Journal
The Bidhan paper
Six issuesThe Bidhan journal starts where the history does: the six chapters of a fifty-year-old sweet shop in Koraput, each one dated and each one carrying at least one checkable fact. Recipes, festivals and district writing follow as they are written.
Every issue
Koraput · Odisha · Established 1974
1974–1981
Chapter 1: The counter
Bidhan opened in 1974 as a small tea and sweets counter in Sunabeda, beside the HAL township. It sold tea, a handful of sweets and morning tiffin to people walking to the factory. That counter is still trading on the same road today.
Read the issue →1982–1987
Chapter 2: Getting it right
The Chhena Poda recipe settled in 1982, after years of trying. Chhena Poda is a slow-roasted cheese cake, caramelised on top, and the whole difficulty of it is the char: too little and it is a milk cake, too much and it is bitter.
Read the issue →1988–1999
Chapter 3: Becoming a habit
Through the late 1980s and 1990s Bidhan stopped being somewhere people went and became part of the township routine. Tiffin before the shift, sweets on the way home, boxes for every occasion in the neighbourhood. Rasgulla production grew steadily through the decade.
Read the issue →2000–2012
Chapter 4: Two counters
Bidhan reached its silver jubilee in 2000, modernised the kitchens in 2006, and opened a second outlet at Semiliguda in 2012. Semiliguda was chosen because it sits on the Vizag–Koraput road, where a full-meal kitchen made sense in a way it never had at the standing counter.
Read the issue →2013–2020
Chapter 5: The road years
Semiliguda turned into a pitstop. It sits on the road travellers take from Vizag and Koraput town towards Deomali, and by 2018 a large share of its custom was people breaking a drive rather than people who live there.
Read the issue →2021–today
Chapter 6: Fifty
Bidhan reached fifty years in 2024. Two outlets, one sweets kitchen, and a menu that still opens with the same tiffin it opened with in 1974. What is different is the scale; what is not different is the method.
Read the issue →