Satyajit was here: Kolkata’s College Street Coffee House
The Hindu
The coffee house where poetry, films and revolutions were brewed
The last time I was in Kolkata, I was stumped by the number of little cafés I saw in every corner of the city. They were bustling with life, peopled by the young, who sat with their lattes and laptops. The sight — though vastly different — reminded me of the city’s old coffee houses, where people once voiced and shaped their dreams over cigarettes and coffee. Coffee houses were as much a part of the city, as, say, the Victoria Memorial. So, I was happy to find a chapter on coffee houses in a new book called A Taste of Time: A Food History of Calcutta by Mohona Kanjilal. The India Coffee House on Chittaranjan Avenue, it says, was one of the two venues originally selected by Coffee Board of India in Calcutta, the other being the Albert Hall Coffee House on Bankim Chatterjee Street. Albert Hall, founded in April 1876 by philosopher-social reformer Keshab Chandra Sen, was the meeting place of the city’s intelligentsia, Kanjilal writes.More Related News