Opinion This,that and the adda

That coffee shops,teahouses and cafes are central to how societies create a sense of themselves,that they are the location of a peculiarly civic pleasure,is both something that we can viscerally understand and an idea others have studied carefully. The German philosopher Jurgen Habermas famously introduced the idea of the “public sphere” — public spaces uncontrolled by the state that were,he said,crucial to the creation of middle-class power,such as the coffee shops that sprang up across Europe just as early-modern autocracies began to be challenged. London had no coffeehouses in 1650; in the few decades following that,there were thousands. And,simultaneously but not coincidentally,the English invented constitutional monarchy. Meanwhile,in Amsterdam,traders in teahouses off Dam Square decided that exchanging little bits of paper could make everyone richer,and called it “finance”. In Paris,a generation later,“nobles and cooks,wits and sots” would mingle with Voltaire,Rousseau and Condorcet at places like the Café Procope,sparking countless radical thoughts: perhaps state power,too,could be as open and accessible as space in a café.

India remains,today,nearly as laced with invisible social boundaries as Europe was then. And it may sound far-fetched that the slack-jawed crowd glassily watching execrable out-of-home advertising in your neighbourhood Barista is key to erasing those. But such things happen slowly and strangely. Even “solitude in company” can help develop a sense of community,the historian Mark Pendergrast argued in his giant history of coffee,Uncommon Grounds. That’s crucial to avoiding the alienation of modern life; even as we move our lives online,we move online outside,seeking oddly to experience our private world in public.

We can make of our homes a castle; our workplaces can be fortified with guards and biometric IDs. But what of this in-between place,what sociologists and Starbucks both call the “third place” of our lives? It is,after all,the very definition of a soft target: something that,in order to work at all,must be inclusive: in this age when PR pushes “exclusivity” for everything,can you imagine an “exclusive” coffee shop? It must be welcoming; walking in with a clumsy backpack shouldn’t invite stares and discomfort. How,then,to navigate a post-Gokul,post-Leopold,post-Pune world?

Especially as both Café Leopold and the German Bakery were special. Neither was an “ordinary” coffee place; they were significant for the cities which they,in some sense,symbolised. Too often do say of such a place,glibly,that “foreigners like it”,as if that means it is less rooted. What we are perhaps groping towards is the idea that some of these places are somehow cosmopolitan,while remaining representative. The German Bakery’s laid-back,Osho-inflected Koregaon cool was as memorably,essentially Pune as Leopold’s glass-topped tables and Colaba eclecticism was Mumbai,as Flury’s reconstructed Indo-Anglian splendour is Calcutta,as United Coffee House’s 1960s-CP mirror-and-plaster interior is Delhi. What do you remember most on a trip to somewhere new? The museum? The hotel? The plush restaurant,or the hurried street food? No,most often,it’s the hour or so in the city-centre café where,for a moment,you look comfortably around at

your fellow-customers with their unfamiliar newspapers and accents,and for that moment feel both home and away. And hitting that collective memory can hurt those who love a city as much,or more,than striking a landmark you might otherwise think more iconic.

For a hotel,even one much loved,is associated for must of us with special occasions; a railway station with the rushed hassle of an ordinary working day. But a coffee shop? That is where,on that ordinary working day,you wish you were instead. Both everyday and special,a third place again. But that depends on being both welcome and secure.

Which is why how we handle our private-public everyday-special places,now we know they are under threat,is going to be crucial. If we start feeling continually threatened there,we will start feeling under siege as a country. If we try and block them off,become suspicious and “exclusive”,we block off,too,the pathway to civic solidarity they can represent. In many ways this is the most telling microcosm of the larger choices we have to make in living in an age of constant terrorism,between openness and security,between anxiety and calm.

And here,as there,the only real answer is to accept the risk. We can certainly demand the best of our counter-terrorism capabilities. But we must accept both that we,the people sitting in the corner with a masala chai,are both the target and the last line of defence. Even in America,once insulated and then shell-shocked by 9/11,this point has sunk home,made eloquently recently by Obama about an attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas Day — foiled,as similar attempts had been earlier,by quick-responding fellow-passengers.

But,most of all,we can’t let it rule our lives: we mustn’t keep half a distracted eye out all the time for abandoned bags,and we definitely mustn’t snap to suspicious attention the moment someone unusual turns up. Not only because these are attitudes that could ricochet into bad policy-making,or strangle a nascent urban culture; but also because they really get in the way of properly enjoying a good Darjeeling.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com