Maddie Soule

The arterial roads snaking their way through Kala Ghoda were bustling. The air was distorted by the heat pulsing through it. Cafes lined the streets — the new influencer-ridden spots outnumbered by relics of a Bombay of a different era. At Kala Ghoda Café, I sunk into my faithfully frequented chair — a creaky old seat at the mahogany wood table closest to the window.  I looked out towards the uncomfortably crowded, disorientingly vibrant strip of land and life and love — close enough to sneak a taste yet shield myself from the explosion and extravagance that is Bombay. There was a distinct comfort in this chaos, in the steady pulse of a place that never quite let itself settle.

These five or six square feet of tiled marble floor — filled with the people who unwaveringly humor me every time I vow to spend hours on end confined to this spot — is something of a sacred space.

As is customary with most of my “happy” places, it is less the rustic architecture or the perfectly-brewed coffee that brings me joy, but more the people that I associate so closely with the place. When I think of Kala Ghoda, I am almost instantly transported to the litany of mornings with my favorite people in the whole world.

I used to confidently map happiness onto oddly specific locations — the corners of cafes, the bends of winding streets, the well-worn seats I returned to time and time again. It was simple when I spent every waking moment in Bombay — to pick and choose the frontrunners from a long list of my happy places, all conveniently contained in the city I call home. But distance has a way of reshaping memory, of peeling back the layers of a place until only its essence remains.

The cafe is no longer about the familiar chairs or the mahogany tables, but about my two very best friends, and the way our conversations stretched lazily across sunlit breakfasts — the way time always seemed to move differently when we were together for an all-too brief visit home. Nothing luckier has ever happened in my life than the day Diya, Gayatri and I decided to stay on FaceTime all night watching a cricket match together. And now we navigate every stage of life together, anchored to the places that have borne witness to every version of us.

It’s the way these places hold unmistakable traces of the people I love. And nowhere is that clearer than in Bombay — in the four precious months of a year that I spend in the city that screams home to me like nothing else does.

Happiness is held in being welcomed home to the sound of Simon & Garfunkel playing on the living room radio that we’ve had since I was a little girl — soft yet distinctive, somewhat static, as if the music has aged alongside the instrument that delivers it. I can almost hear the reverberations of my dad’s guitar, my mum’s off-tune singing interrupted by her gentle laughter. 

It’s good to be home.

It was here that I first kicked a soccer ball, read every Enid Blyton book I could lay my hands on, then read them all over again. Learnt to sing and dance, and also learnt how subpar I was at both.

It was here that I mastered the art of getting microwave popcorn just right — a staple for my Bollywood movie marathons with mum, and for the middle-of-the-night soccer games I religiously watched with dad. 

It was here that I witnessed how phenomenal and safe and fulfilling love can be. In the way my dad softened around my mum. In how my parents looked at each other, and at me.

In my aunt’s uncanny ability to sense when I’m down, and her foolproof remedy of my favorite food that only she can make. In the kindness of the girl that shared her crayons with me in preschool, and has been like my sister ever since.

It was here that I first experienced heartbreak — said goodbye to all the love that has left me, and clung to every bit that I still have.

And right here, to this very cafe, I always return — to laugh with Diya and Gayatri over cups of coffee that go cold too quickly, to carve out a space where time slows down just for us, to relive the enveloping sensation of home in the people who have always been my constants.

It’s good to be home.