Coffee Culture in India

written by Lori Thiessen

Now perhaps I’m just revealing my provincial outlook, but when I think of India I don’t associate it with huge coffee consumption. Tea? Yes. Coffee? No.

But my views are expanding by leaps and bounds from several different sources. I was reading Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, and the story mentions that a weekly treat for the young people in the fictional town of Brahmpur is to go to the Imperial Book Depot and then go for coffee afterwards. Also, I was talking with a friend of mine and he was saying that coffee is quite popular in India. After googling “coffee culture india”, the search engine spat back a BBC article and blog about how coffee culture is taking India by storm.

According to “India’s Coffee Bar Revolution”, BBC News coffee has become the rage among young, upwardly mobile Indians who associate coffee with a more worldly, sophisticated life.

Jinal Shah’s blog Constant Beta featured an article on how Bombay had been bombed by coffee chains, not Starbucks (yet) but a bunch of homegrown chains wanting to cash in on this new fad of Indian youth. Yet after writing a small critique of each of the chains, she goes on to say that India has no coffee culture. Ms. Shah dismisses the coffee craze as nothing more than a passing fancy.

But if Indian youth have seen that drinking coffee is part of being cosmopolitan and joining the global community who are in the grips of the coffee madness, then it seems to me that the fad will likely turn into an institution. However, only time will tell.

Until Next Time,

May your coffee always be freshly brewed!