Coffee House adda lingers on
It was 4:00pm. A small rally marking the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was passing by. The taxi driver said, “Get down here, madam. Walk for two minutes and the coffee house is on your right!”
Exactly at the moment, the most beautiful thing I remembered was the faces of Bangladeshi taxi drivers who can wait patiently the whole day in traffic to drop you at your destination!
Cursing the driver in my head, I got out of the taxi. I was standing in front of the Presidency University at College Street in Kolkata, India.
The university building is an awesome blend of prestige, tradition and modern architecture!
The great minds, from scholars in economics to literature, from theatre to nationalist movement, the immortals like Subhas Chandra Bose , Amartya Sen, cinema guru Satyajit Ray and many others had their footprints in this university since times immemorial.
After a two-minute walk I found the great Indian Coffee House with almost no difficulty at all! I started humming “Coffee house er sei adda ta aaj ar nei” (Those hangouts at coffee house have long gone….) -- the Manna Dey song that every Bangali has listened to at least once in their lifetime. I took a look. There were three name plates. On top was the one in Bangla cursive.
Suddenly, I heard a man asking in broken English, “Where is the coffee house?” I turned and saw a white man. He might have been Portuguese as he had a flag of Portugal on his T shirt. I showed him the way. I murmured to myself, “As there’s a Portuguese here, I may find a ghost of East India Company as well!”
I took the stairs. Ah! The sticky handprints, the stains, the dust and even the girl asking for alms on the stairs excited me. The staircase wall was covered with slogans and graphic art, murals and designs bearing the testimony of British architecture, reminding me of heritage and modernity so uniquely juxtaposed in the city.
Kolkata as a city has undergone through massive changes. Delhi replaced the city as the capital of India. The city is steeped in experience as is the coffee house.
Numerous current and former Presidencians and Calcutta University students in quest of books, knowledge and maybe life come to College Street and pay tribute to the ‘adda’ culture at the Coffee House, they culture of unending hangouts, discussing anything and everything under the sun. New groups arrive and join the discussions. Steam from the tea mingled with smoke from the cigarettes conjures up new ideas, ideas to be addressed and followed.
It is a place that is close to your heart. It makes you feel that way. A place where you do not have to speak a foreign language with a fake accent to order a cup of coffee. The place where you do not have to sit minding your etiquette with your legs in A Cambridge cross or duchess.
The gap between the floor and ceiling reminds you the age of the building. A big portrait of Rabindranath Tagore is installed on the wall. Rows of tables match the look of Dhaka University TSC canteen or Madhur canteen. There is a long corridor upstairs.
I saw a letter M or upside down W on the table inscribed by some sharp thing on my table. It reminded me of the name Maidul in Manna Dey's song—‘Maidul is in Dhaka’. Did one of his friends write his name on the table after he left for Dhaka during the partition? Did Maidul know about it?
The wooden windows and long corridor will drive you back to a time where there was no Facebook, Twitter or social media. When people used to talk to each other, love and feel each other.
Located in the academic hub in Kolkata, Coffee House has become a must-go place for not only the students but also the office goers and other people who love ‘adda’. In this era of fancy coffee chains like Café Coffee Day and Starbucks, only a place like Coffee House offers a cup of coffee within 20 Indian rupees!
One can sit there as long as one wants. After all, Bangali addas know no bound!
I went upstairs and started walking by the tables wondering, is this the place where the handsome intellectual boy from Presidency or Hindu College with his deep eyes behind thick frame spectacles used to sit? Girls draped with sarees might check the boy out with his blue diary full of poetry!
Is this the place where the ‘swadesis’ used to catch up to plan their next programmes against the British? Was this place a part of the Leave India movement, the noncooperation movement, or Gandhis khadi movement?
Coffee House has been the sanctuary for the intellectuals, budding poets, aspiring authors, playwrights, painters and filmmakers. New ideas were generated and exchanged at the place.
The history of Coffee House can be traced back to about 300 years when it was the residence of Bengali social reformer Shri Keshab Chandra Sen. Later this place was dedicated to Prince Albert Victor of Wales and was named "Albert Hall" in 1876.
Later, the Coffee Board decided to start a coffee joint from the Albert Hall in 1942. In 1947, the Central government changed the name of the place to "Coffee House".
The Indian Coffee House offers a variety of coffees and snacks. The most popular coffee is "Infusion". There is a variety of chicken and fish preparations, snacks, sandwiches, chops, cutlet, rolls, salads and chutney at the shop.
One of the members of the coffee house, Bijoy, said, the Chinese menu such as noodles and fried rice were added later. Also, wooden chairs were replaced by the plastic ones.
The place is nostalgic, even if you came here for the first time. It reeks of romantic memories of our life. It is a place that triggers the latent wish deep in our heart- get a book, have a cup of coffee with a fish cutlet and spend the whole day sitting here!
It is the Indian Coffee Shop that can make one realise- the simplest things in life can be the finest.
*Farjana Liakat works at Prothom Alo. She can be reached at [email protected]