A few years ago, I found myself again standing outside Tangra’s Chinese Kali Temple, which houses two idols: the Hindu goddess Kali and her consort Shiva. If it weren’t for the red paper lanterns and frayed buntings in Chinese, it could have been a temple in any other Kolkata neighbourhood.

The old tanneries of Tangra, along with their pungent smell, have gone since a court order shifted the leather-curing units to the fringes of the city in the early 2000s because of water pollutants. Gone too are many of Kolkata’s Chinese, who like many others have migrated to different parts of India and the world in search of jobs and lives. But Tangra retains its stony charm. Like the rest of Kolkata, it has changed but not beyond recognition.

One day Tangra, too, will go the way of Kolkata’s other Chinatown – the original one – Tiretti Bazaar, named after Edward Tiretta, once Kolkata’s ‘superintendent of streets and houses’ during the time of the East India Company. Today, the red-brick Edwardian building that housed Nanking, India’s first Chinese restaurant – along with the Tong On Church – is a strange, boarded-up spectacle. But what is truly spectacular is the daily metamorphosis that takes place from 5am to 9am, when families set up stalls to sell Chinese breakfast. In those early hours, especially on Sundays, the ghost of Chinatown past returns with double force, bringing baskets of cha siu bao (barbecue pork buns) and fish dumplings.