A Short story.. inspired by a Surfing Cafe I once visited

If you’ve ever been to the tiny township of Mahabalipuram or any place like that, you’ll be able to picture a little sea-side town with lazy cafes, tourists & a hippie vibe. This was a place just like that, in a little surfing cafe on the beach. A quaint little wooden shack almost, overgrown with pink bougainvillea, where you can read your morning paper leisurely over a cup of chai by a window overlooking the sea.

There’s a 20 year old girl helping manage the place – as the cafe opens for the day, she puts away the book she’s reading and goes around doing her thing… Chatting with customers, adding a touch of cinnamon to a tea to make it just a little better before it leaves the kitchen, helping out when the cafe is short-staffed & making everything just a little bit more cheerful. But the cafe hasn’t been short-staffed for a while – it’s never as crowded as once it used to be. As she stands at the door saying goodbye to some regulars, she notices an empty Lays chips packet on the sand. She picks it up & then sees a plastic bag nearby.. In 5 minutes, she’s climbing the stairs to the cafe her arms filled with junk, but there’s so much more on the beach. Dumping the garbage in a little wooden bin, she looks around for a while and notices people around. There’ a fisherman removing debris from their nets, a little kid who’s hurt his foot by stepping on a bottle and a surfer turning to head back repulsed by the debris. As this sleepy little town depends on tourism this is not a good sign.

The girl is lost in thought for a while & then she gets out a little wooden board and begins to paint it. As the sun rises the next day, she hangs up a pretty wooden painted sign outside the Cafe – ‘Pick up a kilo of litter from the beach & enjoy a cup of masala chai on us’ – the Little Beach Cafe. She spends the day putting up these signs all over the beach & on the cafe's Social Media Page.

The beach clean-up drive starts out slow, but then picks up steam with the townsfolk joining in with surfers & students, to make their beach clean again. As a young surfer walks up to the cafe with litter & dumps it into a bin, the girl smiles at him. She walks up to the entrance of the cafe & sees a much cleaner beach. There are foreigners walking around, exploring the town’s hangouts, their hair tousled in the wind; people surfing and swimming in the sea & some just lazing around by the beach in the warm sunshine.

An old inmate of the sea-side town gives the girl a toothless grin as he pass by, and she smiles wide. In her own little way she’s made a difference.