Coffee was the forbidden drink. We were permitted to drink as much tea as we could. People didn’t realise the inhabitants of caffeine in both. Maybe as Sri Lankans, we were allowed to consume whatever came along with tea. Anything and everything got fixed with tea. We listened to the brutal news of suicide bombers and assassinations to the background of teacup saucers clicking with each other. But I was always fascinated by the smell of coffee. As a child, I would fill my milky cup of tea with so much white cane sugar that there was barely enough room left in the mug for liquid. Somehow it all became about the sweetness rather than the taste of tea leaves. Who introduced me to coffee? Not sure really. My father drank only coffee. His room smelled of coffee. Him in his separate bedroom to where my mother slept. Snoring to be the culprit of that arrangement. But it all seemed reasonable to me. I didn’t know any better nor any other way how parents were supposed to live. My grandfather loved his coffee. My mother’s father. He had his separate living arrangement separated from my grandmother. I guess you could say my influences on family life came at a very young age. Not sure why I reached out to coffee to calm me down when chemically its meant to induce an opposite reaction. When you can’t depend on people, you reach for something else for stability. Maybe addiction is chasing an extreme form of reliability, but we fail to see that nothing, no feeling, no person is ever permeant. Its ok, I still have my coffee. I now drink it bitter.