A Cup of Coffee

I get sentimental when I’m cooking; perhaps that’s why I like it – not just grounding, but out of the mind and into the heart. Thoughts show up like unwelcome winged creatures – and are kindly shown their way out through the window

I’m not much of a coffee drinker: My morning ritual involves tea and lighting a candle on my altar. I look at a photo of a great yogi, my teacher’s teacher, taken in village India some time in the 50s, such a simple peaceful scene – and I enjoy a moment of peace and serenity myself.

This morning I am up and at it very early in the kitchen, getting ready for the  Farmers Market in San Francisco tomorrow. And when I go to light the candle as usual, he says: How come I never get a cup of coffee?

I laugh remembering all the stories: how he drank strong black coffee and how the teashop owner who made it for him continued to make it after his death, offering it every morning to a large framed photograph that hung in his restaurant.

We used to go to there when, sometimes, it got too hot at the ashram. We would head down to the village to first visit the shrine and then take tea and uttapam or iddli sambhar under the benign gaze of that photograph before heading back to dive in, refreshed and encouraged, for another round of polishing.

When I visited the shrine last year, I had to drop in to Ramesh Bhavan, for old times sake. The altar was gone; I asked at the desk and they said the owner had died the year before. No one was offering coffee in the mornings any more.

So I boiled the kettle again: there was some nice Peet’s coffee in the fridge, but if it’s going to be like this, I am going out to buy Illy. I made a small press pot of coffee, pounded up a couple of cardamom pods and added that, selected a blue and gold demi-tasse, added a little organic cane sugar and just a touch of cream. And I presented that to him before getting back to my day of cooking.  Feeling quite happy now.

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