I AM more than an average drinker of coffee. On a typical working day, I will take three large cups of the hot drink. My day starts with the first cup just before the Fajr prayer. The second is around half past ten in the morning, and the last one is in the afternoon.
I may skip a cup some days and make up for it other days. This may happen if there is a disruption in the work routine. A social visit by a friend or colleague may cause the additional caffeine intake.
Do I love coffee? I probably don鈥檛, but I like it. I enjoy the drink. I like tea as well, and I have it at breakfast. However, coffee wins my preference vote. If I buy a hot drink anywhere, it鈥檚 usually coffee, no other drink.
As I travel to different countries, I compare the taste of coffee from different places. I have become a coffee connoisseur of some sort.
Does the drink help me in any way? Probably it does, or at least I think so. The caffeine may remove tiredness or sleepiness, temporarily at least. The early morning coffee helps me to concentrate on my work for a few hours.
Research has explored the impact of coffee on cognitive performance. A 鈥楽cientific Explanations鈥� blog with the title 鈥楥offee intake and cognitive performance: Metaanalysis findings鈥� links coffee drinking to increased attention and alertness, reduced reaction time, short-term memory improvement, elevation of mood and motivation, and long-term health benefit. However, the effect is likely to vary from person to person. The blog concludes with an interesting piece of advice: 鈥楾hink of coffee as your mind鈥檚 companion: quietly supportive, a friend if you keep it in moderation.鈥�
I haven鈥檛 thought about such benefits of coffee. Regardless, I am likely to continue drinking it for the rest of my life, if health permits. Coffee has come to find some place for itself in my life. I invest time and effort in making and drinking it. Sometimes I buy the drink from coffee shops, particularly when I travel. It鈥檚 not cheap; one cup costs me around ten Australian dollars in some places. I remember I spent more on the coffee than on the whole breakfast in one city. This is bizarre, but I usually don鈥檛 complain. This is a habit that I have developed, and, fortunately, I can afford to buy it occasionally. At home and work, I make my own coffee, so I don鈥檛 see its impact on my purse.
听
Class
HOW did coffee enter my life in the first place?
In fact, coffee was an unlikely companion in my life. There were no social, sociological, or cultural reasons for me to be a coffee drinker. Although scholars say that taste development follows class lines, sometimes there can be small exceptions with small things.
I might have heard or read about coffee during my school days. Manna Dey鈥檚 famous song about their coffeehouse adda in Kolkata may have been one source of my knowledge. However, I had never seen it, let alone enjoyed it, in those days. My parents struggled to feed us three meals a day for many years. Even drinking tea was a distant luxury in our socioeconomic situations.
Culturally, coffee is foreign to Bangladeshis, who usually drink tea. Tea outlets can be found all over the country. Their popularity can be understood from the fact that at school and during public examinations, we were asked to write paragraphs on tea stalls. It鈥檚 only recently that coffee places have sprouted in different parts of Dhaka and other cities. They cater to the emerging drinking taste of a particular social class which has the means and access to global gastronomic and cultural experiences.
I had the first taste of coffee in the 1990s when I was a student at the University of Dhaka. Coffee shops were rare in those days in the city. A friend of mine invited me to one somewhere in Dhanmondi. My host encouraged me to try the drink.
I liked the white and hot liquid in my first sip. Somehow the aroma suited my rustic nostrils. I couldn鈥檛 relate the taste to anything that I was familiar with, but I liked the texture and the flavour. It was also lovingly sweet. I can鈥檛 compare it with my current coffee without sugar.
My first drinking of coffee wasn鈥檛 free from rational choice thinking. I wondered why people would spend 30 taka on a drink. A cup of tea in those days was not even five takas. Although my friend paid the bill, it alerted my economic antenna. Thirty takas was almost my three days鈥� rickshaw fare to the house of my student whom I tutored.
I didn鈥檛 wonder about coffee or another drink in the years that I followed. I might have drunk it once or twice at a formal event, or if a friend invited me again.
Around this time, there came an opportunity for me to immerse myself in a coffee culture. The Australian Development Scholarship took me to Melbourne to study for a postgraduate degree. I stayed the first few days of my first overseas travel in a hotel which provided breakfast. I could choose tea or coffee for a drink, and I opted for coffee almost always.
From the hotel, I moved into a homestay family where I lived with a few other international students. All meals were provided by the host mother. There was an abundant supply of coffee and tea in the kitchen. At the university, we could make our free coffee in the designated social space for postgraduate students. Gradually, I came to understand that coffee was a common drink in Australia; it had no connection with class or social distinction.
In fact, if you encounter a beggar in any Australian city, they will probably beg a dollar or two from you, saying they haven鈥檛 had their coffee for the day.
As I left Australia at the end of my study, I asked myself what I would miss from down under. I counted three things: a) the smell of a coffee shop; b) the reader-friendliness of university libraries; and c) the sound of the bell at pedestrian crossings in Australian streets.
听
Conscience
COFFEE drinking is now part of my everyday Australian life; there is no question of ethics or morality in it. However, drinking the beverage in a coffee outlet in Dhaka during my short visits pricks my conscience. I drink it only sparingly when I get bored with the coffee that I make at home or when I want to meet friends or colleagues.
As I walk to the coffee shop from the place where I usually stay in Dhaka, I find countless vendors selling various products on the footpath. Some sell vegetables on a van; others sell green coconuts, peanuts, and betel nuts and leaves. Some boys sell bottles of water to car riders. There are also beggars who don鈥檛 sell anything but look forward to whatever people will give them out of kindness.
I ask myself if any of these people would earn the amount the whole day that I spend on the coffee. I don鈥檛 go to any high-end coffee shop; the average one that I choose charges 350 taka for a cup.
My poor mathematical knowledge keeps hurting my conscience as I walk to the coffee shop, while I drink the beverage, and when I walk back to my place after the consumption. Many of those vendors may have a target of earning a quarter, a half or three-quarters of the price of my coffee. How many people in Bangladesh have an average daily income of below 350 taka? They are probably in many millions.
My pricking conscience does not make me a philanthropist. Maybe my conscience refuses to be silent because not long ago I belonged to the class of those people. As a student in the same city, I struggled to earn a modest living through private tuition. I also worried about my parents and siblings who didn鈥檛 have regular incomes.
The coffee in Dhaka is more than a drink 鈥� it鈥檚 a reminder of my social origin that I have left behind, my social mobility, and my pseudo-cosmopolitan identity. Every sip of the coffee is an arithmetic exercise 鈥� how many people live by the price of how many cups in Bangladesh and in other parts of the world. I can鈥檛 disentangle the drink from class or conscience.
听
听Obaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education, and society in the developing world. He is a co-editor of Current Issues in Language Planning.