Friends meet for coffee at the landmark Indian Coffee House on College Street in Kolkata, India.
Also known as the College Street Coffee House, the cafe is located across from the Presidency College. At the same location, since the early 1940′s, it was and still is a favorite meeting place for students, poets, artists, writers and other intellectual types. Now owned by the Indian Coffee Workers Co-operative, it looks much the same as it did in the late days of the Raj. One goes there for the ambiance and not the coffee, which, either hot or cold, is much like dishwater.
A half mile of booksellers, large and small, spill out on both sides of College Street, just down from the Coffee House. Known as Boi Para (Colony of Books), it is the largest used book market in the world and the biggest in all of India. One can find almost any title ever printed in India, as well as titles, in and out of print, from much of Europe and beyond.