Alien Café

'Tribute' is such a pretentious word. But I suppose its intentions are honest enough. Here's ours. Thousands of diners and drinkers of average coffee and guzzlers of beer, for all the conversations and experiences that we'll probably never remember.


A self-taught lawyer, a lifetime lost in land dispute,
claims the real estate of his corner table,
land locking his captive audience
as he hitches his pants up, punctuating another grand declaration.

A young Alfred Tennyson balances his teacup,
pinky at right angles to his thumb,
waist-coated and suited to the tea,
he stands and bows when introduced to (sneering) women.

Over by the curry-speckled mirror,
in endless conversation about watching birds,
watching women, he emphasizes his passion
for birds, watching a sari slip through the center of his eye.


An afternoon full of lawyers and government officials
leave the café as unchanged,
as the city that stagnated
in their interminable lunch break.

In the center of the hall, like a raucous shopping mall,
ten thousand theatre persons talk and laugh too loudly,
after a night of having had restricted whiskey
and sexual intercourse with everyone else at the table.

Middle aged and by the door, Salvador dreams
about his first famous (unfinished) painting.
Meanwhile, his life is forever in the moment when the clock melts,
when sunflowers bloom, where a smile is made mysterious.


By the kitchen door, he gazes past the murky surface
of his black coffee. When the clock strikes 8.30 this Friday evening,
Cinderella’s coffee will turn into a rum and c,
his solitude, into a checkered tablecloth full of old friends.

A closet singer tries desperately to capture the verbal context
of the twelve-bar blues stretching its fingers from a hidden radio,
amidst cacophonous talk of Dylan (Who Bob? Oui, Bob!)
and how he changed the lives of artists everywhere. We remain the same.

Nearby, the proprietor with a 24x7 smile
(and 45 second turn around time) backs into a waiter,
momentarily misdirecting his mirth
at an ashtray full of college students.


When I die, this table will be mine in love,
that one in a moment of truth, a third lost in deep thought.
A fourth filled with worry, I must leave this city,
I must leave this country, I must
come back here tomorrow and sit at that table,
where I read, where I stared, where I broke up,
that one marking the most I’ve ever laughed,
where I wished you eternal life, where I observed the aquarium,
swearing never to eat a fish.
Where Beethoven roamed in and out of a conversation
initially about Eliot,
Where the painting of the horse looks most
like a shimmer-clad socialite I know.
That table where, if this were school,
we would have all etched our names in the wood,
waiting for some eternal desultory lunch bell that never rings.


Words: Anoopa Anand
Images: Ryan Lobo
Thanks to Ryan Lobo for planting the idea of this poem in my head, last afternoon.