Old timers and coffee shops

It was Tonio Kroger, Thomas Mann's decidedly bourgoise protagonist (believed to be one of his many roman-a-clefs) who stomped off to a coffee house to resolve the war inside his head for the lack of a better way of doing so. It was Jean Paul Sartre, the famous existentialist, who found himself at comfort at the "nuetral territories" that offered home to the exiles of respectable society (aka the artist). Albert Camus' notebooks proclaim his love for the various cafes he'd been to in his journeys around the world, claiming that they offered the perfect vantage points to a culture.

When I first visited Lamakaan with a friend (who happened a regular) after a year of sequestered existence in Hyderabad, I found a world I hadn't expected to find in this bipolar city. The collective wisdom of my favorite authors was put to test as I mingled with the patrons, and indulged in observation.

Am I saying that Lamakaan is the Cafe de Flore of Hyderabad? In ambition, mayhaps, and definitely in spirit.

Words to a writer in doubt

"Do you know what is the thrill of creating? Knowing that your work is going to move someone else who was like you at one period of time. Lost and confused and had nothing to do. Do you remember the time when you picked that book up from the counter and could not stop reading because within those pages you found everything that you wanted to hear coming to yourself? It indeed is exactly like it. Instead you are going to be the one who will be striking that match and someday, sometime, after posterity is attached to your name... someone, somewhere will be walking through his life, holding your book close to his heart to guide his way."