As dusk falls, the neon signs of the jewellery shops in Bowbazar come alive. But the lights have no effect on the face of Mahadeo Yadav, who is perched on the footrest of his rickshaw that is parked by the road, staring ahead blankly. He is sitting on his haunches, hugging his knees to keep himself warm in the biting cold, so withered and lifeless as if he had been dead for days without anyone noticing.
Who would, after all, notice a rickshaw-puller parked by the road to check whether he is breathing or not. Yet when the same rickshaw-puller goes about his work, playing a human horse, he becomes the most-noticed man in Calcutta. He makes a great subject for photographs, writers and filmmakers. He is the icon of poor Calcutta. Many a renowned actor has pulled the rickshaw in films set in the city.
Calcutta is said to have about 6,000 rickshaw-pullers running on its roads, confined mostly to the old neighbourhoods. They have some things in common, apart from their poverty. Nearly all of them hail from Bihar. All of them wear the lungi to work, perhaps for better mobility. And almost all of them are elderly: I am yet to see a young man hand-pulling a rickshaw. It can be a heart-rending sight to watch a man almost as old as your father panting his way through the roads and streets of old Calcutta, clad in just a vest and a lungi and often barefooted.
Mahadeo Yadav, the rickshaw-puller, is in fact my father’s age. He is seventy, and has been pulling a rickshaw — it’s been the same rickshaw — in and around Bowbazar for fifty years. For him fifty years, half a century, is not a landmark but merely the time that has lapsed ever since he came to Calcutta from Gaya in Bihar to earn a living.
He lives all alone in Calcutta, in a lodge inside a nearby lane, paying a monthly rent of fifty rupees. He is out with his rickshaw between three in the afternoon and ten in the night, sometimes earning sixty or seventy rupees a day and sometimes nothing. Every month, without fail, he sends Rs. 300 to his wife back home, and once every year, visits her. The wife lives with the extended family in the village. They have a daughter, who is married and lives in another village.
‘I will pull rickshaw as long as I can,’ he tells me, ‘this is my only source of livelihood.’
‘But you are already seventy. Are you able to manage?’
‘These days I tire easily. Sometimes my feet hurt, sometimes my back hurts. But do I have a choice?’
He answers all my questions without looking at me even once, but continuing to stare ahead blankly, his arms folded around his knees. I take a good look at his rickshaw. If you discount the rexine upholstery, it could well belong to a museum, so antiquated it looks.
The two — the rickshaw and the rickshaw-puller — make quite a pair.
***
Coffee House is situated on the first floor of a historic building called Albert Hall. If not for the signboard of Coffee House, the building would go unnoticed, eclipsed by the shops selling textbooks. Heritage structures are a dime a dozen in Calcutta: no one cares for them unless they are attached to a tradition.
Stepping into Albert Hall, I nearly trip because of a cavity in the floor. Seeing me stumble, two girls who are on their way out stifle their laughter. I climb up the stairs. On the landing, the aged walls have political posters pasted on them. They have been put up by students’ unions belonging to various ideologies.
Nearly all the posters are in Bengali, a language I can read only haltingly even though it is my mother tongue. As I stand there deciphering their contents, I can hear the buzz emanating from Coffee House. Multiple adda sessions must be in progress.
I am a little nervous entering Coffee House because I have no idea what to expect in a place so romanticised as this. I imagine myself being surrounded by groups of bearded men and gorgeous women, cigarettes between their fingers, and being sneered at for knowing nothing of Nietzsche or Foucault. For that matter, I’ve read very little of Tagore — and now I see a larger-than-life portrait of a young Tagore, wearing a black beard, looming over the tables in the high-ceilinged hall.
Coffee House, however, turns out to be more of a lovers’ hangout.
Young men and women, just into college, like to linger here because they pay next to nothing for killing time in the hallowed premises — the most expensive dish on the menu, baked fish, comes for fifty-five rupees. A cup of coffee costs eight.
Older people drop by too every now and then, not just for the cheap food but also the experience. Coffee House, after all, is also a museum of memories. The curators are the waiters who still wear Raj-era white uniforms, which include a cummerbund and turban.
One such waiter comes over with a glass of water. I try to initiate a conversation with him but he is not interested. All I get to know is that he is from Bihar and has been working here since — quite predictably — a long time ago. He is impatient to take my order. I ask for Mughlai Paratha.
Seated at the table next to mine is a young couple. The woman is gazing lovingly into the man’s eyes. Books are placed on their table: not Nietzsche or Foucault, but textbooks.
At another adjacent table is another couple. If their body language is anything to go by, the man is trying to persuade the woman into something. Eavesdropping is not a possibility here because of the noise; Coffee House is noisier than a college canteen.
I look around. I want to witness, first-hand, an adda of the intellectual kind in progress. But even at tables that have large groups, I only detect banter and not heated debates. People are talking, laughing, smoking and eating.
Maybe this is how adda sessions look from a distance, who knows. I have not seen Sunil Gangopadhyay or Mrinal Sen warming the chairs in Coffee House to be able to tell the difference.
***
Park Street’s energy comes from food. Every eatery here is legendary, and finding a table in the most popular ones is always a challenge. A manager in suit and tie, standing at the door, will take down your name and phone number and ask you to wait.
The wait can last even up to an hour, especially during dinner time, but you endure it because each time the door opens to let in or let out a group of diners, the aroma of food that wafts out makes you hungrier and even more determined to stay put. Moreover, there is no guarantee that you will have it easier at another restaurant — the wait could be even longer there.
People who make the mistake of wandering away during the waiting period often return to find their name already called out by the suited manager, who now gives preference to those who had chosen to hang in there. When he finally invites you in after the long wait, you are so overcome by gratitude that you already like the food.
Bengalis are discerning eaters. The dishes come under scrutiny as soon as they are laid on the table and a serious discussion ensues: Isn’t the mutton excellent? Don’t you think they should have added some more mustard to the fish? Isn’t the chicken curry a little bland unlike what we ate the last time?
Every Bengali dining out is a food critic. Their opinion may not make it to the papers, but it certainly reaches the ears of people next table.
One evening at Mocambo, I find myself flanked by two divergent sets of diners. The table to my left has a bunch of boisterous journalists who celebrate the arrival of their sizzlers by taking pictures of the food. The table to my right is occupied by a family consisting of an elderly gent and three women of varying ages — the oldest must be around sixty and the youngest about twenty.
The old man is unhappy from the start — he is irritated by the noise in the restaurant. The noise is nothing but the collective drone generated by excited conversations taking place at the various tables.
‘Once I went to a restaurant in London,’ the old man tells the women, ‘people there were eating in silence, as if they were mute.’ He puts a finger to his lips to demonstrate the silence of the London diner.
The women pay scant attention to him and are scanning the menu. All three settle for continental fare, while the old man orders tandoori rotis and paneer butter masala .
The rotis , when they come, harden in no time and the old man has a tough time tearing them—and also chewing them. Already the noise is killing him. The women, meanwhile, gleefully attack their food with forks and knives.
At another table nearby, a young woman is protesting as her companion transfers some sliced onions and capsicum onto her plate along with seekh kebabs . She squeals, ‘ Ei, amake ghaas-phoos dibi na ’ — Don’t give me ghaas-phoos .
Ghaas-phoos , or weeds, is an insulting term non-vegetarians accord to vegetables. This woman wants to concentrate on the meat alone. Looking at her devotion to the kebabs , I summon the waiter and order some for myself.
But it is not very often that I get into these restaurants when I come to Park Street. I usually begin with the Oxford Bookstore, where I spend about an hour. Then I walk down the length of the street and cross over to the opposite side and get into Music World. There I am invariably looking for a Bengali song I would have heard on one of the FM channels and taken a fancy to.
Occasionally, if I am hungry, I step into Flurys and order masala omelette along with toast and Assam tea, and through its glass panels watch Indian sahibs and memsahibs walk past at a leisurely pace, often with a determined beggar in tow.
The beggars are always either emaciated women jingling coins in a steel tumbler or small girls telling you that they haven’t eaten all day. They can chase you for long distances, unlike the fat lungi -clad pimp who is forever seated on his throne near Oxford Bookstore, waiting for custom to fall on his lap.
He no longer calls out to me when I walk past him. His trained eyes can perhaps tell that I am no longer new in Calcutta.
( Longing, Belonging , published by Tranquebar Press, will be available in bookstores from the third week of September.)
