Tea, with a chance of cancer

Opposite the Calcutta Medical College, you can walk into Surjya Sen Street, which is a one-way street, probably into another lifetime.

With an old schoolmate dropping into town, the local alumnus (read fellow class-bunkers) gathered together, at the choice of the visiting professor (for he IS a professor in a management school in Karjat), at Putiram Sweet Shop for some samosa followed by tea at Favourite Cabin. 

Now, the question might arise why a group of seven well-placed 58-59 year olds should choose to jostle in Favourite Cabin instead of Cafe Coffee Day. Perhaps nostalgia and being grounded with Kolkata is a driver (we Bengalis often equate intellect with parsimony, if not squalor). However, with friends, surroundings do not matter, nor is it the point of my reflection here.

Frankly, I had tea in a place like the Favourite after ages. Perhaps 10ftx30ft in seating area that accommodates 8-10 minuscule marble-topped tables, plastic chairs and a serving boy who identifies whether sugar had been added by scooping a spoonful from the bottom of the teacup when serving. The manager is in a vest and khaki shorts, wearing a gamchha around his waist as a sign of high office. Two huge fans lumber overhead, being switched on and off depending on climatic needs of the louder set of patrons. Sitting at the table has to meet the parallel goal of not being in the central aisle, especially with so much hot tea being passed around. There was one person even smoking in the congested room but the manager refused to go heavy on him as many historical characters had smoked in this cubbyhole.

Indeed these dingy joints are historical. Basanta Cabin or Putiram next door boast of ancestors who have served many people's ancestors. Most of Kolkata's erstwhile intelligentsia had ebbed and flowed daily in the surrounding square kilometer, which house Presidency College and Calcutta Medical College, and the tidal waves of between-class students would invariably settle down at these backwaters for an indefinite hour or so. Throughout life, they would visit out of nostalgia. The manager of Favourite casually said: "Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee came here and smoked... how can I stop others?" Office-goers and salespeople passing this way who would want to rest for while would drop in. Budding romantics with thin purses would probably go to Putiram's for samosa and jilted johnnies with even thinner purses would park in Favourite and have tea with extra sugar. Fifty years ago, this place, and others like them, cut across a slice of life who wanted to take a break in their running.

Today, somehow, the place still looks frozen in time. The same dinginess, lumbering four-bladed fan, spilt tea on trays continues. Tables continue to be packed. The office goer sips tea looking at his smartphone instead of the newspaper. The salesman glumly contemplates his pad of sales achievements. What I found missing are the college-going students, who would have provided the energy of arguments and the spice of laughter even to this laid back tea shop. What happened? Are the classes off? Or has the student community shifted to Cafe Coffee Day? Have the college-goers of Kolkata become upwardly mobile while the middle-class remains rooted to these affordable options? Loss of young laughter will probably affect the health of these lungs of opinion-dens more than the surreptitious cigarette would.