What is the connection between tam- brahms and the above mentioned beverage?? Is it some kind of unexplainable link that we are born with? A curse…no no…it can never be a curse…a divine blessing, I presume. The exhilarating feeling it gives when we have one Davara full of filter kapi along with Hindu newspaper is out of the world! A day never goes perfectly without the above combination
The aroma of the coffee powder drifting from the Raja Coffee house in C.Pettai main road itself gives me a high! My paaTi had a huge selection procedure when it comes to buying it from any coffee shop. No..not those fancy CCDs or Baristas where they give you froth laden, creamy, water with coffee powder sprinklers, but those where you get coffee beans and powders for daily usage. C.Pettai has 3 main coffee shops and a couple of other smaller ones which don’t even get short listed by my paaTi.
Coffee Day- it was a pioneer launching, actually one of the first fancy shops that opened up in C.Pettai. All the vinyl board on the shop’s headboard impressed paaTi (compared to the hand painted Raja Coffee, where we used to buy) and we soon joined in the queue to get our ½ kilo kapi poDi along with its freebies- variants included plastic mug, one stainless karandi and of course, a davara-tumbler. I still remember my paaTi saving the coupons for increasing her pointless-saving-stainless steel-davara tumblers account. It took a while for her to realize that there is no point in getting those davaras when the coffee decoction is watery!! So, we went back to Raja Coffee which also had started the freebie business (Competition boss!!) to get back their old customers. I think raja coffee was established somewhere in the 1800s, this coming from the oily look of the half deaf coffee mama. But since we had changed patrons, oily mama started giving us scorching looks and more chicory in the kapi poDi. PaaTi started complaining again about oily mama not treating her as a venerable customer. So, we again had to shift to the newly opened Narasu’s coffee- ‘Bhesh bhesh!! Remba naNNa irukku’, right opposite to Raja Coffee. Though business never picked up well, oily mama moved to Narasu’s for no particular reason. Narasu’s also had a business strategy, giving away free packets of chicory or parrys’ sugar. But the business started soaring when they decided to start giving home deliveries. Now, all my paaTi has to do is dial their number, make sure her instructions are clearly spelt back by half deaf oily mama “Kaal A Kaal B, No chicory” (These lines were god’s lines- never to be forgotten at any given point of time- by the oily mama/me/dad) And very soon, oily mama’s son used to drop in the packets of ½ kg every now and then. Thankfully, we haven’t changed our coffee shop for the past couple of years.
I still savor the first batch of decoction prepared everyday morning by paati (no..i haven’t tried making it; tried once, was a huge fiasco) along with sudoku in the Hindu and Vishnu Sahasranamam on Jaya TV. Aah! What will I ever do without filter kapi daily morning????
