The Indian Coffee House is a sight to behold and is completely unexpected in an interesting way; I love it. The coffee shop is built within a spiral chimney. You enter the building at the bottom and have to walk in a spiral up the chimney to find a seat. Each of the waiters wear an odd little hat / fan thing that doesn’t quite look out of place. The atmosphere is somewhat young and hip — not something I expected because up until now I haven’t encountered any young, hip people.
The story behind the coffee shop is an Indian success story. The original Indian Coffee House was founded in Bangalore and thrived during the years following World War 2. About a decade after the war, the shop closed it’s doors and was quickly reopened as a co-operative owned by the original unemployed shop workers. As the Indian Coffee House grew in popularity it spread throughout the rest of the country. The Indian Coffee House in Thiruvananthapuram is one shop in the popular chain.
Tonight rather than wander around blindly and look for the unknown I chose to chat with people and watch handball and cricket with a group of boys. I let the waiters at the Indian Coffee house ask me zillions of questions and in return I asked a zillion questions back about Thiruvananthapuram, cricket and any other topic I could muster up. After my coffee adventure I went back to the hotel and stood outside in the darkness with the staff and waited for the power to come back on.