The Indian Coffee House restored

On 14th April, after about five long years, the Indian Coffee House on Nehru Street reopened its doors. The crowded tables showed how much it had been missed.

“Iconic” is a much overused term nowadays. But the old Indian Coffee House on Nehru Street, with its grubby green walls, lazy fans, wicker chairs and turbaned waiters, surely had something of that indefinable quality. Actually, what made it special was not the coffee or the food (which was never great, although the French Toast had its moments) nor the décor. It was the laid-back conversations and the chance of meeting someone mildly or wildly eccentric who would titillate your curiosity, even, at best, change your life, while outside Nehru Street stagnated in the heavy, summer heat. Remember Yann Martel’s Booker-winning Life of Pi? It begins in just this coffee house with the author meeting an elderly man who tells him, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.”

Long-term Aurovilian, Ajit Koujalgi, first encountered the Indian Coffee House in 1963. He had come with his father and uncle on a visit to Pondicherry. “I still remember it. There were cane chairs, square tables and we met an old Canadian here.” In June, 1971, Ajit returned for good.

“Auroville was still a desert at that time; there were just a few communities. Many of us stayed in Pondicherry and used to go up and down to Auroville with the Auroville bus. Others, like me, worked in the Auroville architects office, which in those days was located in Pondicherry: we were the ‘Pondy Aurovilians’.” Ajit and his friends had a daily routine. “We used to meet at the Auroville dining hall at the Society office on Beach Road, then go for our mail at the Ashram Post Office. Breakfast was at 7.30 so by 10 o’clock we were hungry. Time for French Toast or idli or dosa at the Coffee House. After lunch, time for another cup of coffee and then, around four or five, I would think, ‘Let’s have a coffee’ (O.K., I was a bit of a coffee-addict).

“This place was the meeting place for all the crazy people who were living in Auroville and coming to town, for the Aurovilians living here, for others connected to the Ashram and for colourful personalities like Swami Gitananda. Arindam would always have breakfast here, there was Cow John, Jack Alexander, Bryan Walton, Charlie, John Mandeen, Roy – it was like Auroville’s meeting place in Pondy. It was a real hub. You had all these people sitting around chatting or sharing pages from newspapers and you thought to yourself, ‘Who shall I sit with today?’ Later, when we moved to Auroville, we still used to come here.”

For Aurovilians, the heyday of the Indian Coffee House was the late 1960s and 1970s. At the end of that decade, Maison d’Auroville opened and Aurovilians spending the day in Pondy preferred to crash out in the more salubrious surroundings of this old Tamil house, although some old hands still preferred to lounge in the wicker chairs of the Indian Coffee House, somehow managing to ignore the bites of the bugs which had taken up residence in the cane work.

Even so, the Indian Coffee House retained a warm place in the hearts of many of those early Aurovilians and Ashram school students. So it was a shock when Ajit learned a few years ago, through his work with the Pondicherry chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), that the management planned to demolish it and replace it with a modern building.

“The management wanted to replace it with a concrete structure which would have lost the whole flavour of the original. The Pondicherry planning authority asked us in INTACH if we had any objection, and we answered with a very definite ‘yes’. INTACH offered an alternative. They said that the main thing was to preserve the main hall, but that the kitchens behind could be modernized and upgraded. The managers were unconvinced. Among other things, they said the Madras Terrace Roof was unsafe and only a new building would do.

“I thought so many old buildings have already gone on the Nehru Street, what does losing one more matter?” said Ajit. “But then I felt, let something remain. Let’s get the Government to set a good example and not demolish this.”

He and Dilip Kapoor decided to speak directly to the Chief Minister some time in 2008. “We called on him early one morning when he was playing tennis at the police grounds. We told him we’d all grown up with the Coffee House, and that it is really an iconic building, a Pondicherry institution. And we told him about how it featured in Life of Pi and that there were plans to film the book, perhaps even in Pondicherry. So then the Chief Minister, who has been a big supporter of heritage, agreed that it shouldn’t be demolished.”

Reluctantly, the Coffee House management agreed. It was decided that a government organization would do the restoration and renovation work. It didn’t run smoothly. They started the foundations for the new kitchen at the back without supporting the old building and, after a heavy rain, a section of the old building fell down.

“The management was not exactly displeased,” laughs Ajit. “They thought they had been proved right and that now we would have to demolish the old building. But we said that this was nothing, that we had restored far worse buildings than this. Finally they asked if INTACH would do the work, and we agreed.”

Recently, the renovated building opened its doors. As promised, the main hall is very much as it used to be, with its green walls and high ceiling, although now the hall feels more spacious because the pillars have been removed. There have been other changes. Gone are the wicker chairs – replaced by plastic ones – and the original tables. Ajit says INTACH has suggested to the management that the present furniture be replaced with wooden chairs and marble-topped tables and the management have agreed to this. Meanwhile, the waiters have shed their turbans and cummerbunds, but the coffee is still served in white ceramic cups (no plastic throwaways here) and the menu looks identical to that of the 1970s – French Toast, Rose Milk and the rest.

Over the years, a deluge of new coffee shops has refined Pondicherrians’ caffeine-buds, and the Indian Coffee House coffee definitely suffers in comparison with more exotic brews down the street (particularly if you don’t catch it fresh: they still make it in industrial quantities). But with coffee at Rs 15 and dosa at Rs 30 the new Indian Coffee House still offers some of the best value meals in Pondy.

The work is not finished. Among other things, there is a plan to open another room upstairs. There will be square tables, better chairs, perhaps a sofa or two, and it will be air-conditioned. “The idea,” says Ajit, “is that it will be like an upgrade, a premium service, offering wi-fi, newspapers and magazines to attract a different clientele. So below you will have the walk-in, walk-out crowd, but above you will be able to take your time. I think this is a good mix. Two months ago we invited the Pondicherry Secretary in charge of the Cooperative Societies, who had also been to the Coffee House in his youth, to come here for a site visit, and now the Government has promised additional funds to finish the first floor. But this won’t happen in a hurry. As we can only work at night, it may take many months to complete.”

In the end, says Ajit, the Coffee House management has proved very supportive. “What we have learned is that instead of always saying ‘no’, you should always count on goodwill and cooperation from the people you are working for. You need to listen to what they want and involve them in coming up with innovative designs which satisfy everybody’s needs. In this case, I think we have succeeded.

“And, of course, we had to. We are in the heritage preservation business and this place, in a way, is one of our bastions. It was also a part of my growing up. We couldn’t just let it go.”