Itvara

It was one beautiful not so cold yet a chilly winter evening in Munich. I went with my sister and her friends to have good old German beer in Hofbräuhaus. Little did I know that it is one of the oldest Bavarian Tavern.

The moment I entered the place, it reminded me of some place I could not determine what or where but I had a feeling which I have already felt, an atmosphere I have seen and a place I already have been. I told my sister that the place reminded me of some place, maybe Kolkata coffee house. She smiled. I know it could not have been. Hofbräuhaus had large ceiling with paintings and ornate chandeliers hanging. There were wooden chairs and tables adjacently filled with enthusiastic locals and tourists.

After relentless search we finally found a table which we shared with another Asian couple. We sat and ordered our beers and as we were talking I couldn’t help but overhear the couple.

The guy said, “You cannot compare Hong Kong and Beijing.”

“Yeah I know, but Beijing too is becoming a cultural capital. It might not be iconic, but it is ….”

The guy chuckled.

“What?”

“Nothing”.

The guy looked at her longingly and in that very moment I remembered where I had the same feeling. Only it was seventeen years ago, at place which I left nine years ago, at a time when it was still considered safe to argue loudly without fear and at an age when everything looked possible.

Few months after I turned eighteen, I decided to have my first alcohol legally in an iconic place in Mumbai. I went to Leopold Cafe with my closest friend. Leopold was nothing like the great hall of Hofbräuhaus, but it had the very feeling of people interconnecting with blurred lines. The café too had seen the best and worst times. It was the first time I was having a pint of beer and there were people around me stacked so close to each other that I could hear three different conversations.

An American couple were looking for a place to sit and I offered them our empty seats.They sat with a sigh of relief as it was August and it was pouring outside. They too ordered beer and we got talking. We spoke for two hours and I generally don’t remember names so easily, but I remember theirs – Ana and Troy. Ana was a professor at university and Troy was a schoolteacher.

“You really think Mumbai is better than New York?” I asked Ana who just mentioned it. I was waiting to see the world and I had never stepped outside the country.

“Well yeah! America changed after 9/11. I love Mumbai, the people, the waiters, the food, Kingfisher! Everything.”

“I don’t believe you”, I said. My friend nodded.

“No, it is true I can feel a shift in my country, I think it is here to stay. A silent war is to come. You will see.”

“What war? I think our country had bigger problems like poverty and unemployment than to delve in ideological war,” my friend shrugged. I nodded this time.

“It is going to be a different world, we can see it coming. Slowly and surely, we will change,” said Troy and he touched Ana’s hand and he had the same look, the same longing look.

“I will be here Ana when everything changes and look at his lovely boy and girl. They will now allow the world to go into the dumps.”

Ana smiled.

I looked around and soaked my first beer drinking experience – the chatter of the crowd, the busy streets ahead, the virgin walls without bullet holes of terrorist attack and a couple whom I would never meet again.

“Tinnididi?” I realised my sister was speaking to me. I looked around. The Asian couple was still beside me.

“You can get citizenship. Why are you not? It has been ten years since you left the country. Think of the benefits”

“But I am still from my country and as much as I know the problems of the country and possibly I might not settle there, it is difficult to let go.”

“I know,” said the girl.

I looked at the guy for a split second and it that second, I acknowledged his pain and nodded and went ahead with the conversation with my sister and her friends.

As I walked back I quietly thought of the change Ana was talking about. Seventeen years ago she saw the shift which I didn’t remember and Troy was wrong, as the world changed my friend and I saw it burn plenty of times.

Whenever there is a shootout in America, I always check the names. That’s the thing about strangers, we remember them again and again on occasions which takes us back to the very memory we met them. I messaged my friend that day.

‘Remember Ana and Toy’

‘Of course,’

‘She was right. About the change. Remember’.

‘Change?’

‘The shift. You don’t Remember?’

‘Yeah I remember’

‘So’

‘Don’t be absurd. People are the same. We have changed.’

‘You think so?’

‘Ana had 5 beers that day and you had 3 & she also told Mumbai is a better city.’

‘LOL’

‘Enjoy Germany. Meet new Ana and Troy. Maybe better drunk conversation.’

I laughed. As I walked in the city of Munich where so much history and past, it gave me glimmer of hope that beneath the cynicism of the world there is Leopold café and Hofbräuhaus with couples figuring out their lives in vast ocean of unknown world. There is change – Good and bad.