11 December,2020 08:39 AM IST | Mumbai | Sukanya Datta
The interiors of India Coffee House. Pic/The Book
Don't be surprised if you miss Albert Hall on 15, Bankim Chatterjee Street, Kolkata, tucked between bustling book stalls that promise the best bargain for the rarest titles. Ask anyone around, "Dada (brother), Coffee House?" and they'll personally escort you into the fading halls like it's their own living room. established in the 1930s, the College Street Coffee House inside Albert Hall - built as an ode to Queen Victoria's husband - is more than just a cafe; it's an emotion. It's on these chequered floors that history has unfolded over countless cups of subsidised coffee and helpings of kabiraji, including the rise of the radical Left. Politics, heartbreaks, social sciences, birth of literary magazines, plans of changing the world - nothing was off the table for its patrons, including luminaries such as the late Soumitra Chatterjee, Usha Ganguly, Jogen Chowdhury and Amartya Sen.
Jael Silliman. Pic/ Abhishek Kumar Mehan
And now, Adda! The College Street Coffee House (Notion Press) by Jael Silliman and photographer Mala Mukerjee attempts to stir that nostalgia, with portraits and memoirs by patrons, old and new. Ahead of its digital launch on December 14, the duo reveal why singer Manna Dey's tribute, 'Coffee House er shei adda ta aaj aar nei' (those addas of Coffee House are no longer there), still tugs at our heartstrings.
Mala Mukerjee
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How did Adda! come about?
Mala: I grew up a mile away from Coffee House, in Central Kolkata. I have been there several times, first as a child to buy books at College Street, and later, to catch up with friends. In 2018, there was a photo exhibition on Coffee House in the same building, by a young photographer called Avik Mitra. I suggested he extend the idea to a book, but he wasn't too keen. I then reached out to Jael.
Jael: This was not a world I was familiar with, having grown up in an Anglo (Indian)environment. When Mala di reached out to me, I was intrigued as the Coffee House was that part of Kolkata which I wanted to know more about.
How did you go about seeking the diverse voices?
Mala: We made a list of people who would spend time there; those we interviewed referred us to friends; and we dug out photographs and magazine covers that were created at Coffee House from archives.
Jael: We also met the staff who've been around for long. We wanted to reach out to voices from communities other than the upper class Hindu patrons; but that didn't work out unfortunately.
How would you describe Coffee House to someone outside of Kolkata?
Jael: The coffee house chain is well-known, with Kolkata's being one of the hottest spots, due to the role of adda, politics and passion that Bengalis are known for. People of intellect and artistic vision drew energy from it. It offers a glimpse of important political moments in Indian history. We think the book captures that nostalgia and politics in an easy manner.
The city of Kolkata might today look like a place dotted with replicas of Miss Havisham's decrepit bungalow from Great expectations. But there was a time in the initial decades after Independence when the scene there was fit for someone like the hedonistic Jay Gatsby. Park Street had a buzzing nightlife comparable to Paris or London, with the swish office crowd from Chowringhee descending there for jazz music in the evenings. The aristocratic palaces of the north still retained their opulent splendour. And it was College Street where the intellectuals, artistes and even revolutionaries gathered, sharing their ideas with each other at the legendary India Coffee House located in the vicinity.
They are the ones - people like actor Soumitra Chatterjee and author Nabaneeta Dev Sen - who coloured the cafe with a shade of nostalgia that it will forever remain painted with. Adda! by Jael Silliman and Mala Mukerjee does a commendable job of recreating that past glory, reliving it through the memories of noted people in the fields of politics, the arts and sciences. The book begins with a brief history and some context about what made the place so special. It then moves into interviews with the likes of Chatterjee, Dev Sen, public intellectual Jawhar Sircar and artist Jogen Chowdhury, who were all regulars there. Sometimes, their recollections overlap since some of them were contemporaries. But that only goes to show how the place shaped their collective worldviews, and - after throwing in a word about Mukerjee's stunning photographs that document the cafe's evolution through the ages - we will leave you with this sentence that Chatterjee had to say about his favourite culinary spot in the city - "every day, it was there that we checked for ourselves whether the tanpura embedded in our heart was in tune."
By Shunashir Sen
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