Chatting with Mir Afsar Ali & Indrajit Lahiri and ‘Foodkahini’

Sukalpa Dhar, Kolkata: It was winter last year and Kolkata was very pleasant. Quite a few eateries were popping up like mushrooms in the market as more and more people are inclined towards out of home treats. The same way a new branch of a restaurant named Et Set Mix was inaugurated with great enthusiasm.

The dine-in restaurant was inaugurated on 16th December, 2020. I had known the date of inauguration through a facebook post and was curious to see the joint. The Co-founder of Et Set Mix is Mr. Sunando Banerjee. He greeted and welcomed me as soon as I entered the restaurant. He was very polite and soft spoken and friendly. All thanks to him that I could freely and easily get an excess to this beautiful restaurant. The restaurant’s walls are very beautifully decorated with comic characters and dialogue boxes.

Et Set Mix is one of the newest editions presented by the Hanglaatherium brand. Unlike every other restaurant in this competitive world which are striving for creating their own identity by some kind of authenticity Et Set Mix by Hanglaatherium brand surprises us by it’s catchy tagline “Nothing authentic about it”. They have a cloud kitchen operating by the same name at Kamalgazi (near Garia).

A middle aged person came out of the doorway to the restaurant with a small coconut in his hand and broke the coconut in front of the eatery by striking it hard in the pitch road right in front of the shop. A priest came and ceremonially worshiped Lord Ganesha. Quite a few invited guests had arrived. A beautiful red coloured ribbon was fixed at the entrance of the eatery. Inside, the eatery was decorated with colourful balloons and ribbons were hung.

I knew only one of their guests personally Mr. Indrajit Lahiri. He is an IT entrepreneur at Pickle Solutions Pvt. Ltd. He is popularly known as Foodka for his role in the youtube foodka series. He is the managing partner at Foodka Series.

He is also a published author. His book ‘Foodkahini’ was published by Book Firm publication house. I am an avid viewer of the Foodka series in youtube and once I had contacted Mr. Indrajit Lahiri and expressed to meet him personally one day. To my surprise he rang me up one fine day and said hello I’m Indrajit Lahiri can you come over to the book fair at Salt Lake. He also requested me to carry a copy of the book ‘Amader Santiniketan’ written by, my mother, Kalpana Dhar Homchaudhuri. I immediately accepted his invitation. Really what more can one ask for when one gets to meet a special one and also in such a lovely venue, a book fair.

When I reached the book fair I called him up. He asked me to come in front of a stall. In the entry of the book fair the organisers were providing a road map of the fair to the visitors. The book fair was just like a maze and I felt like the people including me were the players who are trying to reach a particular destination. The destinations were the various book stalls. Anyone who wouldn’t follow the map would get lost in the labyrinth of book stalls.

Unfortunately, I didn’t collect the road map but instead I took the help of a few other people who had collected the map and they showed me the way to the specified stall where my destination was.

When I reached near the stall I could see Mr. Indrajit Lahiri. He is quite tall. He had a jolly pleasant face without moustaches and beards. His hair was slightly gray in colour. He has a big round belly. He was wearing a blue coloured jeans, a black coloured round neck t-shirt and an ash coloured jacket and shoes. He was accompanied by his son Ahan Lahiri. Indrajit dada was carrying his son Ahan’s school bag in his back and a brown coloured side bag in one side of his shoulders.

When he saw me he smiled and we greeted each other. I had carried a copy of the book named ‘Amader Santiniketan’. I gifted it to him. He was very happy. He thanked me. He said he was very eagerly waiting to receive a copy of the book from me.
When I expressed to get a copy of the book, ‘Foodkahini’ Ahan caught hold of my hands and took me to a nearby book stall and very excitedly asked the shopkeeper ‘Please give me a copy of the book written by my father’. The shopkeeper was staring astonishingly at Ahan.

Then his father entered the stall and cleared the matter. The shopkeeper handed me over a copy of “Foodkahini”. Indrajit dada took the book and signed it and returned the signed copy to me. I thanked him. His son, Ahan was very happy meeting me. He is a very sweet and nice little boy. Like his father he is very jovial too. He was in his school uniform at that time. Ahan clicked a photograph of me with his father. He asked me what I love to play. I said I played cricket, football, and even table tennis earlier but now a days I don’t play. Then after spending quite some time in the book fair we bade goodbye to each other until next time.

When I visited the eatery ‘Et Set Mix’ I got to know that Mr. Mir Afsar Ali, an acclaimed Indian radio jockey, Television anchor, singer, comedian and actor was invited too and he would arrive soon for the inauguration of the restaurant. Everyone was eagerly waiting for him.

Finally, a car arrived in front of the restaurant. The word ‘PRESS’ was written using red colour in block letters in both the front windshield and back windshield. Many people came out from the restaurant and stood in front of the car door to welcome him. Then the door of the car opened. Mr. Mir was driving the car himself. He came out of the car and started moving straight towards the entrance of the restaurant. Everyone else followed him. He used a scissor to cut the red coloured ribbon and inaugurate the eatery formally. Everyone was trying to get a selfie or a photograph with Mr. Mir. We entered the eatery. We were offered delicious snacks and hot tea. When Mr. Mir was sitting inside the shop I went near him and gifted the book ‘Amader Santiniketan’ to him. He thanked me. He also said that Santiniketan itself has got a special charm and importance and when your mother is an alumna of Vishwa Bharati University, Santiniketan this book will undoubtedly be a beautiful one. He also praised the cover design. I requested Indrajit dada to click a photograph of us. He clicked a beautiful photograph. I thanked Indrajit dada.

Indrajit Lahiri says every food has got a hidden story behind it. His love and passion for food has made him visit the different eateries in Kolkata and bring out the stories behind them. In his book ‘Foodkahini’ he has penned down about the different known and unknown food items and their whereabouts. It describes about Chinese cuisine, Mughlai, Pice Hotel, and a few recipes. I have read in ‘Foodkahini’ that he followed Sukumar Ray’s ‘Khai Khai’ while writing this book.

He is passionate about travelling and photography. His passion for photography got him associated with ‘Streets of Calcutta’. It is the largest street photography archive of Kolkata. Their hashtag is #streetsofcalcutta. The Streets of Calcutta instagram account has 743 posts and 14.8k followers. Their facebook page has got 11,087 followers. It is probably the first city specific photo archive. Indrajit Lahiri is one of the co-founders of ‘the Streets of Calcutta’. The chief founder of The Streets of Calcutta is Mr. Soumya Dhankar Ghoshal. The other co-founders are Nilanjan Pathak and Ayanava Sil.