It was a weird quirk of Fate that the family I had married into was steeped in rivers of coffee. Coffee was the fuel that had the whole household going. Just-after-getting-up-in-the-morning coffee would be followed by coffee-made-with-today's-fresh-milk. A "second-round" of coffee was compulsory after breakfast. Evening, 4 pm, was ushered in with another round of coffee. This was besides any coffee made for guests happening to drop in. Of course, everyone reserved the right to call for coffee anytime during waking hours and to comment long and loudly on how it tasted.
Cribbing about my non-existent (in his opinion) coffee making skills is a mandatory part of each day for my husband. Let me attempt listing a few of my main coffee-making sins: (1) not volunteering to make coffee, (2) making coffee that tastes terrible, (3) not making hot enough coffee (more on that in a minute), (4) offering too little or too much ! In fact, anything that could conceivably go wrong in this process, did.
Giving him a cup of coffee would mean triggering a half-hour worth of critical commentary on its demerits! The first sip and the second would thus be separated in time by at least 15 minutes; enough for it to cool down significantly. In spite of this, if the temperature of the coffee during that first sip was not enough to scald and possibly permanently kill off cells on my spouse's palate, it was labelled "cold" and immediately poured into the kitchen sink. The verdict "bisi illa" (meaning "not hot enough" in Kannada) was supposed to make me wilt -- again, something I am not very good it. This would lead to more sulking in silence, alternating with tirades on the importance of making hot coffee.
More often than not, as soon as I put the cup into the hands of the spouse, he would pour off one or two millilitres in the kitchen sink -- "Now, the quantity is just fine" he would exclaim.
I never dreamt that former US President George Bush would become my Guru, so to speak, until I got married to this overly-fussy (according to me) person with refined tastebuds (according to him). Let me explain. I come from a Tamil Iyer family -- supposedly from a background that is traditionally known to excel in making "Filter Coffee". Keeping this in mind, I don't really blame my husband for expecting me to make coffee of a certain standard. But I was the non-conformer -- I had never liked the smell of coffee, let alone taste the brown liquid, it until it became a part of a twice-daily routine to fuel my Ph.D. days. I had never made filter coffee -- ever -- before I got married !! Well, I bought the necessary equipment (small coffee filter) and thought "How difficult can this be?" I realized how it was possible to get different things "wrong" and make varieties of "bad coffee" that was inferior to dishwater in my spouse's opinion. Advice poured in from all sides -- change the quantity of coffee powder, change to another brand of coffee, change the coffee/chicory ratio, and so on. I left my husband gasping for breath with each new attempt at coffee making. Occasionally, I would get it right (by sheer chance) -- this would be labelled as a totally unplanned, freak incident. I have finally made my peace with coffee issues by publicly announcing a lack of talent in making the same and lowering expectations all around (a la George Bush). Stray victories are attributed to chance or a fiendish underhand plot to get the husband in a good mental frame to get him to agree to something (his theory, not mine!).
After more than seven years of marriage, I am amazed that in spite of my being guilty as charged (with respect to coffee making), the husband has not even entertained the notion of making coffee himself. I suspect making his own coffee would deprive him of the basic pleasure of complaining about the old ball-and-chain !
1 comment:
well writren, awesome. do post next soon.
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