Prachi (Article)

Its really long so i bolded the PD part....😛

Storm in a cup?

An itinerant sign painter was once asked to draw a sketch of the famous College Street book market of Kolkata. His sketch of the Presidency College and the lane opposite missed a glorious landmark for which he earned a lot of flak, a mistake which he eventually rued the rest of his life, but did not repeat.

Lying at the heart of the internationally famous book market is the Coffee House which is still a big draw for book lovers and ragtag youth alike.That the painter unfortunately overlooked its stark presence is another matter.

Shorn of its glamour and glorious past, the Coffee House is frantically struggling to retain its great tradition, a tradition that has given this eastern megapolis its much-flaunted intellectual class and shaped many a radical mind in the 60s and 70s.

Never mind the dark wall where plasters are peeling off and a big frame of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore is the lone 'odd man out' in the fast-food and coffee-sipping crowd. The dark and dank stairs leading to the once hallowed place desperately cry for upkeep and maintenance. Yet, the popular rendezvous of the young and the old, of friends past and present, has a strange pull that is difficult to ignore.

The charm, the inherent magic of the city's one of the heritage sites might have faded though. Call it wayward gossip, addas, fun chats or tame debates on popular reality shows or serials of today – all this have subdued the flavour of brainstorming sessions of the city's intelligentsia or creative pangs of young poets that produced a plethora of literary pieces.

"For us, it was a sort of pilgrimage; we used to go through a process of learning and unlearning as discussions over several cups of coffee untied many thorny knots in our creative process," recalled Manindra Chakraborty, a retired professor of English in neighbouring Presidency College. Chakraborty who spent most of his pastime in the coffee house, got some of his Bengali poems corrected by none other than Sunil Ganguly, eminent novelist and litterateur.

"I still remember how a waiter in his late 50s corrected some of my ideas as I was trying to compose a lyric – Boatman of the river – and my ignorance of the diction and style of the boatmen of the then East Bengal proved to be a handicap," said Chakraborty who hardly visits the joint now. Not that he has lost interest in the place, but there is no longer the urge which once made him a regular in the Coffee House three decades back.

Chakraborty is not the only person who has stopped visiting the place; there could be an umpteen number of old timers who are regular absentees now as they feel the place has lost its charm and glory. This is despite the fact that Coffee House has carved a niche in the hearts of culture-savvy Kolkatans for whom the importance and value of the place is immense.

The conflict is elsewhere; for the new generation students, Kafkas, Eliots, Lawrences and the rest have been replaced by more 'mundane' topics where clash and exercise of intellect is much less. Besides Harry Potter and the likes of it, one of the major point of discussions is quick careers in TV and reality shows and storms are often raised over coffee cups as to how young girls are successfully catwalking and whether the model-turned-actress ladder is slippery indeed.

"I am surprised how the child star Hansika Motwani who is just 16 plus, could romance with Himesh Reshamiya almost twice her age, in Aap Ka Suroor. It's terrific," exclaimed Sujata Patra, a second-year student of Economics honours in the City College. "One has to be gifted and requires understanding parents without which this is not possible." Saptarshi Banerjee, her classmate, fiercely disputes it. "It's just the pull of glamour that young girls are being drawn towards this. A search in the market will reveal talents like Motwani are dime a dozen," Banerjee insists.

If the first floor of the Coffee House sometimes produces muted cacophony, the second floor would hum with a quiet buzz as the space along the corridor is less and seating accommodation is not far too many. Those who prefer to opt for exclusive discussions by avoiding the crowd, like the second floor. And the topic too invariably changes.

As the students of the Scottish Church College would bear it out. Is the creative inclination of a child more important than education? Prachi Desai, the 18-year-old who plays the role of a married woman in a popular Zee TV soap, has reportedly gone on record saying that she does not enjoy studying any more and she has instead, decided to devote her time to acting. Seven of them – five girls and two boys – spent more than a couple of hours debating on the pros and cons of quitting studies to respond to one's creative talent and a consensus eluded!

"Look, we're serious students (studying English Hons) and we feel there is a crying need for debating on topics like this, claimed Reshmi, a BA final year student. "It doesn't mean one's creative talent needs to be diluted. Look at Aditya Narayan, son of popular singer Udit Narayan, who is making waves. But does that mean every talented boy or girl is required to quit their studies and concentrate on performing arts or whatever?"

Md Rehman, one of the waiters who was listening to the din for a while, smiled for a second before handing over the bill. Over the years, Rehman and the rest were witness to many a silent revolution, hot exchanges, young lovers falling prey to one another's charms or angry ladies walking out of the House in a huff. "But, sir, I can vouchsafe things were completely different in the 60s and 70s, even in the early 80s or so. When we used to clean the tables after the groups had left, almost everyday, one of the tables would invariably spring surprises," Rehman reminicised.

Blame it on his illiteracy and lack of awareness, Rehman had stumbled upon treasure troves, so to say, and threw them away as per routine. "Tables were littered with papers and cigarette packets. Some such packets would contain myriad mathematical solutions which I gave back to some of the visitors while stray papers were full of short poems, some of them in English, too. Once a professor of the Indian Statistical Institute ran back and fished out two cigarette packets and gave me a bakshsis (money as reward) of Rs 20, highest during those days," Rehman recalled.

The Coffee House, presently being run by the All India Coffee Workers' Co-operative Society, urgently requires extensive renovation work and a quick facelift. According to Subhas Ganguly, the accountant, the prevailing financial crunch has been a major deterrent to the make-over move. Since its inception in 1942, the Coffee House has a rich cultural and historical lineage. Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose were once frequent visitors to the place.But when the Coffee Board decided to close it down in 1958 owing to acute fiscal deficit, the city's intelligentsia came together to save it and former Bengal chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy gave it a fresh lease of life.

Since then, it has remained a hub of intellectuals and many foreign writers too have made it to the place as the College Street book market and the Coffee House are almost a single entity.

Proposals from private sponsors for taking up the renovation work are already there. "We only want to reconstruct the walls and beautify the looks without much demolition.The huge Victorian bastions, the long winding stairs and the intricate craft work will be retained to make the visitors feel the age and warmth of the almost mythic building," said Ganguly. There are some bottlenecks which are required to be cleared before the actual work can start. If spruced up, the heritage building will have its own claim to fame as one of the most revered heritage sites of Kolkata where one can go for sip of coffee in an oasis of camaraderie.

-AA😊