Bar Reviews > Kolkata > Olypub
Reviewed By Shamik Nag

21, Park Street, Kolkata
Ph.22299306
Timings: 11:00 am - 11:00 pm
Menu

January last, on a visit through Calcutta, I made my obligatory pilgrimage to Olypub, and noted with relief that it had remained mostly unchanged and stood resolutely uncompromised by the terrible beauties thrown up by our current soulless age. Still located on Park Street, a stone's throw away from Trinca's, the famous night club of yore, the ambience and the familiar dilapidation of the building remain the same, a distinction not many institutions can boast of in these murderously exhilarating times of consumer preferences with their insistence on tasteless packaging and grotesque upgradations to theme pubs and discotheqes.The place opens at 11:00 am and the narrow side annexe to the older main establishment, Olympia Bar, leads to steep, rickety steps which display no embarrassment at the cheap and frayed coir matting adorning them, before opening out into the low-ceilinged mezzanine floor which constitutes the bar proper and which is further subdivided into two sections, connected by a stair of 4/5 steps.

It is tube-lit even during the day and the brightness is designed to allow all customers, wherever they may be seated, to study or to read books of even the smallest print. The sofas are old but comfortably set low and are in some cases in need of urgent repair as the stuffing threatens to burst at the seams. However, once you are seated and have ordered your favourite drink, time begins to slow down, at times it stands still, freezing the tableau of afternoon drinkers into a still watercolour reminiscent of a Toulouse Lautrec, and since there is no music here to disturb you except for the low murmur of earnest drinking and the hum of an errant airconditioner or a stray rotating fan, you lean back and prepare to soak in the myriad sensations and pleasures of spending your time in Olypub.

Except when the place is full to the gills, you will always find a waiter clairvoyantly standing over you ready with the next peg as you finish draining your glass to the lees. On one occasion, poet Sunil Gangopadhyay has been heard declaiming on how, at Olypub, his glass has never remained empty for more than thirty seconds at a stretch. The waiters are kind people who while measuring out a peg let the cup overflow generously which results in you getting an extra 5 ml of booze with your prescribed 60ml peg. The rates are affordable to the common man, with a bottle of beer still priced at around 50 rupees. Pegs of rum and vodka are available at a ludicrous 34 rupees per peg. The snacks range from ordinary to excellent but one notable exception is the beefsteak which sensible cow-eaters, Hindu or otherwise, swear by. It more than approximates a full scale meal and is a compelling excuse to stop by and down a few pegs while the cook inside roasts the beef to ones' desired specifications.

However, in the final analysis, what strikes one most about Olypub, is the sheer diversity of its clientele and its refreshing lack of pretensions. On a good day one can see come and go through the day, though not necessarily in succession, : couples in love or out of it conducting their matters, in between generous swigs of beer, Marwari traders boasting about their latest sting operations to lesser Bengali counterparts, lone poets and writers engrossed in staring fixedly at some predetermined point on the wallpaper and sporadically downing stiff whiskies or rums before furiously scribbling their latest poem on the nearest available napkin or notebook, earnest groups of local collegians engaged in serious discussion on linguistics, Derrida, Nietzsche, Marx and misogyny, earnest groups of wannabe management graduates, stuck up and snotty nosed, lecturing on economics and ethics ( uneasy bedfellows them), three women and a peripheral man whose only role is to provide the women with an entry into Olypub ( since the bar forbids entry to solitary unescorted women in the interests of the morals of its existing clients), groups of quizzers, winners and losers, after some gruelling exhibition of dilettantism at the Dalhousie Institute nearby, the Chowringhee yuppies self-consciously loosening their ties as they enter, droplets of sweat on foreheads and pink chins, a testimony to their sincerity and devotion to Mammon, the occasional 70's revolutionary, now potbellied and balding, seeking solace in alcohol which comforts, which helps one forget as well as remember, bibliophiles who subsist on rum and water, hunched over their priceless acquisitions from the second-hand book shops of Free School Street, and many, many more --- in short, a sample of humanity, which though unexceptional, provides enough material for contemplation to the lone observant drinker seated at the usual corner, the connoisseur of, if not drink, at least, the drinking experience.