My Coffee Moods / 2020
By: Megha Arora
Tags: Coffee, Writing

#1

I. The wake-me-up coffee

It is the wish-fulfilling gem that allows one to navigate the rush hour of a full-blown adult life. It is crucial to maintain concentration for hours and hours of foreign language learning and essential for surviving days at office that don’t seem to end. It is the stimulant that allows one to emerge from their sleep-filled hypnosis and catch the 8 am bus to university. It’s the potion that empowers the probationer to multi-task without getting flustered. After all, a language trainee is required to learn a foreign language, finish her homework, read the newspapers, update briefs, create spreadsheets, figure out her meals, call her parents, file her paperwork and even help people get on an airplane.

#2

II. The Confinement Coffee (that should have been coffee but was tea instead because I already drank too much coffee during the day)

The initial joy at not having to rush to language classes so early in the morning soon subsided as I found myself trapped at home for months. The call to work from home was, at first, revolutionary and then troublesome. Personal and professional worlds collided with no end in sight. Excel sheets invaded the bedroom and the sofa in the salon became a spot for interminable zoom webinars. In the midst of everything unprecedented, the will to make the best out of the dire situation did exist. A desire to catch up on readings, eat healthier, drink water, establish a healthy yoga practice, learn to cook even. On the flip side, there were days when I did not feel like doing anything. All the screen time was exhausting and with the flights cancelled, home felt like a universe away. Much like T.S Eliot’s poetic creation, I measured out my days with coffee spoons each evening, morning and afternoon. The coffee was a worthwhile distraction; I pushed ahead towards restless relaxation.

#3

III. The dreamer’s coffee

Coffee helps, most certainly, to fuel the imagination. Ask the nineteenth century french writer honoré de balzac who supposedly drank fifty cups of coffee a day.

I sometimes catch myself fictionalizing moments of existence in my head while I live them. A thought darts across my mind, a metaphor, an analogy, a figure of expression, an interesting way to say something and I know I must write it down immediately before the din of office work takes over. I tell myself: this analogy, this metaphor, this interesting way to say something couldn’t possibly be ephemeral. It can’t possibly be just for me? I must share it with others. And then I question myself. Do I have the passion or the discipline to be a writer?



I find the act of writing in itself to be audacious. You believe it is the right thing to do and so you must do it, even if all the failed attempts (and blank pages!) are evidence to the contrary.

#4

IV. The on-the-go coffee! (it isn’t really coffee, though)

Probationers transitioning to a life in bureaucrazy might not always have the luxury to be Parisian in their approach and enjoy an potent espresso while sitting on the terrasse of a café and scanning Le Monde.The on-the-go coffee is practical and enjoyable, though it may not be coffee at all. It’s the coffee in take-away-cups that assuredly accompanies you to your destination while you feel lonely in a crowd or the quick-fix bottle that saves you when your plane is close to boarding time and you haven’t even had the time to eat.

#5

V. The trippy coffee (highly recommended for non-drinkers)

After days confined into a rut and routine, I finally step out (chin up, mask on!) for a change of scenery. The coffee in quaint cafés is the beverage for trips out of the city, especially if you don’t enjoy drinking, and if you happen to be going to a sunny locations, an iced version is the best way to cool down.

P.S Since we live our lives in remote and random locations across the globe, the best vacation is of course the one that takes you home! And therefore, the best trip-py coffee is infact the ghar-waali coffee. Plain, simple, effective. Beat coffee and sugar together into a fragrant dark concoction. Pour hot milk over it and voilà. Snuggle in with your grandma in a warm blanket. And marvel at how far you’ve come, despite everything!

#6

VI. The let’s-catch-up coffee:

Miles apart and separated by oceans. United by the love for real conversations and freshly brewed coffee.

Coffee is perhaps the best way to to create a congenial atmosphere to make new friends and meet old ones. From old-school sessions at Barista (worrying about parental curfews and tuition homework that didn’t finish itself) to reunions at Fabcafé (deliberations on spiritual pilgrimages and happenings in love) and Blue Tokai (exchanging books and amusing anecdotes) —it is the adventure of authentic human connection that keeps me hooked on to asking, time and again, “hey, do you want to go get a coffee?”

#7

VII. The I-want-to-be-alone coffee:

There is something to be said about sitting alone in a café, minding one’s own business and ordering a coffee. The key is to observe due diligence and stay away from the noise of the smartphone.

My solitary sessions are exercises in staining pages upon pages in inks of different colors. I scribble ad infinitum: Instructions, prohibitions, poetry, cultural comparisons, lofty promises, mundane to-do lists. How Baudelaire’s “Les fleurs du mal” does not read well in English at all. And how silly of them to translate Beauvoir’s “La femme rompue” as “The woman destroyed?”

It doesn’t make sense.

#8

VIII. The i-married-a-barista coffee

My wedding invitation could have very well said: Cappuccino weds Green Tea.

From offering only green tea to visitors at LBSNAA (I didn't mind!) to figuring out the perfect grind size for my home cappuccino, it has been a steep learning curve for my husband.

By the end of our training in Paris, he was discussing notes of different coffee beans with professional baristas and attempting to draw a frothy milk-heart for me with the steel beaker.

#9

IX. The expensive waiting-in-the-hotel-lobby coffee

This is the coffee that a diplomat is invariably forced to drink in the lobbies of various hotels during ongoing visits. The coffee is mostly bland and over-priced. It seems that I’m paying not just for the coffee but also for the hotel’s satin cushions, intricate murals and fresh flowers. But I must confess: the impact of forced fancy coffee can be pacifying amid the frenzy of protocol, talking points and re-tweetable tweets.

As they say: any coffee over no coffee at all!

#10

X. The Quarantine Coffee

The room in Thimphu has bare necessities: a kettle and bottles of the Kingdom's very own mineral water, named +975 after the country code and guaranteed to invigorate your ku-suung-thuk i.e. body, speech and mind. It took a couple of tries before I found the right blend of nescafé and coffee mate for my daily morning cup. The bitter-but-not-too-bitter coffee is a reassuring accompaniment to slow days of pause and reflection. The magical play of light and shadow, which makes sunrise in the mountains delightful, soon abates. The sun rises as it must and soon overwhelms the city.

The survivor’s guide to quarantine: goals and coffee.

I practice my yoga flows, revisit Stepher Batchelor’s translation of Shantideva’s A Guide to the Boddhisattva’s Way of Life (excellent advice from 700 AD) and read up on my new home: Bhutan. In days reminiscent of childhood, I play all day and look forward to the 8pm nature documentaries and cartoons on the television. At times, obsolete technology can be the key to joyfulness.