New turn for cafés

Why don't Indians play in the world cup soccer?

Because the moment they get a corner, they build a restaurant.

This might be a chauvinistic joke in East Africa, but in Hyderabad, corners have always meant Irani chai. They are called Irani café cafes, but serve only chai. And there are over 10,000 of them. And they are changing. Not just the interiors with cane chairs and marble tops making way for chrome, wood and glass. Not just the addition of Chinese finger foods to the Osmania and Chand biscuits. But the very corners where they have existed are now being threatened as the city's roads get widened.

The importance of corners can be seen where it all started: the Karvan (the first Irani restaurants were started to serve the brew to the Irani cavalrymen who were part of the Golconda kings' frontline soldiers).

It is a crossroad connecting Purana Pul to Golconda, on one corner is Sunah Hotel, in another there is Hotel Mehfil, in another corner is Faizan Café and in the other, Bharat Hotel.

At pre-dawn darkness at 5 a.m., as the young sleepy boys scratch themselves, the Sunah is nearly full of people having their first sips of the hot brew. Cross the Purana Pul and you know that parts of the old city have already seen the effects of road widening. In one corner of Murgi Chowk near the Charminar is Mohammed Ishmael's tea shop Mohammedia, started by his father some 48 years ago. Step out of the place and you can be run over by any of the zooming vehicles.

"What used to be a 150-sft place is now reduced to a 50-sft place which has translated into a loss of about 20 chairs and a decline in revenue," rues Ishmael.

To be über cool you and your partner have to order a ek chai (don't call it single) and pour half into the saucer and keep the remaining half in your cup and: shluuuurp. At Chaderghat, sitting inside Niagara, which is one of the few Irani joints that are not in corners, the man serving chai says wickedly:

"It is good if they are demolished, some of the competition will be out."

But right now the big action is happening this side of Musi.

Omega, where countless debates were brewed over the chai is now a hulk of its former self, Paradise has retreated and reinvented itself as a hep place for biryani rather than an adda for chai.

What used to be Friends Café in Somajiguda is covered in blue plastic sheets.

But prepared and living for worst case scenario is the Garden.

"The talk about bulldozers coming has been on for past seven years. Three years back we even purchased furniture and placed it in the premises that we own across the road," says the man counting the money and dispensing tokens to the waiters.

"Have you got a notice?"

"No, but the fear of bulldozers is always there," says F. Khan, summing up the welling fear among the corner landmark owners across the city as the roads get widened by the day.

But, why are all the Irani restaurants in corners? Because, according to the lore, no Hyderabadi was willing to take up the space for Vastu consideration and the band of Iranians grabbed them.

So, is this the revenge of the corner vastu?

SERISH NANISETTI

Thursday, Sep 07, 2006, Metroplus