Did Calcutta hijack Madras’ coffee-house culture in the early 20th century? This remains an unresolved issue.
During the British period there were only two cities in India known for their romantic coffee-house culture: Madras and Calcutta. Even cities such as Poona, Bangalore, Bombay or Delhi never figured in the list.
English classicist historian Richard Alston, who extensively worked on the subject of the British raj in India, mentioned in his dispatches (he was also a military historian) that Madras’ coffee-houses were more famous than those of Calcutta and were comparable to the typical coffee-houses of London, Paris, Milan, Cairo and Vienna.
Madras, predominantly a port city then, had many coffee-houses in the late-19th century (1870 onwards). But post-early 20th century, most of them shifted to Calcutta — which is rather intriguing because Calcutta started losing its glory after 1911 when Delhi became India’s capital. Yet, coffee-houses prospered there after the First World War and not in other cities.
Madras’ coffee-houses were owned by a few Frenchmen (especially soldiers) from Pondichery, Anglo-Indians, Dutch and Jewish settlers. At that time, Iranians began to promote their Iranian tea and kahwa, which became famous in a short time. This came as something of a setback to the ingrained coffee culture of Madras, which was unaccustomed to challenges from any other beverage.
Moreover, the ever-influential Marwaris of Calcutta began to buy in bulk the Ooty and Nilgiri brands of the best sub-continental coffee along with the Brazilian one to thwart the tea culture of Bengal, especially of Calcutta. Most of the fine tea estates like Makaibari, Castletone and Ambrosia were in Darjeeling and English planters owned them. Marwari businessmen got hold of the tea estates in the foothills and in the plains of Assam, whose produce was considered inferior to the aromatic Darjeeling tea. Marwaris first set up coffee-houses in Calcutta, which were patronised by Bengalis, Anglo-Indians and even the English. Seeing business potential in a city of writers and poets, the coffee-house owners of Madras began to shift to Calcutta, and by 1925 Calcutta became the hub.
But Calcutta’s once-eulogised coffee-house culture is gone today. Gone are the days of creative people in Calcutta discussing topics over cups of hot coffee and cigarettes, and of lovers bashfully looking into each other’s eyes reciting Tagore, Baudelaire and Byron or listening to mushy numbers by Frank Sinatra, Cliff Richards and Ray Charles.
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