Charlie’s Chatter

[Charlie's Note: I did not write this. Well, not entirely anyway.]

‘British Raj’ time like waiters with white uniforms and red kamarpattas and white pagdi. The place has no pretensions of the usual ‘coffee places’. Unlike your usual CCD this one is totally Indian, with it’s blue walls and ceiling fans and wooden tables and benches to sit on.

The people in here I see are over forty, except perhaps the two hippie-ish firangs I see sitting on the booth parallel to me.

There’s a Parsi couple in the corner with their amused non-Parsi friends sitting opposite them. “Oh, no! M.G. Road is in that direction!”. Clearly, the non-Parsis are non-Bangaloreans too. They look amused, strangely, which is stupid. M.G. Road was in fact in ‘that’ direction.

The firang couple; the guy’s blond with matted shoulder length hair, wearing knee length shorts and a kurta-ish shirt, golden print on white, which opens in the front, and a white tee(or a baniyan) inside. The girl, sitting opposite him, looks like another one of those hippies you see in Goa, bright multi-coloured sundress with spaghetti straps and numerous other bands showing on her shoulders.

This place, I’ve heard serves one of the best filter coffees, so I order one and then continue looking around.

Fork and knife uncle.

Open doorway arch that has a wooden board ‘No Admission’ above it.

Lady sitting in the corner, suave black shirt and jeans and a prim haircut, on observation I realized also was wearing a bindi. Ironic.

Open wires held together with yellow insulation tape and customary large switchboard with approximately fifteen switches.

Huge mirror, 5ftx2ft on the wall. Serves no apparent purpose.

In utterly metropolitan Bangalore, this Indian, maybe even slightly British-Indian place is amusing.

Good Coffee.

Cheap food.