MORNINGS are coffee time, and a time, which I spend most conscientiously brewing the concoction to perfection! Quite a few of my friends, knowing my love for the brew, send me packets of the pod from all over the country.
Some arrive from a special friend, Toviholi in Nagaland, Jogi brought me a packet from Coorg, and Amazon helps me a lot with videos showing customers lifting their heads in exhilaration after tasting some brand that promises to lift your spirit with every sip.
And I try to do the same with my spirits with every sip! But to get that to happen, to have the brew brewed to perfection, requires some concentration, between the machine, mixture, the amount of milk and amount of sweetener. All in all, a task that though mechanical to many, still needs me to be wholly aware of any mistakes.
Today I was puzzled. I’d put the mixture, this a powder from the south, poured the water into the side container, but realized that no coffee was being filtered. “Too thick a powder!” I said to myself, as I wondered which one of my friends had sent me this unblending stuff. Was it my friend Tovi, or Jogi, or was it Subu, who had introduced me to the south Indian blend he swore upon, “Bob, you got to taste it to believe it’s the best!”
“How do I taste it when it doesn’t brew?” I grumbled to myself, as my eye went disinterestedly to the switch, and there I did a double take, because the switch was on, but there was no plug going in; the coffee maker was unplugged! In a matter of seconds and holding back a whoop of joy, the coffee started flowing when the plug was plugged.
‘Plug is plugged!’ I shouted silently! Sound’s ridiculous, right? Plugs are supposed to be plugged, not lying abandoned by the side of a coffee machine and a few feet away from the source of electricity! But that’s what I see around me most of the time: A huge company, with one of the richest men in charge, on every list, listing his riches, except that the plug to honesty lies allegedly unplugged, and with it, comes an upheaval; no coffee!
More than no-coffee, financial doom! We see the same in many of our religious institutions, where every ritual is practiced to religious perfection, except the plug isn’t plugged to any spirituality! Churches, but no God! I watched with glee as the coffee started forming in the glass container below, and knew that my morning with my newspapers and scriptures would be a glorious time. But for that I needed to get the unplugged me, plugged..!
