Coffee

Coffee...Kaapi...Cafe'...Kaafi...

People have various names and various flavours for this beverage. Some have it hot, some have it cold, some have it iced. Again, some have it black, some with cream, some with milk. Instant, brewed, drip and filtered. There are varities of the beans themselves, usually geographically distinguished (Brazilian, Columbian, Arabica, and closer to home, Coorg, Nilgiri and so on). The options go on and on.

Currently, I am sipping a cup of coffee to set my mood and let my fingers fly over the keyboard, as I reminisce about this really wonderful and potent drink. For me, a day without coffee is a day without purpose. Pardon me, but like some of you Starbucks aficionados, I also have very strong views about my coffee. For instance, black coffee is a waste of good coffee beans. Any coffee without milk, strength and sugar is not worth the effort. This brings me in line with the South Indian filter coffee. You can read more about the history and social importance of filter coffee at this wiki. Let me talk about my feelings for coffee.

One gets up early in the morning (say 8 o'clock - that is early enough for me, though some purists will want their coffee earlier than that!). One goes into the kitchen, only to see water boiling on the stove, and the filter ready to take the day's first load of coffee powder (in India, we mix coffee with some chicory, which actually adds to the taste). One puts in some coffee powder, and pours in the boiling water with a flourish, and take the lid, tap the top of the filter with it, and close it. One goes outside, just to see the morning's paper waiting to divulge its share of daily misery. Remember, though we say man's failures make the front page and his successes make the last page (thanks to my school friend Srivaths Swaminathan, who quoted this very truthful nugget to me), I still think it is all daily misery because there is usually some news item to overshadow the good news (remember 359/2 in 50 overs at Jo'berg?). In my humble opinion, coffee helps processing such news without much concern.

Anyway, enough rambling. By now, the filter has done its job with admirable alacrity, considering the earliness of the hour. One goes back to the kitchen in haste, to savour the first coffee of the day as fresh and as hot as possible. So, taking some decoction (some have corrupted this into de-kaa-shion!) in a dabarah (please refer Wikipedia for more about this utensil), one adds some milk and heats it on the stove, periodically transferring the milk between the tumbler (you guessed it! Wiki again!) and the dabarah with an arc like flourish. To hold the hot dabarah, one uses tongs, called 'idukki' in Tamil. This process is repeated till the coffee is hot and there is a thick frothy layer of coffee on the top of the tumbler. That process completed, one retires to the hall, settles down with the coffee and the newspaper (I prefer The Hindu).

In the meantime, the morning's activities pick up speed outside, with people of all ages leaving for their jobs (school is like a job, for it starts so early in the morning!). The coffee by now is consumed with zest, and the paper browsed in detail. Time for a second round! In some households, there are actually two rounds of coffee preparation in the morning itself, irrespective of the filter's size. This is, in addition to the evening round around 7 o'clock, when the folks are back from work, play or class, and dinner is in preparation.

A bit about the importance of good coffee. Many grandfathers in the south of India would not taste the coffee made by anyone other than their wives, so particular are they about the consistency and strength of the coffee. Any social gathering usually entails the removal of a huge filter (it is around 3 feet tall by itself, and pretty thick, as big as a small child!) from storage, and the purchase of quite a few kilos of fresh coffee. Bad coffee can undo any occasion, so great care is taken to prepare good coffee, and lots of it.

Anyone who has coffee made this way, would be familiar with a trip to the local coffee store. Time was, when there were no chains of coffee retailers like Coorg, Tata or Coffee Day. I remember going to a local store with my dad, to purchase a kilo of coffee. It was in the evening around 7 o'clock, and I noticed the storefront from across the road. The board was painted dark blue, and big white English and Tamil letters with a plain font proclaimed 'Mylapore Coffee House', or whatever the name of the establishment was. The board was lit by a dim and dusty tube light, and on the whole, presented a classic 1950's look. We entered this store, where of course we had an account, and knew the owner for quite many years. The following description
would hold true for any such store: the interior is conservatively painted in dark shades of blue, and there is a long table in the front separating the customers and the store keeper. This table is usually made of old quality wood, and there is a slow fan creaking from the Madras terrace roof. On one side of the table, there is a weighing scale, with an analog needle pointer. Behind that sits the store keeper, who is usually the owner, and usually a senior person, wearing spectacles and reading the morning's newspaper (I personally noticed The Hindu most times). On seeing us, he closes the paper and gets the order. The order is passed on to the assistant, who selects the beans, weighs it, adds a few extra beans, but not too many, and then feeds it to the machine, which cranks to life with some reluctance. The aroma of coffee wafts around the store, and after a few minutes, we are richer by a kilo of fresh coffee powder, whose delights would be savoured early next morning :)