On Coffee, and Everything That Isn’t
There’s something about the sound of coffee grinding. The whole journey, from grind to table, is a small mystery.
There’s something about the sound of coffee grinding. That low, gritty rumble, and then the whoosh of piping hot foamed milk filling the cup - the slow calm it settles into, from loud rush to silence. That quiet is the signal: the cup is full, ready to reach the eager person waiting for a taste. And no matter how it actually turns out, I love that there’s a whole journey behind it. The beans being ground. The milk poured in. The prep of some intricate (or sometimes not-so-intricate) foam design swirled on top. Then the barista sets the cup on a tray, carries it over, places it in front of you, and maybe smile, maybe they don’t.
The whole journey, from grind to table, is a small mystery. You never really know how the coffee will be today. Maybe you’re lucky, and the barista is having a good day, and what lands in front of you is hot and generous and exactly right. Maybe not. Maybe it’s lukewarm and forgettable. But you don’t know until it arrives, and there’s something honest about that - about sitting with a little uncertainty over something that, in the grand scheme, doesn’t matter at all. Most of life doesn’t offer you that. Most of life demands you know the outcome before you’ve begun.
I don’t know what it is about coffee shops that pulls me toward them, always. Doesn’t matter if they’re famous or forgettable, polished or peeling at the edges. I just feel I owe it to the coffee gods to step in, find a corner, order a cup, and wait for it to appear - to surprise me or disappoint me. The intrigue never fades. I think part of me keeps going back hoping to be surprised, which might be a small, stubborn kind of optimism I didn’t know I had.
I’ve had the privilege of living in a city with genuinely great coffee. Bengaluru, sitting so close to the plantations, helps. The city has access to a whole spread of beans, all waiting to be explored, and I’ve spent years slowly making my way through them - not systematically, not like a project, just wandering from one place to the next the way you drift through a good, unhurried decade.
Coffee places, good and bad, have been woven through my life for as long as I can remember. Some of my highest points happened in them. Some of my lowest, too. They’ve watched me laugh until I couldn’t breathe, cry into a napkin, sit stiff with nerves before something that scared me, turn quiet and introspective, go absolutely furious, and more often than I’d admit, feel completely vulnerable. Like any other establishment, they serve customers. They have chairs, tables, a counter, the usual. But unlike most places, they somehow feel intimate. As if everyone in the room is quietly celebrating a small, private moment with their cup, together but apart.
I’ve always looked around and watched people in coffee shops. Some type away at their laptops, headphones on, sealed into their own worlds. Some lean in over the table, discussing plans with a fierce, contagious enthusiasm. Some talk so softly it’s almost as if they don’t want the walls to overhear. Everyone’s stories are unfurling at once, all in the same warm, humming room, and I’m right there in the middle of it, sipping, reading, writing, sometimes talking to someone I love, but always aware of the life spilling out around me. There’s a strange comfort in it. You’re alone, but not lonely. Surrounded, but not intruded upon. It’s one of the few places I know where you can be part of something without having to perform any part in it at all.
For the longest time, I used to wonder why I was pulled toward coffee shops. I don’t ask that anymore. Because not every question needs an answer. The answer to your why might not be what you expected, or even what you hoped for. And maybe the fact that you asked a question doesn’t mean you’re owed a reply. Some things are better left as pull rather than explanation, as feeling rather than fact.
Somewhere along the way, we get so caught up with productivity - with outcomes, results, goals, the endless quiet arithmetic of whether we’re doing enough, that sitting still becomes suspicious. Just sipping and enjoying the warmth of a cup starts to feel like a guilt trip, like stolen time you’ll have to pay back later. When did rest start feeling like debt? When did doing nothing become something we have to justify?
So, why do I like the sound of a coffee machine and sitting there doing nothing productive, nothing that contributes to “growth”? I don’t need an answer to that. I’ve decided some pleasures don’t have to earn their place. They’re allowed to just exist, the way a good afternoon is allowed to pass without producing anything at all.
What we need, I think, is simply to go out and have that coffee. And your coffee doesn’t have to be coffee. It could be tea. It could be a bucket of popcorn during a bad movie, or a plate of momos you’d walk across the city for. I’ve bent your ear about coffee for the last few minutes, but it was never really about the coffee. It was about the idea that coffee represents for me - the small, deliberate act of returning to something that asks nothing of you except that you enjoy it.
For you, it might be trekking fifteen kilometres up a punishing incline at four in the morning, just to watch the sun crack open the horizon at dawn. It might be a garden. A guitar left leaning in a corner. A particular stretch of road. Whatever it is, you have to find your way back to it now and then. Not because it’s productive. Not because it makes you better. But because it makes you you, and that version of you deserves to be visited.
Because life has a funny way of being not-so-funny in retrospect. With career, family, relationships, and all the other complex adult stuff we keep telling ourselves we’ll sort out later, it’s easy to forget that life is for the living. (Or we’re better off dead- a little Passenger reference there) The years pile up quietly. The to-do lists renew themselves like they’re immortal. And one day you look up and realise you can’t remember the last time you did something purely because it made you smile.
So this is the small thing I’d ask of you, and of myself. Don’t wait for the calendar to clear, because it won’t. Go have the coffee. Take the walk. Climb the ridiculous mountain in the dark. If we’re not returning, however briefly, to the things that make us glad to be here - then what, exactly, are we even living for?