Chennai-bred entrepreneur S. Sujan (24) first took to coffee while studying in Scotland, four years ago. In his words, he “put up with the espressos and cappuccinos”, and when he came back home, got himself a filter and coffee powder to have “real coffee”.
New-age coffee shops, with their swanky couches and bloated prices, may have introduced the culture of drinking coffee to a new demographic, but youngsters like Sujan have chosen to keep alive a living tradition, where filter coffee is not just another drink.
But, this drink which has, over the years, lapped up fierce loyalists, self-confessed connoisseurs and coffee puritans who spend much of their time contemplating the proportion in which the varieties of beans should be ground, its storage, how often fresh coffee should be purchased, and the best way of savouring it, made headway into Tamil society only in the early 1900s, say scholars.
When author and historian Pradeep Chakravarthy’s grandmother went to Ananthakrishnapuram in Tirunelveli as a new bride in 1916, she was the first one to brew coffee in the village. “When they first saw the coffee filter, discussions surrounding coffee and the filter ensued for a week, and gradually, even the extremely orthodox members began to consume it,” he says.
So how did coffee, which traces its origin to Ethiopia, make headway in the south and in the city? Though it is said to have reached the shores of India, along with tea, in the 17th century, it was not until the end of the 19th century that coffee and it’s ‘cultural other’, tea, became a phenomenon in India, says A.R. Venkatachalapathy, author and professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, in his book, In those days there was no coffee: Writings in cultural history .
The cultivation of coffee and tea was linked to colonialism, and in the literature of the time, it was described as a drink of the Europeans, before it percolated to the emerging middle classes, and in some places, to the working class. Prof. Venkatachalapathy says coffee replaced traditional beverages like neeragaram , kanji and buttermilk.
When coffee came to be patronised by a class educated in modern schools and worked in jobs created by colonialism, it gained new cultural connotations, and came to be perceived as ‘modern’. And this modern drink came at a price.
“Unlike tea, coffee was an expensive drink. It naturally lent itself to that bracket because unlike tea which brews better in water, coffee was brewed in milk, and milk was expensive,” he says. In the 80s, it was common practice in Madras to borrow coffee powder from neighbours, for a day or two, because it was expensive.
Venu Srinivasan, partner, Leo Coffee, whose grandfather set up their first outlet in Mylapore in 1971, says, back then, households were loyal to their neighbourhood coffee-maker, and there were only a handful of families that consumed coffee. “In the 1970s, our coffee was priced at Rs. 10 per kg which was considered expensive. It was always a niche product,” he says, adding, it grew to be widely-consumed only over the last decade.
And it is not just south Indians who cherish their filter kaapi . “Though we are Gujaratis, our day does not begin without a cup of filter coffee. I began having filter coffee as a child at my mother’s place, and the practice continued even after I got married. While we have tea in the evening with snacks or biscuits, filter coffee has to be had with no accompaniment to be relished,” says Jamuna Dave.
And ask old timers about their favourite coffee haunts in the city, their answers range from Karpagambal Mess and Rayars Mess in Mylapore to Hotel Krishna Prasad on N.S.C. Bose Road and Vasantha Bhavan in Anna Nagar.
This article has been corrected for a typographical error
