India - Delhi - Indian Coffee House (59 images)

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The Indian Coffee House chain is a workers co-operative found throughout India. The Delhi branch, sat atop the roof of dingy shopping centre has, for the last fifty years, been at the centre of politics and literature in the city. Today, the Coffee House is a shabby but cultured and civilised meeting place for Delhiwallahs. The Indian Coffee House is buried deep in the collective memory of Delhi. Perhaps never as flamboyant as its cousins in Calcutta on Bankim Chatterjee Street and...
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The Indian Coffee House chain is a workers co-operative found throughout India. The Delhi branch, sat atop the roof of dingy shopping centre has, for the last fifty years, been at the centre of politics and literature in the city. Today, the Coffee House is a shabby but cultured and civilised meeting place for Delhiwallahs. The Indian Coffee House is buried deep in the collective memory of Delhi. Perhaps never as flamboyant as its cousins in Calcutta on Bankim Chatterjee Street and Chittaranjan Avenue where Satyajit Ray et al held court, its presence is like a reincarnating deity. Stuck on a corner of one of the radials of the Colonial city, seen from above it is like a spur, preventing the wheel of Connaught Place fully turning and making itself into a Western High Street. It locks down an older geometry like a portal to the past. It will not let Delhi, always a city of trauma (from the destruction of Old Delhi to the Sikh riots of 1984) forget itself.
**A much larger edit of this work is available on request**
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