A strong cup of freshly brewed memories please.

Yesterday evening, as I was walking along the corridors of a hypermarket near my house, I came across this coffee filter contraption. This is a steel equipment symbolic of south Indian coffee, but somehow Kerala traditions are not in sync (I wonder why…) with the rest of the south and as such filter coffee is not part of my culture. I was curious about how it works but could not quite figure it out even though I dissembled and assembled the parts several times.

So here I am, doing what I know how to do best – google Madras Filter Kaapi.

This part of the short wiki write up is...

“The resulting brew is very potent, and is traditionally consumed by adding 1–2 tablespoons to a cup of boiling milk with the preferred amount of sugar. The coffee is drunk from the tumbler but is often cooled first with a dabarah - "dabarah" (also pronounced in some regions as 'davarah'): a wide metal saucer with lipped walls.
Coffee is typically served after pouring back and forth between the davarah and the tumbler in huge arc-like motions of the hand.”

... reminiscent of the many tea shops (chaaya kadas) that line the jagged pavements of my childhood memories. The way the hot brew  is poured out by the coffee vending veterans is something that catches any child’s fancy, atleast it did mine, I could go on watching it forever with dreamy eyes. I have gobbled up copious amounts of Parippe vadas (fried lentil snack) and ethakka appam (banana coated with batter), brought home from the local tea shop, for the 4 o’clock tea.

Sometimes I feel life is all about making that connection, filter coffee to the small tea shop, its open glass almirah stacked with oily delights caressed by flies on a typical tropical sweaty afternoon.