COFFEE HOUSE

ONE LINERS
1. The coffeehouse songs plays along with the title card. Subarnakanti
Ghosh is introduced in between the song.

2. Subarnakanti starts telling the story. Voiceover. Visuals of Kolkata in the

70s to establish the backdrop. Shots of the group sitting in a coffeehouse
adda are included too.

3. The scene reverts back to subarnakanti in his house where introduces

the character of Amal.

4. Amal is shown for the first time sitting amongst several drunk bengali
poets in an adda at khalasitola. The poets exchange poems, profanities
and talk about their failed lives. Amal is visibly disturbed by all the despair.

5. Amal walks through boipara and college street and enters coffeehouse.
He engages in a passionate debate with the group about the relationship
between poetry and politics with Bishnu de being the conversation crux.
Maidul gives amal the address of a publisher he knows.

6. Amal is sitting in the publisher’s office. The publisher ridicules his poems
and explains that he needs to write commercially viable stuff. Amal is
disgusted and silently walks out.

7. Amal comes back home at night to find his baba awake. A conversation
about how amal should start looking for a substantial job results in a heated
confrontation.
8. Amal is shown sleeping. Dream sequence where one of Amal’s poems
play inside his head in a sort of trance voiceover. The poem transports us
to a flasback in Presidency college where amal is seen suggesting slogans
to a student activist writing hoardings. The sequence ends with two more
lines from the same poem.

9. Early morning. Amal is seen brushing his teeth when his dad brings in a
newspaper and tells him about a job interview which he should attend.
Amal reluctantly agrees. Shots of him getting ready are shown in a fast
montage.

10. Amal is standing in the interview line, where he is disturbed by the

mechanical nature of all the unemployed men who are ready to be
exploited. He almost bursts out, almost akin to Pratidwandi’s Siddhartha.

11. The earlier poem returns. Another dream sequence. Where amal is
transported to a sea shore with the interview line slowly turning into a
parade of robots and other similar imagery. ( reference point: pink floyd’s
video of another brick in the wall)

12. Subarnokanti’s house. Now he ends the amal story and introduces
Dsouza’s character.

13.Grand hotel. Dsouza is seen getting ready for the show. Tuning his
guitar. conversing with bartender/ fellow musicians etc character
establishing scene.

14. The show starts. 25- 30 seconds of a song. Showcasing dsouza’s

guitar playing skills.

15. Dsouza comes back home. Drinks. Puts on the record player. His room
with elvis and beatles posters is shown. His loneliness is established.
16. Dsouza pulls a chair and joins in an ongoing coffeehouse adda on how
rock n roll is inferior to classical music. Dsouza hardly participates, smiling
on and being the silent observer. The group decides to go to grand for the
cabaret later that night.

17. Dsouza is seen guiding the group through lanes of sudder

street/esplanade. Snippets of conversation.
18. The coffeehouse group in grand except Rama ray who’s absence is
established by the rest of the group’s conversation. Sujata’s dada boudi is
also present. she introduces the rest of the group to dada boudi.

19. Dsouza is silently waiting in the greenroom. Manager scolding cabaret

dancer Miss rupali. Dsouza looks offended by the manager insulting Miss
rupali.

20. Scene returns to the group chatting in Grand when suddenly the
cabaret starts. The cabaret song with intercuts of all group members,
Dsouza and Miss rupali on stage.

21. Everyone is seen leaving for home post the show. Snippets of
conversation. Amal offering to drop Sujata who declines because she has a
car etc Everyone leaves except Dsouza.

22. Dsouza walking back alone with his guitar. A car stops, Miss rupali
offers him a lift. The car drives away.

23. Little snippets of conversation as the car stops in front of Dsouza’s

home.

24. Dsouza enters home. drinks, Takes out picture of wife and children,
breaks down.

25. Shots of him creating a song with his guitar in a shabby room.

26. The song fades in. Dream sequence in a graveyard where dsouza
walks past his wife and children’s grave, sees props scattered in every
grave around. Then he sees an empty grave with his guitar firmly placed on
the tombstone.

27. Subarnakanti introduces the character of Sujata.

28. A political rally in Presidency college. Sujata standing at the side with a
couple of rich looking friends, engaging in a conversation about how politics
is useless.
29. Sujata and Amal has a conversation in college. Subtle hints of Amal’s
romantic interest towards her.

30. Sujata enters home. Parents in form her about a party at calcutta club
later in the evening. A light confrontation occurs when parents object to her
hanging around with the coffeehouse group.

31. Sujata sitting with the group and coffeehouse. A general adda follows
with several parallel overlapping conversations establishing close
friendships.

32. Sujata is seen at a party in calcutta club with her dada boudi. She
meets a handsome non bengali guy. They decide to meet later.

33. Racecourse. Sujata sitting with the guy. Conversation suggests growing
romantic intimacy.

34. Sujata seen shopping for books on college street with Rama ray. She
talks about the guy to Rama ray and about how she plans to marry him.
Rama ray’s ongoing unrequited love story is hinted at.
35. Sujata enters home which is full of people from another north kolkata
rich bengali family who has come to discuss her engagement with their
son. Sujata reluctantly tries her best to put up a smile.

36. Subarnakanti introduces the character of Nikhilesh.

37. Nikhilesh is seen sitting bored during a lecture at art college. He sneaks
out and leaves class.

38. He is seen travelling to and in the lanes of Sonargachi. He meets a

particular prostitute. It’s established that this prostitute is his regular model.

39. Nikhilesh is seen at home, in a family dinner. The rest of the men keep
talking about their clothing business. Nikhilesh looks disinterested.
40. Nikhilesh is seen painting signboards in a local painting shop. It’s
established that he does these odd jobs because his family is not willing to
fund his art college education.

41. Nikhilesh is seen walking through the lanes of Kumortuli with a friend,
explaining his passion for art and how he finds long lectures of art theory
pointless.

42. Nikhilesh is seen sitting at their family clothing shop as if trying to get a
hang of accounts. He loses interest eventually.

43. Nikhilesh is back at Sonargachi, he is seen drawing the prostitute and

engaging in a light hearted chat with her.

44. Nikhilesh is seen trying to complete and add finishing touches to the
same portrait in his home studio. Dsouza is sitting by his side strumming
his guitar, they exchange a few words.

45. Nikhilesh enters coffeehouse with Dsouza by his side. they enter
midway in an ongoing conversation about the commercialization of art.
Nikhilesh gets into a heated argument about the fact that Jamini Roy is not
a sellout.

46. Subarnakanti Ghosh now introduces the character of Maidul.

47. Maidul is seen in a dingy, shabby mess with a group of other

bangladeshi immigrants. Their hardships in an almost alien city is
established.

48. Maidul is seen conversing with a colleague at the newspaper office he

works for. He expresses his desire to work on a story on the ongoing naxal
movement.

49. Maidul is seen entering a naxal den, talking to undercover naxal

leaders, building up his story etc. His story/article acts as a voiceover.
50. Coffeehouse. Maidul is telling the rest of the group about he might get
into trouble because of the volatile nature of the story.

51. Maidul is seen returning to his mess. He is stopped midway by a police

van, he is threatened by the police to reveal the sources of his story and he
is threatened not to publish it.

52. Maidul is seen reading out his draft article to the rest of the coffeehouse
group. He has also included how the police confronted him in the article
itself.

53. Maidul is called to the editor’s office where the editor throws away his
article and blasts him off, and threatens to sack him. Maidul nonchalantly
states that to him ethics hold more importance than anything else.

54. Subarnakanti introduces the character of Rama Ray

55. Rama ray is seen rehearsing for her performance at the next office
social. Possibly a monologue on the importance of women’s
empowerment.

56. Rama ray talks to her co actors about how she wants to enter tollywood
and proper mainstream bangla theatre, and that she believes she is more
than capable as an actress.

57. Rama ray enters her dilapidated poverty stricken home. She speaks
rudely to her widowed mother who accuses her of not taking care of the
family.

58. Rama ray is seen at her office talking to her boss about her need for a
salary incriment. The boss ridicules her. Possible hints of sexual
exploitation and harrasment.

59. Rama ray is seen at college street getting off from a bus. Right before
she enters coffeehouse, her chappals get torn.
60. She engages in a casual adda with the rest of the group when Sujata
enters with the invitation card for her marriage. Someone cracks a rude
joke about Rama ray’s hopeless lovelife. She looks very very disturbed,
almost on the verge of a breakdown.

61. She is seen walking through her office corridor crying.

62. Subarnakanti returns now summing up the entire group and how their
bonding survived the test of time and weather.

63. A song fades in. Montage of all the characters, their collective adda and
their drastically different individual existence.
64. Sujata’s marriage sequence. Conversations between the rest of the
group members. A visibly happy Sujata. A visibly distressed Rama ray. A
subtly sad Amal.

65. Rama ray shows first signs of mental illness through a sudden
hysterical attack. She is taken away from the site of marriage by the rest of
the group.

66. Amal is sitting in his home contemplating, looking out of a window in his
room, where he is conversing with another Amal in an almost surreal
sequence.

67. Nikhilesh sitting on the stairs of his art college with his friend who was
shown earlier. Nikhilesh tells him about his dream of going to france, and
how he has applied to this famous art college in Paris.

68. A scene at Grand hotel, where post the show, Miss rupali is seen
behaving rudely to Dsouza and then she leaves with another man. Dsouza
is still silent but looks very sad.

69. A party at calcutta club. Sujata is surprised to see Maidul, who explains
that how his newspaper now assigns him to only cover boring social
events. Sujata explains about the conservative nature of her husbands
family and why she doesn’t come to coffeehouse anymore.
70. Maidul is seen saying what Sujata told him to the rest of the group at
coffeehouse. they all display varying degrees of being affected by the
same.

71.Amal is seen particularly affected by Sujata’s absence, he smokes more

than usual throughout the earlier scene and now he is suddenly seen
coughing profusely, as his friends get worried.

72. Rama ray is seen at her home, slowly showing greater signs of mental
illness, as she looks pale and frozen in an entire sequence of shots when
her mother is seen helping her through normal day to day activities.

73. Nikhilesh is seen at Sonargachi. His usual prostitute is suddenly taken

by a prospective client. Nikhilesh looks unperturbed and indifferent.

74. Heavy rain. The group except Dsouza and Sujata turn has turned up at
coffeehouse. Rama ray has turned up inspite of her sudden feats of
hysteria and she insists they all go and visit the very ill Dsouza.

75. The group pays a surprise visit to the very drunk and very depressed
Dsouza. A heartwarming reunion where they reminisce old times.

76. A site of a violent police crackdown on Naxals. Maidul is seen covering

the incident with alarming indifference.

77. Amal is seen having a heated debate with his father who tells him that
not only can he not get a job, he couldn't even get a single of his poems
published properly!

78. A very very agitated amal who is also coughing at regular intervals now
enters his own room and frantically sets fire to all his manuscripts full of
poetry.

79. Seeing the smoke from his room, people from the neighbourhood
gathers at Amal’s house who reacts to them quite harshly.
80. Rama ray’s mother is seen pleading to her to go to office but she
continuously refuses communicating only through disjointed and often
unintelligible phrases.

81. Rama ray’s mother is seen calling Sujata asking for monetary and
emotional support.

82. Sujata now visibly decked up in expensive jewellery and clothes comes
to Rama Ray’s house trying to help her out. However her display of riches
distress rama ray even further and Sujata tells Rama ray’s mother that a
psychologist should be immediately consulted.

83. Nikhilesh is seen sitting very bored inside his family garments shop. He
is seen doodling eiffel tower on a cash memo.

84. Dsouza is fired from his job at Grand because of him being sloshed on
every other show and playing sloppily.

85. A diseased Rama ray is seen being taken to an asylum. A montage

showing her gradual descent into insanity.

86. Maidul is seen explaining to the rest of the group at coffeehouse that
how friendship matters most to him, and how he will not leave everyone
and leave for dhaka all though he has an excellent newspaper offer there.

87. De souza is seen committing suicide. He writes a letter to the rest of the
group which serves as the voiceover for the sequence.

88. The voiceover continues in a graveyard where the rest of the group
except Rama Ray has assembled for Dsouza’s funeral. Except that this
time, the reunion is far from heartwarming.

89. Nikhilesh receives a letter confirming his admission to the art college in
Paris.
90. Sujata is seen speaking to her husband about how she often misses
the coffeehouse group. Whether she is really happy in her married life or
just pretending to be, is left to the imagination of the audience.

91. Nikhilesh leaves his job at the advertising firm. He makes a trunk call to
inform Maidul of his decision and that he might not be able to meet them
before leaving, as he wants to distance himself in the remaining days in the
city.

92. Amal is seen once again at Khalasitola drinking heavily. He suddenly

becomes very ill and starts puking. The rest of the people carry him out.

93. Maidul and Amal and the seventh invisible character are seen sitting in
the strikingly empty coffeehouse table. Amal reveals to Maidul that he has
been diagnosed with cancer.

94. Subarnakanti sums up the fate of Amal and Nikhilesh.

95. Subarnakanti’s voiceover trails as Maidul is seen telling seventh

invisible character that he is leaving for Dhaka, finally, since there’s no one
or nothing left for him in this city.

96. The character who was interviewing subarnakanti so far, is finally

revealed as he asks about the seventh character. Subarnakanti reveals the
seventh character to be Gouriprasanna Ghosh to the interviewer, a director
making a documentary on the song.

97. Both of them enter coffeehouse together. Manna Dey’s tribute program
is taking place. The coffeehouse song is sung from the “saat ta peyala line”
as in an almost surreal ending, the seven characters are seen reuniting at
their favourite table conversing away.

98. The ending credits appear with the rest of the song.