In southern Chhattisgarh, which mostly hits headlines for Naxalite violence, a restaurant serving fresh, locally-sourced food, good music and a convivial atmosphere is making a difference in people’s lives.
Away from the dense forests where Maoist guerrillas and security forces often engage in a deadly cat-and-mouse turf battle, a young dreadlocked rapper types in commands on his laptop to compose the music for lines he had just jotted down on a notepad.
The 24-year-old member of the band Zone D18, who calls himself DBENZ, sips a reddish roselle sherbet at Café Aadim in the Dantewada district.
He is one of many of the millennials and Gen Zers who spend their afternoons in the café.
This is the southern Bastar region in Chhattisgarh state that often evokes images of violence because of its five decades of conflict.
But Café Aadim, nestled in a leafy nook of the cities close to the Dankini river, belies the area’s reputation.
It opened in a single-storey colonial style house with stone walls and a high red-tiled roof sitting on steel joists and dormer windows bringing in the extra light in 2019.
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The place gives one a sense of continuity. The clock doesn’t keep time here. It is more about spending long, languid hours on cushioned bamboo and wood furniture sampling from a busy menu of seasonal food sourced from nearby organic farms.
Open from 8am to 10pm all days of the week, a meal here emphasises crowd-pleasing food as well as music, visuals and smells that are aimed at stimulating simultaneously all five senses, maximizing happiness.
On hot summer afternoons, patrons put the world to rights over a drink of iced roselle juice. Roselle was once considered an aphrodisiac and, whether it’s true or not, these succulent flowers of the hibiscus family are truly tasty.
In the monsoons the sound of a herky-jerky rain beats down the roof, creating a melody that complements the fluffy urad and moong dal vadas, the forgotten kosra millet kheer, the red rice dosa, kulthi dal, java phool rice and much more.
In lazy winters, people choose a table in the sun on the open terrace lined with potted plants that give off an earthy feel.
Akash Badave, a PM’s Rural Development Fellow from Maharashtra, opened it with the singular purpose of providing a platform to promote indigenous crops and food. He got help from the local administration in his endeavour.
“Over time, people have forgotten red rice and the varieties of small millets. Strangely, farmers have been growing these crops in this part of Chhattisgarh,” he said.
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Badave sources groceries fresh from the Bhoomgaadi Organic Farmer-Producer Company, a collective of nearly 2,800 tribal farmers of Dantewada, founded by the innovative restaurateur-activist. The name Bhoomgaadi has a special connection to the land as a post-harvest festival of January-February is called so.
With the exception of potatoes that are mostly sourced from outside, Badave said the rice, pulses and greens are definitely organic, local and affordable.
“A part of the idea is to keep the bill in check,” he said.
The servings at Café Aadim are unpretentious – just good-tasting food as God intended it to be.
The café’s staff is local too.
For Seema Bhavani, who waits tables, it was a dream job after she did a course on hospitality. The native of an interior village gets Rs 6,000 a month working eight-hour shifts.
“We offer a wide array of food. Thalis are preferred and we keep changing the vegetables served at lunch and dinner to add variety,” said manager Laxmi Yadav, who has been with the restaurant since 2019. With about 30-40 patrons every day, the café makes nearly Rs 3,000 a day.
Special events make this place a favourite hangout for the young. There are karaoke nights, gigs held in memory of Lata Mangeshkar and Bappi Lahiri, art exhibitions and the like. Family get-togethers and birthday parties are par for the course. Next up, poetry competition, cooking contests and the singing word game antakshari.
Badave said he wants to see the cafe as a cultural hub with meaningful discussions carried out over food.
The Chhattisgarh government promotes “Gad Kaleba,” a cultural space where people can gather for any occasion and order traditional tribal foods. Café Aadim wants to be a part of that ecosystem.
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XIMB graduate Lisha Crasto from Mumbai, who handles sales and marketing at Bhoomgadi, believes the café needs to be more chic. For instance, karaoke nights – a previously unheard of form of entertainment – should become a regular offering.
In the disco-ball world of big city urbanites, karaoke may sound a bit quaint.
But in remote Bastar, such jovial pleasures shake up the life-stifling stress synonymous with any conflict zone.
Café Aadim’s food, music and convivial atmosphere go a long way to helping alleviate that stress.
The lead image at the top shows the terrace of the café which has attracted and is a hit with many visitors (Photo by Deepanwita Niyogi)
Deepanwita is a journalist based in New Delhi. An alumna of Asian College of Journalism, she writes about rural development, gender and climate change.
