 Here we are at eleven degrees north in southern India. This is an ideal weather for coffee and there are areas of south India which are mountains of coffee. I mean they grow coffee here. During my youth I spent a lot of time in cool and these mountains are covered with coffee. This is coffee country. In another couple of months, sometime in February, January and February, the coffee goes into blossom. When the coffee plants go into full blossom, the whole mountain will turn partially white because of white flowers, jasmine like flowers and though the beans are invigorating, the fragrance of the coffee blossom is absolutely intoxicating and enthralling. It's very difficult to explain or articulate this experience. Many times I felt it in a few years ago, I took a few people who I wanted to know this and experience this. And being there in a coffee mountain or a coffee estate as they are known, it was inevitable I had to pen something about coffee. Being in Tamil Nadu now, though not much coffee is grown here in Tamil Nadu except in Air Card which is close to Salem. The Tamil people are coffee drinkers. They wake up to the day not because of the sun, mostly because of the coffee and they kind of mastered the concoction. Probably the Tamil Nadu's filtered coffee stands out compared to anything in the world. They evolved the system of getting the best out of the coffee beans. Even if you give them very low grade coffee, they will produce great coffee. Here is an ode to coffee, an ode to coffee. As the seed does not reveal the shape of the tree, the innocence of the infant face does not reveal the sage or the sorcerer to come, the white beauty of a blossom with the fragrance to rival the majestic jasmine does not reveal the enslaving insane concoction of your beans. Half the world has surrendered to you, the other half are either ignorant of your magic or have turned ascetic and refuse to succumb to you. Of all of man's ingenuity, in extracting pleasure and nourishment from the mother's breast, you stand out to be the one to inspire a fierce faith of unquenchable sort. You have overshadowed the lord of light. You have overshadowed the lord of light. As for the faithful, daybreak means you, not the sun.