Lanes of Nostalgia: Into the Tapestry of Indian Coffee House

Life on the hustle-bustle streets of a metropolitan city like Kolkata, will often find you like a galley-slave nomad, rather than a poetic fool roaming the lanes.  But, if you once stop wandering in your busy life, you may find a sweet essence of how life and nostalgia have cuddled themselves in love.

The streets of Kolkata and the building that has grown with its history, surely makes you see the city from the eyes of what the nature lover poet, William Wordsworth, would have seen, if he was you. The streets with the smell of dust, washed with morning sunrise and the golden rays of the sunset and you enjoying while walking by the historic roads. 

It was mid-December, eleven-ish and I was walking towards the busy metro station of Tollyguange. When I climbed up the stairs, a metro just passed by with a gusty wind on my face, blowing my hairs in a filmy move. It was again six minutes after, that the other metro came, and I took it for my destination to M.G. Road. I was dressed like a total bong woman with a white kurti and baggy jeans with a small bindi on my forehead and a moderate touch of classy make-over, one you can surely quote as the very nostalgically famous, 'Bonolota Sen'. The metro stopped and the gates opened wide. I climbed down the stairs and came down the street. It's the roads of the very known and lovely place of College Street, known colloquially as 'Boi Para'. Google maps indeed confuse you sometimes with long and short routes. That was the very first time I agreed, 'Yeah that's true'. Though it made me take turns and rounds which had other shortcuts to reach Coffee House, but the journey was quite an exploration, seeing the branches penetrating through the bricks of the old buildings, the half-buried tramlines under the road pitch, the India Silk House, Basanta Cabin, the busy hawkers crying out loud by the side of the footpaths and the busy vendors crossing the roads admist of the green signal shining bright. Finally, after the splendid exploration, I reached the Indian Coffee House. A middle-sized rusty banner hanging high, poking its head out of multiple bookstores, spreading the fragrance of old books. I climbed the stairs, the walls with small postboxes attached with some names painted on them, that can instantly drown you in the sea of Bengali literature and romanticism. Seeing the walls painted in memories and sentiments I reached the white and black checked floors of Coffee House with benches surrounded with two or four chairs. People from eight to eighty have gathered, some blowing smoke from their half-burnt cigarettes and some laughing and giggling over a chit-chat. The Coffee House is a very old cafe cum forum for the workaholics to spend a relaxing moment in between the busy city lights. It is two storied with the upper floor hanging by the sides of walls and the ground floor with same organized structure of wooden benches and chairs and big fans hanging from the ceiling. Being on a solo date I preferred a window side table to accompany my own company. The waiters dressed like the zamindari fort guards, with a white big golden buttoned shirt, dhoti and a turban of white and red, covering their head. as soon as I reserved a table for me the waiter noted my choice, and it was of course the epic Fish Kobiraji and the coffee from their menu. While I sat patiently wandering about the food to be served, my mind was hit by the history of Albert Hall that was established in 1876, which later became the Indian Coffee House in 1942, being one of the oldest historic cafes of Kolkata. My thoughts made me silently sing Manna Dey's famous song 'Coffee House Er Sae Adda Ta', and I was instantly driven by the imagination of thousand footfalls in the Coffee House, one of the oldest corners from the city. 
The nostalgic feeling and slow sips to my coffee cup watching the dusk set its way into one of the cold winter nights from my last December made me see Kolkata from a mesmerizing view.