Esplanade: The Oberoi Grand Arcade, as much a landmark as the hotel that towers over it, was till the late Nineties an oasis in the middle of the Esplanade chaos that allowed people to take a stroll as they browsed the shop windows.

Anyone who ventures into that passage now is hemmed in by at least 60 illegal stalls occupying both sides of the walkway. In the approximately three feet of space left in the middle to walk, lucky is the person who does not bump into someone at every step and escapes having the eardrums assaulted by hawker hardsell.

What was a must-visit for tourists and a favourite of Calcuttans two decades ago has become a place best avoided, unless of course shopping off the street tops someone's to-do list.

In a shop along the eastern side of the arcade, Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha had shot a small scene for their film Do Anjaane, according to the owner of M. Walters and Company.

"The Grand Hotel Arcade used to be a quiet place where people enjoyed walking under the canopy," recalled G.R. Mehta, a co-owner of M. Walters, the firm that the Mehta family purchased from a Jew in the early 1950s.

M. Walters and Co used to be a watchmaker that later turned into a jewellery shop specialising in diamonds.

Another shop owner in the arcade said the one thing he misses the most is the cleanliness of the place until two decades ago. "If I remember correctly, the encroachment started around the start of the new millennium and the number of hawkers grew every year since," said the elderly man.

A younger businessman who owns a store there said the past decade had been the worst in terms of the hawker invasion.

Few guests now step out of The Oberoi Grand to visit his store, or any other in this row for that matter. The throng of hawkers selling everything from nightwear to fake perfumes and watches has almost blanked out the legitimate businesses.

Mehta, 80, was in his early teens when he first visited The Oberoi Grand Arcade. In the Seventies, Amitabh and Rekha visited his showroom. Pictures of the duo still adorn the walls.

Hawkers pay a token fine to the police for blocking a public walkway and a fixed amount to their union. This ensures that they are hardly disturbed.

A police officer said the hawkers were not scared of prosecution anymore. Raids to remove illegal stalls have long stopped. "Hawkers are beyond the control of the police. When I started my career, there would be regular raids to remove hawkers sitting in the arcade, but this stopped after the hawker unions became all-powerful," said the officer, who has worked for nearly three decades in the traffic department and various police stations.

The Calcutta Municipal Corporation has arranged bins along the road for the hawkers to dump all the waste there. But the edge of the road and the pavement is filled with plastic bags, wrappers and leftovers almost every day.

Traders in New Market had gone on a three-day strike in 2015 to protest the proliferation of hawkers and encroachment on roads. Nearly 1,000 traders had also participated in a silent march to protest the hawker menace.

At The Oberoi Grand Arcade, anyone who owns a business seems resigned to the dominance of the hawkers. "If the owners of the hotel cannot do anything, what can small businesses like ours do?" one of the shop owners said.