Random Forays | Let’s celebrate the ‘gup-shup’ cup
The finest of minds bloom with innovative and far reaching thoughts, while the tongue savours the feel of a beverage, which in itself is worthy of celebration
That lowly, insignificant, cup which contains our coffee, tea or sundry warm liquids, needs much more attention than we tend to accord it. True, it only dons a vibrant, steamy, effervescent, avatar once a liquid of substance is poured into it. But once a cup does transform itself into a cuppa, people’s moods change, and there is every reason for meaningful conversations to be ignited.
There’s something of an X factor in the fragrance, feel and touch of a hot cup in hand which elevates the human consciousness to a potentially supreme level. Gossip and lowly thoughts also tend to germinate sometimes when two friends meet over a cuppa. But it is my experience that people are generally better behaved once they envelope a cup of coffee or tea in their hands. For one thing, they don’t want to utter some foolhardy words which may annoy the recipient enough to become physical at a time when a piping hot beverage is available to be hurled, god forbid!
Thus, coffee groups, and even tea collectives, would normally indulge in friendly banter and laughter while sipping something together. There is something very compelling about imbibing caffeine in togetherness which makes the ‘gup-shup’ cup an almost indispensable facet of our lives. Votaries of Bacchus might argue that such bonhomie could also emanate from those enjoying a drink together at a bar, and I have no argument with that.
But decidedly, tea and coffee, or even green tea and black coffee, are usually social drinks and they add volumes to the social health of humanity at large. Workers at a construction site, office goers gathered near a coffee machine, cricketers watching their team play from the sidelines, and even a lonesome writer of random forays typing away at a keyboard, we all feel nourished and rejuvenated once a cup of our favourite ‘hottie’ is at hand to be sipped and relished. But conversation is almost an integral ingredient of the process of gulping down a cup, however quickly or slowly that may be.
Tea and coffee have been the subject of conflicting scrutiny at the hands of this writer in the past, so I won’t go into their relative merits and demerits here. But both have their place in the glorious annals of human history, even though they are relatively young drinks in a historic landscape dotted with landmark moments.
In a 2013 study published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Management, Research and Innovation, professor Harsh V Verma writes, “Tea is instrumental in bringing families together in close proximity and provides a platform for sharing and caring. A certain mystique is associated with coffee. Coffee is predominantly an outside drink; it derives its utility from social, aesthetic and emotional roles.”
Yet, even while tea is usually a homely beverage, chai stalls have cropped up all over the world and tea serves just as much a reason to meet in a café as does coffee. We coffee lovers, on the other hand, find numerous reasons to land up at coffee places. And we also find excuses to prepare some filter coffee at home!
The aforementioned lowly cup that stores these delicacies for us to sip has also undergone several transformations, of course. While in Turkey, we noticed that a unique shapely glass cup was used all over the country to serve tea, while coffee was presented in innovative varieties of containers. A visit to Maharashtra or Gujarat will probably introduce unfamiliar foreign residents and even north Indians to the tiniest of ‘cutting’ chai cups. Paper cups, especially when used for hot liquids, are not entirely conducive to good health, and the internet is flooded with information about their shady origins. But they too have found a semi-permanent place in the realm of tea-coffee drinking across the globe.
The finest of minds bloom with innovative and far reaching thoughts, while the tongue savours the feel of a beverage, which in itself is worthy of celebration. Apart from the lovingly prepared concoction, the hand which knows the precise formula is worthy of applause as well. For those who love their tea or coffee, each sip from each cup is a matter of sheer joy.
vivek.atray@gmail.com
