Coffee, Tea, Me

It is 6.00 in the evening and I am having my fourth cup of coffee. Coffee as coffee. The reason why I am saying coffee as coffee is that it has become a much abused drink these days. Most of the parlours give you so called exotic varieties in coffee - espresso, cappuccino, mocha and so on. As Denis Leary said you can get every other flavour except coffee-flavoured coffee! For instance do you know the difference between a "Flat White and a Caffe Latte?" Honestly I don’t… even after drinking them :)

There are consumers who are always ordering mutant coffees with names like "mocha-almond-honey-vinaigrette latte-espressacino"... beverages that must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products prepared from what appears to be a small nuclear reactor.

The reason why I need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes me alert. Of course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and, like any drug, it is a lot of fun. Bob Irwin said "Decaffeinated coffee is kind of like kissing your sister." I agree and if it’s decaffeinated, I would settle for some other drug – opium, heroin…

I can do nothing useful before I've had several cups of this magic brew. (I can't do anything useful afterward, either; that's why I'm writing this blog.) The Kumbakonam (City of Temples in Tamilnadu) Degree Coffee is the best. That too when it is served in Pithalai (Brass) Tumbler and Davaraa (saucer like). Some time back in one of the MNC offices I got my coffee from a vending machine that also sold hot chocolate and noodle soup; all three liquids squirted out of a single tube, and when I tried them individually they tasted pretty much the same. Abraham Lincoln is credited to have remarked “If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee”.

This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far. I say this in light of a news item I read that there is an expensive coffee by the name Kopi Luwak. It states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a "member of the weasel family" that lives on the Island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a "natural fermentation" takes place, and the berry seeds -- the coffee beans -- come out of the luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs. I will be the last person on this planet who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal's digestive tract. In case any one of you readers have tasted this excreta coffee… ney… exotic coffee Luwak, please enlighten me about it!