When the heat of the hot ceramic cup first hits your palm, the intoxication is instantaneous. The first billow of vapour that rises through your nostrils works like a drug and even the tongue burning attempt at a first sip isn’t mandatory to rid you of any faint glimmer of sleep. And you place your red instant coffee cup down hastily, maybe a moment to cool. Haste only ends the pleasure sooner.
During that brief instant of abandonment, you seek out a task most trivial in an attempt to let the coffee “wait” for you. And just like an eager lover unable to wait any longer, you sweep the mug with still swirling contents into your trembling hands. The huffing and puffing at the hot liquid scents the room with the smell only a true addict could love. The stir tea spoon sits tight in hot transfixion while gently aiding your efforts by slowly soaking in the extra heat that separates you from that first proper gulp. With the cold and heartless morning wind surrounding you, the desperation increases and you puppet the spoon in a mad circular fashion, dangerously taunting the steamy fluid. The frenzy culminates when you decide that enough energy has been wasted and that’s precisely when the courage to chance another sip arrives.
When that first mouthful glides warmly down your oesophagus and into the rest of your digestive track, your neurons charge up for the relentless firing of signals that constitute your thoughts. Getting the right amount of sugar in that cuppa is an art that is learnt only through experience and a deft hand at ratio and proportions. The satisfaction that ensues a perfectly coordinated caffeinated miracle is an altogether different feeling. A Smile maybe. Precisely then are you able to numb out the frigid surroundings and feel the warmth radiate through your fingers and the Goosebumps rise in attention along the length of your arm.
While the rest of the cup is downed with relative ease and an established familiarity with the heat, the tenderness offered only by a steaming cup of coffee leads you as far away from dreamland as you can possibly want to be. Sadists deem coffee to be a threat more than a life-saving lifestyle choice. Caffeine pumps blood to the brain quicker, stimulates the senses like no hot beverage and beats the drowsy blues to pulp. While overdoing it and developing a dependence on it is harmful, like too much of any good thing, it’s absolute necessity and utility can never be argued upon.
And while the black of the early morning world interspersed with twinkling lights plods on towards daylight, the silent red mug sits snugly in your palm. You are never alone once with it for the simple reason that there are many more nursing the same cuppa in their hands too. The coffee rush is brilliantly awakening and spurs bigger and better results.
As for the tiny black dregs of instant coffee sitting snugly at the bottom of the cup along with the remnants of the stubborn sugar crystals, a catchy phrase comes to mind: Life is like a cup of hot coffee. You go through the bitter liquid and then find the sugar crystals lying below, unstirred, undisturbed. If only it didn’t have to end so soon, the pleasure limited to a sticky memory on the side of your lips.
Whether it is bright and early on a black Monday or late some weeknight before an exam, Coffee remains to this day an unheralded elixir of life. And while those fancy brews so well advertised with jingles that play in loop in your brain while sipping your favourite brand, the coffee culture grows steadily with every developing coffee buff. The humble coffee bean and it’s multi-million dollar empire. Instant or the other kind. Coffee. Caffeine. Perfection.
From the very first whiff,
To the sneaky dates with you,
Ours was a love destined to be,
An affair of addiction to you….
plaitsnponys 
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