A cup full of Beans!

French statesman Talleyrand has truly said: “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”
Smell it and you would like to devour it…or just be so mesmerized to let it flow down your throat slowly and gradually….till it’s in your system and you feel as if you have never been so awake in the whole day!! Just a cup of hot coffee makes such a difference!!
It’s a ritual for many of us every day - the reasons might be many – to ward off sleep or just for the taste of it or to share a late afternoon office gossip.
It is of course not a cup of tea for non-coffee lovers - its simply bitter liquid which would be better off in the dust-bin! But talk to the babus in the government offices in the southern part of India and “coffee” has many faithful lovers – its almost in competition of sorts with their wives. It’s the cocaine of the day- with drugs not allowed at the office premise – ask a coffee addict and he will surely agree!!
I got the real taste when I migrated to this “then-beautiful” city of the ‘then Bangalore’ – when the coffee vendor at my office used to pass through the cubicles at exact 3 pm (it was like a wake up alarm of our post-lunch siesta) – offering us ‘filter-coffee’ in steel glasses. No vending machines – no plastic/paper cups – no adulteration – but just pure coffee pleasure!!! And since then – I have been a coffee lover – be it filter/instant – any unadulterated form!
Coffee, was originated in Ethiopia(where to start with the coffee beans were chewed) and traveled all the way to India in the middle 1600s with the hills of Karnataka being the largest coffee producer today in our country. Bangalore surely boasts of a happening coffee culture with the many ‘Café Coffee days’ and ‘Baristas’ opening even in the far-flung areas – surely we see a lot more happening over coffee these days! It has undisputedly taken in the international look (as well as price!) like any other thing in Bangalore – with the Hawaiian/Kenyan Safari flavors doing their best.
Travel to places around Bangalore – such as Coorg or Chikmaglur or the like and you find this drink in its purest form – a coffee connoisseur can have a time of his life. It undoubtedly connects us back to our history - least affected by the so-called distortion in the name of growth and development. I call this culture because it has changed with us but not lost its authenticity…hope we can say the same about Bangalore in years to come.