A restaurant on Marquis Street, popular for its kochupata chingri (a mishmash of taro leaves and shrimps), has more than half the tables empty for lunch, unthinkable even a month ago.

The lobby of a hotel on Marquis Street, usually humming with guests and employees, is wearing a deserted look.

A currency changer on Free School Street would handle seven to eight customers in an hour a month ago. Now, barely one person is coming in every hour.

The crisis in Bangladesh has left an indelible markin the areas around Marquis Street and Free School Street.

Bangladeshi visitors are at the heart of business activities in these neighbourhoods.

The sharp dip in their numbers has lent an eerie look to these areas.

On Friday afternoon, empty rickshaws were standing at one corner. The shopkeepers kept fidgeting with their phones in empty stores.

Emerald Hotel, near Jamuna Banquets on Marquis Street, has 30-odd rooms.
Only six of them are now occupied, said a woman at the reception.

“Between 20 and 25 rooms would remain booked before this trouble started,” she said.

She pointed to the empty lobby, saying: “Normally, the lobby would be full of guests...,” she said.

A currency changer said before the Bangladesh crisis, he would entertain “seven to eight” walk-in customers in an hour. “Now, barely one person is visiting the store in an hour. Sometimes, not a single one,” said Shyamal Saha.

The Marquis Street outlet of Kasturi, a chain of eateries popular for Bengali dishes from both sides of the border, would be busy throughout the day.

Around 3pm on Friday, only a couple of tables were occupied.

“We have a seating capacity of over 70. But we are now recording only 10 per cent of the usual footfall,” said the manager.

A couple of buses for Bangladesh left Marquis Street on Friday, operators said. The 40-seater buses had just over 20 passengers each.

On the return journey, the numbers were less than 10 on both buses, they said.

“We have around 120 hotels, big and small, on Marquis Street and Free School Street. Even on a lean day, over 5,000 Bangladeshis would live here. Now, the number would only be a few hundred,” said Montosh Sarkar, assistant secretary of the Marquis Street-Free School Street Welfare Society.