A few days back, a reader shared the joys of drinking coffee. These days you find many Kumbakonam stalls serving hot filter coffee in brass tumbler-dawara sets. In those days, most Brahmin households did not buy coffee powder. Raw beans were sold in outlets managed by the Coffee Board. The prices kept varying as per the auction rates. Invariably, I was tasked with cycling to the depot to get the beans.
My grandmother would roast the beans. Roasting the beans in an iron vessel was an art in itself. These were then stored in airtight glass jars. Every morning, the coffee ritual would start. All homes had a hand-held machine to ground the roasted beans. The powder would be ground for only that day. Its quality had to be perfect—neither too soft nor too hard. The fresh powder would then be filtered in a stainless steel filter to get the first decoction of the highest quality.
By the time this was ready, my father and grandfather would also be ready to start the day with their first coffee. To the decoction, milk, supplied by the milkman in the early morning, would be added.
We children, the lesser mortals, would have coffee from the decoction filtered the second time. No more than one cup, because once this “coffee kadai” was over, the womenfolk had to get the meal ready before my father and children left for school. The last cup was for our domestic help who had been with us for decades. Her name was Lakshmi. We started calling this last cup ‘Lakshmi coffee’. In later years, when my wife used to refuse an additional cup, I used to plead for at least Lakshmi coffee.
At times when you didn’t get pea berry beans, you had to manage with robusta beans, the lower quality. With the first taste itself, the menfolk will find out that the beans are not of correct quality. In my aunt’s house, my uncle who was a doctor started the day with his morning coffee and the crossword of the day published in the newspaper. He relished the coffee with foam, which he would create while mixing sugar. All espressos have to bow down in front of his coffee.
Today, the Coffee Board also runs coffee houses in select towns. Veterans frequent these places to drink the best coffee and discuss the good and not-so-good events in life. One such joint in Delhi is frequented by politicians. We can indeed say that coffee culture has fuelled Indian polity for many years.
R V S Mani
Email: colonel.rvs@gmail.com