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.

A room with a view

It is so easy to believe that you are uninspired, that life in itself is no more interesting than each moment that has passed by, until you look out the window and see this.

"... while the sky grows dim and dimmer, Feel no untold and strange distress­ - Only a deeper impulse given
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven, Seeking a life and world to come."

- Evening Solace
Charlotte Bronte