Of Coffee and Freedom Fighters
Stumbling inside Indian Coffee House feels like being printed onto a rusty film reel: patrons sport recently dusted bowties and leisure suits, the staff is starched into their uniforms, and everyone sips and snacks over the pressing issues of the day.
Dazed by the Victorian scene, I put some questions to a waiter. Is this a period restaurant? Who exhumed the old-timers? Why is no repulsive American pop music blaring from the radio?
“First,” advises 39-year-old server Bhagirath, “coffee.” Permanently pressed into his ivory coat and trousers, his topi cap coronets his head like a rooster. He fetches a thimble-sized cup of milky coffee, plunks it on the checkout counter, and begins rambling: Indian Coffee House is Shimla’s oldest, best, most delicate, and tastiest café. Well groomed workers operate and own the business. It’s not just cooperative, but a national institution. Prime Minister Nehru ate here in 1960.
There’s a tendency in India to always advertise your goods as the most exceptional. Usually it’s a sham. In a country of more than a billion citizens, little is unique. But by the joint’s spread, Bhagirath may not be exaggerating. Benches, fronted by saucer-worn tables, ring the restaurant. Teak ceiling fans twirl lazily. Like a tombstone, the yellowed menus only age, never change. Customers light cigarettes beneath crusty nonsmoking signs. And true to his word, mounted on the wall is an old photo of independent India’s first Prime Minister, Jawarlal Nehru, sipping a cup of the famed brew. Depending on your point-of-view, it’s either a bum’s bordello or pure bohemia.
Polishing off the coffee, I ask Bhagirath to introduce me to the regulars.
"You can ask whatever you want, but no names and no pictures." Bearded and haggard, the charge d’affaires’s charcoal hair is greased into a comb-over, giving him an academic, freedom fighter aesthetic. He’s spooning a bowl of vada, a south Indian soup of crushed lentils with a fried wheat donut. For all his curt anonymity, a genteel, baronial etiquette informs his mannerisms. He requests permission before the resumption of his lunch, toots his nose into a silk handkerchief, and prods me to sample another coffee.
“Come now, my treat. It’s the best in India.”
Thanks, I repeat, but I’ve just finished one. I’m interested, I say, how in a town perpetually marred by middle class tourists and hyper-development, does the antique Indian Coffee House survive?
“Survive?” he muses, “Shimla.”
More Alps than Himalayas, Shimla became the summer capital of British India in 1864, when the viceroyalty began fleeing to the crisp Shivalik foothills for seven months a year. Since its anointment as a seat of power– first with the British and continuing with Indian state governments – that stodgy islander culture has cemented itself into her roads, buildings, and being. Whereas typical Indian street life tilts into the chaotic, Shimla’s main artery, the Mall, is a peaceful, pedestrian-only district. Smoking outside among the promenade’s colonial cathedrals and storefronts is prohibited, as are cars, motorcycles, and rickshaws. It’s a mountain town dominated by civil servants and bureaucrats, politicians and policy makers. Fusty and dull to be certain, these careers are also relatively lucrative and secure, luxuries in short supply in India. Moreover, they are institutions credited with producing those responsible for liberating India. Nehru, Gandhi, and Ambedkar all were entangled within the bloated Indian bureaucracy, and the freedom struggle generation stamped a legacy of support and adulation for those trudging through this particular slice of life.
Yet, with the country’s economic ascent and her subsequent invite into the globalized world, an elite has emerged defined by financial stardom in the new economy: CEOs, IT industrialists and Bollywood’s A-list now shape India’s imagination more than the social activists of the post-Independence era. This changing of the guard, despite it’s reach, barely registers with the graying gossipers and café clackers that nest inside Indian Coffee House.
"We’re all here for the important dialogues,” he says, dotting the corners of his mouth with the handkerchief. “The quacks across the room, political nuts. Those blabbers by the balcony, Babus. Both are pensioners. The geezer gawking out the window,” he laughs, but then hesitates. “Well, that gentleman is actually a very good friend of mine. A journalist.” He’s bled his soup bowl dry and glances at his watch, as if he actually has somewhere to be.
"Want to meet him?”
I’m elbowed into a seat opposite the journalist who introduces himself as R.K. Sharma, Co-Ordinate Editor of the local magazine, Janpaksh Mail. It’s a position I’ve never heard of, one likely suitable for Shimla’s climate of an inflated workforce. Though he slushes through North Indian news, Sharma strikes me as the type who’s been tweaking the same play for the past twenty-five years. Stumpy, with a shy hairline, he’s eternally cornered between the wall and the front window, people watching.
“You never know who you might see in these parts,” he chuckles and orders us a round of coffee.
Fifty seven-year-old Sharma says he’s been loafing at the same table twice a day for the past forty years.
“What I like,” he explains, “is how everyone visits here. Not like the new cafes.”
India claims few constants. Over the millennium, regions, religions, and rulers have popped in-and-out of celebrity more than the tabloids’ scandalous socialites. Perhaps only poverty and priers have endured the ages. Numerous policies attempt bridging the divide, but it’s rare, even in today’s supposedly more open India, for porters to chat with poets or coolies to banter with croissant-eaters anywhere besides a train platform.
“People that go there think they’re in a different league,” he complains. “Here, coffee is only 10 rupees, at the new places it’s 45.”
India’s rise is a lot like a hick who strikes it rich: gaudy, loud, and somewhat embarrassing in its magnitude. The chain coffee shops and department stores, state-sized malls and mega-movie theatres, breeding like harems of stray pooches from Shimla to Chennai, exemplify this sentiment. What should be tranquil affairs generally tremble with trance beats and glow with plasma screens. An understated, quiet café in 21st century India is like unearthing a hidden temple humming with mystics and prophets of the highest order. The Indian Coffee House in Shimla is an outpost of a band of geriatric guerillas fighting to maintain a fading culture of inclusion and intellectualism. Once upon a time they saved this country from the clutches of the British. Now we can only hope they’ll be around long enough to rescue India from a ballooning middle class ego.
While we finish our coffees, the evening crowd filters in. Belvedere pipes are lit, Ivy caps readjusted, and mustaches tamed. As I stand to depart, I thank Sharma for the drink and conversation.
“Just stop by again,” he pleads as the waiter replaces his saucer with a fresh cup. “We will all still be here.”
