India -- A Calcutta Restaurant Feeds Body And Heart

CALCUTTA, India - Its name is Suruchi: "Good Taste." It's the kind of restaurant that can put a city on the tourist map not only for the excellence of its cuisine, but for the heart-rending story it has to tell.

The setting for Calcutta's premiere restaurant is unlikely. On a friend's recommendation, I find it under a dilapidated sign among the patched and faded shopfronts of tailors, welders and confectioners on Elliot Road. A child in tattered clothes walks past. A tram clamors by.

I step into a clean, spacious dining room. Its austerity - no plants decorate it, no pictures hang on its walls - clearly suggests that the food is the main attraction.

And the place is packed with patrons as diverse as the population of cosmopolitan Calcutta - Bengalis, Punjabis, Chinese. They eat in near silence. A family sits in one corner, five children dipping their fingers in various sauces.

The place buzzes with women workers, a rare sight in India's male-dominated restaurant scene. Sari-clad women run the cash register, serve food, and clean the tables. Feminine voices from the adjoining kitchen argue over whether to add potato to a dish.

In fact, Suruchi is run entirely by women.

I decide to satisfy my curiosity before indulging my appetite for the dishes that fill the restaurant with the characteristic scent of Bengali five-spice: cumin, fennel, fenugreek, onion-flavored kalonji seeds, and black mustard.

In an office behind the restaurant, I find Romola Sinha, a white-haired woman who is president emeritus of All Bengal Women's Union (ABWU). The 60-year-old volunteer organization devotes itself to rehabilitating women in "moral" danger - the kidnapped, the runaways, those rescued by police from forced prostitution.

The list also includes rape victims abandoned by their families, village women struck by famine, and refugees from neighboring Bangladesh.

From 18 women in the early 1930s, ABWU's membership has grown to several hundred. But for the organization, Mrs. Sinha says, many of these women would have remained on the streets, further endangering their lives.

In the early days, the women, many in their teens, received not only food and shelter at the ABWU dormitory, but vocational training as well - in needlework, weaving or cooking.

Many were expert cooks to begin with, and they decided to go into food management. They opened a tin-shade canteen in this location and served jalkhabar, tea lunches.

The eatery became instantly popular and eventually blossomed into the Suruchi restaurant. The women shared the profit equally, donating a portion to ABWU.

Today ABWU also houses orphan children and those with only one parent. It provides nutritious free lunches to the children of nearby slums and runs a nursery school for them.

"These women go through an amazing process of change," Mrs. Sinha says.

"Take the case of Ranu. The first time I met her in this room, she was 13 years old. She cried. She couldn't look me in the eye and kept her head lowered. No amount of kind words seemed to console her.

"One day last year she came back to see me. She was 20 and quite poised and greeted me like I was one of her family. She beamed as she said that she was getting married to a man from the state of Bihar.

"When she recalled the day she first met me in this room, both of us had tears in our eyes."

Finding a table in the restaurant, I decide to order lunch.

Until I came to Suruchi, I'd nearly given up trying to find Bengali food in Calcutta.

Here, in the capital of the eastern state of West Bengal, when people eat out, they dine at Chinese or Continental restaurants. Outside India, Bengali cooking is practically unknown. Indian restaurants in the U.S. serve mostly moghlai dishes (Moghul-style court cuisine dating back to the 16th century) from northern India.

Considered distinctive even in India - a cuisine as refined as the rich traditions in art, music and literature centered in Calcutta - Bengali food is prepared almost exclusively at home, from recipes handed down through generations.

Nowadays, though, in hard times due to political upheaval and overpopulation - not to mention rising prices and a more hurried lifestyle - there have been changes in many home kitchens in Bengal. Fewer dishes are served at each meal. To my dismay, I'd found that some favorite dishes from my childhood were no longer being made.

That makes Suruchi's hand-written Bengali menu an even more exciting find.

I pick steamed Elish, a shad-type fish that is the most expensive item on the menu ($1.50). In this specialty, the fish is first smothered in a yellow sauce made of freshly ground mustard and chili and then steamed. The fish is surrounded by a mound of steaming white rice, a mixed vegetable curry, fried vegetables, a spicy lentil puree, and a delectable winter specialty - sweet coconut dumpling.

The dishes are prepared from scratch, home-style, using only fresh seasonal produce.

I return the next day at 4 o'clock, tea time in Calcutta. This time I order luchi, a puffed, fried bread, and a spicy potato curry. I drink many cups of rich golden tea.

"We have a set of clients that support our causes and keep coming back," Mrs. Sinha says. "Besides, where else except in a home, can you find such Bengali delicacies?"

ABWU continues to grow, supported by charitable donations and individual volunteer efforts. Suruchi has become a "must see" for visiting women dignitaries from all over the world. Many become sponsors.

"Princess Anne has lunched here," says Mrs. Chalia, an ABWU volunteer.

"Life has given so much to some of us," Mrs. Sinha says. "It's time that we give back a little."

------------------------------------- MORE INFORMATION

-- For further information, volunteer work and donations, write: The General Secretary, All Bengal Women's Union, 89 Elliot Road, Calcutta 700016, India.

Bharti Kirchner is a Seattle writer specializing in food and travel. Her new cookbook, "The Healthy Cuisine of India: Recipes from the Bengal Region," has just been published by Lowell House / Contemporary Books ($24.95).