Don't be surprised if you miss Albert Hall on 15, Bankim Chatterjee Street, Kolkata, tucked between bustling book stalls that promise the best bargain for the rarest titles. Ask anyone around, "Dada (brother), Coffee House?" and they'll personally escort you into the fading halls like it's their own living room. established in the 1930s, the College Street Coffee House inside Albert Hall - built as an ode to Queen Victoria's husband - is more than just a cafe; it's an emotion. It's on these chequered floors that history has unfolded over countless cups of subsidised coffee and helpings of kabiraji, including the rise of the radical Left. Politics, heartbreaks, social sciences, birth of literary magazines, plans of changing the world - nothing was off the table for its patrons, including luminaries such as the late Soumitra Chatterjee, Usha Ganguly, Jogen Chowdhury and Amartya Sen.

Jael Silliman. Pic/ Abhishek Kumar Mehan