Have you finished your tea?” I asked my friend while talking to her over phone one evening. Suddenly, I realised my mistake and apologised. As I said sorry repeatedly, she laughed out loud. I was aware that she neither took coffee nor tea, but had asked the question forgetting that. “I can skip my breakfast, lunch or dinner, but it is impossible to skip coffee in the morning and tea in the evening as it would make me feel lethargic,” I admitted.
My friend explained that she too had the habit of drinking coffee regularly and that on days she did not, she suffered severe headache, and so, had decided to put an end to the habit altogether. In between our conversation, an incident which had happened nearly 60 years ago, came back to my mind.
Coffee holds an important position in Brahmin families. Typical procedures are followed to prepare the drink: frying coffee seeds carefully, keeping it in a closed container, then powdering the seeds in a hand machine. Coffee would be made the next morning using milk, sugar and boiled water.
Our old neighbours were a joint family of four brothers. The eldest brother, a lawyer, had a daughter called Rohini. When she was 12-years-old, she was hit by lightning while returning from school and lost her eyesight. The entire family had gone into a state of shock.
Within a few years, Rohini’s father died of a heart attack. The wife, Parvathy, was upset, but for her daughter’s sake, managed to survive. A certain aunt did not like Rohini. “She needs help for everything,” she kept complaining. Rohini was very fond of coffee and Parvathy assumed that she got the habit from her father.
Once, in Parvathy’s absence, Rohini asked her aunt for coffee. The aunt prepared it in a tumbler and gave it to Rohini, who dropped the searing tumbler onto the floor. The aunt complained to her husband that Rohini had thrown the tumbler on purpose as she had prepared the coffee. He got annoyed and slapped Rohini in front of Parvathy, who consoled her daughter.
After the incident, Parvathy asked Rohini if she could stop drinking coffee. Rohini was disappointed and said, “How is it possible to put an end to something I have loved since childhood?”
Later, when problems increased between the family members, Parvathy moved to her parents house. Their memories and untimely death often bring tears to our eyes.