When Indian Coffee House was the country’s living room

It is as if the clock stops when you enter Mohan Singh Place, the fusty 1960s building that houses Indian Coffee House in central Delhi. Climb two flights up to the large, hushed café and, for a moment, you wonder if it is closed. Then you spot them: two men sitting at far ends from each other. One is lost behind the day's newspaper, the other is scribbling on a pad.

The formica tables are bereft of cups, and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee is absent. But a strong whiff of nostalgia hangs in the air. Tellingly, both the men in the room have a shock of silver hair.

It all began in 1936, when the first Indian Coffee House opened its doors in Churchgate, Mumbai. The place was an instant hit and its success triggered a coffeehouse boom, peaking to 72 outlets across the nation. With amazing foresight, the Indian Coffee Board picked locations close to colleges, offices and stations, ensuring robust footfall.

Even so, by the time the 1950s rolled in, the fortunes of the chain began to dip. Branches closed, and workers were laid off. Peeved at their plight, communist leader AK Gopalan came up with the unique idea of a worker-owned cooperative. The Board eventually handed over the control to the Indian Coffee Workers' Co Operative Society.

The first Indian Coffee House under this umbrella opened in Bangalore in 1957, and the workers-as-owners model powered it to success. Today, the chain is dotted across India, and Kerala leads the pack with 51 outlets.

But the numbers do not reflect the inside story, which becomes evident only when you enter. At the central Delhi outlet, only sunlight fills the empty terrace. The glass windows are firmly shut, and the stuffing spills out from most chairs. A grimy board lists Coffee at Rs29 and Special Coffee at Rs32. There are 50 more items, including Plain Slice (Rs7 apiece) and Mutton Biryani (Rs 160), but the kitchen counters are nearly bare.

Your gaze drifts to a metal sign next to the menu: "Sitting idle is wastage of time". It's an irony for a place that lets you buy a rare modern luxury: a few hours of idleness for Rs29. "In fact, we never ask our customers to leave, whether they order coffee or not," says Sunil Kumar Negi, Secretary of the Indian Coffee House in Delhi.

He even defends the appearance of the place, preferring to call it "retro" rather than shabby. "Our coffee houses deliver a flavour of British India. Youngsters should come here; this is a part of our great Indian heritage."

While attracting youngsters to the café in its current state seems a tad ambitious, one man sure has been hooked for life. Meet Gurnam Singh, for whom that metal sign may well have been put up. He is 80, in failing health, and lives nearly an hour away in Kaushambi, Ghaziabad. "But every single day for the past 63 years, I have been coming to this place. I reach at 1.30pm and return at 6pm. It is a second home."

He recalls the golden days of the coffee house, when the waiters wore turbans and cummerbunds, giving the place a regal feel. The likes of MF Husain and Rajinder Singh Bedi sat here; drinking, thinking, talking, writing. "Back then, a cup of coffee cost just 4 anna."

The coffee is still affordable by modern standards, but gone are the days of caffeine-fuelled exchanges, ranging from creative to convivial to controversial.

Veteran journalist and author Sankarshan Thakur remembers accompanying his father, the late Janardan Thakur, to the Indian Coffee House in Patna. "I was upon my teens and the Indian Coffee House off Fraser Road was a captivating trailer to unattainable adult indulgences." He remembers the clatter of toppled cups, the fragrance of coffee and sambar, and waiters picking their way through the commotion, waiting on anna tips.

Prita Maitra, an Indian Coffee House regular in Kolkata, misses the days of the cafe as an adda for debate and discussion. "The location, opposite Presidency College and Hindu School made this the city's hottest hangout. We talked politics, poetry, plays and personal issues. Verdicts were delivered, reputations were made and ruined here. There was no such thing as a stranger—boundaries blurred as newspapers flew open, coffee arrived and conversation flowed." Satyajit Ray wrote here, Amartya Sen supped here, and a young Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee held forth on the need to change the world.

In his book, The Brothers Bihari, Thakur writes, "Indian Coffee House was where I first heard words like Fuehrer and fascism first, words like proletariat and bourgeoisie, like Comintern and Nato and sarvahara and samajvaad, satta, samrajyavaad and taanashahi." So powerful was this "public living room" that the scent of sedition and scandal brewing here during the Emergency wafted into the corridors of power, leading to a temporary shutdown of the Indian Coffee House in Delhi.

Unlike modern coffee companies, no ICH outlet is a clone of the other in decor, menu and pricing. Most of them operate in old, decrepit buildings, immune to time and trends. "That, and the ceiling fans are perhaps all they have in common," says Maitra, with a wry smile.

The institution is braving choppy waters today, drowning under debt and battling the constant threat of closure. The famous vadas have lost their crunch, and the coffee is a diluted shadow of itself. Singer Manna Dey even composed a song ruing the "lost golden evenings".

And yet, the sun has not quite set on the Indian Coffee House. Perhaps because the bearer serving you coffee likely owns a stake in the cafe. And because the old timers still come. But most of all, because the men who run it retain a childlike sense of pride and hope. "We have never done marketing stunts. We run on goodwill and loyalty, " insists Negi. "And then, our Chandigarh branch is air-conditioned, you see."