The morning arose duly like all Saturday mornings. There was nobody around to tell me to wash the clothes, or to have tea or to clean up my bed, so I did it all myself. Later for want of anything else to do, I settled with Amit Chaudhuri in the bed and he succeeded in making me fall asleep by his somewhat lilting poetic charm. I woke up when hungry and to find nothing much to eat and being too tired to go out and have something to eat; forced myself into a hungry sleep. Around four in the afternoon, the hunger was unbearable and so I set out.

The comfortable silence of the room was shattered by the honking horns at the Hajra crossing. Daily sites daily people. The flower-vendors and the soothing smell differentiating the patch from the omnipresent smell of Kolkata. The frail old men squatting on their rickshaws along the shaft set upon the ground making an inclined bed, with half-lit bidis in their mouths, awaiting customers. Everything was as it should be on a Saturday afternoon. The hotel at the corner was just opening. I satiated my hunger with some forgettable potato dish. (That reminds me that in Andhra Pradesh, the potato is called ‘Bengal-root’. How true!)

I had grown so accustomed to the silence of the room, that somehow the outside silence made me feel too disjoint. I decided to check out something new - physically and mentally. What came out of the endeavour follows.

I got to Jatin Das Park and boarded the metro to M.G. Road station. M.G. Road of Bangalore is where anything worthwhile to see is concentrated. Let’s see what Kolkata’s M.G. Road had to offer! And so I got down at M.G. Road to face the Mahajati Sadan, where some cultural program being conducted. A crowd had gathered with ethnic attire and seeing their faces, it was clear it had to be some music concert.

I took the other way. Kolkata’s M.G Road is nowhere near to the M.G. Road of Bangalore. The dark alleys and the innumerable confusing by-lanes leading to all sorts of places are quite confusing. At each corner, I used to feel I had been here before and used to turn in a direction, which supposedly I had not taken only to land up at another corner where I would feel the same. The long row of leather shops lined along the streets did not help in any way to clear the confusion.

When one does not know where one is going, one is seldom lost. This was never as true. Theoretically, I was not lost, and so there was no question of asking directions to an unknown place.

It was quite dark by this time, just the time, which the night refuses to own, and the day does not take along with it. An evening in Paris. There I was walking along some unknown roads of Kolkata, not knowing where I was going, not bothering to ask.

Already I have written so much about these roads of Kolkata, that there remains hardly anything to say - people squatting aimlessly, shopkeepers gathered in a discussion, pimps bothering and some people washing themselves on the roadside gutters.

At a distance, some books beckoned me. I promised myself just a peep and the peep took me into the famous College Street. Sometimes, I wonder how aimless travel leads to great joy! For quite some time I was desirous of going to the College Street and as well planned things seldom yield the expected results, so it is with unplanned adventures leading you to unexpected glee.

Lady luck, suddenly gave me a small smile!

College Street is considered to be the biggest second hand market of books. Idly skimming through the books, passing a casual glance at what the guy is reading next, avoiding the calls of shopkeepers to come and see their unwanted management and ‘How-to’ books, my ‘peep’ lasted for a whole two hours.

Wanting to rest my weary legs, I was searching for a small hotel for a cup of tea. This is something that I have missed terribly in Kolkata. This city just doesn’t know the importance of Irani restaurants situated at strategic corners. I remember the one at the corner of Shivaji Park where Abhijeet and myself had spent hours discussing about all and everything under the sun - from girls to religion and from studies to movies - over just a cup of tea and ‘broon-maska’ without anybody bothering us with when-will-these-people-go-away glances. The tea at an Irani’s restaurant carries a typical colour, unparalleled and irreproducible by any other community. Any true Mumbaikar would second me.

Out in Kolkata, there seem to be hardly any such places where one could sit and stare at the people hustling past. There are some tea vendors, par jo baat Irani restaurant main hain, woh yahan kahan? So absorbed was I in this thought, that I would have almost collided with a ‘artsy’ looking guy emerging from a dilapidated building - a dark winding staircase and a cigarette vendor at its entrance. Don’t know what made me look up, but I did and I saw a black and white board painted with ‘Indian Coffee House’ a.k.a. ICH.

What an incredible piece of luck! How lucky could I get in a day?

Here I was at the so-called intellectual cafe of the Bengalis. Manna De was out here a week ago, shooting for a couple of songs of his, which are based on the nostalgic feeling of the ‘Coffee Houser Adda’. The moment I stepped inside, the outside silence seemed of a different age due to the chatter inside. The atmosphere was quite different than anything else. In a size as big as the Stadium Cafe at Churchgate, there were about a hundred people sitting in dim lights with a cloud of smoke engulfing all of them. Cigarette smoke, the aroma of coffee and the typical ICH waiters going around in a hurry completed the intellectual, artsy feeling.

The ICH waiters all over the world seem to have a common uniform. The once-upon-a-time white trousers, with a white shirt and a white Nehru cap. The headwaiter is distinguishable by his thick multicoloured belt and turban, whose end fans out - like a Punjabi’s doing a Baisakhi dance. These headwaiters always remind me of a dancing peacock. The similarity strengthened by both dancing at the onset of something. If you are new to ICH, you will never be prudent enough to choose a table which the headwaiter waits upon, since you never know that his orders always carry a higher priority - a lesson learnt only when you patronise the ICH for quite some time.

The atmosphere as I said was different; different from anything that I had anywhere seen before. The ICH is situated in a building (originally?) known as ‘Albert Hall’ and the structure has a balcony and a podium. It was used as a place where many a speakers had given speeches in bygone times. The balcony, situated on the first floor, was meant for the rich. I am not sure about who would have given speeches here, neither am I too sure about this Hall had any significance in the annals of our freedom struggle. I somehow feel having read it in the curriculum of the Indian freedom struggle, thrust repeatedly in school upon an unsuspecting candidate for whom history always gives nightmares.

Today it is privy to the mushy talks of college couples sneaking from the Calcutta University across, seeking privacy in the crowded interiors.

Nothing seems to have changed here, not even the fans. As I had mentioned some days ago, Kolkata is how it has been left off by the English - static, except the political change from Calcutta to Kolkata. Maybe, just maybe that the proud Bengali never got out of the remorse of Calcutta being demoted from the undisputed position of the capital of the Raj.

Somehow, I felt quite at home in this situation, except that I missed a Samir or Abhijeet at this place. Their presence at this place would have lent a joy incomparable. I did have the coffee, but somehow the glances of each person looking at me with an incredible look -‘Why is he alone out here?’ seemed to tell what exactly the Coffee House means to a Bengali.

I still maintain that Irani restaurant and the Coffee House are two different ambiences, yet the leisurely pace is what links them together. One has to see it, to believe it

The moment I was out, I felt as if coming out of a stadium where a Sachin Tendulkar was going berserk. It was back to the silence, the dark alleys along the shops closing at College Street, the Calcutta University being lit up. Now I was lost and kept walking finally to come out from some completely different route.

If you ask me again to go to College Street, I can come there, but I cannot take you there.

For throughout the five hours, I managed to barely speak five sentences.