Catching glimpses of colonialism with coffee
Before it was popularly called the Indian Coffee House, it was known as the Albert Hall. The stately mansion was built in 1876 to commemorate the visit of the crown prince of England. The christening of the hall was a dedication to him. After it was completed, the Coffee Board decided to start a coffee shop out of Albert Hall in 1942. Post-independence, the Central Government rechristened it the Indian Coffee House - part of an expansive chain of about 400 outlets across the country.
It is said that initially Albert Hall was lived in by Ramkamal Sen, Treasurer of the Bank of Bengal and Secretary of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, in the early 19th century. But later when it got remodelled and turned into the famed Indian Coffee House, artists, literati, and people from the world of art and culture convened here to immerse themselves in the air of intellect and culture.
Just a few years after its conception, the management wanted to pull down the shutters of the place. But professors of Presidency College and Calcutta University floated a special petition to the government, to save the heritage edifice. Later, it was hit by a colossal financial breakdown that prevented the cooperative society from undertaking renovation of the coffee house. Organizations like Asian Paints approached the society with offers to renovate the restaurant, but they were turned down due to a mismatch of ideologies.
When the stars come calling
The revered halls of the Coffee House have seen many stalwarts across art, politics, and literature. Filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Amartya Sen, Mrinal Sen, and Aparna Sen have spent hours here. Scholars, editors, artists and writers like Ritwik Ghatak, Narayan Gangopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sanjeev Chattopadhyay, Samaresh Majumdar, Subhas Mukhopadhyay, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Craig Jamieson, Sukhamoy Chakraborty, Tapan Raychaudhuri, Barun De and Sumit Sarkar are a few who to have spent their years at the Coffee House. In the early sixties the young and the hungry wanted to steer a change with their literary works, cultural movements and poetic narrations. That’s why revered poets and the brother duo Malay Roy Choudhury, and Samir Roychoudhury also visited this place very often. However, as their content was stirring, they were arrested and prosecuted. The coffee house was the hot seat for gatherings of freedom fighters also. Important meetings, strategies, and political warfare were discussed in these very walls. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was sworn in as the Congress president in the 1920s in the Indian Coffee House. It was frequented by several other noted leaders of the freedom struggle like Mahatma Gandhi, Shishir Bose, Aurobindo Ghose, and others.
