The ambience of a coffee house often feels like a gentle pause from the rush of everyday life — a blend of warmth, aroma, and quiet energy. Soft conversations mingle with the comforting clink of cups and the rhythmic hum of an espresso machine, creating a soundtrack that is both soothing and alive. It is a space where ideas unravel, friendships grow, and time feels just a little slower. Manna Dey’s song Coffee house-er sei adda ta nostalgically reflects on the bygone days spent there with friends. The song immortalised the spirit of the Coffee House.
A new film titled Coffee Houser Sei Adda Ta takes its inspiration from Manna Dey’s song. Starring Anusha Viswanathan, Soumya Mukherjee and Roopa Ganguly, this suspense-filled drama unfolds across generations, memories, and hidden truths. When 74-year-old Sujata mysteriously goes missing from her ancestral tea estate bungalow in North Bengal, her granddaughter Aheri, a young music researcher from a prestigious US music university, returns to India, only to find herself pulled into a web of secrets. Inside the house, Aheri discovers an old diary and a cryptic song titled Coffee House, bearing Sujata’s name alongside others. As she digs deeper, she uncovers the story of six close-knit friends from the 1980s who used to gather daily at the iconic Coffee House.
“Since childhood, I — like countless others — have grown up listening to Manna Dey’s timeless classic song. The nostalgia of that song, its celebration of friendship, its reflections on relationships — these things have always moved us deeply. We often talk about how the song tells us what eventually happened to those friends, but it never shows us how their journey began. And that made us wonder — what if we told the story of their early days? That thought became the starting point. But to help today’s generation connect with that same spirit of adda, nostalgia, and the magic of Coffee House, we chose young Gen-Z actors like Anusha and Soumya to bring the story to life,” said directors Jenny and Dipayan.
“Aheri was a dream character for me to play. She is brave and soft, feisty and vulnerable. Witty and messy. She’s very much a youth from now but she has been raised with values that are timeless. Her love for her grandmother is something I personally related to a lot and it was the anchor of the story. It was a creatively transformative experience for me, shooting for this film. I learned how to push my limits as an actor like I had never before. I’ve never been directed in this manner, especially with regard to romantic sequences. Soumya is a fantastic co-actor to have. We ended up having some incredible improv moments while shooting scenes. Working with Roopa aunty, who plays Aheri’s grandmother, was such a pleasure. She is absolutely incredible, and it felt so real performing scenes with her. Our directors, Jenny and Dipayan, have come up with a wonderful concept dripping in both nostalgia and forward motion, and I hope we all can do justice to it,” said Anusha.
“The Coffee House song is an emotion for us Bangalis. It was lovely being directed by Jenny ma’am and Dipayan sir, who brought out a different side to me as an actor in the film. The best thing about them is that they focus more on the minds of the characters and not just the external paraphernalia. They almost always keep the camera moving, which gives the actors a lot of space to perform. I absolutely loved their organic style of direction and I am deeply grateful to Jenny ma’am and Dipayan sir for trusting me with Rishav, who is a sweet, lovable boy. He is the typical ‘romantic hero’ that we are used to seeing on the big screen and basically a huge pillar of support for Aheri when her grandmother goes missing. He is also extremely old school and believes in the magic of fairytale romance,” said Soumya.