Stroll through B B Ganguly Street

Stroll through Bipin Bihari Ganguly Street and you are face to face with a range of optical stores and tour operators. Surpassing any length of imagination are the optical companies that have their base here and functioning on days when there are no holidays and no festive turnaround. Post Pujos, they are thick in action and the amount of options before a customer or those trying for glasses are phenomenal. Some of them are Optical Stores, Optical Trendz, Bentex Optical, Eagle Opticals, New Vision, Ghosh Dastidar Optical Co, T C Dass & Co ( Reliable Optics), Optical Palace, Mondal Mansion, dealing with optics, Eternity Vision, Marshal Optical Co, Aditya Optical Co, View Point Opticals , Chittaranjan Optical Co, Idea Optics, New Optics World, Maharaja Optical Co and Metro Optical Co among others.

As for tour operators and the destinations they bring on table are Puri, Digha, Darjeeling, Ghatsila, Pelling and Gangtok. There are others, having made quantum leap in tourism and offering new destinations, given the desire of the exploring class to explore and strut around. But the overwhelming presence of optical stores do give a hard time to Tour operators to widen their ambit coupled with some functioning from inner courtyards and some having steps to be negotiated before reaching them.
Amazed at the OPtical Turnaround the B B Ganguly Street has had over the years, it illustrates the desire of the optical companies to stay put no matter the quantum of challenge they face from their big, bigger and emerging counterparts. Exceptional to this turnaround has been the presence of food joints and beverage counters who have the latitude to slug it out despite the not that noticeable positioning some of them are in.
On a Sunday when the entire city was on a festive cruise, with fewer shops open, this street had a forlorn look. Not to be found were fleet of buses, shadowed by trams and personal transport, and no shops of any rectitude were open for aam janata. Some were tempted to engage in cricket cruise, not methodical by any yardstick but symmetrical to the way cricket is played in the streets. Up and down stroll showed no commotion of any nature. One desiring to show the lap of luxury one could be in by having a hoarding of immaculate nature looked to be equally deserted. Beginning with roof top parties, kitty parties, entertainment parties descending to engagement ones to be followed by parting ones were the strengths of this restaurant. But with no numbers to talk about.
As usual this street was the epicentre of idol procession route and that day as well, most shops down with shutters and the crowd comprising of people hailing from other places to catch a glimpse of the Goddess.
The morning stroll beginning at half past five in the post festive period showed the enduring nature of festive fervour with few willing to stray or indulge in morning cuppa exacerbated gossip. Search for the paper in the vicinity of this Optical Street was a trying one given the identified spots from where hawkers function. Fewer vehicles and fewer men, the street's fascination for energy thrust was illustrated once trams began to run past 6. With trams in circulation, the circulation in legs and wheels was the next act to follow.