Chicu Lokgariwar faces the lockdown in the Himalayas that includes a minor tussle over coffee with a mouse. Read on…
Acouple of months ago, I noticed our coffee stash was getting dangerously low and placed an order with Black Baza. Lovingly, I tracked its progress and celebrated the Saturday it reached its penultimate stop. The next evening, the country went into lockdown. My coffee was now stuck for several weeks, perhaps longer.
My husband and I bravely switched to an instant coffee that we considered acceptable and chugged along on it. Till the shop ran out of it too. We were now forced either to switch to tea, or drink a popular but terrible brand – both were unacceptable options.
‘We could walk to Almora’, said my husband. ‘Spend the night there, walk back.’
‘Not sans coffee,’ said I.
Just then we heard someone calling out to us from the top of the path. It was the postman. He never comes down to our part of the village, preferring to deposit mails at a shop on the main road. ‘A parcel arrived for you today,’ he said holding a battered but divinely scented box. ‘A mouse got at in where it was kept earlier, and I came to ask you if you want to return it.’
Return coffee? No way!
We practically snatched the parcel out of the poor man’s hands, thanked him effusively and brewed our first ever pot in weeks. Neither a lockdown nor a mouse may come between us and our Black Baza!
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About Chicu
Chicu Lokgariwar is a writer and worker of water issues, mainly around water conflicts and the conservation of rivers. She is also the co-partner at Pão, a small bakery in the Central Himalayas, owned and operated by herself and her husband Keith; its primary focus is the baking of artisan breads using local ingredients and European traditions. Read more about it here.
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