 "In early '70s, Samovar was emerging as the happening place amongst visual artists: Amol Palekar")
For 50 years, Café Samovar in the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai has acted as a cozy meeting spot for artists, art lovers and intellectuals. Commonly described by patrons as an oasis of calm, the establishment will close at the end of March to make way for a sculpture gallery after a 30-year-long legal battle for its survival failed. Actor and director Amol Palekar, whose film Chhoti Si Baat was shot at the café, tells Ranjita Ganesan about his experiences there.
What are your early memories of Café Samovar?
Let me start at the very beginning. It was a lunch meeting with Basu Chatterjee at Samovar that can be said to be the starting point of my career in Hindi films. An offbeat film called Rajnigandha was being planned, and Suresh Jindal, a first-time producer back then, was also present. He did not say a single word during the meeting. After mentioning that he planned to cast a new girl called Vidya Sinha, Basu da started narrating the story. He stopped after reading a few lines and handed me the two-page original short story written by the well-known author, Manu Bhandari. As soon as I conveyed my willingness to take up the male lead's role, the complete screenplay with dialogue was given. Later, I remember meeting quite a few producers and directors at Samovar since I continued to go there.
Portions of Chhoti Si Baat were famously shot at the café. What was that experience like?
Two years after that first meeting, Basu da chose to shoot at Samovar. I must mention that shooting a film on an actual location was a novelty during the 1970s. On the first day of the shoot, we were a bit apprehensive about how other customers as well as the crowd coming to Jehangir Art Gallery would react. But it went off smoothly. This was probably because most of the crew, such as cinematographer K. K. Mahajan, sound recordist Narinder Singh apart from Basu da and I, were Samovar "regulars”. I remember that even when Ashok Kumar, who was a popular star, came for the shooting on the second day, we did not face the problem of uncontrollable crowds or security issues that one witnesses nowadays.
What was the mood like in the café those days?
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In early '70s, Samovar was emerging as the “happening place” amongst the visual artists. Young artists such as Jatin Das, Laxman Shreshtha and I could mingle there with veterans like K. H. Ara, K. K. Hebbar and V. S. Gaitonde frequently. Just across was the majestic statue of Kala Ghoda was yet another hallowed venue, The Wayside Inn, where poets like Arun Kolhatkar, Dom Moraes and Nissim Eziekiel were seen regularly. A few lanes away, the Neo Coffee House was the evening adda for theatre buffs from the experimental theatre movement. I fondly recollect my meetings with Basu Bhattacharya and M.S. Sathyu in the coffee house. I also remember Sai Paranjape reading out her play to me at Samovar. I still cherish the lunch given by legendary writer DiPu Chitre just to tell me how much he had enjoyed Gochee – it was the production that had explored open spaces and brought the theatre out of the four walls of the proscenium arch in 1973.
Did you go to Samovar in recent years?
Even now whenever I visit Jehangir, I have to have fresh lime soda and a few moments in Samovar.
How do you feel about its closing?
Over the years, I have witnessed the vanishing of all those spaces mentioned earlier, the landmarks that were a part of our daily lives. Like a sand clock, withering away is life's essence. Structures end and get demolished, but not memories.