Tales from Samovar

There was a time, there is a time and there will be a time. The time won’t change but everything around it will, and if it wouldn’t it’ll be mighty tasteless.

That’s what happened to an impulsive K, when she strolled out of MB and walked straight into the Jehangir Art Gallery ,turned right and entered Samovar. K, was heavy with expectation, burdened with memories of art love & debates; and filled to the brim with passion of a young adult, who once wanted to spin the parliament around. And Samovar, like Kayani, Sarovar, Metro cafe, Café New York, Café Cadel, Ideal Café, etc… had been a witness to this naïve madness. At times, K thought that it was the place that made her who she was. The environs demanded her to be idealistic and revolutionary, or maybe it was her slowly growing mental age. (Especially the café near Horniman circle, whose name she can not recollect, whose owner hoped that she would write about his café one day, when she got really famous. Well, she will.)

Samovar was a little different. The owner did not care; the waiters always took the wrong orders, and everyone there was pseudo elite – talking Kafka, Monet and Braque. The overheard conversations, the quick notes in the scrap book, the Google(ing) it all in the college library – was then a shameless way to acquire more knowledge. Samovar was also a place where K saw Mushy the first time – years before they actually met. (On random note: K saw Pudgy fingers the first time at Gokul’s, before she met him 6 years later, in his office!)

Sitting there, K mulled over everything - the unchanged, crammed, familiar furniture, the shaky wooden tables, host of oddballs sipping on the lassi, art novices and barons, the mesmerized newbie’s face and somewhere, sitting solitary in a corner, was a woman waiting for her déjà vu moment.

The moment did not come. There was a suspension at the very heart of the experience. As K walked out of the gallery, she knew that she had out-grown the Essel World of ivory tower talks. The books are now back into the shelf on Art and Literary Criticism. Noone she knew referred to the ‘Beauty Myth’ before picking up a copy of Vogue, or a pair of pumps from Aldo.