Coffee, Tea and me!

A conversation on coffee art on canvas with a close relative of mine inspired me to pen my love for the brew. The discussion was actually about the shades of brown coffee could take and how concentrated it should be. I thought to myself there couldn’t be a better time to write about coffee than, when the mother of all coffee shops (as in shops serving coffee, not to be confused with their Dutch cousins) recent entry promising to serve India with a coffee passion of 40 years. A 40 year old company bringing the coffee experience to a country which has known, brewed and tasted coffee since the 1700’s!!!

Any show of love for the brew by a Syrian Christian from Central Travancore was always looked upon with disdain amongst my tribe. A Malayalee was invariably associated with tea in Madras, the place were I had my early bearing. Thanks to the numerous tea shops run by the Nair immigrants (or as the legend goes), every street corner teashop was known by the generic Nairkada irrespective of the role a Nair played in it. Hence, a malayalee drank only tea was an unwritten edict in Madras.

Having been brought up in and around Triplicane and later on in Besant Nagar I was fortunate to be living close to Tambram community in Madras. This was instrumental in me being baptised a coffee drinker which still continues to be the preferred non alcoholic beverage. However, what I was initiated to was the filter kappi served in a davara and tumbler and during my younger days I always thought that coffee should only be served with the open end facing downwards. Growing in Triplicane the aroma that wafted through the air during a walk past a Leo Coffee outlet, the legendary coffee bean and powder retailer brings about an olfactory hallucination in me even after decades. Not sure how many of you remember this piece of trivia, the BG score for the Leo ad is what catapulted Oscar award winning musician A R Rahman to fame. Today Leo Coffee has diversified into pepper, cardamom, mineral water and even bananas religiously following the Ansoff’s matrix.

In my opinion Starbucks should have launched their India campaign from Mysore as a symbolic gesture and as a tribute to Baba Budan who managed to carry seven coffee beans out of the Yemeni Port of Mocha all the way to Mysore, and you thought all along, that Mocha was a suave name for a coffee shop and coffee was the invention of the Tambram community of South India.

The filter itself is a device that could shame the top 10 coffee maker manufacturers of today with respect to the quality of the end product. The decoction or the filtrate that trickled to the lower levels of the filter by gravity along with 2 spoons of milk kept your spirits high until dawn the next day. Probably that’s why a spoon was never named a coffee spoon. You always added couple of spoons of milk to filter coffee and not the other way around. The quality of the decoction was also a function of the mix of the quality and quantity of the pea berry and chicory that made the coffee powder. In fact the legend goes that the older matrons of the Tambram community could actually smell the brew and detect the precise ratio of pea berry, its type, and chicory akin to smelling your way to differentiate a Glenfliddich Single Malt 18 year from a 12 Year old.

The Baristas, the Mochas, and the Starbucks have all sprung up as social hangouts where one can meet over a coffee but never for a coffee. In all these outlets the taste and the aroma are secondary it neither leaves your buds wanting more nor does it kindle your olfactory.

Lastly, I cannot thank my mom enough for making this experience of tasting filter coffee each time I travel to Madras, I can be sure a cup of filter coffee awaits me at 4 am which is normally the time I land in Madras which incidentally is the most appropriate time of the day to taste your first brew with the strains of suprabatham from the neighbour’s finding its way to your ears.