Not so simple as tea or coffee!

JS Raghavan

Ever since the Abyssinian goatherd minding his sheep accidentally discovered that coffee seeds, which the lambs nibbled, were reason why they would frisk, gambol, and more importantly, look less sheepish, a drink of coffee has been making most of its votaries go after that beverage like dumb sheep. A gentleman, who will be otherwise jovial and friendly, will be simmering with a short fuse, or seething with red-hot rage, if he had not been served coffee first thing in the morning.

There was a time when coffee enjoyed unchallenged monopoly among the upper and middle echelons of society in Tamil Nadu. If tea was offered injudiciously, it would be construed as a veiled insult, abuse, snub, rebuff or affront. The quality of coffee served by a host (read hostess) will place the server in an upper rung on the social ladder. During the boy-meets-girl ritual of yore, the matter may not be taken forward even if the bride-to-be looked like an amalgam of the celestial lovelies Ramba, Urvasi, Menaka and Tilottama, due to the faux pas committed by the bride’s family in serving tea — never mind if it was brewed from top-drawer Darjeeling leaves that even Queen Elizabeth would have condescended to sip with royal grace.

When I was young, the Tea Board, which had perhaps resolved to propagate tea in Madras (now Chennai), sent a van around the city, offering free cups of piping-hot tea to wean away the coffee drinkers. Tea was considered by those with stiff upper (and lower) lip as a lowly beverage, served in glass tumblers, which the blue-collar workers enjoyed, followed up with a beedi. Arguably, and uncharitably, tea was for the brawn, coffee was for the brain!

Gallons and gallons of coffee and tea might have passed through many epiglottis since. Tea has now come up big, acquiring equal status. Hostesses ask the guests’ preference, ‘coffee or tea?’ without inviting ire; and also ask a supplementary, ‘with or without sugar?’, as depletion of bodily insulin has become a national shortage.

A ‘double’ strong coffee requires as much skill to prepare as it requires to drink. It should be darkish-brown in colour, with a surfeit of froth embellishing the top. Liberal ingestion of milk makes it look anaemic and ergo fit to be drunk by the washbasin.

There are a few ground rules on brewing good coffee. My granny had taught me the art of preparing a tumbler of authentic Kumbakonam coffee in an early morning ritual. I still keep it guarded the way Coke formula is kept. As a tailpiece, the ultimate insult to a waiter can be paraphrased in the outburst of the customer who barked, ‘Waiter, if this is coffee, bring me tea. If tea, bring me coffee!’

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