The South Indian Filter Coffee Obsession Chart
Fresh and hot tribute to the lovers of the South Indian Filter coffee
In all the time that I’ve been alive (close to 12,000 days now), drinking a freshly brewed tumbler of filter coffee in the morning ranks among the most habituated routines (closely following the brushing of teeth and responding to calls of nature). It is a morning ritual that makes mornings.
Blame the nurture.
When you grow up in a conservative, Tamil-Brahmin household, a few things are programmed into you whether you like it or not. Filter coffee is one of them.
For the last few years, an idolatry obsession has been emerging for coffee all over the world and in urban India. The cafes have sprung like sores on infected skin. And perhaps a fall-out of that has been a quiet urban rediscovery of filter coffee.
Filter coffee has suddenly gotten cool. It’s suddenly worthy enough to find a place in airports and cafes. People wear it like a badge of honor (like they used to wear booze and drinking).
But that is just the trending trickle effect of a long standing obsession that a cult of people have had for the filter coffee.
Members of this cult have their own definition of what a satisfactory cup of filter coffee is and would go to great lengths to prove that their definition is the only real definition of filter coffee. Add to that a sprinkling of a false belief that it somehow represents a true tradition — a sense of ‘our’ versus ‘their’ (read western) coffee — and we have a religion.
Interestingly, filter coffee’s history in South India is short. Its popularity and adoption really happened only sometime in early 1900s in Chennai. Like it is in our cafes today, then, it was an expensive, snooty drink representing the colonial influence. Never to say no to wearing a new mask of smug superiority, the middle class adopted it and then it later filtered (yeah, pun) to all parts of the society.
But in this short period, the south Indian version filter coffee has gone from a rarefied and exclusive poison to becoming a defining part of a sub-culture. And it generates an obsessive allegiance from its lovers.
Justifiably so because it is so goddamn delicious!
I think I started drinking filter coffee when I was maybe 6. Don’t really know. But it’s in all my conscious memory of mornings since childhood. My interest in it has gone through a few ups and downs over the years. For a period in my 20s, I was just too lazy to make filter coffee for myself every day. Coinciding with this phase was my discovery of all these other coffees (having only experienced one version of it until then) suddenly accessible through these new cafes and mind-opening trips outside the shores of the country.
But old addictions die hard. By the time I was turning 30, I was back to the comforts of the morning filter coffee, having come to the conclusion that while I do enjoy and drink other types of coffee, nothing gives me the same kick as that of a well made filter coffee.
During this time, I had also gotten increasingly perceptive to the behavior of what I have come to call the cult of filter coffee; the followers who show a religious veneration to the drink.
Based on my observations, people’s interactions with filter coffee fall under one of the following types:
- Virgin (never tried it or drank it a few times in life)
- Dater (need a daily morning dose)
- Stalker ( obsession and borderline addiction) and
- Sociopath (requiring serious intervention).
The chart below is basically how you’d identify which bucket someone belonged to. Virgins are ignored. They don’t belong to the cult.
I feel that I am inexorably hurtling towards being a Stalker. I used to be just a Dater. Perhaps its the increasing influence of some filter coffee Sociopaths that I’ve come to know.
So, where does your obsession lie?
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