Beans or Bucks by Ayesha Shahid
Uploaded by eddyslash on Mar 09, 2009
Beans or Bucks
By Ayesha Shahid
Cafes have become a major hit in the country and tea /coffee have become an integral part of the urban culture. The café culture has spawned in the last eight or nine years by the mushroom growth of coffee shops especially in Lahore. The cafes are the ‘in’ thing these days especially among youth: turn the lights down, play loud rap music, pass around a child-friendly tobacco-free hookah (sheesha) market the joint as ‘hip’ and you have the license to sell coffee at a nice little markup.
Apart from the coffee/tea and snacks, what makes these coffee shops the centre of attraction is the distinct ambience. I myself have witnessed my friends who are not coffee connoisseurs, yet they have developed a kind of obsession for their local coffee shops. Most of them agree that it is the ambience that attracts them with the irresistible appeal. – the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, the plush seating, the music, the dramatic lighting and to top it all the ‘cool’ gals and guys- all make these young people coming back to these cafes time and again.
If we look at the evolution of the café culture in Pakistan since partition, we’ll notice that it has undergone a tremendous transformation. Even in pre partition era, literary and artistic activity in Lahore had traditionally revolved around cafes and restaurants. The Mall was marked with cafes and restaurants such as Coffee House, Cheneys Lunch Home and Pak Tea House where writers, intellectuals and artists spent hours, having nonstop cups of tea to trigger the creative process. They would hold endless discussions on subjects that were relevant, creative and close to their hearts.
Among these tea shops, Pak Tea House (that has recently been shut down) in particular became the abode of creative and intellectual processes. It was the favorite hideout of leading writers and politicians who visited it not to have a cup of tea alone but to invoke the ‘heavenly muse’ so that they come up with creative ideas Famous names, such as Mira Ji, Saadat Hasan Manto, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Kamal Rizvi, Munir Niazi, Ustad Amanat Ali, Intizar Hussain and many others have spent innumerable evenings in the tea house, which used to remain open until midnight The celebrated fiction writer, Intizar Hussain, has been a regular visitor to the tea house since 1949. According to him, “No...