Where the coffee smells different

One of the oldest of the new coffee cafes in Bangalore, The Barista at St Mark’s Cross, at one pm on Tuesday is full of what look like die-hard coffee worshippers-the type you’d encounter at Starbucks in San Francisco or London .

Nestled between a cozy bookstore stocking authors like Kundera, Ishiguro, and Ondatjee and a Lacoste outlet the café, with its cheery ad speak, attractive merchandise and endorsements from Microsoft and ABN Amro couldn’t be more international in its setting and ambience.

Suma, be-jeaned and professional behind the counter (the staff is surname-free) dispenses specialty brews like Illy, Colombian and Jamaican with a large smile to a couple of back packers. In a corner two men undoubtedly IT professionals attend to their email on laptops. A large blue sofa with inviting cushions faces the café’s centre on which a young woman is reading a novel. The ensemble is housed in a structure made of stone, with a pebbled outer verandah skirting it, filled with umbrellas and what looks like ideal seating for lovers wanting privacy and a bit more romance.

Romance is what’s in the air this week in Bangalore, with the advent of the rains. The gulmohars are in bloom, the bougainvilleas are a riot of colours and every where there are lush green wide — leafed plants. It gets decidedly nippy in the evenings and most people wear a jacket or sweater when going out.

At the Café Coffee Day at Prestige Meridian on MG road, there is a Bollywood blockbuster blaring loudly; obviously the restaurant’s profile is a few notches below the Barista’s, with pizzas, hot dogs samosas and burgers in place of muffins, croissants and sandwiches. But again, the presence of young upwardly mobile professionals is striking.

That Bangalore is more of a coffee drinking, pub-crawling two wheeler-driving, and mall-visiting IT -working city than Mumbai is evident every where. The streets are full of young professionals, some of the biggest international IT companies have set up shop here, and the IT — BPO money is evident every where.

At the Central Mall on MG road, Bangalore’s superiority in this department over Mumbai is apparent. The mall rises six floors high, is constructed to international standards, and boasts of a far more mature consumer culture. What is interesting is the plethora of Indian branded goods holding their own among the international fare.

Indeed the juxtaposition of Indian and Western iconography is what makes Bangalore one of the most promising experiments of liberalisation.

The Central Mall with its gigantic banners portraying pouty blondes selling jeans and underwear sits bang next to an ancient Hindu temple replete with a myriad statues of cavorting Gods.

Opposite this happy coupling a kiosk carries a simple message from the Bangalore  Municipality: ‘Bangalore — It’s great to be here.’

Indeed it is.