“If you could go back, who would you want to meet?”
“What would you change if you could travel back in time?”
These two questions sit inside a small Japanese novel called Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.
In the book, there is a café in Tokyo where you can travel back in time. But there are rules. You can only meet people who have visited the café. Nothing you do there will change the present. And you must return before your coffee gets cold.
I got this book on my farewell day at ISDM, the development management school I graduated from in June.
This week, I gave it away.
A small kitchen. Cups by the sink. A fridge. A sofa and a TV just beyond.
Anishka stands at the stove in a jacket, cooking for me. Dal and chawal.
I had been fasting since morning.
The ghee goes into the dal. The whole room smells of it.
Before we eat, she makes coffee. I hold the warm cup in both hands.
She talks. About her life. What she is doing now. Where she is. What she is feeling. I listen.
I met her in March 2023 at Chitkara University. I was teaching an advanced MERN stack course there, a web development course, to more than 200 students. She was one of them.
They used to call me “Accha Wala Sir.”
lots change in meeee
In 2024, we met again in Bangalore. She is vegetarian. She loved Margherita pizza. Over that pizza, I told her about an idea I had. A family tree for communities.
