KOLKATA: Anadi Cabin will down shutters for the first time since 1925. The screen of Regal Cinema will go blank for the first time in decades. Shamilar Hotel will not entertain guests at least for four days in April — for the first time. And Sabita Basu, who has been living in seclusion ever since her husband’s death, will walk down the stairs after four years.This is how the tunnelling work of East-West Metro along SN Banerjee Road is bringing about unforeseen changes in people’s lives which centre around nine ‘unstable’ buildings that have been served evacuation notice by Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC).Regal Cinema will stay shut for the first time in decades.Anadi Cabin, which has been a favourite with the foodies for its lip-smacking Moghlai Parathas, is bracing for a four-day closure, a first in its 94-year-old history. “We are aware of the Metro project that will need us to keep our premises closed for a few days. But it’ll be strange, keeping Anadi Cabin closed for four days at a stretch,” said owner Bhabatosh Jana.The situation is somewhat similar for Shalimar Hotel on 3 SN Banerjee Road. Dinesh Vohra, who has been working here for the last 22 years, said, “We have never downed shutters ever. The hotel remained open during the Babri Masjid unrest and also when Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Now bookings are closed indefinitely from April 4.” It will remain shut from April 4 to April 8.KMRC, in its evacuation notice to Regal Cinema on 4, SN Banerjee Road, has ordered the authorities to vacate the premises for three days from April 6, just enough for the tunnel-boring machine (TBM) to pass by. Apparently, Regal Cinema, operating since the 1930s and famously called Electric Cinema during the British period, will be closing for the first time for East-West Metro’s underground tunnelling. “I have never seen the theatre suspend its shows during the decades that I have worked here,” said machine operator Utpal Dasgupta (60).On Tuesday, the evacuation notices were pasted on the addresses to make way for the first TBM — Chandi. Each copy of the notice issued by KMRC bears the address of the building on which it is pasted. Many of these buildings are 100 — or more – years old. They house both commercial establishments and living quarters. The evacuation process will see one such resident, Sabita Basu, who occupies a portion of the second floor of 9 JL Nehru Road, step out of her home after four years. “I will walk down the stairs for the first time since my husband’s demise four years ago. I have put on such excessive weight because I have been avoiding climbing up and down the wooden stairscase. The three-storey building is as high as a modern five- or six-storey structure. I am told that the Metro authorities will be shifting us to a nearby hotel,” Basu said.KMRC has organized a stay for Basu and 39 other members of families residing in the nine addresses. Also, around 30 shops and business establishments will remain closed in phases.The 2.45km Esplanade-Sealdah stretch is the last leg of underground tunnelling of the 16.6km East-West Metro. A phased commissioning of the 5km between Sector V and Salt Lake stadium is due in April. But this last leg of tunnelling that’s keeping engineers of KMRC and ITD ITD-Cementation, the company contracted to build this stretch of the East-West Metro, on their toes, thanks to the high density of structures.

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