## The city of joy

## Great Eastern Hotel

The Great Eastern Hotel (officially Lalit Great Eastern Hotel) is a colonial era hotel in the Indian city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). The hotel was established in 1840 or 1841; at a time when Calcutta, the seat of the East India Company, was the most important city in India. Referred to as "the Jewel of the East" in its heyday, Great Eastern Hotel hosted several notable persons visiting the city.

The hotel has housed many famous personalities including Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin,[4] Elizabeth II,[1] Mark Twain,[4] Dave Brubeck,[6] and possibly Ho Chi Minh. Until its closure for restoration in 2005, the hotel was the longest continuously operating hotel in Asia.

## Grand Hotel

The Grand Hotel, now called the Oberoi Grand, is situated in the heart of Kolkata on Jawaharlal Nehru Road (earlier known as Chowringhee Road). It is an elegant building of British era and is a famous building in Kolkata. The hotel is owned by Oberoi chain of hotels.

The site where the hotel now stands was first developed at No. 13 Chowringhee Road as the private residence of a Colonel Grand in the early nineteenth century. The house was converted into a boarding house by Mrs. Annie Monk who later expanded her business to include Numbers 14, 15 and 17. 16 Chowringhee was occupied by a theatre owned and managed by Arathoon Stephen, an Armenian from Isfahan. When, in 1911, the theatre burned down, Stephen bought out Mrs. Monk and, over time, redeveloped the site into what now makes up the modern hotel. Built in an extravagant neoclassical style, the hotel soon became a popular spot amongst the English population of Calcutta. It was known, in particular, for its annual New Year party that, along with iced champagne and expensive gifts, involved the release of twelve piglets in the ballroom. Anyone who caught a piglet, could keep it.