Growing up days – coffee at College Street Coffee House

The Coffee House at College Street, located in the vicinity of Calcutta University and Presidency College, was the well-known meeting ground for Bengali intellectuals of the 1960s – its regular patrons came from the fields of politics and of arts and aspiring poets would recite their poems aloud in the near holy coffee joint.

From film stars to movie directors and authors to politicians, everyone who mattered in Bengal of the sixties made it a habit to be a part of the Coffee House. Some of them were already established in their fields while others were trying to get a toehold in the highly stiff competition to climb the ladder of success.
There were two parts of the Coffee House – the upper floor was known as the House of Lords and the lower floor was the House of Commons.
The ever courteous waiters, dressed in white, flitted from table to table collecting orders and serving the patrons – but, one section of the patrons would not bother to order either a cup of coffee or even some snacks. They would be busy in arguments with others and, at times, their voices would cross normal decibel levels and draw the attention of others.

The legendary singer Manna Dey sang a song on ‘Coffee House’ and the adda for which it was famous. Incidentally, adda was and still is something unique to Bengalis because it is all about total involvement of all participants to voice his or her opinion on the subject, it could be any subject under the sun. (to be continued …)