Dear Reader,
Was it mere chance that brought Baba Budan and the coffee bean, not to east, west or north but south India? Only if you don't have even a dollop of romance in your soul. I'd like to think it was destiny; an inexplicable, subsonic thrum, a collective call with the resonance of "Om" that bubbled and brewed for centuries, needing just a handful of dark, bitter beans to bring it to boil. Lord in heaven, the southern states love filter coffee. And why not? Walk into any (and I mean ANY) south-themed store in India and the smell that envelopes you in a warm embrace is that of ground coffee. Who amongst us doesn't hanker for a warm embrace? One that tastes delicious to boot.
Earthy, metallic, heady, with a promise of sourness, filter coffee is the only "no-bullshit" drink I know. Significant literary paeans have been sung about this lovely brew so I won't add to them. Suffice to say, I still think it's magical how you can add boiling water to a few scoops of dark brown powder in a stainless steel filter pot, wait for the decoction to drip slowly into another chamber, collect the resulting inky liquid in a tumbler, add a bit of hot milk and a dash of sugar to give a diabolical contrary flavour to the bitterness, churn it up into a froth and serve it, not in a palanquin (which a well-made cup of filter coffee deserves) but casually, with nothing more than a plain steel bowl called davarah. Maybe it's better this way; there are no frills when it comes to filter coffee, none of this vulgar latte, grande or foam hearts in mugs and whathaveyou.
I have been going on, what? I'll stop with a little factoid - the sister, who is about as culturally Tamil as I am Phoenician, isn't technically human in the morning until she's had her first mug of that pale European imitator - Nescafe. I mean, you can fight heritage all you want, but QED and all that.
Filter coffee is important. More so at a Tamil wedding. How else can I explain that the hall for my dear cousin's wedding was decided in a week but the question of "who will make coffee for everyone, ferry it to various locations (where relatives were put up) at 5:00 am and 3:00 pm and ensure the container does not run dry during the wedding" took 2 months? My grandmother wasn't the only one nervous about the coffee logistics. It became a talking point amongst the parents of the groom, the extended family, the caterers and who knows, maybe even the caterer's family.
And, it proves fucking handy to distract curmudgeonly relatives when they're holding forth on why I should get married soon, I can tell you. Sure, I'd like to engage them in intelligent conversation about how meeting someone right (loves books, is nice, cuteness and liking cats are bonuses) for me hasn't been the easiest exercise but it's a lot easier to smile sweetly and offer to fetch them a cup of coffee. To the last person, they'd break out into a beam of childlike happiness, nod dreamily and forget what they were going on about. I got to execute a graceful pirouette and exit, stage left.
Anyway, a LOT of folks attended this wedding; not just from different parts of the world but places like Madras, Bangalore and Hyderabad, which was even more significant. My extended family suffers from that most peculiar of afflictions; a marked reluctance to venture into the badlands north of Karnataka coupled with the jolly expectation that us "Bombayites" would take the effort to travel south every time we hankered to meet them.
Some of my family haven't met since 1995. So there.
To be continued.
Song for the moment: Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
Was it mere chance that brought Baba Budan and the coffee bean, not to east, west or north but south India? Only if you don't have even a dollop of romance in your soul. I'd like to think it was destiny; an inexplicable, subsonic thrum, a collective call with the resonance of "Om" that bubbled and brewed for centuries, needing just a handful of dark, bitter beans to bring it to boil. Lord in heaven, the southern states love filter coffee. And why not? Walk into any (and I mean ANY) south-themed store in India and the smell that envelopes you in a warm embrace is that of ground coffee. Who amongst us doesn't hanker for a warm embrace? One that tastes delicious to boot.
Earthy, metallic, heady, with a promise of sourness, filter coffee is the only "no-bullshit" drink I know. Significant literary paeans have been sung about this lovely brew so I won't add to them. Suffice to say, I still think it's magical how you can add boiling water to a few scoops of dark brown powder in a stainless steel filter pot, wait for the decoction to drip slowly into another chamber, collect the resulting inky liquid in a tumbler, add a bit of hot milk and a dash of sugar to give a diabolical contrary flavour to the bitterness, churn it up into a froth and serve it, not in a palanquin (which a well-made cup of filter coffee deserves) but casually, with nothing more than a plain steel bowl called davarah. Maybe it's better this way; there are no frills when it comes to filter coffee, none of this vulgar latte, grande or foam hearts in mugs and whathaveyou.
I have been going on, what? I'll stop with a little factoid - the sister, who is about as culturally Tamil as I am Phoenician, isn't technically human in the morning until she's had her first mug of that pale European imitator - Nescafe. I mean, you can fight heritage all you want, but QED and all that.
Filter coffee is important. More so at a Tamil wedding. How else can I explain that the hall for my dear cousin's wedding was decided in a week but the question of "who will make coffee for everyone, ferry it to various locations (where relatives were put up) at 5:00 am and 3:00 pm and ensure the container does not run dry during the wedding" took 2 months? My grandmother wasn't the only one nervous about the coffee logistics. It became a talking point amongst the parents of the groom, the extended family, the caterers and who knows, maybe even the caterer's family.
And, it proves fucking handy to distract curmudgeonly relatives when they're holding forth on why I should get married soon, I can tell you. Sure, I'd like to engage them in intelligent conversation about how meeting someone right (loves books, is nice, cuteness and liking cats are bonuses) for me hasn't been the easiest exercise but it's a lot easier to smile sweetly and offer to fetch them a cup of coffee. To the last person, they'd break out into a beam of childlike happiness, nod dreamily and forget what they were going on about. I got to execute a graceful pirouette and exit, stage left.
Anyway, a LOT of folks attended this wedding; not just from different parts of the world but places like Madras, Bangalore and Hyderabad, which was even more significant. My extended family suffers from that most peculiar of afflictions; a marked reluctance to venture into the badlands north of Karnataka coupled with the jolly expectation that us "Bombayites" would take the effort to travel south every time we hankered to meet them.
Some of my family haven't met since 1995. So there.
To be continued.
Song for the moment: Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
Comments