At 23, after multiple rejections, Alina Alam found herself in the northeastern Karnataka town of Hubballi, with zero capital, an offer of a rat-infested tin shed and lots of community goodwill to execute her longstanding dream of a café that would employ people with physical, intellectual, and psychiatric disabilities. One panel of experts had rated her idea poorly on a variety of parameters, but what annoyed her was that they had also rated her 1/5 on a quality she had in abundance: passion. You just have to listen to her talk to know instantly that Alam has enough passion to power a hundred ventures.
Now 31, Alam travels to her 46 cafés spread across India in institutions such as airports, large companies, banks, her one-year-old son Orhan in tow. He’s already logged around 150 flights. In the past year, she has opened her Mitti Café at the Supreme Court, Rashtrapati Bhavan and IIM-Bangalore. In the coming months, you’ll see the café at many more airports, metro and railway stations. Alam uses and swears by words such as magic, courage and compassion. She believes that everybody can fight injustice and discrimination. “My confidence comes from faith,” she says. Faith that if you do your best, things are likely to work out.
She prefers to use the phrase ‘social duty’ over social work, and describes it as the debt we must pay for the privileges we enjoy. “My belief in the innate kindness of the community has been proved time and again,” she says. In a cynical world, Alam is a blinding ray of hope. Her favourite quote — also her sister Ayesha’s favourite — is from Cinderella: “Where there is kindness, there is goodness. And where there is goodness, there is magic.”
Mitti Café has 500 employees and has trained nearly 10 times that number, placing them with various companies. “We encourage the larger ecosystem to hire from us,” says Alam. Some, like Saviha, who has multiple sclerosis, have become entrepreneurs. “We discovered she has the gift of the gab,” says Alam. “If you come in to buy a ₹10 chai, she will convince you to buy a ₹50 meal.” Saviha now runs her own grocery store in Hubballi and is one of Mitti Café’s vendors.
Alina Alam (right) with President Droupadi Murmu (centre) at the opening of Mitti Café in Rashtrapati Bhavan this June. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Inclusivity through service
Alam is a repository of her employees’ dreams. Like Lakshmi, the single mom who can’t hear and speak and who is now an assistant manager at the cafe. She has a newspaper clipping of a world tour and dreams that one day her children will take her around.
Alam’s inclusivity-through-service model is an opportunity to alter perceptions about differently-abled people — even the way they see themselves. Since the pandemic, Mitti Café has distributed six million meals to economically vulnerable communities. In a country that offers few opportunities to the differently-abled, Alam’s team not only looks out for themselves but contributes to the larger good. “It’s changed the whole paradigm,” she says, adding that the team knows the café is an opportunity to change society and the way society thinks about them.
One time in Bengaluru, an angry customer stomped up to her in a café, complaining about the abrasive way the server had been communicating with him. “I told him his name is Bharat, he’s on the autism spectrum, his expressions may not do justice to his role but he takes back money every month, and this is possible because of customers like him and the community.” On her next visit to the café, she spotted the same customer and he had brought along a friend. “He was giving a high five to Bharat and introducing him to his friend,” says Alam. “You can’t take for granted that people know.”
Alina prefers to use the phrase ‘social duty’ over social work, and describes it as the debt we must pay for the privileges we enjoy. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Seeing beyond grades
Growing up, nobody looked at Alam as someone who would be a success story. “Everybody gave up on me,” she says. “I don’t think I was the most disciplined student, my grades were never that great.” After her Class X exams, her school told her mother they were worried about her future and suggested that she enrol her daughter elsewhere. Alam’s success is a reality check for educational institutions and parents who can’t see beyond marks.
Alam isn’t the first entrepreneur among her siblings. To support the family, her elder sister Ayesha started exporting ethnic wear to Bangladesh when Alam was still in school. Another early influence was her grandmother, with whom she stayed for many years. The older woman needed support to walk but was never defined by what she could and couldn’t do. “When I went into the world, it was confusing to see how a person’s disability could define everything from their friends’ circle to their opportunities,” says Alam.
Alam describes her father as “pro-labour”. “If a factory had to be shut, my father would speak up for the people who would be affected.” Her parents may have often found themselves short of funds but they always supported people in need.
At that first café in Hubballi, a local printer helped her translate an ad for jobs. It said that Alam was looking for people with disabilities. The only requirements for the job were a minimum age of 18 years and the intent to work. “For two days, nobody called,” she says, recalling how she grappled with self-doubt. “Then Sandhya aunty called, very hesitantly, about her daughter Keerthi who has a very severe disability. She came to the café crawling,” Alam says. “Today, she is quite an inspiration. She manages a team of 10-15 as a manager.”
The writer is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.
