Paradise Lost, or lost time regained

One long-ago afternoon, a woman in a Central Delhi café got up from her table and walked towards the bakery counter

One long-ago afternoon, a woman in a Central Delhi café got up from her table and walked towards the bakery counter. She suddenly turned around and began moving her arms. “Look, I’m dancing,” she said, swaying her hips. See photo.

Lilo Marina, from Australia, at Appetite German Bakery café in Paharganj. (HT Photo)

The woman was Lilo Marina, from Australia. Just back from the Himalayas, she was travelling through India, she said, to seek something new in life.

That was Appetite German Bakery café in Paharganj. This is the second instalment of our new series, Paradise Lost, chronicling Delhi’s vanished landmarks.

Decades ago, Paharganj grew into a district of inexpensive backpacker-friendly hotels and hostels because it lay within walking distance of New Delhi railway station. Budget travellers arriving in Delhi from abroad stayed here before heading elsewhere in India (oh well, mostly Rajasthan, Manali, Benares and Goa).

The café offered a view of Paharganj’s hyperactive life. Beyond its street-facing glass wall, Main Bazar’s crowds passed like a film, a mix of Indians and foreigners. Central Asian women in robes and headscarves, Orthodox Jews in hats and sidelocks, and backpackers with tattooed limbs. Plus we, the desis, including market shoppers, flute sellers, and cart vendors. Cows and dogs, too, among bikes and autos.

Many of the people lounging inside the café would be foreign travellers taking a break from Paharganj’s bustle-and-bhasar. Among those encountered here was a hospital staffer from Wisconsin, the US, playing his guitar. A dress designer from Normandy in France, jotting in a diary clipped with fabrics of different shades. A young man from England, sporting a pearl earring, a braid, a goatee and, as his final accessory, E.M. Forster’s Maurice.

During slow-moving afternoons, a guest might be playing chess at the corner table with the café manager, the friendly Farid, while a few others might be writing in their journals. Outside the glass door, fakirs and beggars peered in uninhibitedly.

The easy-going café made Dilli feel far away, even for Delhiwale. French and Spanish chatter would be heard around the tables. Tibetan chants would occasionally play from a tape beneath framed photographs of Nepal’s Annapurna mountain range. The menu included Spanish breakfast and Nepali thali. Although the handwritten Today’s Special would stay unchanged for months, the cook would rustle up foreign khana on request. Once, on being served her order, a foreigner firmly remarked, “This is not crêpe.”

Whatever, various kinds of cakes crammed the bakery counter, some reduced by day’s end to the last wedge on a steel tray scattered with crumbs. Honey-ginger-lemon tea went best with the yummy almond cake, dusted with powdered sugar.

Dating from the 1990s, the café never reopened following the Coronavirus lockdowns. This Wednesday afternoon in October 2026, where Lilo Marina once danced, packets of chips line the glass front of The New Shop.