‘Now listen to me. Don’t spend all your time doing adda at the Coffee House. Attend your classes too,’ said the bespectacled gentleman in specs to his daughter. The year was 1992. We were part of a serpentine queue of students outside the physics department on the first floor of the building located at a right angle to the portico/ main building of Calcutta’s Presidency, College. Undergrads waiting to complete the admission formalities.
The gentleman needn’t have worried. By then the India Coffee House at College Street was no longer where future Nobel, Oscar and Berlin Film Festival winners, Indian Presidents, IAS officers and left liberals from Presidency hung out. A quick glance through the clientele of this sleepy establishment would tell you that those sitting there were more likely to sari salesmen and book stall owners. Not students.
The canteen, Promod da’s canteen, as it was known after the Odia gent who ran it, was where the action was. There was even a term for students who spent all their time there. Canteen Hons. The space had ‘diplomatic immunity.’ According to an unwritten code, teachers would not come here. If they wanted to order food, they’d send the office boys with their orders.
College was one of the happiest parts of my life. I was proud to be a Presidencian. To my Erich Segal tinted eyes, getting into Presi was like getting into Harvard. I hadn’t got English, the subject of my choice. Sociology, then a new subject, was my wildcard second choice and I got through. Turned out to be a happy accident as I loved most of what we studied. We had a few exceptional teachers. PR, in particular. Prasanta Ray, our HOD, who really helped open my mind to the world around us.
I made a great set of friends. From across departments. Very few from my own to be honest. Our batch in sociology had 18 girls and 3 of us guys.
Three years whizzed past and then it was the last official day of college before we broke to study for the finals. Emotions were running high. Even those who were not close to each other felt the twinge of separation. Which possibly explained why a bunch of us from the Presidency College Sociology Hons batch of 92 – 95 decided to go the Indian Coffee House for a last coffee together that evening after settling our library dues and photocopying notes and books.
We climbed up its winding stairs to find the place packed as usual. Prices are very cheap and service very slow and waiters don’t really care about turnover. Suddenly we saw two gentleman waving at us. PR, and his friend, AM. The latter a guest lecturer from Bardhaman University, who was a rather cool prof too.
We joined them bashfully. PR ordered coffee and pokoras for us and smiled and gently said, ‘why do you look so sad? Are you coming from a funeral?’
‘It’s the last day of college sir,’ I said. ‘Then imagine what happens to us teachers,’ said PR. ‘We create new connections every year and three years later most end as each batch moves on. Such is life. I hope you remember your time here fondly wherever you go.’ (This was 27 years back so I might have got the words wrong, but the essence right).
It was time to leave and we took out our wallets and purses. Another unwritten tradition back then was if you came across a professor while travelling or at an eatery, you paid your own fare/ bill. College professors were not highly paid, so this helped avoid any embarrassment.
‘I will take this one,’ said PR in Bengali. with a smile. He and AM sat on while the rest of us trudged out. I am pretty sure that his eyes were watery behind his thick specs.
I spent two more years at College Street as I did my MBA at IISWBM. While we had access to Promod da’s canteen, I’d go to the Coffee House more often then.
I went back to Coffee House in 2018 with a friend when I took her on a food walk at College Street.
Truth be told, the subsequent visits notwithstanding, that evening in ‘95, when we met PR, was our last tango in the Indian Coffee House.
Do click here to read more about my College Street memories : https://www.finelychopped.net/2018/07/the-book-street-that-is-home-to.html?m=1
