Much ADO Over Coffee: Indian Coffee House Then and Now

Based on oral history, fiction, fascinating intellectual gossip, and records of the Coffee Board of India, this study is a multi-sited ethnography of the Indian Coffee House, possibly the world’s first coffee house chain. It offers a critical analysis of adda (informal meetings) of the educated middle class in Allahabad, Calcutta and Delhi. The coffee house became the new socio-intellectual nerve centre, replacing the neigbourhood tea shops, and creating an entirely different social space. This book will have line drawings and cartoons as well as archival photographs.

Bhaswati Bhattacharya is a historian affiliated with the Centre for Modern Indian Studies in Göttingen. Her publications include Bhattacharya et al The diary and photographs of Jan Kornelis De Cock during his trip to India 1909-10, Leiden: Roelof Barkhuis, 2014.