Bharat Coffee Depot

If you walk down toward Dandia Bazar in the Parkarwada area, you’ll find us right opposite the Rajdhani Hotel. Bharat Coffee Depot has been a fixture here for a long time. The smell of roasting coffee beans usually hits you before you even see the shop. It’s a deep, heavy scent that lingers on our clothes and in our hair long after we go home. We have these old grinders that make a lot of noise, but they do the job better than any new machine we've seen. The shop is small and can get cramped when more than three people are inside at once. We don't have fancy seating or a menu with complicated names. We just sell coffee, plain and simple. People come in with their own containers or we bag it up for them right there. We know most of our customers by name and how they like their beans ground. It’s a tradition for many families around here to get their coffee from us. Sometimes the beans arrive later than expected, and we have to tell people to come back tomorrow. They usually don't mind because they know us. The floors are wooden and a bit creaky, and there’s always a fine dusting of coffee powder on the counter. We like it this way. It’s a quiet life, mostly, punctuated by the roar of the grinders and the chat of the neighbors who stop by for their weekly supply.