It was the last day of my 10th grade board exam, after which I was supposed to be free. At least that is what I was told, the biggest lie of my life. I was pretty done by then and so I didn’t pay attention to what was termed as “revision” in that era, through the day. Jitters and anxiety had the best of me by the time it was night and so in my best effort, I sat down for my revision. I was so distracted and now I realise, I was frankly disinterested. You may wonder how all this is related to my cup of coffee? It is, it is. This understanding came to me very recently. Anyways, and so that happened to be my first night where I stayed up all through the night to study for my board exams. I think my son will have a much more exciting story about his first night up than me. Morning arrived perfectly in time and so did the day of my exam. My mother was making her coffee and much to her surprise she understood I haven’t slept all night when she saw me all groggy. To keep me awake and alert for the final exam, she handed me my first cup of coffee. Frothed perfectly, in a very desi way, hot and strong. It smelled like nothing I had experienced before. Exactly in that moment with my first sip, I fell in love….. with coffee. Mum didn’t hand me just a cup of coffee, but a legacy. Clearly in my family, either you are a coffee person or a cha person. My mothers family has been a coffee loving - drinking family for a couple of generations. And that is how I always remember my first cup of coffee, extremely special.
Instant coffee, that’s all I knew then. Which surprises me a little, knowing that partially my roots are from South of India - coffee land and air too ;) I grew up not knowing any better than what I saw around me. Of Course the way I made my coffee differed over time. Milk reduced, no sugar, more coffee, more water, lesser milk. Everything to make the perfect hug in the mug. Till one day, I stopped having milk and so coffee became black. Of course long before I switched to Kenyan coffee, which offered only coffee and not every other variety of food products under its name unlike my previous coffee brand, yet instant. One day, instead of the instant coffee, I had the ground coffee sent to me by someone from the same coffee brand. The reason being, this came in multi laminated plastic instead of the tin. So logistics made it easy. I was pretty confused about how to make my coffee and about a decade ago neither were there many brewing apparatus available around home, nor did we have a very elaborate coffee culture. Of course I experimented a lot and eventually fed them to my plants. They were happy and I was too, since I got to inhale coffee all the time. My curiosity had the best of me, but I still continued with my instant coffee. It was a ritual that I would boast about, I sleep walk to the kitchen and make my coffee with my eyes closed. I couldn’t wait a moment extra for it to be ready and would only wake up after having my first sip. So the name instant coffee suited well. Hustling had become secondary to nature or the nature of life, maybe.
It wasn’t until a few years ago, and oddly enough unlike my first coffee, I dont exactly recall how or when I switched to freshly brewed coffee and had the South Indian filter at home. The oldest apparatus in Indian households. Did a friend gift it to me? Suggest it? Don't remember.
One winter early morning, quiet and dark as I am brewing my coffee, waiting there patiently (yes, that’s the big switch) the aroma of coffee filled the air in the house. In the silence of early morning, I could hear each drop collect in the container at the bottom. It was an experience so soothing to my soul and music to my ears. I had never felt so much appreciation for the process and the time it allowed me to observe and feel grateful for small things around me, in my life, in nature, in the neighbourhood, in my wild imaginations. Those few moments are the ones I started looking forward to as much as my cup of coffee and my time with it. When I am asked ‘how do you take your coffee?’ I like to say, ‘seriously, very seriously’.
The sound of the extraction collecting in the container, the aroma of coffee, the steam from the cup and the feeling with the first sip of coffee, everytime is magical. Brewing coffee is meditative. I only know, because I manually brew my coffee and the switch from instant coffee is like switching from living in an urgency culture to slow and conscious living. And now, it has been a while that I have collected and enjoyed brewing coffee in different ways.
I have also tried roasting coffee, just because there were some green coffee beans that were at home (don't ask me how? Our house is blessed with love that keeps coming from all around) and I failed at it pretty much. And eventually learnt where i went wrong. Not only that, I now freshly hand grind the coffee beans each time i brew a cup, because I am a handcrafter after all :) I get to buy my coffee beans in my own container, which btw has an identity of its own with everyone at the shop. So no packaging waste there at all.
Eventually I had a lot of coffee grinds I was left behind with. One day, I was just too bored to feed my plants or the compost bin. So I decided to just rub it on my skin instead of my homemade bath powder. And boy! I was mighty pleased with the results.
Today as I finally write this while having my cup of coffee, it amazes me on how brewing a cup of coffee helped me slow down and how slowing down in my life made it even more beautiful, fulfilling. All thanks to my cup of coffee!!!!
So, how do you take your coffee? What’s your story? What inspired you in life?
