Sayonara Samovar

Regarding the closing of the iconic 50-year-old eatery Café Samovar on the premises of Jehangir Art Gallery (JAG) the Gallery’s chairperson Adi Jehangir acknowledges, "This Café is an institution. To deny it would be childish. But legally, it had to go.” Samovar finally downed shutters on March 31, 2015, after completing a five-year extension of its licence granted by JAG which had been preceded by protracted litigation. A few days before D-Day Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament Shaina N. C. initiated a last ditch attempt to save Samovar, but to no avail.
The hype over Samovar’s closure took on a near hysterical pitch when celebrities flocked there to taste for one last time its famed boti rolls and pakoras with chai and to relive their association with the Café over the years.

Waiter at Café Samovar Photo: Bombaywalla; (below): Adi Jehangir

The space will now be used for a sculpture gallery and "if dampness and moisture isn’t a problem, we can even display paintings,” Jehangir informed The Times of India (TOI) of March 21, 2015. The sculpture gallery would fulfill a demand made in 2007 by a section of artists who took a protest to the eatery’s door, mentioned Mumbai Mirror (MM) of March 29, 2015. "The JAG was created to offer subsidized rates for artists and not subsidized rates for commercial organizations such as Café Samovar,” Jehangir explained on Simin Patel’s bombaywalla.com blog. He wrote JAG was not asking Samovar to shut down their commercial enterprise but merely to vacate the premises. "They are at liberty to start…again in some other premises, especially after enjoying this premium locale at low monthly charges for half a century.”
The situation was very different 50 years ago when the JAG space was not fully utilized and the then management decided to give it on strictly short term leave and licence basis in the 1960s to Kekoo Gandhy of Chemould Gallery, Café Samovar, Natesan’s Fine Arts, The Terrace Art Gallery, INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) and Prabhakar Dhanraj Talari. Each of the six licencees signed a two-year agreement with JAG, but 11 years later the law changed and these establishments became sub-tenants, MM reported. This was the genesis of the problems. The first suit for their eviction was filed by Jehangir’s father Hirji in the Small Causes Court in 1979. Bitter legal wrangles followed but the JAG was awarded a favorable verdict at each stage. The matter finally reached the Supreme Court, Jehangir mentioned to bombaywalla.com. When The Terrace Art Gallery lost the case "the others saw the writing on the wall. Unfortunately, it led to acrimony… the Samovar litigation ate up millions from our corpus, upsetting the committee. But I, as a neutral member, could do very little,” Jehangir admitted to MM.
Jehangir told TOI, "The eviction was done under the Government Premises Act.” Devieka Bhojwani, daughter of Café Samovar’s owner Usha Khanna, claimed, "Jehangir Gallery is a private trust. They cannot evict us under that particular Act.” Her grouse was that Khanna had asked for 10 years’ extension, but was only granted five. Nor was the Café permitted to move elsewhere in the building. The team was dejected, but Khanna felt they should be proud instead. TOI reported Bhojwani quoting her mother as saying, "How many other places can claim to have made it to 50 years? We are going out in style.”
Museums across the world have cafes on their premises where food can get new audiences like younger people, families and locals who might otherwise leave museums only to tourists, wrote Vikram Doctor in The Economic Times (ET) on March 21, 2015. Café Samovar, according to him, could be seen as a model for a museum restaurant offering good food, mostly Indian, at moderate prices. "Over the years it has become a beloved part of Bombay’s life with people who first came there as students continuing to drop in for both nostalgia and nourishment. It can even command the ultimate accolade of a big Bollywood connection – Jaya Bachchan’s first date with Amitabh Bachchan took place there, a memory she was happy to share to help the place survive,” Doctor wrote.
But with the artists’ demand for exhibitions increasing exponentially, the JAG was unable to cope with just its three viewing areas and the waiting list began to grow. "Today, in 2015, the Gallery is giving out application forms for the year 2021! This is a highly unsatisfactory situation both from the Gallery’s as well as, more importantly the artists’ interests,” Jehangir is quoted as saying on Patel’s blog. Most of the artists exhibiting at the Gallery are up and coming ones not having comfortable finances and hailing from regions all over the country. JAG is "the only venue which they find truly affordable and get in return the most premier institution of its kind in the city… Moreover, (JAG) is a non-profit institution… to create more exhibition space is of utmost priority both for the Gallery and (for) the artists,” he maintained.