family members gather around the dining table for a well spread out meal, washed down with umpteen glasses of these wines. Not only Christmas but even weddings in the community are incomplete without home-made wines.

Chef Norman D’Silva, who had worked for many years in the fivestar Park Hotel, points out that a, “Christmas meal can be an elaborate lunch or dinner. During Christmas, Anglo-Indians in Calcutta still cook traditional British fare like roast chicken, roast turkey, roast duck and roast suckling pig. Salted beef is a must-have on the list of Christmas specials. But then our Indian roots also make us cook a rice dish like peas pulao or yellow coconut rice for the meal. Curries like kofta curry and vindaloo generally feature on the menu.” Soft bread rolls and a variety of salads from the Russian to parsley potato (tossed with bits of crispy bacon and bacon oil) to potato and mayonnaise (with small juicy pieces of pineapple and finely chopped green peppers) to the fresh vegetable salad on a bed of lettuce form part of the spread as well. ‘Plum cake, rich fruit cake and plum pudding are among the confections made during the festive season’, continues D’Silva. ‘But confectioneries like kulkuls and rose cookies are Christmas specials that are typical to the community’.

Kulkuls are small, fried, rolled sweets with ridges. They are made of semolina and refined flour mixed with butter, powdered sugar, salt, egg yolks and vanilla essence, and kneaded with coconut milk. Rose cookies, in contrast, are deep-fried sweets that look like flowers and are made with the batter of refined flour, rice flour, salt, powdered sugar, eggs, coconut milk, cardamom powder, vanilla essence and baking soda. Generally, cast iron, aluminium or steel moulds are used to shape the sweets into flowers.

Thus, the celebration of Christmas that was begun by the Europeans is continued with as much enthusiasm by the Anglo-Indians of Calcutta. And in this celebration, they have not only remained true to their European roots but also to their Indian roots as is evident from the fare prepared during this time. Their Christmas celebration is a wonderful embodiment of the best part of both worlds. And this large-hearted and open-minded community shares the festive spirit with anybody willing to participate in the festival as is obvious from the Christmas celebration at Bow Barracks, which is open to the entire city.