twenty rupees of happiness

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough
Rabindranath Tagore

Make that five feet. Paramount is another of those institutions that Kolkata residents will wax eloquent about. For Rs.20, you can drink its fantastically sweet daab serbet, a potent drink that revolves around coconut and sugar. This is also where you will find Mrigendra Mazumdar, presiding over his business with perfectly coiffed hair and the conviction that the city swears by the drinks.

Of course, being Kolkata, even this little hole-in-the-wall sliver of a cold drink shop comes with a larger-than-life story. “My father, the late Niharanjan Mazumdar, started it in 1918,” says Mrigendra, sitting under antlers his father bought from the Nizam of Hyderabad 85 years ago. “In the early days – it was called Paradise then – it served as a front for freedom fighters, who pretended to be workers here while they planned covert operations.”

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