So many faces, so many stories. Some come here to meet, some for a first salary and others for a birthday treat. Some come just to beat the heat and others just to park their feet. I come here to weave stories. I am a café artist.

Sitting in a corner sipping inconspicuously on my americano I feel inspired by the energy and all the talk. The exchange of emotions and changing body languages. Every café with it’s unique stories to tell, speaks to me from every corner, big or small, bay windows or blank walls, closed and congested, overflowing with people, high or low ceilings, open underneath a tree, beside a river or next to the refrigerator, overlooking the sea or catching the setting Sun behind the snowy Himalayan peak. When the incoherent café buzz hits me with more clarity than an intimate conversation I see transformed into lines and colours all the laughter, grunts, smirks, shouts, endless conversations and exclamations, waiters calling out to their customers, the thousand thank yous and the clinks of a thousand china cups, the countless hellos and goodbyes between friends and chessmen, among crosswords and scrabble boards, in the hot summer Sun or in the conditioned air, and so much more that I cannot share...
The endless music, the mirrors and the mean stares , occasionally looking at me as if to say he is mad, he is sad , who is he and look how he is clad?

In the pages to come is artwork inspired in cafes from all across the subcontinent. It surfaces from the pain, suffering, anxiety and the existential quests of an ordinary man in an ordinary café. I consider these works as contemporary Indian Miniature Art because most of them have been compiled on A3 or A4 size. They focus on line quality as forms surrender into each other in a limited space and time.

Some of these works had inspired me to create an avant garde film “ Lost or Found” , which I produced and directed along side my café visits.