MAKE in INDIA

Home can be anywhere in the world, finds Vidya Balachander—as long as you wake up coffee to the aroma of freshly-brewed filter

According to a story that is fondly repeated by my family as proof of my alleged precociousness, one of the first things I learned to say when I began to form words was ‘taapi’. It was toddler speak for kaapi, or filter coffee, the fortifying South Indian brew that the adults around me seemed to have an undying passion for. In Ratlam, the sleepy town where I spent my early childhood, mornings were marked by a constantly replenishing stream of kaapi, always frothed at the table, until each steel tumbler was crowned with a cloud of foam.

After spending years overseas, my maternal grandparents had chosen to retire in Ratlam, where the unhurried pace of life was perfectly suited to their sunset years. Soon after, my grandaunt and granduncles also came to live with them under the same roof. As the youngest grandchild, I had unfettered access to the indulgences of this incredibly cosy nest: Long car rides in my grandfather’s trusty Fiat with impromptu stops for ice cream, a large garden with fruit trees in which to play hide-and-seek, and a seat at the table with all the grown-ups where I could demand my own share of kaapi.

In my childhood home, kaapi was much more than a beverage. Like the radio that crackled into life in the wee hours of the morning, its intense aroma heralded the promise of a new day. As my grandparents aged and their hearing failed, their morning kaapi became a ritual in which they could partake in companionable silence. In later years, after we had moved far away and would only visit them during the summer holidays, my mother would make several rounds of kaapi as a token of her—and by extension, our—affection for her octogenarian parents.

Looking back, I now realise that my formative years in Ratlam left in me a lingering impression of what home could be. The yearning for the ephemeral comfort I felt in that house, soaked in light and saturated with love, has followed me around like a shadow to all the places where I have put down roots. Perhaps I had decided then that in my blueprint for a perfect home, there would be always be a hallowed place for filter kaapi.

It has taken me years to understand the arithmetic—and alchemy—that goes into the making of the perfect filter coffee.