Dhapa

The Sing Cheung Company, maker of chilli, garlic and soysauce, is responsible for the sweet smell of molasses wafting into the street in dhapa.

It helps because otherwise the overpowering odor in the Tangra neighborhood is a mix of stagnant water and rotting eggs, the product of chemicals used in the area’s tanneries.

“So many chemicals, there is no malaria here because it kills all the germs,” joked one resident.

Tangra, on the eastern side of Kolkata, the port city in east India once known as Calcutta, the capital of British India, has long been home to most of the city’s Chinese.

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