Archive for August, 2006
Just about the coffee?
The Indian coffee house at MG Road offers a glimpse of the mixture of cultures that Bangalore is.
The place has its own little world and it starts opening up as I find myself a vacant table. A college couple, oblivious to the crowd around them and maybe also to the fact that their coffees are done with, continue to chat. Another guy, in his late twenties maybe, having his french fries along with the coffee. The table, full of his treasures. A latest cellphone, an Mp3 player to mention a few. He chooses to keep his sunglasses on though. One can safely claim — in the coffee house, he has travelled back in time.
Then of course, there are the people I usually manage to strike up conversations with. The middle aged men who are absorbed in their newspapers and while not at it, quietly observing around them. Quite often, their solitude is short lived for they usually find someone of their kind soon enough. Friendships are renewed, greetings exchanged. Discussions take place, politics, cricket, trigonometry and even aviation. These relationships are formed here, in the coffee house and mostly end up within these walls.
Two Tibetan monks walk in and order coffee. With them they carry an air of peculiarity. They share the table with the sunglasses guy, the gadget-man. There is a contrast of sorts. The monks, in their red robes while the gadget-man, as if almost adamant on showing off his prized but earthly possessions, still decorating the old, odd wooden table. As evident, the common thing between these two cultures, the coffee, sharing the space of whatever is left.
The big glass paned window, the biggest witness of all to the change of times, gives a view of the multicultural sea of people on the outside. Like waves, groups of people pass by.
Look at it one way and it is just a place serving coffee. Look at it another way, in fact, any other way, and there is so much going on that I start to wonder, is this really just about the coffee?
This place is stuck in another time and it wants you to oblige as well. For some, it could even get addictive. Trust me, there are people like that.
Enough for the day, I say to myself and leave.