Poets’ corner is over.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The chaikhana would stay open long after midnight. Its white lighting would continue to dimly illuminate a small portion of the darkened alley outside. While the air inside the tea house would faintly smell of lukewarm milk. And oh, that last table! It would almost always be thickly wreathed in swirly clouds of beedi smoke. The smokers there would be reciting shairyis. The applauding cries of their wah-wah would emanate out into the deserted street, where it would be swallowed by the surrounding silence.

Founded in 1966, Modern Tea House in Old Delhi’s Havel Azam Khan shut down three weeks ago. It is a particular loss for the area’s poets. Arriving every night after dinner from nearby galis, kuchas, katras, chattas, ahatas, they would gather at the Modern to recite their poems. Sometimes they would have to be nudged to leave, so that other poets could take their place, or because it would be time to close the place for the night.

During the day, many of these same verse writers would attend to their jobs and businesses. A few would still return briefly to the chaikhana. If two or three of them might happened to be present at the same time, then a nazm or two would again be shared over the noisy slurp-slurp of chai. (One afternoon though, there were no poets present. Instead, poetry aficionados Taslim and Ayub were occupying a table, loudly intellectualising the songs of the 1982 movie Prem Rog.)

Meanwhile, the chaikhana’s lovely moody interiors had visibly deteriorated over the years. The floor had grown uneven, causing the tables to tremble on touch. The tabletops themselves were stained with rings formed by chai glasses. Rats became bolder, corner cobwebs grew more elaborate.

Whatever, one of the memorable characters at the Modern was its proprietor. The polished glow of his face almost spiritual in its austerity, he would silently sit on his throne-like wooden chair, his arms plopped across his chest. The pages of his account book would be scrawled with the names of chaikhana regulars—each serving of chai indicated by a vertical bar.

Speaking over the phone, the proprietor says he has now grown old, his children settled in the professions of their choice. Everything meets its end, he mutters philosophically. (He doesn’t pointedly asks for it, but it is clear that the courteous gent would prefer to remain unidentified for this dispatch.)

One late night, during a long-ago winter, five poets were huddled around the last table, see photo: Munir Hamdam, the late Rauf Raza, Javed Mushiri, Javed Niyazi, and Iqbal Firdausi. The men were trying their new verses, investigating what was clicking, and what was falling flat. Abruptly suspending the lyrical exchange, the poets patiently answered The Delhi Walla’s queries. Finally, Iqbal Firdausi’s intellectual face glanced up. “If you don’t mind, janaab, please leave us now with ourselves.”