An Extreme Love of Coffee

by Harish Bhat

  Neha looked at Rahul. When the car had almost toppled, he had been thrown off his seat and hit his head on the dashboard. He seemed to be in pain. The driver was dumbstruck. Neha knew that she had to take control and deal with the elephant before it did any more damage. But what could she do? The animal and its Japanese mahout appeared hell-bent on carrying out their wrecking mission.

  Suddenly, she had a crazy idea. She turned to RG. ‘RG, can you fly outside and frighten the elephant? I think elephants might be scared of ghosts too, like the black eagles. I don’t know for sure, but right now, we have to try something!’

  RG had never dealt with elephants. Scaring humans is part of a ghost’s life, and they are generally quite successful. But until that point, there was no recorded evidence of ghosts frightening elephants away.

  RG, however, rose to the challenge. He tucked in his pocket watch, placed his spectacles firmly on the bridge of his fat white nose and flew out at the elephant, just as it was preparing to attack the car once again. His flight was calm and composed, and he decided to move directly into the line of the elephant’s vision for maximum effect.

  We will never know what the elephant actually saw, or thought it saw. What we do know is that with one mighty heave, it raised its front feet off the road and trumpeted loudly, just once. It shuddered, its feet returned to the ground, and it turned its head away. In less than half a minute, it had taken to its feet and was running away from the car, in a wild swaying motion, deep into the paddy fields.

  Along the way, the elephant pooped several times, perhaps out of fear, thus unwittingly creating fertile territory for the restless coffee merchant of Madikeri, Avinash Machaiah, who had already begun his search for elephant poop with coffee beans in it. Unfortunately, Avinash would never hear of this episode, though he would eventually, many years later, go on to become a famous name in the world of exotic elephant coffee.

  *

  Fortunately, Rahul was not hurt, though he was rattled. The driver had regained his composure, and without a charging elephant in front of him, now put on a show of bravado. ‘Sir, did you see how bravely I withstood the elephant? Without me, our car would have just toppled. I kept the balance, with my hand firmly on the steering wheel, staring at that stupid, big animal all the time. It was difficult, Sir, but I am a strong man. I hope you will recognize my bravery, Sir. Even a reasonable cash award will do.’

  Neha shook her head sideways a couple of times, a peculiarity that Indians specialize in, and which can mean anything, both approval and disapproval. She said, ‘We’ll talk about that later. First, take us where we have to go, right away, to Mangalore. Let’s get on with it.’

  Then, she turned to Rahul. ‘That Japanese guy did try to carry out his threat, Rahul. In a clumsy but dangerous sort of way. I don’t know what these brothers are up to. Maybe they think they can frighten us into doing exactly what they want. Or maybe they want to scare us away. But this makes me even more determined to find our coffee monk’s treasure. We’ll get the better of them.’

  Rahul looked at Neha, nodded and smiled. To tell the truth, her new-found confidence as they progressed on this coffee adventure was making her even more attractive. Confidence and beauty are such an irresistible combination. And then, of course, there was also the common love of coffee.

  23

  If the elephant attack episode had rattled them, there were no visible signs of it when they reached Mangalore. All they focused on was solving the third clue.

  Rain and mellow, we are gold and yellow.

  ‘Let’s start by calling that coffee merchant’s grand-uncle, Sharad Machaiah. If he genuinely knows everything about coffee, maybe he can help us find coffee beans that are golden and mellow,’ said Rahul.

  RG agreed that this was the best way ahead. They called Sharad Machaiah and Neha spoke to him.

  ‘Sir, my friend and I are tourists with a keen interest in coffee. Your great-nephew in Madikeri—yes, Ashwin Machaiah—he told us that you are an expert on all kinds of coffee. Can you help us, Sir? We are looking for some information about golden coffee beans.’

  ‘Welcome to Mangalore, Madam,’ she heard his booming voice over the phone. ‘Welcome to our little coffee town. Ashwin already told me about your arrival. You are welcome to meet me, Madam. Bring your friend along. I love people who love coffee. Come to the fish market in the area called Baikampady and ask for Sharad Machaiah.’

  They found the house easily and were immediately shown into the sitting room. What they saw there amazed them. Each wall in the room was adorned with photographs of coffee beans. Red and orange coffee cherries, green dry beans, roasted brown beans—virtually every colour associated with coffee was up there.

  Within this glorious mélange of colours, Rahul glanced around carefully to see if he could find a photograph of golden-yellow beans. And voila! In one corner was a photograph of large coffee beans that appeared to have a swollen look and a golden-yellow colour. A mound of golden-yellow beans, photographed with some sort of a shed in the background. They were on the right track!

  In the centre of the room, on a spotted tiger skin spread out on the floor, sat a very big, very bald man. He sat cross-legged, with his eyes closed, and appeared to be meditating. For a few minutes there was no movement. They were silent, the man was silent, and RG in the background was silent too. A calendar with a picture of a coffee cup, hung on one of the walls to tell the date and month, swung a little in the breeze. The stillness persisted.

  Finally, after what seemed like ages, the big, bald man opened his eyes and looked at them.

  ‘Come, sit! Sit down, my friends. Welcome, welcome. I am sorry I made you wait, but I sit on this tiger skin for an hour each day, very silently, to say my prayers. It gives me the strength I need. This is the skin of a ferocious tiger that roamed the coffee estates of Coorg many, many years ago. Have you ever experienced sitting on a tiger skin, my friends?’

  Rahul and Neha had to admit that they hadn’t. Such an opportunity had not presented itself, until now. And, to tell the truth, such a desire had never occurred to them either. Sharad Machaiah began speaking. Surprisingly, he abandoned his line of inquiry about sitting on tiger skins and came to the point straightaway.

  ‘I can help you on your quest, my friends. You want to see coffee beans that are golden-yellow in colour. I know where to find these beans. They are the speciality of Mangalore, of this entire coastal area in fact. So, you are in the right place, yes, the right place. What you are looking for is our famous monsoon Malabar coffee.’

  Rahul stared at him. ‘Monsoon Malabar coffee? What’s that, Mr Machaiah?’

  Sharad Machaiah asked them to sit on the floor with him. He had placed some mats for them, while he continued to sit on his grand tiger skin.

  ‘Sit down, sit down. You have not heard of monsoon Malabar coffee, the most famous coffee of our land? Are you serious, my friends? What kind of coffee enthusiasts are you? Come on now, stand up. Come with me.’

  He led them out of the house. They walked down a narrow, shaded road for a few minutes, without speaking a word. Sharad Machaiah was in front, occasionally rubbing his bald head. Rahul and Neha followed a few paces behind, and RG followed, invisible. Soon, they entered a large shed with a red tiled roof, which looked like a shipping warehouse. And then, just next to this shed, was a large outdoor area, vast and open, shimmering yellow and gold under the sun.

  ‘Here you are,’ said Sharad Machaiah with a flourish, ‘see this yard here, all the way until there. Covered with monsoon Malabar coffee, which has brought us fame and glory. These beans look golden and, let me tell you, they are real gold. Pure gold.’

  They looked closely to see that the yard was indeed covered by a carpet of very pale golden-yellow coffee beans. It was such a beautiful sight; the gold nuggets lying on the ground, thousands and thousands of beans stretching evenly on all sides.

  Sharad Machaiah picked up a few beans from the ground, rubbed them between his palms and smelt t
hem, ‘Pick them up, feel the beans,’ he urged Rahul and Neha.

  Rahul did so immediately, and as he held the golden beans in his palm, he knew instinctively that this was really, really special coffee. He admired the pale gold colour from close quarters, then brought the beans close to his face and inhaled. A musty, chocolaty smell overtook him and spread into his body and mind, gently seducing his senses.

  It was a faint, but beautiful and sensuous smell. The smell of humid afternoons interrupted by heavy showers, the smell of wet earth; a smell so different from every other coffee bean he had encountered. How can coffee have so many wondrous aromas, he thought to himself. This was heavenly! And these aromas would express themselves far more powerfully after these beans were roasted. No wonder the monk had led them here, to this unique coffee they hadn’t known of earlier.

  Sharad Machaiah watched them with a quiet smile. He could see that they were captivated. And then, as quietly as they had come, he led them back from the warehouse to his home, where he resumed his seat on the tiger skin. After that, he began narrating a story which was so gripping that Rahul and Neha forgot to drink the steaming hot coffee placed before them in steel tumblers.

  *

  ‘What you saw now, my friends, was monsoon Malabar coffee, the gold and yellow coffee you are searching for. My grandfather, God bless his generous soul, was one of the pioneers of this coffee. See his photograph up there on the wall. He killed rogue tigers and created some of the best coffees in the world.’

  They looked up at an old sepia photograph of another bald man, even balder than Sharad Machaiah, with a long rifle in his hands. At his feet was a dead tiger whose skin looked remarkably like the piece on which Sharad Machaiah now sat, comfortably cross-legged.

  ‘My great-grandfather, Appappa as we called him, used to work at a fine shipping agency called J.K. Thomson and Sons. Their ships would carry Indian coffee and spices to Europe, across the vast Arabian Sea and around the Cape of Good Hope. That was the only route those days, you know. Very long and open to the hazards of poor weather, and often pirates too. My Appappa also went on these voyages sometimes, got friendly with the ragged sailors, picked up all their terrible addictions. Yes, these addictions killed him ultimately. But, blessings of God Almighty, he saw the wonderful thing that happened to coffee beans on these long sea journeys. Something which stirred his great mind.

  ‘And here is what happened, my friends. This is all real, I assure you, right out of my Appappa’s old and tattered logbook, which I have seen myself. On one long voyage from India to Europe, which lasted more than four months I think, my Appappa befriended a Dutch sailor called Derrick. I still have a couple of old photographs somewhere. Derrick Van Buster was his full name, a handsome young white man with blond hair. I suspect the friendliness was not strictly platonic. After all, it was a long and lonely journey with only men on board, but as a rule I do not suspect my forefathers in such matters. That’s just not the right thing to do, you know. Always respect your forefathers. After all, it is their genes that we carry.’

  At this point, he looked up, winked, adjusted his crossed leg against the tiger skin and continued his merry narration.

  ‘Derrick and my Appappa used to roam around the wooden ship to bide their time. Sometimes, they would spend long periods of private time in the holds below, where all the cargo was stored. Good sailors, just talking to each other and avoiding the harsh sunshine, I’m sure.’ Here, he winked again, looking Rahul in the eye.

  ‘Then, one day, a couple of weeks before they reached the shores of Europe, both of them smelt something in the hold. They sniffed, just to be sure, and the smells were there, all around them, mild but wonderful. They were puzzled. They went near the cargo, which was none of their business really. The smell, meanwhile, got better and better. They then discovered the origin of these smells: the hundreds of sacks of coffee beans being shipped from India to Europe!

  ‘They tore through one of the sacks using a sharp knife and drew out some coffee beans. And what a marvellous sight they saw. No longer were the beans fresh green in colour. They now looked pale yellow, almost golden in colour. To their surprise, the beans had also swollen up in size, almost twice as large as normal coffee beans. This was where that beautiful, mild aroma was coming from. “How could this happen?” Derrick asked my Appappa. “I don’t know,” my Appappa told him, “I am not your coffee expert, darling, but let us ask our captain. He’s been on these voyages hundreds of times. If anyone knows, it will be that crusty bastard!”

  ‘So they met the captain, indeed a crusty Englishman with a rusty beard. To begin with, he took them to task and gave them a good whipping with his sharp tongue. My Appappa has faithfully documented all this because he was an honest man, you see. The captain told them that it was none of their business to tear open sacks of cargo. “We are a reputed shipping company. What would our customers think if they knew a couple of you were carrying on like this, ripping open their precious goods?” And then he became kinder, moved by their curiosity I think, and revealed a great secret to them.

  ‘He said, “This is what happens to coffee beans when we cross the sea. They turn golden-yellow and swell up, absorbing all the moisture from the sea, and the monsoon rains and winds that have crossed our ship for over four months. That’s what leads to the creation of this very special monsoon coffee. And that’s good for us, fellows, because we have coffee merchants in Norway, Sweden and Denmark who love these golden-yellow swollen beans, and pay a fortune for them. They call this monsoon Malabar coffee because it is the monsoon winds and rains from our Malabar coast that transform the beans. Those merchants have told me that they had never drunk such mellow coffee anywhere else.”’

  Hearing the word ‘mellow’, Rahul sat up. That’s what the monk’s third clue had said. He ran over the clue in his mind.

  Goddess from the sea, you welcome our coffee.

  Rain and mellow, we are gold and yellow.

  Something struck him at that moment, like an idea that drops into your mind from nowhere. The monk’s clue contained a reference to the sea, and here he was, listening to a story about coffee crossing the sea. This could not be a coincidence. No! Not at all! Were they getting close to solving the clue?

  ‘Then what happened? What’s the connection between all this and that warehouse full of golden-yellow coffee that you just showed us?’

  Sharad Machaiah was quick to respond. ‘My Appappa, he was an intelligent man. He absorbed the captain’s knowledge and kept it to himself. Many years later, he retired from the shipping company, a satisfied but restless man. Then, as he sat at home, this very home you are in today, contemplating what to do next, all this came back to him and he sensed a big business opportunity. A business opportunity in creating these very golden-yellow, mellow coffee beans, called monsoon Malabar, right here in Mangalore. As he thought about this, the bright idea that came to him was that why not expose coffee beans to the same monsoon winds and rains right here in Mangalore, for months together? Mangalore is on the Malabar coast. For many months each year it gets the same monsoon rains and winds as the wooden ships that crossed the sea. So, that should lead to the same swollen, golden-yellow coffee, he reasoned quite correctly. And what a wonderful idea it was! It worked so beautifully, my friends. He created a shed here in Mangalore, quite similar to the warehouse that you saw, but a lot smaller. In this first shed, he exposed the coffee beans to the monsoon winds, which came laden with humidity. In four months, the beans swelled up, turned golden-yellow and, with monsoon god Indra’s blessings, my Appappa became the supreme creator of monsoon Malabar coffee. Lots and lots of monsoon Malabar coffee, more than any wooden ship could produce on a single voyage. Other locals watched this closely and followed with their own little sheds. Merchants from Europe lapped up this wondrous coffee and it made my Appappa very rich, though in his advanced years. This gave him leisure time to pursue his other passion: tiger-hunting. Look at this skin on which I sit. Just sitting on it gives me gr
eat strength because this was a terrifying man-eater, hunted down by my Appappa. See that photograph there, my friends.’ He pointed at the old sepia photograph, pride shining all over his bald head.

  ‘And now, my friends, let us not speak any more. What is all this storytelling worth without a sip of the real thing? Let us sit together and enjoy our very own monsoon Malabar coffee!’

  The coffee was served in steel tumblers, piping hot, frothing at the top. Rahul and Neha took a sip each and sat back, their heads falling back almost simultaneously, like two wooden dolls conjoined by some internal spring. The coffee was so delicious that Neha immediately composed her next blog in her mind and desperately hoped that she would remember to jot it down later that night.

  ‘Thank you, Sharad Machaiah. Truly lovely coffee this is. Monsoon Malabar. And what a wonderful story! Your Appappa was such a cool guy. I wonder whether his platonic friendship with that Dutch sailor continued. Just idle thinking, of course. I am interested in that sort of close historic comradeship, but you don’t need to answer. And thank you for your time, for sharing all this with us. This is really so useful, Sir. I have just one last question.’

  ‘What’s that now?’ asked Sharad Machaiah.

  ‘Do you know of any goddess of the sea who may have welcomed this monsoon Malabar coffee?’

  For the first time that morning, Sharad Machaiah was stumped. He did not know, and he said nothing. Coffee, sea voyages and tiger skins were the interesting canvas on which his thoughts wandered. Goddesses of the sea were another species altogether. They were not in his line of sight, at least not yet.

  Rahul and Neha thanked him profusely and left, turning to look back one last time. They saw him there, seated with eyes closed once again, on his beloved tiger skin.

  24

  It was Neha who found the answer to the sea goddess question, quite unexpectedly at that. They had decided to spend another day in Mangalore, exploring the place and the nearby beaches of Ullal, hoping that the monk’s third clue would unravel in this nice, small, coastal town of golden, mellow coffee.