Meherchand Market in Lodhi Colony is flooded with shops and outlets, which spring to life in the evenings as their sharp, yellow display lights are turned on, bathing the streets in their bright colours. Tucked away in a quiet corner of Meherchand Market, a little north of Fifth Avenue Road lies an uncelebrated walk-in cafe that adorns the long list of shops in the Lodhi Colony area. Kunafa, a small Middle-Eastern cafe stands out due to its distinctive pointed arch that marks its entrance along with the bottle green doorways. The outlet itself is named after a Middle Eastern dessert called Kunafa that is made out of roasted semolina and sugar syrup. A single counter commands the majority of the space inside and is lined with glass cloches covering diamond-shaped flaky Kunafas and Baklavas. Behind the counter, an array of assorted dates are displayed in extravagant boxes.
Kunafa is a paradise for dessert-loving crowds. The cafe’s menu is dominated by desserts and biscuits that trace their origin to some part of the Middle-East or the Mediterranean, thus providing the average Delhite with a much-needed recluse from the normal cafes serving English pastries and macaroons with French-pressed coffee. Although Kunafa occupies a small area in the heart of one of Delhi’s most lavish and luxurious streets, the food it provides is an experience that cannot be contained in the four-walls of Kunafa; it’s a magnificence that explodes and proliferates each time you sit on the long-legged chairs of Kunafa, with the aroma of dark Turkish coffee and Middle-Eastern sweets emanating from the counter.
Kunafa might be known for many things, but what caught our attention was the soft and crispy baklavas and the bitter Turkish coffee that was served to us in a brightly coloured ceramic cup and saucer, their designs, and colours matching and contemplating each other. As self-declared coffee connaisseurs, the rich smell of the bitter coffee and the coloured ceramic cups instantly appealed to us, before we had even taken a sip.
As we feasted on the sweet baklavas and the grainy, bitter coffee, our minds and tongues tried to make sense of the contrasting tastes that almost overpowered each other. From the crispy sweetness of the baklava to the crude bitterness of the coffee, our tastebuds were bombarded with a wide array of flavours.
The Turkish dark coffee has its own story to tell, which most patrons of Kunafa have glanced over. From being banned in the ancient days to being brought back to life by the Ottomans during the medieval era, the story of the Turkish coffee is ridden with crests and troughs. These same crests and troughs, however, are interwoven into another story that the Turkish coffee tells to its patrons. Tasseology or Tasseography is a form of fortune-telling that developed in Turkey and has stayed there, wherein the fortune-teller observes the dark stains of the coffee residue left behind in an empty cup and predicts their future. Just like palmists who trace the lines of our palms and tell us the fortune that would befall us, tasseographers trace the waves formed by the coffee residue to tell the fortunes of their caffeine-loving patrons.
Thomas Jefferson once said “Coffee- the favourite drink of the civilized world”, and his definition of the civilized world excluded the very regions where the beverage is said to have originated. It is ironic that coffee was introduced to the New World only in the 17th century while the Arabian peninsula was familiar with it from the 15th century onwards, from where it continued to travel east. The arrogant white man obliterated two-hundred years of history just out of sheer negligence. Today, the US-based company Starbucks has hijacked the coffee market all over the world, selling sugary concoctions and cappuccinos. The over-the-top sweetness of American westernization and capitalism has completely restructured and also destroyed the inherent bitterness and simplicity of a commodity that was enjoyed by people in the Arabian peninsula across class barriers. While there is nothing wrong with tweaking a beverage to suit one’s taste, the problem lies in perceiving it as something unique to the West or as a part of their ‘culture’. In such cases, the problem of cultural appropriation needs to be addressed. The story of coffee is just that of a not-so-prodigal son who ventured around the world and left his traces in his progeny, who went on to have their own kids and form their own little family trees, not completely severing themselves off from their great-great-great grandfather, but at the same time keeping their own cultures alive.
Dastaan-E-Dilli 