#061 A Terrific Cup of Coffee

Sitting on a dotted red chair that a friend of mine left behind, I was sipping a delicious cup of coffee that I had just made, listening to my favourite Yuvan tracks on the headphones. The Speak-To-Chat feature on the headphones pauses the music every time I (involuntarily) start singing, perhaps politely asking me to stop singing. The sky appears cloudy. I think it will rain today. I can see the moon through a squared mesh that's installed to keep away the pigeons that would otherwise end up settling down here. I can see that someone on the 4th floor has an overgrown money plant that's made its way to our balcony, while my own money plant has only recently starting branching out of our apartment.

I like this coffee mug. I picked this over my overpriced red and yellow Harry Potter mug, and the broken blue mug. H had gifted me the earthy green coffee mug- I was eyeing it when we'd visited a Third Wave coffee outlet at Kammanahalli last year. My brother had thoughtfully gifted me the hand grinder that I had used today. I guess I'm a coffee person and that's why I get coffee related gifts. I was also gifted a coffee needle last year!

Filter coffee was a staple item in my house. As children, we were only allowed to drink Boost, Horlicks, etc. As we grew older, my parents developed a strong love for Cothas filter coffee powder. I learnt later how to brew it using the channi, from my mother. In the meantime, my father scored a DeLonghi espresso machine at a steal deal price and decided to use the Cothas powder to extract espresso shots—or decoction—that he would use to make really good filter coffee. One day, he showed me how he used the built-in steamer to make frothy coffee. He also tried to teach me something about how the coffee would brew under the high-pressure steam, and about how the machine had to be engineered to develop such high pressure so quickly and not explode.

I wish I had a better understanding of the physical world- that's more real than the computer dabbling that I do.

Perhaps my obsession with coffee came from my college days, when I would sit down on the wooden cube-shaped chairs in Block IX, where my dorm was. It all began as an effort to stimulate my brain into some kind of a "limitless" mode. My friend P, in our first year of college, used to have a rolling hot coffee pot in my room during our exams. The idea—as naive as it sounds now- was to keep adding instant coffee powder into a boiling kettle, never letting it run out for the night. I believe that shortly after, we would give up and end up sleeping, probably tired of the frequent washroom visits thanks to the ingenious idea.

Initially, it was all green Bru packets and red Nescafe Classic bottles because that was all that I could afford. Sometimes, when the tab goes to my parents, I would get a nice big bottle of Nescafe Gold and Davidoff—which at the time were luxury.

Thanks to my growing interest in coffee, I convinced my parents during a family trip to Coorg that we should visit a coffee plantation nearby. The tour guide quoted a whopping five thousand or so for a full tour of the plantation. My father, at this point, was reluctant and asked the guide what we'd gain in return. "Knowledge," the guide said. He cleverly put my father in a spot: to weasel out of the deal, he would have to say no to 'knowledge' in front of his children. Naturally, we ended up taking the tour.

That tour, as promised, ended up showing me my first sighting of Arabica plants, Robusta plants, why blends exist, why they plant Silver Oak trees in the middle of these plantations, etc. That was also when I learnt to differentiate between Arabica and Robusta beans by sight, and also that a variety called Peaberry (the pod has 1 bean) exists and that it's stronger than the other two.

Much later, at Chennai, I got introduced to the world of speciality coffee by a relative, K, who persuaded me that I should invest in an Aeropress. Dr. K used to make such terrific cups of coffee. I would sometimes crash at their apartment at Anna Nagar, and used to be fascinated by how much there was to the coffee world that I had no idea about. Soon, I ended up purchasing an Aeropress following his advice. I carried it wherever I travelled- there was no going back to the harsh tastes of instant coffee powder.

I wonder what drew me to all that. More importantly, I wonder how coffee became the magic drink that it now is, at least in my own life. Coffee is hope. There's no problem that you cannot boldly attempt to solve when you're sufficiently caffeinated to tackle it. Over time, I think "let's do this" eventually started to mean "let's have a cup of coffee and then do this briskly."

I used to, and still try to, enjoy a fresh brew before I leave for work or start work. We probably have a strong affection/inclination for all the psyche-altering properties that it has. I would be sluggish and unwilling to do anything- and living- but after the first cup of coffee I feel like working, working out, or just being up and about. I read somewhere that culturally, this explained why the Islamic civilizations (which had a strong coffee culture) fared better in science and technology than the European civilizations (that had a prominent wine culture).

As much as I enjoy a good pint of beer, as much as the next man, I must say that I like my caffeinated self better. Despite how shitty I close my previous day, coffee- piping hot coffee- gives me the semi-colon that my days desperately need. It's a new day. It's a new morning. So many possibilities, so many things that I could do today.

Years later, when I met H for the first time, we met at the Aaladipattiyaan Karupatti Coffee near my Vaikuntam apartment after a long walk. Something about coffee always leads to good times in ways that other beverages don't. One of our early good memories is the first cup of coffee that I brewed for her that we enjoyed at the balcony on a pleasant morning (pleasant morning weather is a rarity at Chennai).

Eventually, it became a little ritual/routine for me to make coffee for the both of us. It's hard to impress H with good coffee, it looks like she's more exacting in her taste. Over time, I have learnt that she likes her coffee strong, frothy, and in small portions. The only problem with the Aeropress/Single Moka Pot and the hand grinder coffee setup is that it's a slower process and I am not always the most patient. Perhaps this is for the best and I really can afford to spend another 10 minutes extracting two shots, one at a time, than to upgrade my setup. You have to draw the line somewhere so that you can be an enjoyer of things instead of being a collector of things.

One of my friends had purchased an expensive espresso machine for a few lakhs, and I remember the interesting boy math about how, compared to the alternative of buying a coffee from his local Starbucks, he would actually end up saving money by buying the espresso machine. Soon after, he gave up on the setup altogether and switched back to instant coffee. Like I said, you have to draw the line somewhere.