Koffee with Suman

There is something mystic in Koffee - no its not the aroma or the taste or the brand by which it sells - its the history that envelopes it. Time and again - this bitter berry has been in limelight for instigating and provoking thoughts which have stopped time - made a mark and then allowed the almighty time to roll on.
Look back and you would find incidents like

1. The shutting down of Coffee shop at College street in Calcutta because it was turning out to be an amalgamation for rebellion . This coffee joint was hanuted by
Subhash Bose, Rabindranath Tagore and revolutionaries.
2. This place turned out to be churning out eminent writers and poets, when it reopened. Satyajit Ray, Manna Dey, Mrinal Sen, Aparna Sen got most of their inspirations while idlying on the chairs and sipping coffee over here
3. Bob Dylan started his career by singing in the Coffee shop


all these are just the tip of iceberg of what talks and thoughts around a Koffee table have done.
I might be sounding a advocate for Koffeee but there is something in the caffeine content which stimulates the grey cells or is it the relaxation of the other wise busy nerve endings - when we patiently relish the cup of coffee that has made the difference ?
So much so that in some corner of world - Koffee precedes deals and plans , as an instance in Arab world - one has to have the bitter Koffee which they call "gahwa" before inking a deal and denying the same would offend the host.
During the Civil war - Koffee was the breakfast, lunch and dinner - for Union Army , so much so that the soldiers would often chew these beans because they didnt have time to boil water and their rations were all blocked by the Confedarate Army.

There is some charm about Koffee -a tinge of rebellion. Am not sure if I am concluding this because I found coffee shops as meeting point for rebels or that the history over coffee is higlighted by wars that followed over it. But am not alone in this thought process. This seemingly innocent drink was banned several times - mostly because it was perceived to incite rebellion.
It was banned by Ethopian Church and also the Ottoman empire.

But we could relate these acts to more of frustation , where they could only punish coffee when they could not get hold of the rebels. So its more of a regressive behavior, akin to the way in which some toddlers start hitting themselves when denied of their demands.

But one thing that I could not help noticing was that coffee has become a great leveller and so are coffee shops. Imagine being at a typical coffee shop and you could end up sharing the table with a Jew, hindu, muslim or christian, talking on various subjects. And this has been the genesis of thoughts that we have been talking about.


Surely there is lot of storm brewing over the coffee cup.