And a little tribute to VG Siddhartha Hegde CCD
The idea of spending a few days at Chikmagaluru at a resort in the middle of a coffee estate sounded alluring,
and my partiality to estates, considering my birth in one, perhaps nailed it.
Some asked why I was going to a place which is quite similar in terrain and
foliage, mention not the scenery, to Kerala. In any case, we had decided and so
wedged the trip into the tail end of our short vacation to Kerala.
The resort we were headed to, resplendent as it was, had
been owned by Siddharth Hegde of CCD, the very man who had recently jumped off
a bridge to his death. I banished all negative thoughts, not that there was any
time for them in the hustle and bustle of the travel plans, the flights in, the
initial days of buzzing through Kerala and meeting many relatives and some
friends, a part which I need not narrate here.
We spent a couple of days at Bangalore, only to see the city
we had grown to love in the 80’s had changed so much, most of it was
unrecognizable and enveloped in a cocoon of developmental misery with traffic
snarls, noise, smoke and teeming masses scurrying about. The IT capital, a
metropolis now caring for and handling the back offices of much of the
developed world was in my mind, uncaring about its own self.
Gone were the misty mornings, muffler clad pensioners, empty
roads and much of the green foliage. Buildings had sprouted up all over like
weeds, while scores of vehicles had found their way into a road system not
really designed or built to handle them all. We were curtly told that our usual
shopping (nostalgia driven) trips to MG road, Brigade road and so on were out
of the question due to the limited time at our disposal and that we had to
curtail our shopping jaunts to the Jayanagar 4th block (we stayed
with our aunt in the 1st block). The trip planned to the old
Anglo-Indian hamlet of Whitfield to check out my brother’s pad was going to
take a whole day, as I learnt in dismay. My ideas of investigating Winston
Churchill’s rumored trysts with Rose Hamilton, the daughter of the owner of the
Waverly Inn at Whitefield, was postponed to a distant day in the future. All we
got to see instead were the many high-rise buildings put together to house the
new middle class and not so Anglo Indian crowd (The hamlet of Whitefield had
once been earmarked in the 1800’s fro Anglo Indians). Perhaps Whitefield’s
history is meant to be for another day, for another article, so I will not
digress and get on with the Chikmagalur jaunt.
Coffee and tea are both favorite topics of mine and you may
recall a previous article where I had covered the origins of coffee drinking in
India, thanks of course to some fine pointers from Chalapathy’s fascinating
study. Tea was another subject which I covered on a couple of occasions,
including the Chinese and Nilgiris and I was hoping to get back to working on
the origins of the Samovar to assist my pal Nikhil, but for now it was Coffee.
Why so, would be the question from a tea lover, and the answer would then be,
because Chikmagalur was where Indian coffee plantations were born, according to
lore and legend.
And that would have me retell the story of Baba Budan once
again. Many centuries ago, the 16th to be vaguely precise, Baba
Buda, a Sufi preacher from Chikmagalur went to Mecca for his Hajj pilgrimage
and drank coffee. He liked it so much that he wanted to bring some beans back
and plant them in his backyard. But there was a moratorium on seeds and only
baked or ground coffee could be taken out of Arabia. So our pious man decided
to do an impious act, he smuggled 7 beans out (don’t ask me why he took seven
and not six or ten! But if you did, I would then reply that seven is a sacred
number in Islam, 7 heavens, 7 earths, 7 days, 7 colors etc…!) in a walking
stick, strapped to his tummy belt or tucked in his beard (depending on the
story teller or his mood) and planted them on the slopes of the Chandragiri
hills. And thus Baba Budan who lived as a hermit in a cave in Chikmagalur, lend
his name to the hills and to the history of the coffee plants which germinated
form the seeds he planted outside his cave.
But how did the coffee bean become popular in Yemen? For
that you must get to know a bloke named Mullah Chadly who had, perhaps due to
his advanced age, the habit of nodding off to sleep while he was reciting the
Koran. What he did not fail to see, was how energetic his goats were, prancing
about here and there and this led him to the secret of caffeine. The goats had
eaten the fruit off some wild shrubs nearby and gotten hyper. Chadly (I doubt if
there is a brand named after him, Baba Budan certainly is well known!) had soon
found something which would keep him awake and sprightly, and thus was coffee
introduced, grandly termed as a gift of Mohammed. Now Chalapaty who declares
that the Iyers of Madras opted for coffee since tea was mostly a Muslim drink,
may have missed this, but Iyers may perhaps be vociferous in dissent, reading this.
As one would imagine, there is no dearth of stories
purporting to the origins of this fascinating potion. There is the story of
Kaldi the goatherd in Yemen and there is the story of the banished Sufi
missionary Al Shadili (for philandering with a princes) who discovered that
coffee berry juice was a good cure for itches. How it became a drink is not
stated though, though it is mentioned that the Algerians use his name for
coffee – Shadhiliye.
Nevertheless, the seeds planted by Budansaheb grew and grew
all around the Malanad hills and created the so called ‘old chik’ variety! It
was in I799 that the possibilities of coffee as a commercial crop attracted the
attention of the East India Company. Between 1826 and 1830, British planters
started plantations in Chikmagalur. By the 1840s, they were well entrenched.
So, here we were, headed to the land of Baba Budan, the
birthplace of Indian coffee and I did intend to see the cave of Baba Budan, perhaps
even get a look at some of the old Chik bushes. Serai, the resort established
by the late Siddharth Hedge was to be our home for three days. The hallowed
grounds where Arabica, a fine breed which needs shade and much care while
Robusta, a breed that was well, robust and needed less care, could be seen all around
our home.
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| The Serai Chikmagalur |
Chikmagalur was hardly known to the world after the British
planters left, though coffee buyers knew it as a source for their beans. It was
only in 1978 that Chikmagalur or ‘little daughter’s village’ got huge media coverage
when Indira Gandhi decided to contest elections from this high range (Much
later, her grandson Rahul contested from another hill range, Wynad! Don’t ask
me why they chose estate towns or hill ranges, all I can infer is that they
were safe seats for Congress). Once Indira won her seat and continued to Delhi,
the area went back to sleep until the son of the soil Siddharth rose to fame. A
few words on him and the Hedge family, which threw the hamlet of Chikmagalur to
the fore, would not therefore be amiss and would only be my feeble tribute to
an admirable businessman.
I must have seen some similarities in his life story for we
were of identical ages and we had both failed to clear the SSB exams, trying to
join the NDA. After college Siddharth decided to venture out on his own, much
against his father’s wishes. Ganesh, his father and Keshava, his uncle were
themselves quite well off, owning Chocolate and Coffee plantations and living
in a huge heritage property in the area (They said that many years ago, Girish
Karnad had shot for the film Utsav with Rekha in the lead, at this homestead).
For some 130-140 years they had been in the business, a planter family.
By then as an NRI, I had finished my initial runs in the
Middle East. I think I was working at Turkey then and I still remember walking
into a Coffee day retail outlet in Calicut the very first time. I had been to
coffee day shops at the Forum mall in Bangalore earlier, but it was in Calicut
that we had the first experience of a proper sit-down CD café or CCD as they
termed it . Our driver accompanying us, exclaimed - Shambo Mahadeva! seeing the
coffee prices on the menu card, and nearly fainted. Dressed in a dhoti, I must
have looked odd among a group of youngsters lounging on low cushion sofas,
cradling laptops. The stylish barista must have wondered if I had the money to
foot the bill, for he did throw disconcerting glances at our table now and
then. Coffee or cappuccino with patterned froth was served in style, savored
and slurped by us and some minutes later, we left. The first impressions of
Coffee day were not forgotten, it became a favorite tale often retold at our
family meetings, especially the reactions of Mani our driver.
So that was Siddhartha’s plan, to open CCD’s across the
country after his experience at a stylish coffee house in Singapore. It was all
for the experience, the ambiance, they said, replete with free internet. It
would be a beacon for youngsters with their lap tops (No smart phones yet, but
he perhaps foresaw all that) and the Lavelle road CCD turned out to be India’s
first hotspot. He opened several hundred CD outlets to sell coffee powder as
well. Later, he dallied with all kinds of other ventures such as furniture and
real estate, resorts and so on. Soon he was to get the label, India’s coffee
king, the person who introduced fancy coffees such as the latte, cappuccino,
Americano and espresso, to the masses.
He hobnobbed with the business elite of Bangalore, the Mallayas, the
Infosys team and many others. Malavika took care of the resort business and his
two sons, Amartya and Ishaan were engrossed with their studies.
So that was where we were at, the Serai resort at
Chikmagalur. I believe he called it the Serai after the term Seray in Turkish
(rest place). As we walked around the estate in which the resort was situated,
learning about coffee and its cultivation from the in-house guide, the Swiss
tourists were busy swatting away mosquitoes, who despite the deet sprays were
trying to get a better taste of foreign blood (like us Indians, Indian mosquitoes
also like foreign, perhaps!). The pool villa was splendidly appointed to say
the least, but with the pelting evening rains, pool usage was kind of iffy. The
timber inlays in the villa gave them a rich aura and I read somewhere that
Siddhartha used much of the timber (perhaps the silver oaks, we saw a lot of,
all around) from his estates, for the woodwork in his cafe's and resorts.
The evenings were rainy, with the NE monsoon in full swing
and in general the terrain was akin to the Ghat areas of Kerala, with the same
foliage and a similar scenery. We were told that we should delay our trips to
the Mullayanagari peak due to heavy mists and fog and so we detoured to see the
Hoysala temples nearby. As we moved past Doddamagalur (big sisters’ village),
Srinivas mentioned that Srinath the cricketer hailed from nearby Javgal, turns
out he is on the board of one of Siddhartha’s school ventures. The temples were
simply put, beautiful. The sculptures were awesome, and the temple remains at
Belevadi, Hallebedu and Belur magnificient. A simple Udupi taali lunch at Belur
topped the day.
One tends to wonder though, about the rich and teeming
Hassan area during the heydays of the Hoysala Empire, until Malik Kafur’s
marauders destroyed most of the temple sculptures and rode away with the loot.
According to chronicler Amir Khusrau, the looters got away with some 512
elephants, 5,000 horses and 500 manns of gold and precious stones by the end of
its southern campaign! Veera Ballalla III who then moved to Tiruvannamalai lost
his life eventually after another battle, getting slain and skinned; they write
that his skin was stuffed with straw and hung from the walls from Madurai!
While the bar at the Serai was adequate, the restaurant was somewhat
of a letdown. The malanad food they
served was not as good as the veg meal we had at the Hoysala resort enroute (we
ate coconut dosa, Godi roti and guliappa) and the resort itself was not fully
occupied, so it was a bit forlorn for our taste, in the evenings. The many
Serai employees tending to the guests were an enthusiastic lot, though!
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| The lady at Siri |
The next day we drove up the mountains to the highest peak
at Mulleyanagari to take in some breathtaking views of the hills and valleys,
the climb up was not difficult at all, though swirling mists made photography a
bother. The 4x4 Mahindra jeep journey through virtually unmotorable rain
drenched mud tracks to the Jhari buttermilk falls, was stomach churning. Only a
trip to the last spot in our schedule was left, the Baba Budan cave, the place
where the hermit who started this coffee story, once lived.
We were stopped and checked by the police thoroughly, they
rummaged through the car trunk and ID’s were reviewed. Srinivas, our driver
mentioned then that there was a lot of unrest here during the last few decades
both Hindu’s and Muslims had started to claim ownership for the cave and the
festivals attached to it. Even though for many centuries, Muslims and
non-Muslims had venerated the saints at this shrine, the old communal harmony
had vanished. Every year there would be protests, quarrels and fights over the festivities
and so the area was heavily policed to avoid another Ayodhya event. Why so? While
Muslims connect the cave to the Baba Budan or one Jamaluddin Maghrabi of
Baghdad as well as the Sufi saint Hazrath Dada Hayath Meer Kalandar, the Hindus
connect it to Dattatreya, believing it to be his hermitage and that he would
one day appear at the cave mouth, to herald the final avatar of Vishnu. Dattatreya,
incidentally, is the three-headed reincarnation of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
We drank a lot of good coffee everywhere and discovered
another of Siddharth’s ideas (based on a
Japanese invention), Filta Fresh - the filter coffee sachet. No longer
was a stainless-steel decoction apparatus needed, you just opened the sachet,
draped it on a cup and poured boiling water into it, to get an instant
decoction. I will admit it that it was nothing close to the original, but then
I must add that in the room, we had to make do with Amul coffee creamer and not
real creamy milk.
It was soon time to pack up and leave, after three fine days
at the small daughter’s village. We did have a surprise, we located my wife’s
schoolmate living in town, for her husband was a coffee planter. A high tea at
their home and a trip to the coffee museum (as the English tourist described –
Oh! it is ok, kind of quaint, actually) completed our trip.
It was on July 29th, 2019, that Siddhartha went
missing after having his driver take him to different places, stopping finally
some distance away from the Ullal bridge on the Netravati river. He walked on
to the bridge and never returned.
Was it the piling debts and creditor pressure, was it his father’s
comatose situation, the fear of competition, the harassment from politicians
and tax sleuths, shame of his own missteps or was it just loneliness and
weariness that made him take his life? We will probably never know. For a
person who did not balk at the losses during the stock market scams or the
impossible situation when his 100M$ loan could not be realized due to a change
of government regulations, handling a debt valued well below his assets should
have been a no-brainier.
His body was recovered near Mangalore a couple of days later
and the death ruled a suicide. Did he jump? I don’t know and I find it hard to
accept, from a person who once said “As an Entrepreneur, you can't afford to lose
hope". He wrote, in his last letter to his board - “My intention was never
to cheat or mislead anyone, I have failed as an entrepreneur,” the letter
reads. “This is my sincere submission, I hope someday you will understand,
forgive and pardon me.”
Siddhartha, I read, was a person who found peace walking
through his coffee plantations and spending days in his ancestral home, eating
Malanad food made by his mother rather than basking in the cocoon of unlimited
luxury he could have enjoyed. But then, for the 45,000 or so employees who
adored him and his family, it will always be a tragic loss. I can only hope that
his endeavors and employees never get orphaned. He was, as far as I could
gather, a good man and his motto “A lot can happen over a coffee,” makes and
made a lot of sense.
The drive back took us through Sharavan Belagola where we
climbed up the 650 steps barefoot to see the magnificent Bahubali or
Gomateswara statue. I could not help thinking, how this character atop the
hill, lording over the entire area,
having seen an awful lot of change over the years, remained totally detached
from it all, with a hint of a smile on his lips….
Back home now. The Trump impeachment hearings are heating
up, fall is turning to winter, DST will end this week and hopefully the jetlag
will disappear soon. Back to routine, and until the next trip…
References
Escoffier: The King of Chefs - By Kenneth James
Coffee Is Not Forever: A Global History of the Coffee Leaf
Rust - By Stuart McCook
Secret diary of VS Siddhartha – N Mahalakshmi ( Outlook
business )
Notes :
It is mentioned by some (wrongly though) that Monsooned
Malabar coffee was popularized by Siddhartha. But what is it? In the past,
wooden vessels loaded with raw coffee sailed from India to Europe through the
monsoon for almost six months around the Cape of Good Hope. The coffee beans,
exposed to constant humid conditions, underwent changes, the beans changed in
size, texture, and appearance, and of course in taste. With faster
transportation and the shorter route via the Suez Canal, these conditions vanished,
and the Indian coffee flavor was no longer what it once was, one which
Europeans had liked. Therefore, an alternative process was implemented to
replicate these conditions. From June through September, selected beans are
exposed to moisture-laden monsoon like atmospheres for many weeks. The beans
absorb moisture and get significantly larger, turning a pale golden color.
Aspinwall & Co were probably the ones who perfected it.
The original ‘old chik’ Baba Budan variety meanwhile lost
its resistance to the rust disease and was mostly replaced by a Coorg variety
of Arabica. Robusta on the other hand is hardy and resistant to the rust
disease. There are connoisseurs vouching for both, though in my mind Arabica reigns
supreme.
