Conquest of the lunacy

It’s amusing how I turned into a coffee junky these days, yet coffee for me was somewhat exotic and distant, maybe a bit irrelevant too even a few years ago, just before the Covid pandemic. In South Asia, tea has been the dominant hot beverage for the last few centuries. Long story short, the British wanted to beat the Chinese in the tea exporting/cultivating business during the colonial period, and my ancestors, the skinny, poor sods were made to do it for them. The British aren’t here anymore (their ghosts surely are, I see them every day in education, law, bureaucracy, etc), but tea stayed. Flourished. Morphed. And even gave birth to a wide range of types, yes, that includes ‘chai’, which is a mislabel. Urgh, we call them ‘cha’ (and dudh cha is milk tea) as it rightly should be by its Chinese birthright (I'm not Chinese, no bias of that sort). I drank tea for 28 years. And then suddenly, switched to Coffee.

This blasphemous act that trampled the family tradition surely made my grandpa tremble in rage in his grave wasn’t really a conscious process. During the lockdown, tea vendors were forced to close shops. Well, some of them kept a back door open as we are terrible at following the law, even if it kills us—however I’m scared to die, so never tried those. And me being a lazy bum, I was trying to avoid making tea myself, so I started to sip those store-bought mixed coffee sachets by Nescafe. And of course, THEY WERE HORRIBLE! But I didn’t know that back then. It was good enough.
Eventually, the pandemic was showing its effects on the economy, those nescafe sachets got rebranded, and became lighter in intensity. After trying a couple of different brands, I had to resort to making my own coffee with instant coffee jars, milk, and sugar. I could just switch to tea but I think I got hooked by then. I tested all sorts of instant coffee brands that were available at the super shops and within months came to a conclusion, Davidoff had some of the best instant coffee—taste and smell-wise. I have so many empty Davidoff jars now that I repurpose them to keep other ingredients.

I am not sure what drove me to ground/brewable coffee after that, perhaps a desire to taste “actual” coffee and my friend @surrealfia getting me a collection of ground beans from 12 countries around the world helped. Now I get my roasted coffee beans from a local cafe chain named North End, they do have some amazing-smelling beans! I use French press and moka pot, and these coffee brewing methods are far different in taste and smell than instant coffees. I wouldn’t say superior, just different. Still, there’s something missing I feel like. Perhaps, I need to buy an espresso machine to be a proper coffee enthusiast! Tea is still on the table, however, mostly black these days.

Anywhoo, hello, this is supposed to be my introduction post to the community. I am in my early 30s and a 3D visualizer by profession. It’s been nearly 3 years since I’ve joined Hive and after a break, this is the first post in a while.

I’m a traditionalist when it comes to art. I believe each person ultimately finds their own art form to devote to and by engaging with it, gives meaning to life. Literary classics and arthouse cinema have been my poisons and source of life simultaneously. I feel guilty wasting time if I somehow find myself disconnected from both of the art forms for a prolonged time. Both Seneca and Thoreau’s disapproving stares haunt me! If you find this strange, this is the lunacy I am referring to in the title of the post.

Anyway, currently I’m reading a few books, The Magic Mountain by Thomass Mann is perhaps the most notable—a speculative fiction in its tale and philosophical in its intention. A young man of 24 goes to a sanitarium for a few weeks to visit his cousin where the patients are a multinational, multicultural people and the main form of treatment is “rest cure”. Mann takes a humorist approach in describing the daily lives of the patients—colorful, never mundane, the bourgeois society, and their questionable treatment methods. The young man cannot leave when his visiting period is done, yet no one is forcing him to stay. This novel reads like a semi-thriller sometimes.

That’s all I had to say, thanks for reading, and have a nice day!
A few of my friends are regulars in this community and came to know of it through them. I like what I see here.