The Sexual Tension Between an Average Urban Indian and His Cup of Coffee
Like every self-respecting millennial whose diet consists of a daily recommended dose of popular culture, I am obliged to explain my non-platonic relationship with coffee in the form of a meme. If we consider a list of overused yet effective productivity hacks — a short walk fires up a bunch of my neurons to resemble blinking Christmas lights, a 20-minute nap illuminates my mind to look like India as observed by NASA astronauts on Diwali eve, but a strong cup of coffee releases radiant strobes of light from my brain, blinding onlookers like my mom’s cellphone brightness would inside a dimly-lit room. In other words, I like coffee — it turns me on.
But let’s face it, coffee has never been accepted as a household staple in India, playing second fiddle to chai across the length and breadth of our country (except maybe a few pockets in the south). Decades of being taken for granted has conferred the status of ‘beverage mistress’ to the lovely coffee, as opposed to the ideal housewife that is tea. Most Indians wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee when they step out but their heart lies with the trusty tea, a drink they swear by and tend to break their fasts with. This deplorable treatment has broken the spirit of coffee several times, causing her to reinvent herself time and again in an attempt to capture a higher share of our throat. While there is no personal animosity between her and tea, coffee has just never understood the step-sisterly treatment India has meted out to her. Surely there have been enough makeovers to catch our attention?
As with at least half the problems in world history, the blame for India’s tea drinking habit lies squarely with the British. Their obsession with the beverage is legendary and as the London elite kept manufacturing occasions to consume it, India became their personal tea garden. Kolkata’s high society picked it up in no time, and before long Irani chai became popular on the other coast in Bombay. A lesser known fact is that Mahatma Gandhi had opposed tea consumption, labeling it an intoxicant in the same class as tobacco. Had his non-cooperation protests featured tea instead of salt, one wonders what the state of tea consumption in the country would be today. Perhaps we would have followed America, another British colony, who inspired by the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party became a coffee drinking nation. In an alternate universe, this article’s title would have been slightly different.
For a coffee traditionalist, it is disheartening to see newfangled marketing gimmicks depriving coffee of her core essence — that of a strong, smooth and rich beverage, equally adept at caressing us and kicking our butts. The central tenet is that coffee is a simple indulgence and doesn’t require the bells and whistles we’ve come to witness of late. But if our nation does not appreciate its simplicity, coffee is not averse to playing dress up. A whole spectrum of businesses, from artisanal bistros to international café chains, have all come forward with ideas that would potentially transform coffee’s perception and mend her flimsy relationship with the Indian populace. Bold expressions of flavor, eccentric packaging tricks, elaborate brewing contraptions, subtle variations in base notes — there have been many tweaks in the approach, some more successful than others. It is obvious that no amount of window dressing can compete with the deep-rooted instinct that is awakened by the first sip of a caffeinated beverage. At the intersection of an excellent product and a transcendent experience lies the elusive emotion of hitting the spot. Safe to say that brands have been unable to capture this yet. But the sexual tension between an average urban Indian and his cup of coffee is growing. It is only a matter of time until Crush, Tear, Curl is what coffee does to Indian tea consumption.
The Journey of a Drinker
Over several years of loosely-monitored milk+coffee intake, my brain had started to develop hefty defenses against the caffeine onslaught. Like every stimulant messing with the natural chemical composition of our body, coffee requires increased dosage to maintain stimulation levels. For a consistent intake, my dopamine secretion tapered, adenosine receptor generation increased to counter caffeine’s sleep-inhibition effect, and the adrenaline just didn’t hit me anymore. So I did what I had to — I embraced the abyss that is black coffee. And during my transition from sweet, milk-forward, bournvita-substitute, harmless coffee to dark roasted, punk/emo phase, dirty-bean-water coffee, I realized I was feeding a monster. I wasn’t always like this.
My intense love affair with coffee, which later turned into a parasitic relationship, began as an adorable tale of a five-year old child spending a vacation on a coffee estate in Yercaud with parents. It shifted gears to a mildly unhealthy story of a schoolboy revenge drinking coffee to spite his sister, and later to chugging double-coffees at his college canteen while working on late-night assignments.
Like most blue-eyed boys, my descent into this madness was slow and gradual, and forced by circumstance. This journey began as an act of defiance to my sister’s revolting tea drinking habits in school. She would crush all kinds of nasty roots and spices into a dirt-colored broth and boil the devil out of it, causing nauseating fumes to permeate our small apartment. Then she would creep up behind me as I sat commanding my G.I. Joe action figures into battle, and breathe right into my face. The overpowering smell used to drive me crazy, and I vowed to never as much as inhale those stomach-turning vapors in my life again. To rebel against adults indulging in strong-smelling adult beverages, I found repose for my stung soul in the magic powder of instant coffee. Much later in life I found myself sitting across a Marwadi truck fleet operator in west Kolkata as a summer intern at Tata Motors. He had just decided to stop buying our trucks and I was sent to investigate. Though he didn’t look as menacing as I had feared, his first sentence made my insides churn— “We won’t talk business until you drink our tea”. What followed were the most excruciating ten minutes of my life, after which he went on to massacre the engine, clutch and gear in our new range of trucks for a solid 30 minutes. My palate destroyed and ego bruised, I visited another fleet owner later the same day, further up the Kona Expressway towards Howrah. The tea story repeated itself. Twice on the same day. I needed six months of rehab to recover from this trauma.
With a steady income flow came the social pressure of upgrading my lifestyle, and mine spiraled into one of vice and debauchery when I purchased my South Indian filter and French Press, and then got gifted a Black+Decker drip coffee maker within the space of a month. It was like donating a vineyard to an alcoholic.
In my years as a serial coffee philanderer who wouldn’t think twice flirting with any pedestrian cup of coffee for a cheap dopamine hit or an extra half hour of productive work, I have seen and sampled Indian coffee trends up close. Now on a steady three-cups-a-day diet, I have been to cloud cuckoo land and back. But it is interesting to dissect the behaviors of fellow coffee drinkers, and how brands and trends mix to create momentary flashes in a carafe.
The Journey of a Drink
To understand the composition of the Venn diagram that would represent urban India’s relationship with tea and coffee, I conducted a quick survey among friends and acquaintances. While barely statistically-significant and with an obvious sampling bias, I found that 40% of my friends prefer coffee outright, and another 40% consume both beverages with a clear preference for tea if asked to choose. A negligible amount stick to just tea. And a pitiful few dismiss both. Clearly, this author runs in very exalted circles with the most refined taste cultivation possible. Despite the psychological toll of surviving among the crème de la crème of Indian society, the author was grounded enough to dismiss the results as non-representative of the whole country. A 2019 YouGov India poll (results below) flew in the face of my findings, but did not mention if these were all urban consumers, nor did it shed light on the preferred beverage if a person drank both. Crucially, it did not help us decode the troubled, uneasy relationship an average urban Indian has with coffee.
When data proved inconclusive, I fell back on a more potent source — my life experience peppered with a host of cognitive biases. A couple of hypotheses were hashed together to better understand the characteristics of coffee drinkers in urban India today.
- There are two distinct types of coffee drinkers basis their focus during the consumption process — the ones who prioritize the experience, and others who put product front and centre.
- For the packaged deal that coffee brings: a tasty beverage with formidable stimulating effects, there are two factions depending on the primary payoff sought — the ones after the coffee flavor, and others seeking the stimulation.
Coffee as a Steroid
Legend has it that an Ethiopian goatherd observed his flock nibble on a fruit one day and turn into raging insomniacs that night. That fruit’s astonishing powers were spread far and wide, and today help billions of humans transform from demented lions woken up mid-slumber into docile cats nodding serenely on 9 am Zoom calls.
There is a huge section of coffee drinkers who partake in the drug-laced mudwater exclusively for its invigorating effects — a classic case of friends with benefits. These are no-nonsense instant coffee drinkers who will stare at their inflated grocery bills quizzically when they mistakenly order Nescafé Gold instead of their usual Nescafé Sunrise. These are folks who wouldn’t recognize a premium coffee if it slapped them in the face, and probably think that Chicory is a type of coffee bean. But don’t underestimate their capacity for copious consumption of colossal cups of coffee, never mind that they would just start snorting the powder if they could. For this group, likely raised on a strict no-tea, no-coffee diet as kids, discovering an artificial stimulant meant nothing more than a mental crutch on difficult mornings. They would start inhaling cardboard tomorrow if scientists discovered it had caffeine. Their go-to order is a Nescafé or Bru Classic instant coffee in a liquid solvent of choice — water, milk or leftover tomato soup, they honestly couldn’t care less. At a café, they appear confused when asked if they would like a cappuccino or a latte.
“I’ll just take a normal coffee, thank you.”
“No sir, you have to order from the menu.”
“I just want some coffee inside some milk, thanks.”
“You’re not understanding, sir.”
“Actually, I’ll just have a glass of water.”
Awkward.
Coffee as a Sharbat
A subsect thriving within the larger group of people in an open relationship with both tea and coffee are the infidels who drink coffee as a sharbat. Their beverage of choice is most likely the tea — a familiar drink they grew up with and now cannot do without. But somewhere along the way, they had a few wild nights. Coffee became a mistress, a second-choice beverage they will happily consume on one-off occasions.
They love the smell of coffee and will jump in excitement when they spot cute, little bottles of flavored instant coffee in supermarkets — the whackier the flavor, the better. Irish Hazelnut, French Vanilla and Crème Brûlée are all standard, but they are sure Pickled Garlic and Raw Mango flavors will be out soon. These first-generation coffee-drinkers like to think they love the drink, but they actually love the idea of coffee more. This wonderfully misguided population also drives the sales for exotic items like coffee-infused vodka, candles and e-cigarettes. Their go-to order is a pack of six 50 gm bottles of assorted flavored coffee with natural additives for building immunity.
An erstwhile co-worker of mine loved asking me to find a better couple than the Mumbai monsoon and a cup of coffee. I enjoyed pandering to him, until on his last day at work I got him a gift box of ground coffee samples for his home brewing kit as a farewell present. He looked at me confused — “What do you mean I can’t drink this directly? I always carry my coffee with me.” And when he showed me a pocket bottle of RAGE Creamy Caramel instant coffee, it was my time to look confused and betrayed.
Coffee as a Vibe
You know a beverage is iconic when it creates a legion of global fans who may not necessarily care for the product itself, but are absolutely smitten with its vibe. Coffee has sparked a lifestyle through its associations with a cozy ambiance in a hole-in-the-wall café, free-flowing conversation among friends, a veritable presence among the instantly desirable book-fireplace-rain-couch combo that the Danish describe with the word ‘hygge’, among many such scenarios that can be neatly summed up with #goodvibes. More than igniting a passion for coffee, café-culture has triggered an ineffable desire to co-opt the lifestyle associated with coffee-drinkers, particularly among the millennials and Gen Z.
Picture a raucous bunch of sixteen year-olds with gelled hair and tote bags congregating at the long centre-table at every Starbucks café, pretending to “collaborate” for a group project but actually just uploading Instagram stories of the Venti cups featuring their misspelled names. Why are they sticking around for hours and for heaven’s sake why are they so loud? These are the self-appointed connoisseurs of coffee-as-a-vibe in their natural habitats, helping fulfill the true purpose of a café as the mythical third place between work/school and home. At home, they probably drink their mom’s masala chai, but their “coffee in the streets, tea in the sheets” lifestyle is not duplicitous. They are proud to show off coffee as their girlfriend on social media, even though they will eventually marry tea in a quiet arranged ceremony later.
These outspoken lovers order frappuccinos with whipped cream but probably wouldn’t notice if the barista forgot to add a shot of coffee in their drinks. In October, they order Pumpkin Spiced Lattes because it is like tasting a feeling in a cup. To walk in their shoes, I gave in to the hype and purchased a tall PSL when I once had a few hours to kill in Gurgaon’s DLF Cyber City. It was a 7 minute wait in the queue, a 3 minute wait as the barista prepared my order with her customary flourish, and a 15 second delay between the moment the rim of the cup touched my lip and the bottom of the cup hit the waste bin outside Starbucks.
Coffee as Theater
The fourth and final quadrant of coffee-drinkers are comprised of upwardly-mobile urban Indians who want to appear knowledgeable about coffee because their manager’s manager who lives in the US mentioned that he likes his pour-over at 93 degree Celsius. They are most likely to invest in industrial-grade brewing equipment and invite friends over for coffee cocktails and serve almond biscotti as chakhna. Their consultant friends will bring nondescript ground coffee labeled as ‘Colombian’ or ‘Kenyan’, or worse ‘Omani’, in vacuum-sealed bags for them when they visit on weekends. In offices, you will spot them fretting over the perpetually-dysfunctional coffee machine serving rancid effluent as coffee, and wondering aloud if they should just order in a cold brew. A colleague offering spray-dried instant coffee will be immediately dismissed as a spittle-drinking neanderthal because obviously freeze-dried is the only acceptable form of instant coffee, if there is even such a thing. They will cry blasphemy if a nincompoop as much as utters mixing cream or sugar into their single-origin brewed-to-perfection coffee — “would you add Pepsi to a Yamazaki single malt, you fool?”
They look for terms like ‘sparkling acidity’ and ‘fruity notes’ while buying coffee on specialty websites, and talk about sharing a personal rapport with the tattooed entrepreneur running the hipster café in their neighborhood, which is so Instagram-worthy by the way. But these guys don’t visit such cafés frequently — no, they brew their coffee at home, thank you. Their go-to drink is a single-origin pour-over cup of black coffee extracted from sustainably sourced beans from Guatemalan rainforests whose plantation owner is personally available to sing for them on a video call, if they need that. For them, coffee is their trophy wife.
It would be a travesty to exclude the now ubiquitous South Indian filter coffee ritual from Coffee-as-Theater. A close Bangalore-born friend of mine described his childhood memories of waking up to the wafting aroma of freshly brewed filter coffee. His family was as particular about the percentage of chicory in their coffee blend as they were about their son becoming an engineer. The elaborate act of cooling the hot, frothy liquid with a 120 cm gap between the tumbler and dabarah is nothing short of a performance, and in this sense every South Indian coffee drinker is an artist. This same friend moved to London a few years ago for his MBA and texted me when he purchased a syphon coffee maker because he missed his school chemistry lab. When I told him I’d send him beans for his new set-up, he stopped me — “Dei, I’m getting only Nicaraguan coffee grounds please da.”
I consider myself to be firmly within this group of coffee drinkers, and would be lying if I said I wasn’t more likely to look for a magic trick inside my coffee than coffee inside my coffee. The other drinking types like to mock us for our perceived snootiness, but we’re really sorry if our passion shows.
During my extended stay with the parents in the ongoing pandemic, I included my 65-year old father in the sacred morning ritual of coffee preparation. While a traditional tea-drinker, he enjoys the occasional coffee. But it was clear his participation was more an act of father-son bonding than anything else. One day, after a particularly fine pot of brew, I told him to slurp and appreciate how “full-bodied” the beverage was. He sipped and nodded earnestly, but the next morning when I gave him a glass of canned apple juice he asked me innocently if that was “full-bodied” as well. I gave him an eye-roll in the moment and the bottom sludge from my coffee carafe from then on. Filial love and all is okay but insulting good coffee is sacrilegious.
Fin.
