Chapter 1 Cafe

You will find us on the second floor of the building at 1374K/1375K in Dinesh Nagar. We are on Fatehabad Road, which everyone knows is the main stretch in Agra. We are about a hundred meters down from the ITC Mughal hotel. Being on the second floor means we are a little bit away from the dust and the noise of the street level, though you can still hear the rickshaws if the windows are open. We don't have a big fancy entrance, just the stairs leading up. The cafe is a spot where we see a lot of tourists who are tired from walking around the monuments all day. Agra gets incredibly hot, so people are usually just looking for a place to sit under a fan for an hour. We have mismatched chairs and a few books lying around for whoever wants to read them. The staff spends most of the afternoon prepping for the evening crowd. We get a mix of local students and people from the hotels nearby. We don't put much effort into being a cool place; we just keep the lights on and the water cold. Sometimes the power goes out, which is just how things are here in this part of town. We just wait for it to come back on and keep going. It’s a basic place for people who need a break from the Agra sun.