A tiny café called home.
There is a question that designers and wannabe philosophers often discuss at house parties, mostly after their fourth or fifth drinks — What is the essence of a chair? Is it the four legs? a seat? armrests? or a backrest? …How much of it can be simplified — stripped, taken away — for the chair to still be called one; so that all that’s left is just its essence, the bare minimum; the crux. So what is it, that truly makes a chair, a chair?
This is what I am pondering now, as I walk down the bearably crowded promenade of the Uzanbazar ghat, alone, on this cold sleepy night of the last day of 2021. My destination, for one last time, is The Tiny Café — nestled in the corner of a busy street crammed with a pantheon of famous cafe chains and boutique restaurants — looking rather inconspicuous, and unfortunately so; its small round backlight signage of a house sparrow now marked with grime and scarred with age, overshadowed and overpowered by the dominating massive neon lights of its affluent neighbours.
Today is not like every day — when I briefly swing by for some caffeine after an evening walk — today, its owner and my dear friend is hosting a party — either as a celebration or a consolation, or maybe both — for today is the last day of the café; the proverbial last supper, not of a year but of a life…for tomorrow as a new year begins, the sun will rise but the shutters won’t…for tomorrow, life, for everyone else, will resume exactly the way it did today, but for the café, and its patrons, this is it. This is the end.
Heartbreak is way worse when there is a timer attached to it, and it ticks with your every step.
Let’s jump straight back to the night when it all began.
Dude, finally some good news, my friend sighs impatiently, I have locked in on a place, right at the end of the Bhuvan road.
It’s a beautiful summer evening of 2019 and I am walking home from work after a long day — tired, gloomy and dejected — a typical day of your everyday millennial, feeling lost and hopeless amidst the imposing buildings of an unknowable metropolis. Midway home is when my friend calls me, giddy with excitement, swirling freely in his office chair some two thousand miles away.
That’s great, man, I say, sounding so exhausted and unexcited to the extent that it felt like I was mocking him.
Are you okay? My friend asks with genuine concern.
Yes, I reply.
I was clearly not. I had just received the reply to a three-page love letter I had written for a girl — two lines, saying that she was in a relationship with someone else and was categorically not interested in me.
Okay, that is all he says. We stay silent for a while. He knew me long enough to know that that I was lying and he knew me well enough to know that I didn’t want to talk about it, not now.
Help me with a name, please, he finally says, probably in an attempt to distract me from whatever was making me so sullen.
I don’t know…how about Café Jajabor?
Oi, he replies, alop seriously ko na.
I click my tongue, getting mildly annoyed at him ( And I still think Café Jajabor would have been an excellent name but that’s beside the point now).
What kind of cuisine are you thinking? I ask.
Not sure.
Dude, cmon! I need to know something about the place before suggesting names na…okay, what does the place look like?
The space I rented?
Yes.
mmm…I don’t know yaar. It’s very tiny.
What about ‘The Tiny Heart Café’? I instantly make my second suggestion.
He ponders on it for a while. How about just tiny cafe… ‘The Tiny Café’?
Interesting…, I reply, still not over his flippant dismissal of my awesome first suggestion, it could work.
“Okay cool, he announces, send me a nice logo and the menu design over the weekend, Okay?
huh!? What?! but…. the call ends.
Now, two years later, as I make my final turn onwards the Bhuvan Road, I can see that familiar sign at the end of the street — the one I designed — a yellow house sparrow with its glittering eyes — calling out to me one last time — like a lighthouse beaming rays of hope for a ship lost in the storm, showing me the way, screaming that I can make it through……The Tiny Cafe- estd.2019.
I think about the day of the christening and it makes me chuckle — The Tiny Heart Café would have been a terrible name for the place. For in it, probably everything was tiny, except its heart.
The wind is cold and it bites my face as I now walk with heavy steps, tricking myself into believing that somehow by walking slowly, I can slow down time itself.
The wind is cold, but not enough to freeze my tears.
Two years can be a very long time, or it can be very short — depending on the day you ask that question. Two years ago, when the café opened its shutters for the first time, the food-junta of the city was sceptical. The entire Bhuvan Road, and all its parallels, were crowded with famous long-serving joints that guaranteed good food. My friend didn’t have any promotion budget and hence had to rely entirely on word of mouth. Slowly, but steadily, the word did spread — The Tiny Cafe served the best house-made mayonnaise in the area, and their minced mutton wraps were the best the city had had in a long time. Apprehensive visitors turned into regulars and the Tiny café started enjoying steady patronage. And then three months later, 2020 happened.
Everything changed. Tiny Café was forced to close and I moved back home. When finally the lockdown was over, and people started taking baby steps back into the world, I too decided that enough was enough, and made my first and probably my only step into a place outside home — I came and visited my friend’s café. For many days, maybe months, there was no one else but just him and I sitting on its once buzzing balcony, sipping lemon tea and sharing cigarettes, wondering when will the shit get over.
( In a way, the shit never did. People became even more sceptical to try new places, although I knew for a fact that even if he had to throw stuff away and suffer loss every day, my friend made sure that his burger patty, even if there was a single order- was freshly made. )
And one fine day amidst such wondering, we heard footsteps rattle the café’s precarious stairs — a school friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen for ten years had found his way into the café. It was a beautiful reunion. And then there was another…everyone of us, once dispersed across the country, had been forced by the pandemic to run back to our homes. And after months, when even home stopped feeling like one, we stepped out searching for a new nest, and somehow fumbled our way up the twisted stairs of The Tiny Café.
The café’s customers were unique in their ability to even spot this dimly lit room amidst the blinding lights of all the other places that besieged it. And those who came to the café were not specifically looking for a good time, or particularly good food — we were all eccentric (or ordinary) in our desire to find some quietude — cigarettes and solace. That was what its patrons craved for. And maybe that was what bonded the lost souls occupying its mismatched chairs and wobbly tables — for under those forgiving eyes of the house sparrow, strangers turned to friends, and friends became lovers; old friendships rekindled, new ones made, and at times, broken. We celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, getting new jobs and new relationships, and quitting bad ones — jobs or otherwise. It was the first spot we would rush to when tired of our work or annoyed at home or just by life; this was the first place we would come to tell stories — both the good and the ugly. We shared drinks on someone’s heartbreak and raised a toast to the ones going out to meet someone new…people laughed, fought, kissed, cried, made out, got high, dated, cheated, got drunk, yelled, wrote poems and finally let go of things to live for another day — the café was our confessional, we knew this was the only place that won’t judge us, the only place we could hope to find some forgiveness.
If only stories were a currency, my friend would have been a millionaire.
If only we could pay him, either in laughter or tears, he would never have needed to make that one choice we all presumed was not even an option, till that night, about ten days ago…
…Ten days ago, we were on our way either to or from the café and this time I was swaying in the wind — having finally met someone interesting on a dating app, wondering if our first date should be in the café, when my friend who was driving, said to me without turning sideways — hey listen, I am going to close the place down from Jan.
The radio was playing Backstreet Boys’ Quit playing games with my heart — one of our childhood favourites. My sweet reverie shattered instantly, and I looked at him in silence and disbelief, recalling in the back of my mind that he was the one who made me listen to The Backstreet boys for the first time, probably in second grade.
My gut feeling was anger and disapproval — Why didn’t he tell me earlier?! How could he give up like that?! This is not right! — I wanted him to rage, to fight, to not give up…
Okay, that’s all I managed to say. I knew him long enough to realise that this was a deliberate decision, and I knew him well enough to know that no words from me would make him change his mind.
The Tiny Café served its customers with heart and soul for two years. Two years…was it a long time? Was it too short? If you ask me now, as I am nearing its entrance — I think two years was just perfect. A little less and we would all have been craving for more. A little more could quite possibly have turned it into a drag. But two years was just long enough to make everlasting memories and yet short enough to allow us it's sweet yearning, hopefully for all our lives.
Standing below its small twisted staircase, I now hear my friends’ voices floating above me — somehow indistinguishable from one another, mixing and blending into each other, becoming the voice of the tiny bird itself — one never-ending beautiful chirp. I close my eyes and listen in, wondering what will I do tomorrow after I finish my evening walks?
Listening still to their soothing chatter, I look up at the unassuming signboard for the final time —
This was the place where I had a cup of lemon tea almost every evening for more than a year.
This was the place where, sitting in its corner-most chair, an obliviously beautiful girl with salted hair and sparkling eyes, wearing a dull black sweater, struck a match, lit my cigarette and burnt down all the walls I had built to protect me from heartbreak.
This very spot, where I am standing now, under the still shadow of its signage was where I told a fellow patron and one of my most trusted friends that I was in a relationship with his ex- the girl he had almost proposed for marriage. And all he did was look right back at me and say — good luck, bro. And then he smiled at me with such searing pain, it instantly turned me into a cripple.
Yes, yes, the café had seen the best and the worst happen — and in Mary Oliver’s words, I too have walked on my knees, for a thousand miles in the desert, repenting — not for I dated a wonderful person, but for in that process, I ended up hurting my friend.
And finally, after not talking to each other for over a year, when that same friend and I ultimately made peace one night after finishing every bottle of booze we could find in my house, and after he held my hand and said that he had missed me and I buried my head in his shoulders and cried like a bitch, and when even after being inebriated, I somehow drove him home — he refused to get out, and instead directed me to this same spot I am standing now — at 2 am — got down from the car, pointed to the café told me that that was his home. I assumed he had completely lost his mind, forced him to get back into the car and dropped him back at his ‘real’ home, but now, standing below the café, I think about it again and wonder if he was right indeed. For the café was our home. Even if not for our bodies, then surely for our hearts.
As an avid reader, I have read many great stories, and sometimes they inspire the writer in me to write some ordinary ones. But as a patron of The Tiny Café, I can proudly claim that I lived my life through one, and a pretty darn amazing story at that.
So, what makes a café, a café? I wonder as I make my way up the stairs, the winter winds rattling my bones now. I am unfashionably late as always, and out in the balcony, I can see the wise old Arnab with his brooding eyes and that mischievous smile, the ever-bubbly and cheerful Valentina sitting beside him, always geared up to flip any dull moment upside down in a second. Standing next to her is Sukanya with her caring smile- who somehow, even though being younger to me, made me feel like she was that concerned elder sister I never had. And next to her — Asish, gesturing me to hurry, already frowning for I am late again, and then there is Rohil with his wicked jokes holding Madhurima’s hands, a match made courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood café, and somewhere in the background I can see Raghav mimicking government officials and making everyone laugh…the memories come rushing in, and I am no longer cold, their warmth melts my soul.
So what was the essence of The Tiny café? Was it the chic and the decor, the food, the wobbly tables and its greasy floors? Or was it it’s people — friends and strangers, their laughter and their sadness… I look at the gang and smile — the answer, like what Bob Dylan had told us decades ago, was truly blowing in the chilly ( and mildly fishy-smelling) winds of the ghat, and tonight when we say our final goodbyes, and when the café will inevitably cease to exist, we would all have picked up a smouldering fragment of its essence, tucked it safely in our hearts, knowing its warmth will keep us company in nights when we may find ourselves alone and missing one another. They are our memories, we made them with our sweat and soul and tears, and no one can take them away from us.
