At a glance, Sukanta Restaurant, near Z Bridge off JM Road, looks like any regular eating joint, but as you enter the restaurant, you will find a board with messages scribbled for the Indian team on the right side of the entrance and a schedule of all the fixtures on the left.
The restaurant has also placed a drop box for customers to predict the winners of this edition of the ICC World Cup, which is hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
You are in for more surprises as you enter the dining hall, where all the waiters are running around in the Indian colour.
“We want to make the most of it during the World Cup, which comes once in four years,” says Upesh Marlecha, who manages the cash counter. “The hotel had a similar show in the last edition as well, but the waiters wearing the Indian team’s colour is something that we have come up with for the first time. We wanted to give more colour to the World Cup this season,” adds Marlecha, who wants to have a television set in the hotel so that his customers can get the latest updates on the matches.
The restaurant, famous for its Indian thalis, is visited by 400-odd customers on any given day. However, the Indian colour is not the only common factor between the waiters and team India. As the team comprises players from all parts of the country, waiters from different places of the nation work at the restaurant.
“We get great pleasure in wearing the colour of our Indian team,” says Elton Roy, a waiter from Kolkata, who has been working at the joint for two years. Sukhinder Singh from Lucknow joins the conversation saying, “Yes it’s a great feeling to wear the Indian colour. It gives us immense pleasure when kids point us out to their parents and say, this is the colour of the Indian cricket team.”
