“That side,” said Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri awardee Usha Uthup, pointing towards the right corner of Trincas, a restaurant in Kolkata’s Park Street, “is where Sharmila Tagore and the Nawab of Pataudi would sit.”Then she swept her hand across the room. “Farokh Engineer... the West Indies cricket team... Jyoti Basu... Uttam Kumar... Suchitra Sen...”“I never had to go anywhere, the world came to me,” said the legendary singer as she remembered a particularly fond encounter with filmmaker Satyajit Ray at Park Street. The maestro visited Trincas often and had expressed his interest in making a film about a “Madrasi girl”.
Usha Uthup with Shonali Muthalaly
| Photo Credit:
chitrographer media
She paused before smiling. “It sounds like I’m dropping names. Which I am, actually.”The audience erupted into peals of laughter. Around them was the same dining room that had once hosted many of those famous names.On Sunday (July 19), Trincas became both venue and subject as The Hindu’s Lit for Life Unplugged brought together Ms. Uthup and historian Anand Puri, third-generation custodian of the iconic Park Street restaurant, for When Park Street Sings: A Conversation on Music, Memory & Kolkata. Moderated by The Hindu‘s Associate Editor Shonali Muthalaly, the discussion moved between Ms. Uthup’s five-decade musical journey and the history of Park Street, tracing how one restaurant became central to Kolkata’s nightlife.The evening introduced Mr. Anand’s forthcoming book on revisiting the history of Kolkata in the last 100 years through the eyes of Trincas. The event also turned the pages of Ms. Uthup’s memoir, The Queen of Indian Pop: The Authorised Biography of Usha Uthup, written by Vikas Kumar Jha, and published by Penguin Random House.The first stageLooking back at the beginning of her career, Ms. Uthup returned to Madras in 1969. The conversation began with Ms. Muthalaly asking the singer about an inland letter she received from Mr. Anand’s grandfather in 1969 inviting her to Park Street in what was then Calcutta.
