In 2020, one of the little joys people were deriving were by making Dalgona Coffee at home. It was summer & cold coffee forms a part of our diet during the hot months.
Becoming aware of Dalgona made us give it a shot (or multiple shots rather!). That set off a few comments too. I being I, those comments got me brooding…
But first, let me admit I loved Dalgona Coffee. It was refreshing. It was simple to make (though N did all the heavy mixing). Unfortunately, I couldn’t drink too much of it thanks to my GERD.
I’m not giving any recipe here as there are ample already available on the internet. Now back to what this post is about. So, the comment I heard more than once was this was the same ‘phenti hui coffee’ that Indians have been making for generations. That Dalgona was just a fancy name for it.
First, it wasn’t the same ‘phenti hui coffee’ that Indians have been making. In our coffee, the whipped mixture doesn’t sit at the top. It sits at the bottom & the milk is poured over it & stirred.
In Dalgona, milk is poured into the glass & the scoops of the thick whipped coffee mixture as ladled onto the milk.
Second, even if for a moment I assume the two were the same, & that Dalgona was just a fancy name, why were people so averse to learning the correct name of the drink & dismissing it as ‘just a fancy name’?
Here was an opportunity to give a name to the coffee drink we’d been making since we became aware of coffee beans & we bypassed it!
Have you’d an occasion when someone hasn’t remembered your name or has mispronounced it? How did you feel?? I’ve felt terrible when someone has called me Priyanka or Nupur (!!!) or a Hindi speaker has mispronounced my last name.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare may have written this in Romeo & Juliet but the fact remains that names give identities. Names define. They bring meaning. When we’re able to name our anger/ fear/ shame, we cross the first stage of accepting our emotions.
That’s the power of names.
Thus, as with Dalgona, so with everyone & everything in life – naam yaad rakhna!
