Coffee, Chai and Shakes in the jungle frontier of Gonda Twisa

(Story of the first barista at Gonda Twisa)

By Saibal Debbarma

December 8, 2023

Gonda Twisa, or (in)famously known earlier as Gandacherra, is 120 kms. away from Agartala. The little town of Agartala is booming with baristas and restaurants where the Indian tradition of adda is ritually observed over cups of coffee, chai and samosas. Politics, sports, art and the trivial farce of everyday life becomes the topic of much of the conversation. The evening buzzes with the gaiety of the youth. But to think of ever having a barista at Gandacherra cradled between the jungles of Amarpur and the frontier of Indo-Bangladesh border at Raishyabari was itself an act of madness until a young entrepreneur made the impossible come true.

 Bapan Burman had always wanted to build a restaurant business, even as a child he had dreamt of having a food court of his own. So, after completing his Hotel Management course from BFIT (Baba Farid Institute of Technology), Dehradun, he ventured into building a small barista at his local hometown of Gandacherra. Only with 5,000 /- Rupees in his pockets and eyes full of dreams Bapan started his barista in a small concrete shack overlooking his own house which he has transformed with his aesthetic sensibility into a beautiful place of respite, a home away from home for the employees who hail from Agartala.

While returning from work exhausted and tired, my brain buzzing with phrases from letters and memorandums, with my colleague Bhaskar Debbarma, Assistant professor of Kokborok and guitarist of the internationally acknowledged band Koloma , we happened to come across Bapan’s café ‘Foodie Quick’. Bapan and his wife Papiya are the concierge of that small café. Papiya with gentle dexterous fingers and quick, lithe movements serves the customers, take orders and cook. Bapan is the mind behind the enterprise he experiments with new dishes, adds a dash of that or a sprinkle of this and regales the customers with his conversations. Bapan who had formerly worked at the Zuri White Sands Deluxe at Goa manages the enterprise with his skill and know-how of an experienced hotel manager.

I drank a strawberry shake and Bhaskar sir had a glass of lime-soda and Bapan played us the songs from Koloma Band and we stood sipping exotic drinks at a barista in the heartland of Gandacherra listening to the unique folk cadences of the Koloma Band. The evening was made so richly flavoursome by the music and the shakes that I forgot all the cliched phrases of the office letters that had stuck themselves to the dry walls of my brain.

Bapan and his wife Papiya, owners of the ‘Foodie Quick’ the first barista at Gondatwisa.

Saibal Debbarma is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Government Degree College, Gondatwisa (Gandacherra), Dhalai District, Tripura.