One Cup of Calcutta: Tea, Coffee and the Making of a City

Calcutta's history lives not only in its grand colonial buildings, imposing institutions and celebrated monuments, but also in its humble tea stalls, old eateries and neighbourhood gathering places.

One Cup of Calcutta is a heritage walk that explores the everyday social and cultural life of the city through the intertwined histories of tea, coffee and public sociability.

From the emergence of tea as an increasingly popular urban beverage to the lively conversations that animated neighbourhoods, cafés and roadside stalls, the walk investigates how ordinary spaces became important sites of intellectual exchange, political discussion, literary debate and social interaction.

It seeks to uncover the lives of students, writers, clerks, workers, shopkeepers and other urban residents whose everyday encounters contributed to the making of Calcutta's distinctive public culture.

Moving beyond the familiar narratives of colonial architecture and elite institutions, the walk examines the relationship between food, conversation, class, gender and urban life.

It also considers how these spaces changed over time, reflecting the transformations of colonial and postcolonial Calcutta.

Through historic neighbourhoods, old eateries, archival photographs and stories of everyday life, One Cup of Calcutta invites participants to rediscover the city from an intimate perspective—one cup of tea, one conversation and one forgotten story at a time.

Because sometimes, to understand a city, one must simply sit down and listen.