Bursting My OC Chai Bubble
The pungent odor billowing from that apartment had to have been alcohol. Unfamiliar and foreign, like the 1960s America that had become her home, my mother rushed my brother Khalid past that space during their morning dash to school to avoid any contact with the forbidden drink for Muslims. Her father-in-law’s prophecy–that America’s very air would be infused with the forbidden–had come true.
Or so she thought — until 2000 something.
When I measured out two tablespoons of coffee for two cups of water, she leaned in, and spontaneously revised her own personal history. “This is what I smelled outside that apartment.” Turns out what she thought was alcohol decades prior was actually the earthy aroma of coffee.
Despite being born and raised in California, of Indian-born, Pakistani immigrant parents, I grew up in an Indo-Pakistani chai bubble. And nowhere along the line was there mention of coffee. Funny enough, according to popular legend, it was Muslims who introduced the brew to the ‘Western world.’ Yet coffee was absolutely unfamiliar to me while growing up.
I have always loved Americanness, the glory given to the self-made, the pioneer.
But somehow I felt like an outsider when it came to coffee, sharing my drink of choice with Indians and Pakistanis rather than Americans. Not being able to relate to — in a land where coffee is not just a pastime, but a patriotic duty — troubled me. Coffee had, after all, replaced tea after the Revolutionary War as the red-white-and blue’s caffeine jolt.
I wasn’t expressing my American-ness enough, and that needed to change. My journey to coffee enlightenment needed to begin at the Mecca of coffee. I had to go deep into the trenches and apply for a job as a barista.
The thought of being a barista somehow seemed glamorous to me. But how could I tell my parents the daughter they’d cradled and nurtured had made this choice? All their sacrifices in leaving their parents behind in Pakistan, in building a life for my siblings and I, all the money they poured into my education— how could I tell them about my job as a barista?
I did what any dutiful daughter would do: I kept it a secret.
So off I went on a rainy January afternoon in 2004, my chai-making skills and master’s degree in hand, to Starbucks’ regional interview. Hallelujah! I began work within a week, my learning curve was steep. From the get-go, my manager would call me in to cover shifts at the busiest times, like Saturday mornings. I leaped from not knowing the difference between instant coffee and drip, knowing nothing at all about the range of espresso drinks, to whipping out white chocolate mochas and cappuccinos.
My favorite time of day was opening, at the first light of 5 a.m., with the earthy aroma of coffee floating on a breeze, and the interplay of sounds: coffee grinding, blenders churning, milk foaming and human conversation, all inaugurating the day in unison.
Construction workers and executives, nurses and doctors, students and teachers would come for their democratized jolt.
“Are you getting the usual today?” “Room for cream.” “No room.” “Can you drop a few ice cubes in it?”
By daybreak, the hustle bustle calmed. The overhead lighting radiance paled from the brightness of the sun. Welcomed by birds hopping outside seeking sustenance, off-shift employees came to say a quick hello to their on-shift coworkers. Lonely people seeking a jolt, wanting simple human contact, visited daily.
I wanted to end my coffee ignorance and I did it. Not only did I simply acquire a taste for coffee but I enjoy drinking it, too. I know which drink to order when I’m standing in front of an apron-clad barista. Somehow learning about coffee made me feel more culturally balanced.
In the end though, barista life wasn’t meant to be, I guess, because, for no good reason — I got fired.
That same day, I went home to make myself an old country cup of chai.
