Shadi wali coffee, caffeinated nostalgia
We had barely exited the Sunil's wax museum at a Mall in Lonavala when Mrs Katyal spotted a stall with this huge espresso machine placed right in the front. Just the sight of the machine and its whoosh made both of us want a cup of coffee. And it wasn't much later that an order was placed for two cups of Shadi wali coffee ! In Hindustani, Shadi stands for a wedding and Shadi wali coffee translates to Coffee served at weddings. Coffee at most North Indian homes wasn't a daily affair, well, at least not in the 90s, when I was growing up in Lucknow. Most people we knew were tea consumers. Consumers may be an understatement, more like tea guzzlers! And like tea, coffee too was prepared over a gas stove, with lots of milk and copious amounts of sugar. S ometimes we would pester our parents to treat us with some ' Machine wali coffee ' when it wasn't the weddings' season. Another reason we stuck to nomenclatures such as shadi wali coffee...