Caffeine rush!

Coffee, traditionally has been served hot.  People all over, love to drink the hot beverage, savouring the aroma of the steaming, freshly ground coffee beans; with coffee beans sourced variedly from Africa to South America; to India.  Cold coffee, generally meant iced coffee and different recipes have been explored for people to savour and enjoy.

There was a time during my school days, when I used to love the cold coffee (or 'cooled' coffee, if you want to crunch the grammar); mind you, not the iced coffee variety, but simply the hot coffee preserved in a steel vessel for a few hours. Just to be clear, coffee meant the South Indian filter coffee added with milk and sugar.

School life then, to me meant, play in the school and more play outside the school hours.  Since attendance at the school was mandatory and some little home-work was unavoidable as part of the school life, I complied without demur.  What choice did we have?  As soon as the school was finished for the day, I ran home with my school-bag, dumped it in a corner; hastily changed my dress from the smelly khaki school uniform and was eager to rush out to play.  My playmates were waiting for my arrival from school. It was a mystery to me, how some of the boys had managed to arrive at the play field early, even before me.

Before I could hurry out of the house, mother shouts from the kitchen.

‘Hari, have your coffee before you go out to play’.

I run into the kitchen.  ‘Where is the coffee?’.

‘Wait a second, I will heat the coffee for you’.

I say, ‘No time for that.  Give me the cold coffee itself’.

‘What is the rush, your friends will wait.  Heavens are not going to descend.  Just wait for a few minutes, I will heat the coffee for you’.

‘No mom, give me cold coffee itself or else I am off, without drinking any coffee’, the ultimatum from me. Mother surrenders. 

‘Ok.  As you wish’.

My mother transfers the cold coffee in a steel tumbler and pushes it across towards me.  I gulp the coffee.  The cold coffee tastes great; there is a lingering sweet, after-taste.  You see, as young boys we did not drink Bournvita or Horlicks or any other nourishing (does it really nourish?) beverages those days.  We simply could not afford them, I presume; although I was not worried or bothered about what we drank.  Play was much more important!  

In those days, in my home, in order to save on milk and sugar (you see, sugar was generally available in Ration Shops; and small, insignificant quantities were allocated to each family; some of the families used to buy sugar in Retail, where the price was double the cost of rationed sugar) coffee used to be prepared by mixing the filtered coffee decoction with milk and sugar only once in the morning and again once in the evening.  If one happens to be late to attend the family coffee-drinking session, the already pre-mixed coffee used to be re-heated in a steel vessel on a kerosene stove.  The coffee tasted of kerosene smoke sometimes when the stove exhibited an yellow flame. 

Coming back to my school days’ story, after gulping the cold coffee, I hurry out to join my playmates, who had already commenced the game, without me.  I was made to wait until the game, which was already midway in progress, had finished.  I was more than determined that from the following day, I would join the game early on; and was firm on having only cold coffee in the evenings. In the mornings, I purposely got late to the family coffee-drinking session by lingering on the 'teeth-brushing' routine; so that I could have my coffee cold.  From that day on, my determination had stayed intact, as I was hooked on to cold coffee, for a long, long time, perhaps, until I enrolled in the Pre-University. In my younger mind, cold coffee tasted great; and was the only way to consume coffee.

Back to the present, when I was narrating this incident to my cousin, he told me that he too had liked his coffee cold during his younger days.  I was surprised; was this a universal phenomenon in young boys of my generation or was it confined to only boys within my family?

Would I, perhaps, care to drink my coffee cold, now?  No, thank you; I just happen to enjoy the steaming hot cup of filter coffee served straight from the gas stove!  The caffeine hit first thing in the morning is the drug that stimulates the bodily functions!