Close to Nahoum, the eminent bakery in New Market, is another shop that glows with the same old world charm. Literally, because it sells silver jewellery. Called Gift Palace, it also sells handicrafts.
One concrete source of this old world charm, if you really think about it, in New Market, or elsewhere in Kolkata, is the old wood-and-glass cabinets.
These are not just cabinets. They demand space to stand on and need space around them. And in this space, more than bargaining or anonymous transactions with nameless salespersons can happen.
At Gift Palace, the counter itself is such a cabinet, with silver earrings and pendants on display. Behind it sits Vijay Khattry, its owner. He has been looking after the shop for the last 33 years. For many, the presence of Khattry, 73, behind the counter — unobtrusive, low-key — is a frame that is an essential part of a visit to New Market, as much as dropping in at Nahoum.
Preserving the cabinets has been long, hard work.
Khattry is a gentle, soft-spoken and dignified man. He greets his customers in with a smile and they are never forced to look at anything. The prices are reasonable. But Khattry expects customers to appreciate that and in his polite way does not encourage bargaining.
Instead, if you linger on, savouring the tiny ring of pearls concluding a silver jhumka or a turquoise pendant exuding gravitas, he is likely to start a conversation with you that may run on for years.
Gift Palace, even if it is not a landmark New Market shop, has a loyal base of customers who keep coming back to the shop.
It was set up by Khattry’s father, the late Ganpat Lall Khattry, who was from Amritsar, about 65 years ago, when “curio” shops flourished. Gift Palace originally sold only handicrafts, including ivory items, till ivory was banned. Foreigners from Europe and the US, looking for “exotic” India, were the biggest customers.
The shop has a portrait of Ganpat Lall, a handsome man in a suit and an inspiring presence, facing the entrance, and another photograph inside a cabinet, in which he is meeting Indira Gandhi. He was a sincere Congressman and involved in helping many people. He was the president of SS Hogg Market Trader’s Association till his death.
“He was a social worker,” says Khattry.
From the beginning the shop sourced almost everything from Bengal, says Khattry, who was a small child when the shop started. The supplies arrived from Murshidabad, Birbhum, Bankura. From Murshidabad came sandalwood items, from Santiniketan, leather bags, batik wall hangings and silk scarves. (The silk scarves are still available, very pretty and very affordable.)
“The craftsmen came to Kolkata with the supplies,” says Khattry. “Lots of Dokra karigars came to the shop. Even brass items from Morabadabad were supplied to the shop,” says Khattry. With the silver jewellery, Gift Palace still has a substantial stock of Dokra, metal and sandalwood figures and objects.
“It is still the same,” says Khattry proudly. “We get most of our supplies from local craftsmen and jewellery workers.” A lot of jewellery is made by craftsmen in Domjur. Much of it is handmade, which lends the jewellery a distinction. One particular flower design stands out. It started out as an earring design, but is so pretty that on the request of a customer, Khattry had made a necklace out of it. The effect is very elegant.
The jewellery was added after Khattry took over the shop, following his father’s death.
“Nothing has changed in this shop,” says Khattry again. “The furniture, the lights, how we get our supplies.” Not that he has not thought of “modernising” the shop, he says. But whenever he has called in a carpenter, he has been told that the furniture, made of Burma teakwood, is invaluable. That has halted any makeover plans.
When everything around him has changed.
New Market still has amazing variety, but huge gaps have appeared in the past few years, not only changing the nature of the establishment but also the look and feel of the place and inducing some sadness in old New Market addicts. You do not see bookstores here anymore, even as you remember spending some joyful childhood hours at a corner bookstore amid tantalising stationery. The Chinese shoe stores have disappeared; only Henry stands alone. The old clock and watch stores have gone, mobile phones having become the only markers of time.
They have been replaced by clothes stores and yes, silver jewellery shops. Along the same row as Chamba Lama, the most famous silver and antique jewellery shop in New Market, and near it, one witnesses a silver boom. Several new silver jewellery shops have come up, all of them generously stocked and very glamorous. The same holds for the clothes stores. Most sell casual clothes and salwar clothes, noticeable for their bling, a sign of the times. The trend extends from New Market down Free School Street, where all old book stores, once favourite haunts in the city, have been turned into salwar kurta shops.
The ensuing razzle-dazzle can make Gift Palace look subdued. But Khattry speaks of what has remained unchanged. “New Market has always been dependent on foreigners. Now, visitors from Bangladesh shop here a lot. They buy clothes as gifts,” he says. Tourists from Bangladesh would not shop for Indian “exotica”; we were once the same country.
“New Market is the best ‘mall’,” smiles Khattry. “It is also very good to be here because the relationship between shop owners is very good,” he adds. If Khattry would like a change, it would be the clearing the front of New Market of encroachments, which is also a priority with the traders’ association, and having better parking facilities. Khattry was once vice-president of the association. “That way people can see the market properly,” he says.
Till then, you hope the old Burma teak holds, not only at Gift Palace, but at all the other shops where the vintage glassand-wood cabinets stand.