{"id":1564,"date":"2020-06-29T14:43:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T14:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/?p=1564"},"modified":"2020-06-29T14:43:35","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T14:43:35","slug":"tryst-with-coffee-the-history-of-cafe-culture-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/2020\/06\/29\/tryst-with-coffee-the-history-of-cafe-culture-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Tryst With Coffee: The History of Caf\u00e9 Culture in India"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

By Vinaya K<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The age-old connection India has with chai<\/em> is well known. Local teashops have for centuries\nserved as newsrooms and chatting corners for rural Indians. The depiction of tea shops as\nhappening places in many Indian regional language films till the first few years of the twenty-\nfirst century underlines the importance they had in India\u2019s cultural and social space. \nUnderneath this overwhelming \u2018chai\u2019 culture, coffee has always been a vague presence; the only\nreminders of coffee being the \u2018Indian Coffee House\u2019 across the country. It was during the early\n1940s when a small group of dismissed Indian Coffee Board members created the \u2018Indian Coffee\nHouse\u2019 coffee and the conversations around a coffee table became more acquainted in Indian\nurban space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Established under the leadership of A.K. Gopalan, who with the help of the then Prime Minister\nJawaharlal Nehru, mobilized workers and encouraged them to establish Indian Coffee Workers\u2019\nCooperative Societies which gradually gave birth to Indian Coffee Houses across the nation. The\nfirst one opened in Bengaluru in 1957 before spreading to the rest of the country, including\nDelhi, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Punjab. The Coffee House became the nation\u2019s\ncentre for both coffee and conversation and is still serving its loyal patrons in over 400\nlocations. What made it popular was the affordable and authentic food served there as well as the\nspace it provided for intellectual and creative conversations. There is a whole generation of\nIndians who grew up in the \u2018Coffee House culture\u2019. However, it seems that the Indian Coffee\nHouse is now only a part of a great legacy and nostalgic memory; because gone are the days of\ncreative and controversial, caffeine-fuelled conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1996, when Cafe Coffee Day got the ball rolling with over 1500 locations all over the globe\nbringing the convenience of a barista and providing a proper place for the people to meet up, it\nwas a beginning of a great new epoch in the Indian coffee history. Young people were the first to\njump on the caf\u00e9 bandwagon. For the youth, a coffee house was not only a place to buy lattes and\ncappuccinos, but also a much-needed urban space lacking till then. A caf\u00e9 offers a neutral\nmeeting place that allows friends and colleagues to get together in a space that is neither a home\nnor a workplace. The older generation also caught up fast with this new trend-setting up informal\nwork meetings in cafes. Not surprisingly, tourists are also big fans of caf\u00e9s that offer them their\ncaffeine fix in a cosy environment complete with Wi-Fi and air conditioning. These days you can \nfind coffee shops located not only in train stations, hospitals, airports, shopping mall etc. but\neven in small towns and rural areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes the western-style caf\u00e9 chains do so well in a country traditionally associated with\ntea, and where coffee can be bought at a much cheaper price is the growing sentiments and\nsensibilities we share with the international culture and American TV shows. Places like\n\u2018Starbucks\u2019 are particularly popular with younger generations, students, businessmen and the\nrising middle classes. It is partly a response to the international experiences of a population that has begun to experience these types of places abroad, and want to do so at home. What these\ntypes of caf\u00e9s essentially provide is a safe and comfortable space to escape the chaos of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How is this new urban caf\u00e9 culture different from the traditional coffee shops we had, especially\nin the Southern states? While the traditional coffee shops offered coffee only, with the new style\nof caf\u00e9, space and ambience is as important a product as the coffee itself, and a big reason for the success of these businesses. Caf\u00e9s are much more expensive than kaapi<\/em> bars, but for the price,\nyou also get an unmatchable space where you can meet with friends, colleagues or relatives.\nNonetheless, what matters is whether you prefer to sip your filterkaapi<\/em> from a local coffee bar in\nTamil Nadu, or post Instagram stories with your friends in a cosy cafe in Mumbai, it is likely that\ncoffee culture is here to stay. Indeed, in India, \u2018a lot can happen over coffee\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Indian Coffee House to Caf\u00e9 Coffee Day and now to the several thousand
\ncaf\u00e9s across the country, India has been witness to a long history with Coffee. How has the Caf\u00e9
\nCulture in India grown? Read more to find out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1533,1541,478,486,477,488,482,589,480,1540,484,1536,491,487,1537,492,1535,476,1538,1543,483,485,1542,362,479,481,1534,1544,1545,489,490,1539],"class_list":["post-1564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-a-k-gopalan","tag-barista","tag-cafe","tag-cafe-coffee-day","tag-cafe-culture","tag-caffeine","tag-cappuccino","tag-chai","tag-coffee","tag-coffee-house-culture","tag-coffee-shop","tag-coffee-table","tag-comfortable","tag-cosy","tag-creative-conversations","tag-filter-coffee","tag-indian-coffee-board","tag-indian-coffee-house","tag-indian-coffee-workers","tag-kaapi-bars","tag-latte","tag-lifestyle","tag-nostalgia","tag-society","tag-starbucks","tag-tea","tag-teashops","tag-traditional-coffee-shops","tag-urban-cafe-culture","tag-urban-india","tag-urban-life","tag-western-style-cafe","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2294,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions\/2294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}