On coffee shops

It wouldn’t be uncommon to find someone writing about coffee shops. A trite subject even, for those who find it unexciting or the resort of people who have the luxury of spending hours at a corner by a book in a cafe. 

I’ll address the latter part first. Many coffee shops have sprung up that caters to the class of people who want to be seen as indulging in a high-society activity. To this category belongs many youngsters, especially of the Gen-Z and downwards (alpha?). Posting a snap of your cup of coffee amid the ambient background with the cafe tagged online has become a status symbol. Alas, the young are in their blooming years, when paradoxically they feel insecure and act naive in an attempt to carve an identity. Let’s be a little forgiving and set aside these new-age epicureans in the guise of stoics. In some years they may look back at these antics in embarrassment.  

Yet in this part of the world at least, frequenting coffee shops is indeed associated with the rich and upper middle classes. One can find quite some writers, journalists, businessmen brushing through the doors of several cafes in the city throughout the day. Conversations, long and brief, take over several cups of coffee. Some can be seen storming away at their keyboards, perhaps finishing up a story for the news cycle. 

Coffee shops are for me a place where one can be left alone to do one’s work yet feel that they’re part of a larger community. Desks with laptops and books atop with someone nosily poring over their screen. The extra-hot coffee might be sitting undisturbed for several minutes before you as you slog away, but the world keeps moving. There’s motion around you, the clicks of keyboards, the ahs of exasperation,  the whirring of the coffee machine and the small murmur talks between lovebirds over, as always, a mocha. As you look up from time to time, it’s a chance to observe people of different hues. I’m bemused at the variety of people that populate this world — the anxious one who looks at the menu several times before placing an order, the safe-goer who prefers the latte — an additional syrup would be a travesty for them — and the easy going ones always willing to experiment with something new. 

This illustration by Ruby Wright inspired me to write about coffee shops. Like me, she frequents them and can’t stop sketching them.

The world of work may have moved indoors with WFH mechanisms, more food-delivery apps that will bring you the best food to your doorstep from anywhere in the city, and perhaps even more affordable coffee machines on the market. Yet the classic coffee shop has been a mainstay of the quiet social life, in the past as well as in the present. The existentialist philosophers, Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus and the like, discussed ideas over several cups of coffee in quaint French cafés. Even now you’ll find people discussing everything from politics to business to anything personal in the same spaces. Times may have changed, but the essence of conversations have remained the same. I can’t however help but wonder if the substance of the words exchanged have dimmed over the years. Chatter or otherwise, the good old coffee, and my favourite Cortado is here to stay.