Coffee and Cigarettes!

An obscure entrance flanked by a mundane cigarette shop and then a winding staircase. Almost as if in a trance I got my ‘6 classics’ from the corner store only to remember that smoking is now banned in public places. However, I stashed the sticks in my pocket and started to climb the stairs. The smell of fresh paint was almost nauseating. The walls that used to be plastered with layers of pamphlets and memories now stand white-washed. We were never the ‘first floor crowd’ but still I chose to check out the haloed ‘hall of fame’ (better known as ‘house of commons’)once before climbing to the balcony aka 'house of the Lords'. The dilapidated door was replaced by a plush one and boasted a new signboard- I hesitated a few moments, I was still not sure if I was ready to face the ‘change’. Suddenly, a familiar voice: ‘Ki go didi atodin por? Bakishob kothaye? Opore esho .’ (Where were you all these days? Where are the rest? Come upstairs) –startled I looked around and there he was! Our very own ‘his highness’ in his white formals replete with white turban and green cummerbund (this non-descript man may come across as an ordinary waiter but the character of Don Vito Corleone was actually based on him). He didn’t wait for an answer and I realised that I am inside a sunshine-yellow hallway adorned with brightly painted canvasses and in front of me was a huge full-length poster of young Tagore . This is hardly the Coffee House I left 4 years back! Since 1942, it has acted as a greenhouse to the budding philosophers, writers, actors, directors, politicians and lovers and ever since Manna Dey sang the famous lines: ‘Coffee House er shei adda ta aaj ar nei’, Indian Coffee House at College Street has been a source of collective nostalgia for bongs- even to the first timers! The very fact that the place was once a favourite hangout of stalwarts like Satyajit Ray, Manna Dey, Amartya Sen, Soumitro Chatterjee, Aparna Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen has given it a halo of a sacred place to the city ‘intellectuals’. To be able to sit on same spot where Allen Ginsberg, Sunil Ganguli and Shakti Chattopadhyaye spent hours dissecting romance and revolution over cups of infusion is enough to give a high to most. I don’t remember when I first went to Coffee House. Going to College Street to buy school books was an annual event and this usually ended with a ‘treat’ at Coffee House. At that age the ‘haloed place’ looked rather shabby to me and I hated the long wait for food. But, it was when I enrolled for my Masters in Calcutta University that I truly ‘discovered’ the place (and the fact that there are actually many people like me who really never liked ‘infusion’!). What really made Coffee House an instant favourite among us was not its ex-client list but the fact that it was pocket friendly and you could sit there for hours- and we sat there until they pulled the shutters down and almost threw us out! However, this ‘sitting’ part really needed technique for the wooden chairs and tables were home to millions of bed bugs. But then where there is a will there is always a way and if there aren’t any, you devise one! And as dedicated we were to our adda sessions we indeed came up with quite a few of those. From bug creams to bringing empty folders just to use them as hand rests to the boys trying to impress the girls by finding that rare steel chair-we did all that it takes to survive and fall in love with Coffee House (with its bugs! ). What made this coffee house a ‘home’(for us humans as well) was really its people, especially the waiters- the very soul of this place. Their memory used to store the names of the famous and the ordinary college goers alike; a memorable day that has gone down the pages of history to how many cups of 'infusion' and cutlet you have devoured they kept a track of it all. Apart from serving our orders ‘his highness’ wouldn’t hesitate to rebuke us for having too much coffee and cigarettes, and if we came in too drenched after romancing in the rain, his would be the concerned voice to caution us not to sit near the fan. Then there was the silent cashier with a head-master’s gaze and bell to match-when things got too loud the bell would ring to warn us check our decibel levels! Food was the last thing on the menu as far as the coffee house adda was concerned and we mostly survived on cold coffee (which was actually normal plain coffee served cold) and cigarettes. However, the first thing I noticed on the grime-laden menu card, apart from the grime, was a lot of ‘do’s- Chicken Do, Vegetable Do, Egg Do etc and it took me quite a few days to decipher this code. It was simply a ‘Ditto’ sign under the sandwich! Such oddities were common in this house of commons. But, today’s renovated coffee house hardly looks a place that we-the then-wannabe-rebels would have felt at home. Sitting in front of that huge a size of poster of Tagore can have a rather intimidating effect! However, as I climbed the stairs and reached the balcony I felt a bit less lost. Thankfully, ‘our’ table was not occupied and sat on the bright red plastic chair-- there are no bugs now but you can hardly sit on it with your legs folded as we would in our old wooden ones-- I sighed and closed my eyes. I could almost see the familiar faces crowding around me, the first rain splashing on the staircase through the tall windows, five of us almost crawling out of the classroom, rushing through the corridor, the old elevator, crossing Rakhalda’s canteen where J is still waiting for R, crossing the rain-soaked laal bedi looking as red as revolution, the water-logged College Street, clattering of trams and rickshaws and ‘mundaneness’, smell of wet books, the two of us making lame excuses to ‘the rest’ and taking roundabout ways, getting drenched, finally joining ‘the rest’ at the ‘balcony’ and sinking into the chair--‘his highness’ appears ‘Ki go ar karor dekha nei je? Ki khabe bolo?’ (Where are the rest? What will you have?) –startled, I open my eyes, he had the same stern smile. Suddenly, I realized there was really nothing wrong with the sunshine yellow or the huge poster or even the ‘bugless’ chair- all that mattered was how close you keep your friends and how many rounds of random discussions you can survive!