COFFEE OR TEA

I miss coffee.

There was a phase in life when I would be hanging around my mother while she made me cold coffee after I ran in sweaty from playing in the clambering summer oppressive heat.

Sometimes it was a tall glass left in the fridge and sometimes made fresh in front of my ricocheting energized eyes…

I have to be fair though how I stare at mango shake is more reverential, now that is a KING shake if there was any,if that is in the fridge my heart sings yummy yummy en route to the fridge and half way across town.

The thought of it sitting in the fridge gives me a smile,(though truth be told mango shake is best had fresh, the stage where the pulp settles and the milk floats on top all chilly and cold is not very appealing, Cold coffee on the other hand is a decent keeper in the chilly climes.)

But I still miss it.

First let me answer why did it have to walk out of my life and even after a few years in exile, trying to show it the door in , has failed to raise my stomach up to a toast.

Hungry is a feeling I love. I love to follow my nose to the table and we have a mini affair in the hungry period of my life.

Uptil I was sick with a pathogen that floats in the water and invades your stomach,relegating you to the back burner of metabolic stages for the rest of your life,incapable of digesting milk in simple things like tea and coffee, specially those.

Uptil then I could sip coffee like a snap.And yes digest leather.

When some people talk about  “in my hay days I could digest leather”days…I don’t mind as they are about sixty decades down the countdown,one can forgive their dedication to the rudimentary problem on creeping years..I on the other hand beat everyone to that grasping rant by three and a half decades.

In short coffee is not an apertif for me it’s a whole course, it leaves me feeling like the coffee with milk or tea with milk has taken over my stomach and shouldered out all empty spaces,leaving me full.

So after a few years of flailing around sipping all varieties of black teas and infusions,as a grown up(not giving into to kiddish demands of hot chocolate)The deafening queries of insensitive forgetful lifelong friends ,who hammer the question down my ears,do you want coffeeeee????I mean what happened to tea??that too black.My favourite answer should really be ,I still don’t drink it NO.

So why do I miss coffee?

Its how you miss a thing when you know your greedy graspy hands are just flailing

In thin air and what you want is tantalizingly a mirage oasis.

 However there is something about holding a hot cuppa in a crowded café while you reminisce about all mundane problems, constantly touching your cup to reassure you of its ebbing steamy presence,that kept pulling at my strings.

I don’t know how many of us would raise hands to this but asking for green tea in a starbucks queue with people waiting to steep their tongues with coffee, is an explanation waiting to fall on ears that judgementally come paired with ‘o you poor sod eyes.’

So to flow with the crowd on a caffeine haze ,wrapped in concerned conversations,peering into my coffee to take a contemplative break to find a great insightful comeback in the conversation ,I jumped into the fray by deciding on the black,which without milk in it, should technically not churn around merry in my stomach.Rather I think it shouldn’t.But body chemistry is all about experimentation.

That’s how I found my self in starbucks queues miming like the rest for black coffee.

(Its after going a couple of times Black no milk no sugar ,I discovered world over in all cafeterias you just say Americano…and it miraculously produces a black coffee.Why is Americano  “black” ?not being politically correct but geographically layman anthropology it should be Africano..PARDON!!!)

Drifting back.

However maybe my racist mentality is suffering from the snobbish demands,and Americano now moves inside me with a sluggishness that makes me want to pull at my hair,and walk for hours in circles trying to beat a heavy head and shake out the lead like caffeine from my system.

I'm tenacious it has to be said.I gave my crowd instinct driven desire more than a couple of shots.

I However today solemnly decide after walking an hour around the block after today's coffee  to shift back to green tea.I mean how many dinners could I skip just to hold a hot cuppa.

 I have yet not been able to identify my problem.Should I knowledgeably with a practiced painful air of the chronic describe the malady as a lactose or caffeine intolerance?Its not a known cause as my lazy bones haven't dragged themselves to the doctor yet.

But what I do know is the answer to your question.Coffee or tea??Meet me next time  at a tea parlour(thankfully which are fashionably catching up) and we shall practice my answer over an unfurling jasmine tea ball.