Life is not so easy. As a kid, you want to grow as fast as you can, be someone. Moreover, when you do grow up, you want time to stop, halt and go back to a time when everything was simple. As adults, you are forced to make few decisions, which in the end are choices that you have made, and finally that defines you as a person.

Life is supposed to be a journey but for most, it is not. It is a series of numerous wars that you fight, some with known enemies and some with unknown. But, this is the life that you were born to face. Life itself is a war, one big war, that you want to close your eyes and give up to.

As a kid, you grow up to some dreams, ambitions. By the time, when you achieve them, you have many more lined up. But most of the time, it is not about the dreams, that you dream of. It is about living up to other's expectations, other's dreams. And at the end of the day, you are all but alone, and unfulfilled.

As a person, staying thousand miles away from her family, it has been somewhat easy for me. For my family, they never had any expectations from me apart from being happy and prosperous. It was the dreams that I had seen for myself. A never-ending series of wants and desires.

Imagine yourself, you are in a room. You have everything around you that a person needs (material). But are you really happy? You want to be alone as crowded rooms suffocate you. You want to be independent as you cannot see yourself living and adjusting to someone else's needs and wants. You are but what You want for YOURSELF.

Being alone and independent is nice but with it comes space, too much of space. Imagine, you alone in the space. You and only yourself. Will you survive?


Probably, you will. It is a choice you had made. The choice of working till late night, staying alone, not being dependent on someone financially and not expecting emotional support because you believe that makes you strong.

But does it really work?

Are you happy being alone?
When you need to scream, can you do it alone?

Life is but a war that nobody wants to be part of it, but one is born for it. One has to fight it, face it, kill the monster and embrace the truth that nothing in this world or life can satisfy us. We always need something. So being alone, doesn't help because no one can win a battle alone. Even Hercules needed his fellow mercenaries when he had to fight the Thracian wars, then who are we?

One cannot escape from a given situation. Wake up, embrace the life you have been given. Make two cups of coffee, share it with someone. Visualise your day ahead, with your friends, colleagues, family. Make someone happy, lead a team, overcome challenges, stop running away from reality, share your burden with someone, because when you do, you are lessening a bit of it, and slowly, most of it is gone. Try before it is too late.

I am fond of hanging out in cafes and restaurants but none of the places I visit in Kolkata satisfy my soul. There are places like Flury's, KFC and MCDonalsds'. But they are there. They have been. I always felt something is missing in them. Either they are too open and loud or too conservative to make people cozy, at home types. In Kolkata there is none like Candies', one of my favourites! Nothing beats it. Not even Oly Pub (which recently has got little conservative, paisa do, peeyo, bhaago). I used to paint this idea, a dream of opening a cafe cum resto. Homely, cozy, where you can just hang over a coffee or something all by yourself, read on and no one to bother you. I won't say I found one but few days back I found one, which made me so cheerful, at home, laid back that I felt like sitting back and relating to my dreams of opening one during my college days.






I used to pass by this place, I have many times. I always ignored it. I used to think it's just a coffee parlour for young couples to hang out. However when this friend of mine took me there, I was blown off at first shot. Bon Appetit, a small cafe made out of the front extended portion of a bunglow type house in Salt Lake's AD Block. You get food at reasonable rate and you can lay back and kill your time. As you enter you find plastic chairs and tables kept. Nothing extraordinary decoration has been done. You have both self-service and ask the waiter options. There are books and magazines lying for you to pick up and read. A music system, the one's we don't use it anymore has been put up and the radio has been kept on. Normal ceiling fans and table fans put up across the corners with a hut-type ceiling made out of bamboo structures. There is an aquarium, transparent one, whose other side is the garage of the bunglow. 






Everything that has been used here has been taken up from the house. From the plates to water bottles. Just like home. The food is good. Some food combinations are great. You get Baked Beans on Toast which very few cafes offer. There are these speacial paranthas for the day. Like for Tuesday, you only get Aloo Aanchar Parantha. And Cheese Parantha is always available. The chocolate avalanche is huge! Three can't finish off! All in all, it's like your living room combined with your kitchen. The place is not big. At a time maximum thirty five people can accomodate.






The main point of this place the founder's idea of turning the empty front place of the house into a cafe for everyone. It's not that only young folks visit. I saw people around 50 years hanging out there!






The cafe has been decorated to match the sophisticated, posh nature of the area surrounding it, to the nature of the Salt Lake city folks. With City Centre mall so near, still Bon Appetit is having full house even at 3 o'clock in the noon. I felt if my house would had been across the street, I would had come frequently to have coffee or a snack and lay back and read over or scribe down something. 






Well the negatives, it's a small place and even for 35 people there is only 3 folks attending the services. And about the decorations, well you can put couches at the corner and increase the library.






My teen dream of opening a cafe was brought back again by this small cafe. I guess am gonna take my friends coming over from different cities at least once, not just for mere sight-seeing or enjoy the food but at least to make them wonder over how creativity works!

"Nothing can ever be more scary than keeping thoughts, wishes within yourself."