Mrs. Saswati Sengupta
e-abhivyakti.com welcomes Mrs. Saswati Sengupta. She lives in Kolkata and pens beautiful memoirs and travelogues. She is an avid traveller and an outstanding photographer.
Her brief intro is as under:
– Having spent my formative years in Poona (Pune) and Jabalpur before relocating to Kolkata, I, Saswati Sengupta, am an avid reader and equally passionate about music, sports, photography, painting, watching movies and travelling.
The various permutation and combination of words with their everlasting effect have always fascinated me, leading to the inevitable penning of my thoughts and memoirs of bygone days as well as whatever catches my fancy!
(This is an effort to preserve old invaluable and historical memories through e-abhivyakti’s “दस्तावेज़” series. In the words of Shri Jagat Singh Bisht Ji – “The present is being recorded on the Internet in some form or the other. But some earlier memories related to parents, grandparents, their lifetime achievements are slowly fading and getting forgotten. It is our responsibility to document them in time. Our generation can do this else nobody will know the history and everything will be forgotten.”
In the next part of this series, we present Mrs. Saswati Sengupta‘s musings on international coffee day “Time’s Gentle Brew: Coffee and the Heart’s Musings.“)
☆ दस्तावेज़ # 17 – Time’s Gentle Brew: Coffee and the Heart’s Musings ☆ Mrs. Saswati Sengupta ☆
International Coffee Day !
Espresso,
Latte,
Mocha,
Cappuchino,
Iced,
or
‘Kattang-kaapi’?
That means black coffee..the real strong one!
Coffee is almost synonymous with South India.
How do you identify an ethnic South Indian household?
Elementary my dear whatever…!!
Its the fragrance of hot, steaming idlis,
sizzling dosas on a hot griddle,
that teasingly tangy sambar or rasam boiling in the pot,
and,
of course…
the heavenly aroma of freshly filtered coffee!
My love affair with coffee……or rather, its fragrance, began in Kirkee, Pune where my father was posted.
Tultul (a rare name for a Tamilian) and I were of the same age, a royal three plus some years old, and our barrack style quarters shared the same open verandah in front.
Most of our waking hours were spent either with me following Tultul at her house…or at my place, Tultul in tow.
We were yet to begin school and life then was all fun for us.
We ran about in the garden, dug the flower beds for earthworms, smelt the roses and mogras, chased squirrels, shared stories we heard, drew pictures and coloured them in our drawing copies, practised the alphabets and did everything three-year-old pre-schoolers usually do.
I enjoyed being at Tultul’s house.
The spicy fragrances wafting from the kitchen tingled my senses!
As my mother was kept busy with my new-born younger sis., Tultul’s mother took me under her wings, and her two elder sisters became my guardians too.
They dressed Tutul and me in matching ‘pawadas’ (a long ankle length skirt paired with a short blouse), plaited our hair or whatever strands we had, and also tied them with the same coloured ribbons.
I relished the lunch menu of sambar or rasam rice, curd rice, lemon rice et al but what I enjoyed most was the crunchy, paper thin ‘poppadams’.
This early initiation into a South Indian household influenced and affected me in many ways.
I learnt to speak in Tamil (sadly out of touch now) and started appreciating their culinary and cultural background too.
Till date I am enamoured by their classical dances, Carnatic music, kanjeevarams, kollams and of course….’ kattang-kapi ‘!!
‘ Kapi ‘, or coffee, is not meant to be sipped from any ordinary cup or mug.
For any self- respecting South Indian, that would be scandalous!!
It has to be served in a small conical tumbler with a flat edge, and the tumbler has to be placed in a cylindrical bowl with a flattened edge too.
You raise your hand holding the tumbler..and pour the ‘ kapi’ from a height into the bowl..and again from the bowl into the tumbler..so on and so forth quite a few times, to cool the steaming hot beverage.
This process is called ‘stretching the coffee!’
It is an acquired art.
Experts are known to raise their coffee tumblers to a height of 3-4 feet and serve it foaming!
(Tried it once with disastrous results.
Never tried again.
Sheer wastage of good coffee!)
Entertaining guests with a mug of hot steaming coffee and ‘ murukkus ‘ (chakli) is soul satisfying, in my opinion!
Still remember my dear friend Suguna, calling out…’Kaapi kurchitta poitarey! ‘
(Meaning… ‘Please have some coffee before leaving!‘) to some visitors, who had come to meet her at the hostel, and were short on time.
Nothing heightens my senses than a freshly brewed mug…. sorry, tumbler of coffee!
On, the 5th of October 2024, the International Coffee Day, the gift pack of this tumbler set along with my favourite brew is a treasured gift from my loving beta, Udayan, and bahu, Srijita!
Like to share a tumbler of hot ‘ kapi ‘ folks?
♥♥♥♥
© Mrs. Saswati Sengupta
Kolkata
≈ Editor – Shri Hemant Bawankar/Editor (English) – Captain Pravin Raghuvanshi, NM ≈
यात्रा संस्मरण – हम्पी-किष्किंधा यात्रा – भाग-१० ☆ श्री सुरेश पटवा 
