“Love is BLIND”
“Caffe latte pls”… holding the folder with creative stuff in one hand and payment card in another, my eyes started searching for a secluded table in the coffee shop. After all, it was a date and as always, I was the first one to reach. Soon he came and sat next to me, quiet, docile, a true charmer. I felt his warmth as I kissed and greeted. Yes… it was my cup of coffee, ‘Cafe latte’ to be more precise, the love of my life.
I share a secret relationship with it since my teens. As I walked the path of life, sometimes falling and other times running and walking, it has been with me always in every situation — happy, sad, difficult, lonely, fun and what not. It has been excellent in understanding my various moods and always providing me with comfort. It has played a great role in being my ‘creative stimulant’ when I would get blocked for ideas. Whether it was being my office companion on heavily work-loaded days, or poetic companion in the rainy nights when I wanted a creative high, it was always available, like no one else with a smile on its face. My design projects have a special mention to him in acknowledgement section for motivating me during my endless hours in cafes, accommodating itself in-between my worksheets. My conversations with my friends and family have been incomplete without this very café latte sips between the dialogues.
Yes I am hopelessly in love with my Cafe latte, served anywhere — Starbucks, or Tim Hortons, pacific place or the coffee academics, barista or cafe coffee day, college canteen nescafe or office vending machines. Having a coffee has always been a foolproof way of making the blue days bright in my life.
We, as human beings have all answers to our problems within us. But in low times or when we are anxious for things, we feel the need to talk to someone who is not there jumping at solutions for our problems, but is there to listen to us, understand us, stay calm and unreactive, is not our critic, and above all, is not there to judge us for who we are. All we need is warmth and assurance that we have someone to uplift us even in terrible situations of life.
Life has a peculiar characteristic of ‘change’ — friends change, relationships change, circumstances change, scenarios of life change. But one constant in my ever-changing life has been this ‘Cafe latte’ which finds its way to my heart like a hopeless lover, expressing its love relentlessly, making me feel its presence and pleasing me, his ‘soul mate’ at every walk of life…!! :)