When a waiter inadvertantly spilled tomato sauce over the bald head of a celebrity writer

–Govind Prasad Bahuguna–

Coffee house culture is absent now but it was there in all capital cities of India in sixties and seventies.
When I first went to join a small job at Gandhi National Memorial Fund Trust, New Delhi ,I lived alone in the guest house accommodation alloted to me by the Trust with canteen facility . So I was free without any engagement in the evening. I used to roam about alone in Daryaganj market in the evening.
One day I went to Cannaught Place and visited a coffee house known as Mohan Singh Place which was famous for its haunt of new born writers and poets.
I saw there the New Delhi gossip class sitting there for hours togather over a cup of tea or coffee .
I used to go there on every Saturday evening to meet my friends particularly Manglesh Dabral, Dr Prabhati Nautiyal, Netra Singh Rawat( then working in Dinman Weekly)andTrinetra Joshi-
all of them were in lime light for their literary creativities .One day I had a chance to visit another coffee house also and saw Dr Ram Manohar Lohia sitting with his friends over a cup of coffee. I saw him from close quarters for the first time, although I had seen him delivering a lecture at Allahabad University one day in 1965.
But this was nothing new for me because in Civil lines Allahabad too literary celebrities like Dr VDN Sahi, the famed writer and poet our professor at Allahabad University, also used to visit daily a coffee house in Civil Lines.

Now let me come to my intention to share one interesting incident which occurred in Mohan singh place at Cannaught Place, New Delhi one evening. A famous Hindi writer (name not to be disclosed on request by friends) was sitting there for long hours chatting with friends, when a waiter collecting empty cups and bottle of sauce from serving table accidentally spilled the sauce bottle remains over his bald head… You can imagine what should have happened there that day but the writer didn’t ask his companions to lodge a complaint against the waiter and condoned him for human error otherwise the waiter was sure to lose his job.

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