Kasaitola

Anindita Mazumder

Cossitola or Kasaitola, subsequently renamed as Bentinck Street, was described to be Calcutta’s Cheapside with a large proportion of European shops.  The blocks between Cossitola and Old Court House Street were the prime locale for fashionable shops and prestigious offices. In fact, during 1840s, Cossitola was looked upon as the “Indian Elysium of plebeians. Garden Reach being the Arcadia of patricians.”

In Cossitola were Macfarlane and Watts and Monteith, the bootmakers; Lazarus and Currie and Shearwood, both cabinet-makers. It was said that the presence of no fewer than three undertakers in that narrow, crooked thoroughfare provided eloquent testimony to the unhealthy surroundings of the city. Five of the nine European tailors of the time had their premises in Cossitola; so had James Stewart, the well known coachmaker. But its chief attractions were the three confectioners’ shops – Payne, Ahmuty, and Wilson.

The owner of Wilson was popularly known as “Dainty Davie” who went on to set up the Auckland Hotel, later renamed as the Great Eastern Hotel. While giving an account of his popularity it was said ” European visitors seek him, not he them; his good things are enough to give celebrity status to any street in Calcutta: as Spence of the family hotel is, so is he; one of the few men that Europeans in the metropolis cannot do without. Visit the rooms of this confectioner at tiffin, count the palanquins, garis (carriages), and buggies that set down sahibs at his door between noon and two o’clock every day (Sundays not being exceptions), and if you are a European stranger you will be astonished.”

However, in the initial days of Settlement, Cossitola was the quarters of Kasais or butchers. HEA Cotton observed “It must therefore have been a hateful street for the Hindus to pass through and yet it lay on their direct road from Chitpore to the shrine at Kalighat being in fact that portion of the immemorial pilgrim path which stretches from Lall Bazar to the junction of Dhurrumtollah and the Esplanade.”

In the earliest maps it was clearly marked and all its eastern side appeared to have been a mass of jungle. Only a single house existed at the corner where it met Lall Bazar in 1757. By 1788 several houses came up in Cossitola. J Trenholm’s Tavern was right beside Meredith’s Stables; John Palmer’s undertaking establishment was near that of Oliphant, the coachmaker and premises No. 44 occupied by the Union Tavern; Mckinnon’s School was also in the same neighbourhood. One of the houses in the street is said to have been used as Government House during the time of Governor-Generalship of first Earl of Minto (1805-1813). The neighbourhood was also the local home of Freemasonry in Calcutta for 44 years.

However, with the passage of time, other non-British communities begun residing the area, particularly the Chinese. Even today Bentinck Street conjures up an image of rows of Chinese shoe-shops and boasts of a dental clinic run by Dr C Hsue, reminiscent of the days when the city could confidently leave dental care in the hand of Chinese dentists. It also has rows of cycle shops and eateries.