In Love With Coffee

I don’t remember drinking milk as a child. Early morning reminiscences of my childhood are that of my father waking up me and my brother, sometimes in a cajoling way and sometimes otherwise, we both dragging our legs to brush and then when once we are done, drinking a big steel glass full of coffee prepared by my mother.

Health drinks like Horlicks, Viva were never my cup of drink. It was always coffee and that too a big glass full. In fact, I never had the habit of eating any breakfast, all I had in the morning is coffee. I remember my mother using a big filter in the early days and later a percolator for making the decoction. There were days when we used to get up early for some reason and then wait for the milkman to deliver the milk so that we could drink coffee. Over a period of time, although the habit of consuming coffee continued, the quantity of consumption has comedown remarkably. I started consuming one third of what I used to consume earlier.

Years later, in the later part of nineties, I had to stop coffee consumption owing to health reasons. I was having this acute acidity problem because of obesity and was advised not to drink coffee. Although I was a regular consumer of coffee, I did not have any trouble in stopping it at the same time it didn't mean that my love for coffee was lost. Meanwhile I went to US, the largest consumer of coffee in the world, the country which brewed different coffees like Latte, Mocha etc. Out of my one year stay in US there was only one occasion in which I drank coffee. I happened to only hear praises for Starbucks coffee, never got to taste and make myself. Although I didn't completely do away with consuming coffee, my coffee drinking has become anecdotal over a period of time and every time I tried drinking some, it gave me acidity.

Seven long years have passed from 1998 to 2005 without consuming coffee. In the mean time, I got married. My wife is an avid tea consumer but not coffee, although she occasionally enjoyed coffee. Unlike my dad’s place, where your mornings are filled with aroma of filter coffee, our evenings at my home are generally filled with the aroma of ginger tea. Since there were no coffee drinkers, we never got into the habit of making coffee at home on a regular basis. I bought a coffee filter from Coffee Day, to be used during my dad's visit to my place.

Over a period of time, the acidity problem gradually lessened and after I started putting down weight, I practically didn't have it. Proximity of coffee bars like Barista and Coffee Day to my office made me to start enjoying coffee occasionally. After a couple of months, I stopped consuming tea in the morning and started having coffee, as days passed by I did away with tea in the evenings and replaced it with coffee.

My dad's last visit to Hyderabad was the final kick start to regain the habit of preparing and enjoying coffee at home. It is a practice that we make coffee at our place during my dad's stay, but me and my wife continued it even after he left. The situation today is we are consuming around two kilograms of coffee powder in a month and are drinking coffee both morning and evening. The final stroke in this episode is that, my wife discontinued her habit of drinking tea and is now drinking coffee three times a day, which only reminds me of my dad's words that no drink equals coffee's taste.