Nestled in the lanes of Jodhpur Park is a café that draws a crowd every evening. Many are regulars who have their usual spots, which allow them to read or smoke. And some drop by because they might have heard that the pizza and apple pie are rather good. Abar Baithak has been able to strike a balance between the Bengali adda and a modern café, where every now and then, an innovative spin on a classic will take you by surprise. (Tip: Try the Eggs Benedict.)
The proprietress of this popular haunt is not a chef. Neither had she harboured any aspirations of being an entrepreneur. Life is just what happened when she was busy trying to survive. Grit and presence of mind have always been Swaralipi’s forte, characteristics that came to the fore when she recently stood up to local goons threatening to cause damage for refusing to contribute to the 95 Palli Jodhpur Park Festival.
In fact, Swaralipi is no stranger to the intimidation of men; she grew up being witness to her father torturing her mother in all sorts of ways – her parents had once been in love but that dissolved soon under the pressures of caste differences and family disagreements. Thinking on her feet is a skill she picked up at the age of six when the local councillor stepped in to settle a dispute between her parents and she piped up to tell him how her education was going to suffer at this rate. Even in school, she ran the risk of being written off since her grades were low, until she taught herself recitation and began to win poetry competitions. School, if anything, was an education in how to get ahead without necessarily making a hue and cry.
With her mother in the depths of depression and a timid younger brother to raise, the responsibility of bringing home at least some of the bacon fell upon this young girl. Swaralipi tried her hand at everything from selling chocolates at the local grocery store to modelling, while still in school. In a few years she went on to become a sought-after face of Hau Mau Khau, the talent hunt show. Modelling and acting did not come without their fair share of harassment, lewd advances and threats from men in power. “All the cliches, you know,” she says with a smile that indicates that nothing can take her by surprise anymore. For Swaralipi, some nightmarish scenarios in her twenties were lessons in being able to identify any port in a storm, and emerge relatively unscathed.
Swaralipi at the unmissable entrance of Abar Baithak
‘Sita wasn’t afraid when Ravana came to kidnap her, was she?’
“Simply being a woman is actually being in a position of strength. Sita wasn’t afraid when Ravana came to kidnap her, was she? She looked at him, unafraid, and so he never hurt her.” She goes on to illustrate how strangers and male relatives alike have backed away at simply the thought of how much trouble they might get into if things were to get out of hand.
Abar Baithak was a venture Swaralipi set up with her ex-husband. She might have lost the café in the waves of divorce if the bank loan hadn’t required her name to be used for the paperwork. “I suppose I’ve also been lucky when it’s truly mattered,” she says, always optimistic. “Besides, one always gets by with help from friends. Friends are everything.”
During the brouhaha in Jodhpur Park, her friend Sumita told the thug – who was apoplectic with rage at being video-taped as well as being denied money – to “calm down if you don’t want to have a heart attack.” The two women laugh about this now, despite the terrifying ordeal they faced.
It turns out that other than friends, a sense of humour is also everything.
Local goons at Abar Baithak, in the screenshot of a video that went viral
‘Local goons have come before but they’d leave quickly after looking at the bookshelf!’
“I haven’t faced trouble in Jodhpur Park before. Abar Baithak was the first of its kind here, before all the other cafes started cropping up. Local goons have come before but they’d leave quickly after looking at the bookshelf. Anyway, I refuse to live in fear,” says Swaralipi firmly, albeit amused at the memory of vandals beating a hasty retreat at the sight of books.
Coffee, books and adda at Abar Baithak cafe
In the latter half of 2019, Swaralipi opened an Abar Baithak cafe in Hyderabad, which she eventually shut down because it involved spending too much time away from her baby daughter. In 2020, she opened another branch of Abar Baithak in Wood Square Mall, Narendrapur. “The pandemic of course put a hole in my plans,” she says, echoing the words of many a restaurateur, “but now I’m almost back on my feet again. I’ve never been a chef, you know. But I’ve discovered that I like being on the administrative side of things.”
Her daughter, Sahachari, is going to be five in April. “She’s already very independent. She’s my life. Cafes will come and go, but everything I do now will pave the way for her.”