Its ideal location near iconic Telegraph building and close proximity to Shimla deputy commissioner Office and lower bazar makes it the most sought after place for meeting and eating . Its close proximity to the Telegraph Office building right at the South-West corner of the fashionable Mall Road added to its popularity. The Telegraph Office Building was designed by the Scottish architect Scott Begg in 1922. It is still one of the most ambitiously designed colonial building. It was from here that Government telegraphic office functioned and made first link with the outside world .
Earlier, District court complex was also housed here. Now District Court complex has been Shifted to Chakkar near Boileauganj. As such, the usual presence of advocates in large number throughout the day has disappeared. It may be one of the reasons for coffee house diminishing sale.
The popularity of this coffee house was so high that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi when was BJP in charge for Himachal was regular visitor to the coffee house. He even made it a point to sip coffee at this coffee house during his visit to Shimla in 2017. It was like a drawing room for most of the regular visitors particularly visitors from Lower Bazar. Coffee house waiters used to say it was a drawing room for one of our friends Hriydesh Arya, popularly known as Papa jee . He was often omnipresent there. The book shop his family was running was hardly few meters away from Coffee House.
The repeated lockdowns and outbreak of corona virus have made it hard for the coffee house to survive. it was closed for sometime in July last year after one of it workers refused to quarantine and skipped corona test.He had returned from Delhi, then the hot spot for coronavirus. He had to be institutionally quarantined after booked for violations of corona guidelines.
I have many sweet memories of this coffee house as well as another coffee house closed in late seventies . Right from my university days in early seventies, I used to be a regular visitor to the coffee house. In the beginning, along with my cousin OP and my classmates, we used to sip coffee at another coffee house known as Northern Indian coffee house, closed in late seventies. Now the building houses the HP State Coperative Bank. .This coffee house was then run by comrades but couldn't survive for long. Then Indian Coffee House used to be a sitting place for elites and its upper story coffee house was largely for families of VIPs. Later, it was closed and another unit opened downstairs of the main coffee house. Our veteran friend ,J.N. Sadhu used to sit early in upper coffee house and later in downstairs coffee house. He would rarely visit the main coffee house. For him this coffee house was for gossipers and rejected politicians.
At one time as long my close friend ND Sharma was posted at Shimla, we both used to regularly visit coffee house once in the morning before the Press Room on Mall Road opposite famous Gaindamull Hemraj, Departmental Stores opened up. This Press room was another popular meeting place for journalists. People coming from outside would often wait for us here. Don't know whether its still there but hope it is there. And then later in the evening after finishing our day and before returning to home in U.S. Club.
There were some distinct activities of some friends. My close friend K.s. Tomar used to treat veteran journalist. P.N. Sharma over a cup of coffee in the afternoon exclusively. Other journalists used to gossip that Tomar used to seek feedback from P.N. Our non-journalist friend Arun Sharma used to mock their meeting as "spy meeting". Two veteran journalists, Prakash Lohumi and Najmul Hasan (Times Of India) were never friendly . They rarely visit coffee house. Prakash Lohumi used to jokingly call Hasan a "Spy" because of his long white beard. But despite all these tits-bits, we all used to enjoy fully. It was during this period that Shimla Press Club and a Journalist Co-operative Housing Society came into existence. The present journalist housing society near Sankat Mochan Temple is the result of friends' hard works. Those were the golden days and has no parallel. Miss those days badly.
I have never missed visiting coffee houses. I was an weekend visitor to coffee house in Delhi's Mohan Singh Place and Chandigarh Sector 17 coffee house. Even visit Lucknow Hazaratganj coffee house whenever I happened to visit the city. I was also regular visitor to Bhopal New market Place coffee house along with ND. He is still a regular visitor. There was no Indian coffee house in Maharashtra Aurangabad . So I missed it badly during my stay there.
It is most unfortunate that one after another , Shimla iconic meeting and eating places , the popular destination for weekend tourists, are shuttng down . Earlier, famous Baljees restaurant was closed down in July 2019. And now if iconic eating and meeting place Indian Coffee House, crumbles, it will be doomsday for Shimalites.
It was way back in 1935 that the Indian Coffee Board established a number of coffee houses, where natives ofee British India could enjoy as the gora sahibs were . There needed to be place where commoner Indian could have a cup of coffee, snacks and converse about anything under the imperial regime.
The first coffee house was opened in Churchgate, Bombay in 1936. But after independence these coffee houses fell on hard times, and by the mid-fifties the Coffee Board had decided to close them down all rendering ]nearly 850 workers jobless.Here enter A.K.Gopalan, a Communist Party leader from Kerala. He accompanied a delegation of the workers to meet Prime Minister J.L Nehru. He asked the workers to form a cooperative that could take over the running of the coffee houses Thus was born the Indian Coffee Worker’s Cooperative Society, which took over the business from the board. Shimla Coffee house is also run by this society.
Hope like A.K.Gopalan, some leaders. may be even PM Modi who is quite nostalgic about Shimla Coffee House come forward to save this coffee house which has in store most valuable history of Shimla including iconic visit of Indian PM to this coffee house.
(Chander Sharma)
c
No comments:
Post a Comment