Coffee House: The rent-man comes knocking

A rent bill from the state government has become a bitter pill for the cash-strapped Indian Coffee House to swallow.

In a letter to the Indian Coffee Workers’ Cooperative Society Ltd, the state information and cultural affairs department has asked the famous Bankim Chatterjee Street address to cough up arrears — adding up to over Rs 11 lakh — in equal monthly instalments.

The rent for Coffee House is Rs 8,000 per month. In April 1996, the state government acquired the 9,239-sq-ft premises from Abhiram Mullick of Bhabi Property Pvt Ltd and allowed the cooperative society to keep running it. The rent arrears meter has been ticking since then.

The society — which has been running Coffee House since 1958, when the Coffee Board downed shutters — wrote to the government last week requesting a slash in the outsdanding amount and a rebate on the rent.

“We have requested the government to reduce the arrears. We can at best pay about Rs 1 lakh,” said Dipankar Dasgupta, the accountant for the society. “We have also appealed to the government to reduce the monthly rent to Rs 4,000 in future,” he added.

With an average footfall of 1,000, the daily sales at Coffee House is about Rs 20,000. “Most of what we earn goes into paying the salary of 70 workers, the electricity bills and also on maintenance,” said Dasgupta.

The information and cultural affairs department is willing to hear them out. “We have received the letter. We will see if the rent can be reduced,” said Anup Motilal, the ex-officio director of culture of the state government.

The government has also invited the society to renew its contract of managing Indian Coffee House for the next 10 years.

The Coffee Board had opened the outlet off College Street in the early 1940s to promote coffee drinking among Calcuttans. It soon became the intellectual hub of the city.

“When the board decided to close the outlet, the retrenched workers, with the help of the then chief minister BC Roy and the city’s intellectuals, formed the Indian Coffee Workers’ Cooperative Society,” recalled Dasgupta.