A robust brew

Author shows how the history of coffee is intertwined with histories of colonisation, indentured labour, war, migration, and destruction of tropical forests to meet the demand for cash crops

Cherry Red, Cherry Black

Author: Kavery Nambisan

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 288   

Price: Rs 699

When you drink a cup of coffee do you think about the processes of planting, growing, plucking, drying, and packaging that have gone into it? For most, coffee is simply a beverage that kick-starts your day or helps you stay awake when you work at night.

If you are a coffee lover and a bibliophile, Kavery Nambi­san’s new book Cherry Red, Cherry Black: The Story of Coffee in India deserves a place on your bookshelf. It is an engaging work of non-fiction about the geography, economics and history of coffee. The author, who is a surgeon and novelist, is equally at home with telling stories that transport the reader to various places and time periods, and rattling off numbers that satiate the nerd’s thirst for data.

Did you know, for instance, that India is the eighth largest coffee-producing country in the world with an annual output of 3,12,000 tonnes per year, and that Karnataka is responsible for nearly 65 per cent of the total coffee production, Kerala contributes 18 per cent, Tamil Nadu accounts for approximately 15 per cent and Andhra Pradesh is responsible for two per cent? Were you aware that there are more than 2,10,000 coffee producers in India, and that the majority of these are small farmers with plots of land around two hectares?

The author’s deep interest in this subject comes from early exposure. She writes, “Born in my maternal home within a coffee estate, I must have drawn my first breath not ten yards from the bushes just picked clean of red berries, for it was the month of February when the coffee-picking is over.” She has fond childhood memories of watching berries ripen from green to red, and getting intoxicated by the sweet fragrance emanating from coffee bushes in bloom. She is able to communicate the magic, romance and nostalgia through her well-chosen words.

While the focus is on southern India — especially Kodagu aka Coorg in Karnataka where she is based — the author also provides a global perspective by bringing in stories from Abyssinian, English, French, Brazilian, Arab, Sri Lankan and Vietnamese contexts. She shows how the history of coffee is intertwined with histories of colonisation, indentured labour, war, migration, and destruction of tropical forests to meet the demand for cash crops.

The author’s enthusiasm for her subject is infectious. All the facts and figures that she lays out evoke interest rather than exhaustion because her authorial voice employs all the skills that she polished as a novelist when she wrote The Scent of Pepper (1996), Mango-coloured Fish (1998), The Hills of Angheri (2005) and A Town Like Ours (2014), among other books.

With great ease, her prose alternates between taking the reader on a pilgrimage to the Baba Budan Hills, and pointing out why the prices of coffee fell during the Second World War, between talking about plant diseases and analysing why the Kodava community of Karnataka is anglicised. The seemingly effortless switch between registers owes to the variety of life experiences that the author has gathered. She has been a medical advisor at the Tata Coffee Hospital in Kodagu, worked in rural Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and served as a governing council member of the Association of Rural Surgeons of India. She has interviewed people from the coffee industry, and conducted archival research for the book.

Additionally, this book also touches upon topics like sustainable coffee growing practices, conducive weather conditions and soil quality, export markets, the political significance of coffee houses, associations to facilitate networking between plantation owners, working conditions, trade unions, and legal measures instituted to address critical concerns around economic exploitation, sexual harassment, housing and health services, creches and canteens. 

This book also alerts the reader to challenges faced by migrant workers who are able to secure only temporary employment. Not only are they not entitled to medical care, they are made even more vulnerable by plantation owners who take possession of their Aadhaar cards. To make matters worse, their school-going children face frequent disruptions in education. It might be fair to presume that most coffee drinkers are oblivious to these disturbing realities.

The author writes, “There are several smaller plantations which exploit temporary workers by giving them loans and then keeping them in bondage until the money is returned with an exorbitant rate of interest.” This burden of debt is felt most acutely by “uneducated tribal communities” in Kodagu, and migrant workers coming from states like Assam and Mizoram.

The author succeeds in presenting a nuanced picture of the ecosystem that coffee production and consumption have been part of. While it is common to celebrate coffee houses as places for circulation of revolutionary ideas, this book also urges the reader to think about why coffee drinking was considered a Western habit in India in the early 20th century, when coffee houses also put up discriminatory signs such as “Brahmins only”, “Shudras not allowed” and “Shudras, Panchamas, Muslims and Christians will not be served food, snacks or water here”.

This book familiarises the reader with anti-caste protests led by EV Ramasamy aka Periyar against this practice, and the efforts of the Congress party in Tamil Nadu to cancel the licences of coffee houses and hotels promoting caste-based prejudices.

The most depressing part of this book is an incident revolving around Kannan, a Congress leader who walked into one such coffee house with his friends and insisted on being served. The owner had the gall to say he would make an exception but these customers would have to wash their glasses after drinking coffee because they would have been polluted by their touch. Read this book to learn not only about coffee but also about the country we live in.