You would have spied the scarlet truck some evening or the other. Its station is one of the busiest spots of central Calcutta — outside the Esplanade Metro station, a few paces beyond the busy Dorina crossing with its tangle of tramlines, speeding buses and yellow cabs, a stone’s throw from New Market.

The ticker on the electronic board on the front of the truck reads Cook on Wheels, followed by the menu — chicken roll, egg roll, fish roll, chowmein, momo, chilli chicken, fried rice, drums of heaven, chicken soup...

What is new about a food truck, you might ask. Nothing, and that is precisely the story. Cook on Wheels has been around for the last 18 years when food trucks were not such a common sight.

The owner of the truck, Indra Deb Chatterjee, tells the story of how he came up with the idea one morning in 2005. He says, “I was sitting in a tea shop in Bhowanipore with my friends when a truck bearing the Amul logo sped past. I thought, if a truck could supply milk then why not food?” At the time Chatterjee, who has a bachelor’s in commerce, was a regional sales manager with Bajaj Appliances.

“Mine is most likely the first privately-owned food truck in Calcutta,” says Chatterjee. According to him, it was only a decade after his Cook on Wheels that some other food trucks mushroomed — Agdum Bagdum near Ekdalia Evergreen Club in Ballygunge, That Food Truck in Salt Lake, Thank God it’s Fresh near Calcutta Rowing Club on Southern Avenue, Food First in Ajay Nagar.

Chatterjee designed the truck himself. A relation working in a ship-repairing company helped him with the fabrication of it.

He continues, “It is quite long, about 11 feet, and six feet wide. There are two sliding panels on the roof for ventilation. Above the driver’s cabin, there is a 300-litre tank, the water is safe to drink and also to cook with.” There are 11 people in Chatterjee’s pay and a place in Kalighat where the prep kitchen is located.

Shoppers as well as staff from the office buildings nearby constitute Chatterjee’s customer base. The food truck’s immediate neighbours are a juice seller and a phuchkawala. A couple of feet away there is a bhelpuriwala. A little further away, there is another food truck.

When he is not manning his truck, Chatterjee turns high-altitude biker. In fact, he quit his sales job when he was not granted leave for one such expedition. He says, “But my first expedition was in 1993. I was 19. Mamata Banerjee, who was the youth affairs minister those days, flagged it off.”

He continues, “Those days the roads in Ladakh were bad. Now, only the last stretch — probably 80 to 100 kilometres — is not metalled. There weren’t any smartphones with GPS connectivity, so we could not access Google Maps, or check the weather details, air pressure and other barometric details. There was no roadmap either, only toposheets from the Geological Survey of India which were of little use. We also approached the army and they refused to share any details.”

Chatterjee got into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2008 for “the greatest altitude reached autonomously by motorcycle”, which is 6,245 metres. He was one of a group of six bikers of the North Calcutta Disha Motorcycle Club to do so. They summited the Changchemno Range near Marsemikla in Ladakh. In 2018, he created a new record and found place in the Limca Book of Records. This time he had scaled 6,560.52 metres with other club members.

Back to the food truck. From his vantage point in what is still referred to as Chowringhee, Chatterjee has seen times change and trends alter. “I remember a time when there was hardly any street food in this area, just Anadi’s Mughlai paratha on S.N. Banerjee road and Ralli’s sherbet and kulfi stalls. I have seen momos make their debut.” He remembers pavements uncrowded by hawkers. The advent of malls and the kind of people they attracted. He remembers the political rallies that have since shifted address to Rani Rashmoni Road. “I have seen the gradual swell of domestic tourists, and the shoppers from Bangladesh,” he adds.

Chatterjee is also an itinerant witness to Chowringhee’s different moods at different times of the day, from the bustle of late afternoons to the romance of early evenings to the boisterousness of late nights. At the stroke of 12, the truck disappears. Chatterjee tells The Telegraph, “So many years later, the novelty of the very act of riding into the night makes me feel special, like a food Santa of sorts. But of course, you might say that’s an exaggeration.”