Dear Reader, Place names as we all know are sites for intense political rivalry. This, of course, is not a new phenomenon. It has been happening through ages and across the world. But politics over place names does tend to become more rigorous in moments of regime changes. What is it about an innocent name of a place or street that renders it to controversy so often? One can safely assume that street names are a window to the complex historical development of a city, and also are testimony to whose history is being written. For the past several weeks, Neha Banka has been documenting the stories behind the names of the streets of Kolkata. In Streetwise Kolkata, as we like to call the series, she speaks to historians, city heritage experts and residents while also digging out old documents and books that carry the lesser known historical anecdotes behind the naming of any street. Taken together, these stories of street names, tell us much about the history of Kolkata. This week, she went searching for the story behind a narrow, inconspicuous lane that lies in South Kolkata’s Bhawanipore neighbourhood. The Teliapara road as it is called, is named after the telis (oil pressers) of Kolkata. In this piece, she examines how and why the oil pressers of the city came to be associated with this neighbourhood, while also narrating the intriguing story of the teli community in Kolkata. Last week in Streetwise Kolkata, Neha told the story of Tipu Sultan Road. Here she unravels the many legacies of the Mysore ruler that are lying around in Kolkata, a city he never saw. The week before that she wrote about how Red Road, that slices the large expanse of Maidan in Kolkata, came to be named so. This is the road where the grand parade of 1911-12 took place to welcome King George V and his wife Queen Mary when they arrived in Calcutta for their tour of India. Interestingly, the road was given several other names during the colonial period, and about 40 years back, was changed to Indira Gandhi Sarani. However, it is Red Road that has continued to be used to refer to this street by the people of Kolkata. In this story, she explains why that was the case. This week we published the second part of our flash fiction food history series, ‘Kucini Tales’, written by Ari Gautier and Ananya Jahanara Kabir. This story looks at the history behind some dishes that emerged out of colonial encounters like Bafat, Kousid and Salmi. Interestingly, while the names of these dishes occur in different parts of India, their recipes are not so much the same. For instance, in Pondicherry, kousid is a very specific dish with coconut milk, greens, and shrimp (sometimes chicken too), but while the same word exists in the old Portuguese Creole of Kochi, it doesn’t signify something so specific. In the Portuguese-speaking world, including Goa, ‘kucid’ simply means a platter of boiled meats and vegetables. Ari and Ananya dramatises this historical phenomenon to narrate how such dishes might have emerged in India. Wishing you a pleasant weekend ahead. Sincerely, Adrija Roychowdhury | 
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