KAAPI!

Its wonderful aroma wafts through the air molecules and sinks in to the system while people get up to get their fixes. Or some others wait sleepy eyed at canteens or the roadside shops for that one cup of pure ecstasy. Yes I'm talking abt coffee, or as we call in our dear old madras filter kaapi.

Like a typical madrasi, I cannot function in the morning without my cup of filter kaapi. . But till date most of the time when I wake up in the morning there is amma handing me a cuppa. But when mom isn't in town, the wait in the morning is like pure torture. The wonderful aroma, the sounds of the sizzling hot water poured into the filter and of the milk boiling over is what gives you a jump start to the day. when I was younger amma always took me along to buy the coffee from "Leo coffee house" in Usman rd. Those huge coffee bean grinders never failed to fascinate me. The utter casualness with which the coffee beans were poured into the grinders and the seeming ease with which the grinders crushed the coffee beans into "kaapi podi" always unfailingly left me awed. I miss that! These days we buy the coffee powder in packets.

CCD has this tagline "A lot can happen over coffee". I agree. Although honestly one doesn't really get the same rush or enjoyment with a cup of cappuccino or an espresso served in mugs or cups and saucers. What we need is the good old davara and tumbler..Piping hot coffee in the glass which would be poured back and forth into and out of the davara for the coffee to slightly cool – just that wee bit so that the coffee did not end up burning ones palate.

Sometimes when we are at the beach we walk to this tiny shack and order a 'by-two kaapi'. The sad part is that nowhere else do you feel that love, that feeling of contentment not even when you're sitting in comfy cushions out of the sweltering heat at Barista or Mocha. It's when you hit a shack, order a by-two kaapi, sit on the wooden bench, stretch your legs, pour that coffee into the saucer-like cup, sip, and talk -- you say "aaah there we are!"

And what prompted this post? The debate if the world coffee chain conglomerate - Starbucks would soon come to India. As a self-confessed coffee junkie, I say there is no way they can ever replace my shtrong filter kaapi.