A news report that the four-decade old Coffee House on Bangalore's Mahatma Gandhi Road will be replaced by a new building is a bit of a shock to someone like me who has been haunting the place ever since relocating to India's Garden City some 20 years ago. "The old order changeth, yielding place to new" and all that but what price the Coffee House memories of the last two decades!

For one thing, the Coffee House was the closest comfortable refreshment joint to the office on MG Road. For the other, it was the most reasonably priced. Unlike those who sampled masala dosas and coffee, I just focussed on the brew with, at the most, a plateful or two of buttered toast.

Needless to say, it was not just the coffee which drew me there. It was also the company of fellow scribes. On my initial arrival in Bangalore, I noticed columnists like the late P.K. Srinivasan who is remembered not just by his contemporaries but by Johnny-comelatelies like me. He would always be surrounded at the Coffee House by younger colleagues in whom he would try to instil his unorthodox nonhierarchical views of life. If a wise old man once said, "There is no hierarchy in journalism," it was PKS who practised it!

The Coffee House was also an immediate rendezvous for boy-meets girl over a cuppa! For the more sober married types, it was the call of last resort before dashing down to the nearest movie-theatre for an evening or a second show. On off days, after or before shopping, one could always use the upstairs facility for a leak! After shopping, one could even dump the stuff on the table and reinvigorate oneself with a cup or two. The uniformed bearers with their turbans were instantly recognisable in their attire. It was only when they resorted to their non-official dress that one had problems in giving a name to the face!

As the years progressed, the amount of time one could spend in the Coffee House shrunk. So much so that I would sometimes pick up a plastic cup, have it filled at the Coffee House and return to work. And then came the Competition with a big Cin the form of the fine cafes! First it was the Cafe Coffee Day outlet and then Barista. But the fine cafes lacked the ambience of the Coffee House with its portraits of the traditionally dressed, captioned 'A fine type' as if to extol the virtues of good, old filter-coffee at its aromatic best. For those who liked to converse, there was no distraction in the Coffee House unlike the fine cafes where the music drowned the sound of the spoon stirring the sugar and conversations had to be repeatedly repeated! In my capacity as a journalist, I once interviewed the owner of a fine coffee-cafe chain on his premises and then had to rush back to office to get him to repeat the facts and figures over the telephone!

The Coffee House on MG Road was set up by the Coffee Board in the late 1940s and then taken over by the Indian Coffee Workers' Cooperative Society Ltd. in 1958. Similar Coffee Houses are run by Similar Coffee Workers' Co-operative Societies across the country, not just in the bustling metros but in the smaller industrial townships like Bhilai. My brother, who had sampled the brew in the Bhilai Coffee House in the early 1970s, was pleasantly surprised when he returned after three decades early this year to find the same brew being served in the same place. It is fashionable now to talk about the contribution of the fine cafes to promoting the coffee culture. However, decades before they got into the act, the coffee culture was being promoted north of the Vindhyas in the non-traditional consumption areas by the Coffee workers' Cooperative Societies. It was they who kept the coffee flag flying high even in those decades when the north Indian middle class was only used to tea.

It is only back in the Coffee Board headquarters of Bangalore that the old order could change on MG Road. However, the memories will remain of books being read in the upstairs portion of the Coffee House, of glimpsing the first monsoon clouds through the windows and of whiling away the time sipping the brew before taking in Costa-Gavras' `Missing' at a nearby movie-theatre!


Janaki Murali

Many of central Bangalore 's well known landmarks are vanishing. The ones still around evoke many fond memories for old times.

Coffee house in M.G Road will no longer -be around, so won't Madhu Sweets. Victoria is gone and has been replaced by Bangalore Central and Tiffany's has been razed to the ground.

All these landmarks were a throwback to the laidback Bangalore of the pensioners, who had made it a home to retire in, when long walks amidst tree lined boulevards, listening to the birds instead of the noisy traffic was what mornings were made of. This was often followed by a relaxed breakfast of puttukadalai at Victoria sitting in the verandah overlooking the road.

The waiters took their own time to serve you, so you sat there reading your morning newspapers, in no hurry to go anywhere. Nobody asked you to leave and you could sit there until you found something else to do. It was no different at Tiffanys, where sometimes it seemed as though there were four waiters to a customer, hanging around chatting in corners, until somebody waved out to them to catch their attention. Driving past Vittal Mallya Road now, all you see in the place where Tiffany's stood is rubble and debris.

The Coffee House on MG Road is another icon from the past, that along with Victoria and Tiffany's gave central Bangalore its identity, its old world colonial hangover. The waiters in their white and red uniform are probably as old as the Coffee House itself. They know most of their customers and stop by for a chat. The coffee costs only Rs 5 and the masala dosa, like the way mom makes at home, is only Rs 13. You can sit over your coffee and watch life hurrying past on MG Road outside.

At the other coffee house outlet in the Coffee Board premises, they even serve crunchy onion pakodas, along with the usual sandwiches, the cutlets and the scrambled eggs - all specialities of the two Coffee House outlets. Government officials, NGOs, journalists, high court advocates and pensioners have over the years made the Coffee House their adda. The conversation here rises and ebbs with politics, court cases, government policies and politicians' nakras.