Welcome to Midnight Café, it’s a place located on the Bangalore-Mangalore highway, near Mangalore. A place which is standing like a home to all the travellers and a place where one could sit with the ones they like and share the words from their heart. Mr.Stanley owns the place. His wife's name is Sandhya. Mrs. Stanley also helps her husband in looking after the café. The café is a meeting place for many couples and an ideal place for a first date. It was called as midnight café because it was the only place which used work even during midnight. Mr.Stanley loved customer satisfaction more than earning profits from the cafe. Mrs.Stanley worked in the café during the day time and Mr.Stanley and his friend Mr.Nagesh looked after the café during the night time. Mr.Stanley was an Ex-servicemen and he started the café after his retirement from the Indian army. Mr and Mrs Stanley had two sons, who were settled in USA and they wanted their parents to be with them, but their parents had refused to move away from their home town.
The midnight café was small and cozy, Those seats and tables were so comfortable that one never had the mood to get up after they sat there. The left side walls of the cafe were covered with posters which had quotes like "i love you the way like drowning man loves air. And it would destroy me to have just a little", life and pictures which showed how powerful is love and how can it win over other. The right side were covered with paintings of Raja Ravivarma. Customers loved the ambience of the place. Many writers and directors used to arrive there as that place helped them to come up with new stories and even to write the screeplay for some of the love scenes for their movies.
Mr.Stanley loved seeing the couples who used to come to the café and used to remember the love story of his marriage. Most of the times he used to help guys and girls to get into a relationship and sometimes even resolve misunderstanding between them. Mr.Stanley was interested in writing and he used to write stories of the couples who used to come to his cafe. Now we will read one of his favourite stories from his collection.
For which he kept the title as ‘A date to remember’.
Mr.Stanley expresses the story in the way he saw it.
A Date to remember
One day I saw a man sitting alone in table number 4 and I went to take his order. He ordered two cold coffees and two doughnuts.
I asked him casually, “Are you waiting for someone"?
- “My friend is on the way, she’ll be joining soon.” he said with a smile. I smiled back and thought he is on a date and waiting for his girlfriend. His name’s Sushruth.
After sometime I saw a girl coming and joining him. They started talking casually about each of their lives after that Sushruth called me and ordered two cold coffees again.
Till that time, I had seen them as I see all the couples, who come here for a date, enjoy what they have here and go back, but something really drew me towards them. After having cold coffee, Sushruth called me again and asked to get some tissues and after that they stopped talking with and kept on looking at each other. They maintained an eye contact with for a long time. I tried to catch those signals from their eyes but those were too hard to decode and know what it is.They kept exchanging expressions and after sometime they wrote something on their tissues, exchanged them and then the girl left the place, but before leaving the place she just turned back, smiled at him and left the place. Those expressions had all the hidden meaning. They were intense and i was curios to know what those two beautiful and clear eyes meant to their loved ones.
I wasn’t able to control my curiosity. I went to him and asked, “is she your girlfriend”? He smiled and then said “no sir, she is my wife, we were married her 5 years ago." I was shocked because of many reasons. The first reason was he told me she was his friend, then she left before him and their body language was like a couple who were on a first date.
I thought how weird these people are, they are husband and wife and still they behaved in that way but I saw him opening the tissue and reading it. Smiles and happiness just reflected on his face while he was reading that tissue.
I got curious again, went to him and asked, “can you please explain me what you guys did just now? I didn’t get anything, you spoke so casually like friends at the start and then you people became silent and exchanged some expressions and wrote something on each other’s tissue, exchanged it and she left early, what happened"? my curiosity level had reached the limit and sushruth understood that.
Sushruth smiled and made me take a look at his tissue and said, “read it once and you will understand a little bit and after that I will tell you what we did."
In the tissue I saw his wife’s beautiful handwriting and she had written like this. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to understand why you were so disturbed and worried and fought with me about small issues last week. I even know why you didn’t like to share anything with me but mistake’s there on your side too for thinking about me like that, even if the whole world tells me that are not trustworthy, I will stand against the world for you. I loved you not just because you were smart and intelligent. I didn’t see any type in accepting you as my partner for the rest of my life. I loved you and accepted you as my husband because I loved the way you are and the way you loved me. I will be going to the hospital and will check how your friend is and then will be waiting for you in our home for a candle light dinner. Love you forever,
-Preethi”
Those words had her love written in each one of them. One can say by looking at a word written on a paper by a person can tell the feelings. A handwritten word can tell more things than a typed poem or a typed story. Then i told him “okay.. Now I understood that you two had a fight and you wrote the reason for it in your tissue and gave it to her and she replied you by writing this in her tissue and gave it to you.”
He smiled at me again and said “you are wrong again sir, I didn’t speak with her about anything, we just saw each other’s eyes and our eyes did all the talking. Non-verbal communication is more effective than the verbal communication because when we fight with each other we get so angry that we will not watch the words we speak and those words hurts a lot, so we will sit together like this whenever we have a fight, it’s one of the easiest ways to resolve the misunderstandings and fights between us, we started doing this from the day we started going out.”
“What was the fight about?” I asked him as I knew only half of what happened between them. -“My ex-girlfriend is suffering from cancer and I took her to a cancer specialist and I was there with her for more than a week and didn’t come home. I had told my wife that I was going on a business trip. I just hid the truth from her and she got to know the truth when she met one of my colleagues and she was angry on me. I thought she was angry on me because I went with my ex-girlfriend but she was angry only because I hid the truth from her so I told the same to her just now and apologized her, now everything’s fine and peaceful."
-“How could you tell everything just by your expressions and eye contact?"
“It depends on how much you love your partner and more than that how much you have understood them. We may be two different people but when we started going out and loved each other, our heart became one, so when your heart becomes one, then no matter what happens between you two, we can resolve any issue between ourselves because we will have a strong belief that nothing can break us apart.” he finished saying this and got ready to leave.
I asked him before he left the place “what did you write in your tissue?”
He said “I wrote ‘I love you like I love myself’… that’s all.” He bent his head down showing that one has to lose for love and he smiled and that smile did tell how much he loved her.
Finally I got to know how people find their way to be happy forever in their life and preserve their precious love so that it will never die. For them it was just a casual meeting to resolve their misunderstanding, but for me, it was a date which I will remember forever.
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140,216 Literary Works • 673,044 Reviews
Hey there! Here to review as promised.
Okay, so first of all, I kind of actually really enjoyed the premise for this piece. The cafe idea is ridiculously adorable and endearing, and the love story told is heartwarming, honest, and original. The couple wasn't perfect. Neither member was perfect. They obviously had their struggles, but they loved each other and made it work anyway. And honestly, I think that the reason so many people have given up on love is because stories always give us these perfect examples, and we get disappointed when we don't meet those standards. Oddly enough, those standards are usually impossible.
Really though, I loved the story, and the idea of this little cafe and an owner who just loves what he does and loves the people and the stories that come in and drift out.
But, I'm going to have to quote your entire first paragraph and talk about it for a second here.
Okay! So the bolded numbers:
1) Your first two lines, which I also italicized. They were an awesome two lines, and, in my opinion, after you explain that Mr. Stanley owns the place, you should break off into a separate paragraph. My reasoning is that the first few lines are excellent, and they hooked me, but the rest of the paragraph was long and kind of daunting and it threw me off a little bit. First two lines: Excellent
Rest of the paragraph: Iiii'm getting to that
2) The word 'cafe,' which is underlined every time it appears. Okay, so. It's an incredibly repetitive word in the first paragraph. Like, the amount of times you read it is a little overwhelming. You only need it once, and we know that pretty much every "it" afterwards is going to be referring to the cafe. I suggest taking out all of the 'cafe's except for the first one, and replacing them with other words. Inanimate pronouns like "it." Just because the redundancy of the word really bogs down the writing and makes it feel choppy and more amateur than it is.
And I know that English isn't your first language, and other people have already gotten to grammar nitpicks, so I'm not going to rip those to shreds or anything.
Your storyline was amazing, and the love story told within the story was adorable and somewhat fascinating, and definitely original. I'm really glad that you asked me to read this one
My advice is: Take what I said about the first paragraph, and try to apply a similar approach to the rest of the piece with sentences that might sound awkward, or words that seem to appear too often.
Good job and keep writing,
~Ish
Thank you very much Isha..
Wow. This is a very emotional piece. I like the way you explained all your emotions in the note on the tissue though i do have a couple of things i don't like about your story. I think you have a number of errors in your sentence structure and grammar. For example, "I thought how weird these people are, they are husband and wife and still they behaved in that way" In this sentence the way you change tense in, "I thought how weird these people are." Thought is past tense while are is present tense. I suggest watching your tense change because you might've done this a couple of times. I also suggest changing your sentence structure. For example, " I asked him as I knew only half of what happened between them." I believe this sentence can be revised to flow better. You could have put, I asked, as i knew only half of what was going on between them.\
Keep writing. I sure you can do better.
Thanks for the review...
will surely edit this work..
Hello, time for a review,
The first three paragraphs are very bland. Have you ever read a play at school and it describes the scene? Well, that's what it felt like you were doing except since this is a story and not a play you should be telling us these things by showing. There is no personality and I feel like you are just describing a room.
There are also a lot of typos and miss wording.
After reading more I notice that there really isn't any feeling.
I really did like the story line, now that I've finished reading it.
But I think it still lacks feeling and insight into the peoples minds, and some of the wording doesn't sound right.
If you wanted a full edit on this I could do it through the next one or two days and email you.
-Cori
Thanks for reviewing again, i was about to edit this today. I will research on how to add all the feelings. Both the stories i wrote were for a short movie so it was like a script. I just added more narration. Once i edit this i will send the link. Just check it once and tell me where it has gone wrong.
So.....first of all, welcome to YWS!!!!!
Knight Subtle here for a review! So, first of all let me praise you on the originality of this story. The idea that the owner of a cafe would write down every couple whom has visited is a very sweet, and romantic way. Even your title, Midnight Cafe is a very sweet and mysterious one. Like a walk in muted moonlight, two silhouettes that moved slowly... Now, excuse my rambling on. Let's get on with our review and I will point out the good old technical things and give you some stylish advice.
So the opening line, I found it pretty flat. It was like stating a fact, and with opening lines. You should always try to hook the reader in. Also, near instead of nearby would have flowed better. Instead this I think perhaps, you could try writing something like this. 'Tucked away quietly on the Bangalore-Mangalore highway, there sits a cafe with the name Midnight..' My point is, show don't tell, I know you always have to tell something but try showing it to us instead. Trying showing it to us how lovely this cafe is, how special it is. How different it is.
The passage I have quoted, try showing it to us instead. How is it small and cozy? Also the 'i' there is not needed. Tell us what the love quotes represented instead. Show us the atmosphere of the cafe, because then, the readers would feel more involved if you show it to us. Then if you just tell it to us.
Okay should be written with a capital 'o', Also the ellipses, in this case doesn't work that way, perhaps a comma?
There should be a comma after 'he said'.
Those are tiny little details that I'm sure if you re-read this you could edit them, I enjoyed this story overall for its originality and the message it sent to the readers. The only I would say is that it lacked emotion, your characters didn't have enough depth as in we couldn't really see what they were thinking. So try adding in some voice into them, use similes and metaphors. Describe what they are doing when they are talking, even some tiny insight into our MC could go a long way because if the readers can relate to your MCs, they would feel much more involved. Hope I wasn't too harsh.
Keep on writing!
-S.s
Thank you very much for the review SubtleSanity. It was very constructive and i will try to improve all those things. Thank You...