Cafe
A place that never shuts
Moving towards the end of Malad in the city of Mumbai where certainly a glass building signifies a high standard place to be in, forms a distinct character of infrastructure around it that comes up. It not only generates work opportunities, but also generates a large influx of people from the suburbs and its peripheries with ease of connectivity to this place from main access points such as the Link Road or the Western Express Highway.
Where it was a marsh piece of land just adjacent to the mangroves beyond which construction was not possible. Large IT companies, call centers, commercial complexes with smaller industrial units, malls and supermarkets and most recently residential high-rise buildings have started coming up that offers a support infrastructure for respite spaces to emerge.
With many such glass buildings enveloped that creates a space inside it with air conditioners and almost all possible amenities within it for its workers, the ground gets underused with only creating large green landscaped patches or allowing space for parking vehicles and nothing more than that.
A café that finds itself as an insert in such a vivid typology of working spaces under a ramp that connects to the parking level above it talks about the diverse form of activities and behavior that takes place by its many users who occupy it at different times of a day.
The main access point to this space is from the main entry point, which is the same for the people working in the building above it. There is an open sitting space outside and also a closed air-conditioned space inside with a small kitchen counter and a common toilet.
Compared to a street side eatery or a tea stall which may serve a delicacy similar to what this space provides, the only reason why many users from far away as well as near by areas occupy this space because it allows them to sit and do diverse activities for a longer period of time. They claim their space by ordering some food or refreshment that the café serves.
On a regular day when the café is occupied, several users talk about the reason why they use this space for a respite.
Table 01: Two women entrepreneurs who have occupied the table are sitting on the chairs with a coffee cup, laptop and a notebook opened and kept. One of the two women is engrossed in her mobile phone that is looking for a dress that she wants to buy from a nearby store located in a mall. To shorten the time spent on selecting the kind of clothes she wants, instead she looks for it in a phone application, which may help her not walk too much and directly try those apparels when she reaches there. In between of all this, they meet a friend who comes here regularly to work.
Table 02: He is a writer. He works from morning to afternoon and then goes back home for lunch or rest then again comes back to this place to work. As soon as he occupies his table, he plugs his laptop charger to a point behind him, sets up his table and by then the waiter keeps the coffee on his table. He takes out a cigarette from his bag and starts to write down the things that he has to do by the end of this day. Talking to his familiars and friends who join this space, he remembers that he forgot to buy cigarettes for today.
He calls and his friend who is going to come in sometime and asks him to get the necessary things for him. While doing the act of sitting and whiling away time, he also greets people who are friends or are friends of friends, thus collaboration works at its best and the idea of interdisciplinary engagement comes into existence.
He calls and his friend who is going to come in sometime and asks him to get the necessary things for him. While doing the act of sitting and whiling away time, he also greets people who are friends or are friends of friends, thus collaboration works at its best and the idea of interdisciplinary engagement comes into existence.
Table 03: The friend of the writer is a gamer. He also works at a call center and does night shift. The node that gets created near the office where he works merely remains active all round the day. There are food stalls on the edge of the sidewalk between the parked motorcycles and the compound wall where a group of people from the office building often come here for a break. Pan-shops, tea-stalls and food eateries have small shops on the edge of the road. The gamer has his friends seated in the café and he rushes to the pan-shop when a person from the food eatery reminds him of the payment he has to do for the food he had last night at 3:00am. The group of gamers that he is a part of sit here regularly for around 6 to 8 hours from afternoon till late evenings. Phones become the means of engaging to friends in this group. Men from age group of 20 to 35, find this space for them where no one complains of the decibel level they create because of the familiarity with people around. Charging point, Wi-Fi, tables, chairs, fans help them to undergo such behavior.
Table 04: During evenings a man in his 40’s has a fixed table at the end where the ceiling tapers because of the ramp above it. He occupies this space for 3 to 4 hours regularly when he plugs his earphones to his phone and plays snooker or a card game. A cup of coffee and a quick snack accompanies him while he has several cigarettes during this course of time. The people around are familiar to the men yet he chooses to not talk to anyone apart from sharing a smile. He finds this space cozy enough because of the functional ceiling lamp that lits this space to forget the pressures of life and work.
Table 05: A boy enters with two other boys and two girls. They often come together but sometimes they also come alone. In a group they play board games or gossip about many things. Food and refreshment that gets served here and also the space around offers them a sense of security. Also this place is far away from there homes which allows them to be themselves. When they come alone, they often get their work to conceptualize and sometimes even read a book for a longer time.
Table 06: It seems that these two people are meeting for the first time. A men and a women, both in their mid 30’s, undisturbed by the people around, they find a table where only talking and knowing each other is at stake. The claimed table and many tables around it act as a screen for them to disappear and not become exclusive in the crowd. Couples often find this space useful because there is much less familiarity from the people around who may not interfere in the kind of activities one undergoes
Spaces like cafes across the city are structured in a way that they attract people from merely all age groups and are in many cases welcoming to all the gender. How work seems to be operating in the city where mobility largely governs the business, spaces like these help to meet as well as respite. The way these spaces are structured allow for the idea of non-programmed activities to happen. Also the idea of work outside the boundary of a strict disciplined office takes place, for many such forms of work like writing, running an entrepreneurial business, etc. where meeting friends and engaging in some of the above discussed activities, governs the intention to go to such space and make it users own space that supports the extended body like apparatus, equipment’s and devices in all its ways.
