Coffee at Then-Hilton-Now-CCD

A couple of days ago I met a new friend who had his office near the Osmania campus. When he told me CCD had opened we decided to check out ‘Hilton Ban Gaya CCD’ and have coffee there. I was a bit nervous entering CCD which came up on the grave of Hilton, a former haunt of mine. It held a lot of memories for me of the endless hours spent there talking with friends over Irani chai. I wondered how it would feel to sit in the same place but in a different (and mod) setting.

I began to compare CCD with Hilton right away the moment we stood before it.

As in Hilton where you could see inside the hotel from outside it was the same with CCD except there was a glass between.

Hilton was bright, noisy and lively, CCD is dark and silent. It was dark because there was no power and for a while it felt no different from Hilton in summer.

Hilton had enough place to seat more than fifty people while CCD can accommodate not more than twenty at a time. Of course, the seats were of different varieties- two-seater and four-seater tables in CCD.

Where the former Hilton had the cashier’s table there were tables for customers in CCD. I tried to place the layout of Hilton over that of CCD. The main seating area of Hilton was now taken up by a smoking section behind a glass partition.

We sat sweating for sometime and waited for someone to notice us just like in Hilton. After a while the English speaking waiter approached with a menu. In Hilton one only had to indicate with a finger what one wanted without opening the mouth.

The crowd was different too. There were youngsters lounging around, the sort of guys who wear expensive jeans and talk only about the internet or Hollywood. I missed the autoricksaw drivers, the working class men from the street and the student crowd dropping in for a one by two chai. This was a different experience alright but it is not going to wipe out the memories of good ol Hilton.

The coffee was good. Maybe I will be visiting Then-Hilton-Now-CCD again but not as frequently, considering the price of the coffee and also considering the fact that drinking one-by-two coffee may not be possible.