Flury's glorious days

Stephen Court on Calcutta’s famed Park Street that turned into a towering inferno last Tuesday has been a historic symbol, and the tea-room, Flury’s, that adorned the 99-year-old heritage building, was even more iconic. Stephen Court, built by penniless Armenian refugee-turned-millionaire Stephen Arathoon, was among the innumerable stately mansions that along with magnificent churches and expansive garden houses made up the Calcutta (as it was then called) of the 1960s and 1970s.

On the one hand, the city was a picture of languidness. Tramcars rambled along what seemed like cobbled streets, the driver shooing away men and animals from the tracks with his foot-bell. Weather-worn buildings stared down at hand-pulled rickshaws as they struggled to move through smoke-belching motorised traffic. Calcutta’s football fanatics gorged on spongy “rosogulla” and triangular “singada” after they had argued silly over their Mohan Bagan and East Bengal heroes, while the babus of the Writers’ Building, the State Secretariat, debated American atrocities in Vietnam over small mud cups of syrupy tea.

Away from this cacophony of babus culture and streetcars lay another Calcutta, the swinging city, whose focal point was the posh Park Street.  Its ritzy night spots like Moulin Rouge, Macomb, Blue Fox and Trances offered live music and sizzling cabaret. Pam Crain crooned, and so did a 20-something silk sari-clad Tam Bram, Usha Uthup, who became a rage at Trincas with her sexy voice and sensational songs.

Source : http://www.hindustantimes.com/Flashback-Flury-s-glorious-days/H1-Article1-523033.aspx