Bengali food, culture, and conversations flow at Chennai’s Mackay’s Garden

On a cloudy morning, a teenager wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt walks past a wall mural of Mother Mary that reads Mother Mary Amader Ma (Mother Mary is our mother) inscribed in Bengali. Currency notes of Bangladeshi taka and the American dollar share frames on foreign exchange billboards. Fish is sold and cut in what is called the ‘ bangali (Bengali) cut’. This is not Kolkata. This is Mackay’s Garden, Greams Road — a part of Chennai where the absence of Kolkata broods in its presences.  

A wall mural of Mother Mary reads Mother Mary Amader Ma (Mother Mary is our mother) inscribed in Bengali. (Source: Akhila Easwaran)

Locally referred to as mini Bengal, Mackay’s Garden is dotted with Bengali food messes, Bengali-speaking vegetable vendors, bustling travel and ticketing counters, pharmacies, fruit shops and hot tea or cha sellers. Most billboards are written in English with a qualifying line in Bengali.