This shop looks like any other neighbourhood sweet seller on Netaji Subhash Road in Howrah. Whitewashed walls, a squeaking ceiling fan, wooden benches and a glass case stacked with kalakand and milk cake. But what stops most visitors in their tracks is the signboard above the door: Ghosal & Daughter.
A name that plays tricks on assumption
At first glance, the name can evoke a familiar picture: a father running the business with the daughter who may inherit it one day. Across India, business names ending in “& Sons” have made male succession feel familiar.
Ghosal & Daughter carries a different story. Sutapa Ghosal founded the shop herself in 2018 and hopes to pass it on to her daughter, Momoiro Mukherjee. The business begins with a mother and may one day continue through her daughter.
From newsreader to sweet maker
Before she ever thought of selling sweets, Sutapa Ghosal worked as an announcer and television host with Doordarshan. She also holds a PhD in drama from Rabindra Bharati University, a background far removed from the world of syrup and chhena.
When she decided to enter the food business, she returned to the classroom. Sutapa pursued a degree in food processing from Jadavpur University before opening her shop in Howrah.
Her professional experience and academic qualifications did not shield her from the gendered assumptions she encountered as a woman building a business.
“It doesn’t matter who claims our society has overcome the traditional norms; women endure the silent gaze of patriarchy even today. So it is an extra challenge for me to resist,” she told My Kolkata.
Starting without a recipe book to inherit
Unlike many sweet shop owners who inherit both a trade and a network of skilled workers, Ghosal started with neither. “Being a sole entrepreneur in the sweet industry without a family business to inherit, one of the toughest challenges I face is finding skilled sweet makers. The reality for new business owners is difficult,” she said.
She now hires her staff largely from Nadia and Howrah, though she admits that maintaining consistent quality across batches remains an ongoing struggle, one that many independent food entrepreneurs quietly wrestle with as they scale up.
Despite this, her kalakand and milk cake have earned her a loyal, returning clientele in a city already spoilt for choice when it comes to traditional sweets.
The daughter who pushed her to begin
It was Momoiro Mukherjee, in fact, who nudged her mother towards opening the shop in the first place. “My daughter has been my biggest support throughout my journey,” Ghosal said.
That support has now come full circle. The shop is not just named for Momoiro; it is meant, quite literally, to become hers.
A legacy passed from mother to daughter
Family businesses in India have long carried an unspoken script: a father builds, a son or a brother inherits, and a daughter, if she is involved at all, plays a supporting role.
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Ghosal & Daughter turns that script on its head without ever raising its voice. There is no dramatic declaration on the signboard, only a simple pairing of a mother’s name with her daughter’s place in the story.
For Sutapa Ghosal, that pairing is not incidental. It is a deliberate, everyday assertion that businesses, dreams and legacies do not need a patriarch’s blessing to move forward.
They can travel from mother to daughter with the same ease, the same pride and the same sense of continuity that has traditionally been reserved for sons.
Eight years since it first opened its doors, Ghosal & Daughter continues to serve fresh sweets to its regulars in Howrah.
But every time a customer glances up at that signboard and pauses, if only for a second, to question who really built this shop, the sweet shop is doing something rather more significant than selling kalakand. It is quietly challenging an assumption most people did not even realise they were making.
Images courtesy of: The Telegraph
Sources
‘Doordarshan announcer’s sweet shop in Howrah has no father figure, just a daughter‘: by Shrestha Mukherjee for My Kolkata (The Telegraph), Published on 18 July 2026
‘How women-led family businesses are challenging inheritance norms in India‘: by Waterfield, Published on 2025
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com
