Coffee
For the longest time in my life, a common question I had to deal with was "Are you old enough for coffee?" Because you know how people post things like first coffee in fall and first coffee in January? My first coffee was when I was six. My grandmother came over to stay with us and help out as my mum had just given birth to my sister. I was raised in a household where I was supposed to be given one milk-based drink in the morning and one in the evening. I hated the taste of plain milk so my mum used to add Milo, Bournvita, Complan (Anyone else a Complan kid here? Just me? What happened to that drink by the way?) or Horlicks to make me drink the milk. Because you know kid needs her calcium and stuff. So my grandmother is a serial coffee drinker and somehow when she made coffee for herself, she sort of snuck it for me once and then it became a regular affair. Indians usually make coffee with milk and sugar and for some mysterious reason, I was a kid who quickly acquired a taste for this slightly bitter, slightly sweet, milk based drink. My grandmother would make one tumbler (a drinking glass that's made of stainless steel) of coffee for both of us - one half for herself and the other half for me. "Please give me more paati! (Tamil for grandmother)" I would exclaim, licking the tumbler clean and looking at her with earnest eyes. She would laugh and refuse - saying a kid shouldn't be drinking too much coffee. And to date, I have not had a better coffee than that made by grandmother - which is probably the case because of our hometown.
My hometown in India is famous for its coffee. Known as "Kumbakonam Degree Coffee", or rather "Kumbakonam Degree Kaapi" as there is no "F" sound in the Tamil language, it's a steaming and frothy combination of coffee decoction, milk and sugar. Think of a cappuccino but a tad sweeter - the froth is achieved by pouring the mixture back and forth between two vessels. Back then, this coffee was made famous because of the pure milk that was used in the preparation of coffee. I'm talking about milk milked from cows seconds before making the coffee. People had men on standby to milk cows for fresh milk. Owners of restaurants would ask their tea masters (local for barista) to throw out the milk if it had been sitting out for too long. This is not an exaggeration, this was how serious people were about coffee. With time and the advent of pasteurisation and packaged milk, "Kumbakonam Degree Kaapi" has pretty much become a rare, near non-existent commodity, with restaurants and cafes holding on to the name, the fading memories and next to none of the authenticity.
And for someone from a hometown famous for its coffee, with nearly twenty years of coffee drinking, you would think that I would have a couple of coffee buddies like drinking buddies. But the truth is, almost none of them drink as much as I do, or don't even drink coffee in the first place. I drink this nectar of gods twice a day while my family drinks it a maximum of once a day. My sister recently announced that she wants to be healthy and switched to green tea. Green tea. While I drink what can only be described as an Americano with about a tablespoon of milk, most of my friends can tolerate a mocha or a latte at best or complain about the smell of coffee giving them a headache. While I need a Robusta blend in the morning, some of my friends talk about how coffee makes their heart beat faster. But somehow, I've always been able to have coffee around these people, I've gone to cafes with these people, and these people are more than happy to make sure that my coffee demands are met.
The reason why I find this interesting and even a tad amusing, is because, I follow a fairly interesting diet (vegetarian who only eats chicken that is boneless but no sausages, nuggets or ham). Telling my lunch companion for the day that I am vegetarian for that day for religious reasons almost, always gets an eye roll and a "Are you serious?" while announcing at 7pm that I'm in need of a coffee gets me a completely casual "Oh there is a Starbucks here". Having a heart-to-heart session with my friends means a cozy, offbeat cafe with a cappuccino for myself and a pot of English Breakfast for them with a slice of cake (chocolate, 90% of the time) for us. Whining about running low on coffee gets me a "There, there" while whining about a low battery gets me "Good, maybe you can embrace the world around you". So what is this unifying power of coffee? How are people able to sympathise for someone's need of coffee even if they have never touched a drop of caffeinated beverage in their lives? How has coffee made itself so accessible and sustainable across the many, many, forms of diet that have emerged?
Yeah, I agree it's partly, if not mostly, a matter of convenience. Cafes and places that sell coffee are just a stone's throw away, from anywhere you are. And with people getting more aggressive about the blend of their coffee like myself, or requesting for a plant-based milk in their coffee, finding specific forms of coffee is not that hard either. Apart from the comical tea vs coffee debates, nobody has ever complained about someone who is particular about their coffee. My only observation is that this utilitarian attitude towards coffee doesn't sustain itself around other opposing points of view in life and my only hope is that it does. Somehow it's so intuitive for us to understand that someone needs their coffee now and we are more than happy to oblige, and almost, respect that need. But somehow this doesn't carry over - from religious practices different from ours to lifestyles. And if you think about it, it's not that hard to respect something someone does differently from us. And if you don't, you can always try, at the very least, to understand, over a cup of coffee! With hatred in the world being discussed more than ever, probably because it is being publicised more than ever, I fear that respect of cultures, lifestyles and religions will one day become a fading memory - like a "Kumbakonam Degree Kaapi". Let's not make that the case - pasteurise your negativity.
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