Jan 07, 2011 10:33 PM
6945 Views
In 70's and 80's Park street in "Calcutta" was different.Average middle class Bengali could hardly afford the expensive Bars and Restaurants. But "Olympia" now commonly known as "Olypub" was the place where you got real "value for your (heard earned) money".
The bearers would pour drinks from the bottle in front of you, that too quite generously.No body would ask you to leave for occupying a table for long neither would disturb you if you did not want to.
The customers were mixtures of clerks of merchant offices, small traders, students, writers and poets (few already quite famous and known), bookies from race course, even few rich (particularly) Gujarati traders.
There was no hierarchy, no caste, no religion.
All were equally boisterous, knowledgeable, ready to sacrifice anything to prove a point, worried how to reach their home late at night and finally how to pacify their wives for again committing the same sin.
I had friends there who were much much older to me.They used to keep a seat reserved for me.They never asked me how much I earned, but they knew my test in cinema, my favourite singers, my investments in shares and lastly my favourite brand of whiskey.
We never bothered about "decor".We were happy with the companies we got and of course the "generous pegs". I wish I were young enough to visit "Olympia" again.
