Madras Cafe

Madras Cafe is a 2013 Indian political espionage thriller film directed by Shoojit Sircar and starring John Abraham, Nargis Fakhri, Rashi Khanna and Leena Paul in lead roles. The film is set in the late 1980s and early '90s, during the time of Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan civil war and assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Madras Cafe was released on 23 August 2013. Box Office India stated the film did above average business. The film won the National Film Award for Best Audiography for Nihar Ranjan Samal (location sound recording) and Bishwadeep Chatterjee (sound design) at the 61st National Film Awards.

Background

As per John Abraham, "Madras Cafe brings us closer to what changed the political history of India." The film, set in India and Sri Lanka, is a political spy thriller with the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War. Major Vikram Singh (John Abraham) is an Indian Army special officer who is appointed by the intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing to head covert operations in Jaffna shortly after Indian peace-keeping force was forced to withdraw. As he journeys to Sri Lanka with the intention of disrupting the LTTE rebels, he becomes entangled in rebel and military politics. There he meets a British journalist Jaya Sahni (Nargis Fakhri) who wants to reveal the truth about the civil war, and in the process he uncovers a conspiracy to assassinate "a former Indian prime minister", Rajiv Gandhi, through the use of plastic explosives. Although Vikram tries, at 10:10 pm, an LTTE suicide bomber kills Gandhi while bowing down to put a garland on his neck.

Coffeehouse

A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment which primarily serves hot coffee, related coffee beverages (e.g., café latte, cappuccino, espresso), tea, and other hot beverages. Some coffeehouses also serve cold beverages such as iced coffee and iced tea. Many cafés also serve some type of food, such as light snacks, muffins, or pastries. Coffeehouses range from owner-operated small businesses to large multinational companies such as Starbucks.

In continental Europe, a café is a traditional type of coffeehouse, but elsewhere the term "café" may also refer to a tea room, "greasy spoon" (a small and inexpensive restaurant, colloquially called a "caff"), transport café, or other casual eating and drinking place. A coffeehouse may share some of the same characteristics of a bar or restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. Many coffee houses in the Middle East and in West Asian immigrant districts in the Western world offer shisha (nargile in Greek and Turkish), flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah. Espresso bars are a type of coffeehouse that specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks.

Coffea

Coffea is a genus of flowering plants whose seeds, called coffee beans, are used to make coffee. It is a member of the family Rubiaceae. They are shrubs or small trees native to tropical and southern Africa and tropical Asia. Coffee ranks as one of the world's most valuable and widely traded commodity crops and is an important export product of several countries, including those in Central and South America, the Caribbean and Africa.

Cultivation and use

Several species of Coffea may be grown for the seeds. Coffea arabica accounts for 75-80 percent of the world's coffee production, while Coffea canephora accounts for about 20 percent.

The trees produce edible red or purple fruits called "cherries" that are described either as epigynous berries or as indehiscent drupes. The cherries contain two seeds, the so-called "coffee beans", which—despite their name—are not true beans. In about 5-10% of any crop of coffee cherries, only a single bean, rather than the usual two, is found. This is called a peaberry, which is smaller and rounder than a normal coffee bean. It is often removed from the yield and either sold separately (as in New Guinea peaberry), or discarded.

Greasy spoon

Greasy spoon is a colloquial term for a small, cheap restaurant or diner typically specialising in fried foods. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term originated in the United States and is now used in various English-speaking countries.

The name "greasy spoon" is a reference to the typically high-fat, high-calorie menu items such as eggs and bacon. The term has been used to refer to a "small cheap restaurant" since at least the 1920s.

United States

Many typical American greasy spoons focus on fried or grilled food, such as fried eggs, bacon, burgers, hash browns, waffles, pancakes, omelettes, deep fried chicken, and sausages. These are often accompanied by baked beans, french fries, coleslaw, or toast. Soups and chili con carne are generally available.

Since the 1970s, many Greek immigrants have entered the business. As a result, gyro and souvlaki meats are now a common part of the repertoire, often served as a side dish with breakfast and as a replacement for bacon or sausage.

Chennai

Chennai /ˈtʃɛnnaɪ/ (formerly known as Madras ⁱ/məˈdrɑːs/ or /-ˈdræs/) is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal, it is a major cultural, economic and educational centre. Chennai is known as the "Detroit of India" for its automobile industry. It is the fourth-largest city and fourth-most populous metropolitan area in the country and 36th-largest urban area in the world.

The city is host to the third-largest expatriate population in India after Mumbai and Delhi, with 35,000 in 2009 and steadily climbing to 82,790, in 2011. Tourism guide publisher Lonely Planet named Chennai as one of the top ten cities in the world to visit in 2015. Chennai is ranked as a beta-level city in the Global Cities Index and was ranked the best city in India by India Today in the 2014 annual Indian city survey. Chennai has also been named in the "hottest" cities to live in for 2015 by BBC among global cities with a mixture of both modern and traditional values. National Geographic ranked Chennai as world's 2nd best food city and Chennai was the only Indian city to feature in the list. Chennai was also named as the 9th-best cosmopolitan city in the world by Lonely Planet.

Madras (cloth)

Madras is a lightweight cotton fabric with typically patterned texture and plaid design, used primarily for summer clothing such as pants, shorts, dresses, and jackets. The fabric takes its name from the former name of the city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. This cloth also was identified by the colloquial name, "Madrasi checks."

Madras today is available as plaid patterns in regular cotton, seersucker and as patchwork madras. Patchwork madras is fabric that is derived from cutting several madras plaid fabrics into strips, and sewing them back together as squares of 3 inch sizes, that form a mixed pattern of various plaids crisscrossing. As a fabric, it is notable because the front and back of the fabric are indistinguishable.

Seen neatly tucked into pressed khaki trousers while darting across the campus green, the plaid cotton madras shirt enjoyed widespread American popularity in the 1960s as requisite garb for a post-WWII generation of preppy baby boomers. But as early as the 1930s cotton madras clothing began to emerge stateside as a status symbol: first popular among American tourists who could afford pricey Caribbean vacations during the Great Depression, the madras shirt was a palpable and overt sign of affluence worn on the backs of returning Ivy Leaguers. Today it remains a wardrobe staple for the resort- and country club-bound, as much as it is regarded as distinctly peasant class in its native India. Spanning some 5000 years, the story of the summery cotton plaid madras shirt is the province of paupers, artisans, and royalty alike.

Madras (costume)

The Madras, also called the Jip or Jupe, is the national dress of the countries of Dominica and Saint Lucia. A traditional five piece costume it was originally derived from the Wob Dwyiet (or Wobe Dwiette), a grand robe worn by the earlier French settlers, and this garment is also recognised as a national dress of the country. The Madras is the traditional dress of the women and girls of Dominica and St. Lucia, and its name is derived from the Madras cloth, a fabric used in the costume.

History

The material, known as the madras, is named after its place of origin, Madras, India. The origins of the Madras lie in the pre-emancipation days of St. Lucia, when African slaves on the island would don the colourful dress during feast days. Beginning in the late 17th century, slaves on the island were forced to wear the livre of the estate to which they belonged. Normally a single colour, one piece item, originally worn as a sarong, later becoming a simple tunic with holes for the arms and head, and a simple rope belt. During Sundays and holidays, the slaves could normally wear what they wished, and through monies earned through selling produce from small plots of land, they would often buy colourful cloth. On feast days and special occasions, free women and slaves would wear the colourful clothes, now known as Creole dress.