Indian Arabica Coffee comes to Finland

 

Balehonnur (Balanoor), Karnataka (Photo by KZ Kuriyan)

This news report appeared on Newsmeter.in.

Photo from the Newsmeter.in article

I have been for years been  telling our family  in India that the Finns would love the coffee we produce in our estates as in Badra Coffee Estates, in which I am a tiny shareholder.

Finns are the real  coffee connoisseurs in the world. 

They appreciate a good reaonably priced coffee. 

I recount an incident from 1992 when Annikki and I were visiting our daughteer, Susanna, who was studying in Exeter University in England.

As we walked down the High Street, Annikki smelt some coffee and was in the mood for a cup. There was s small kiosk on the walking street. We went in and asked the lady for the coffee which aroma Annikki had smelt.

After consuming it very slowly, she said that it was the most delicious cup of coffee that she had ever had. I told her that we could buy a kilo to take it to Finland.

I approached the lady and asked what was the price of the coffee. She told me that it was called Blue Mountain Coffee  and it came from Jamaica. 

The cost was  Blue Mountain Coffee was €100 per kilo. (Coffee in Finland at that time cost about €5 per kg.)

I was literally coffee-shocked and opted to buy 100 gm for Annikki. 

She drank it on special occasions for a year

On her 60th birthday in 2004 I found it in the Oulu Coffee shop in the Market Place and bought her 200 gms. 

Annikki drank it for the next 5 years on special occasions till her 75th birthday. 

(She now only drinks coffee very occasionally!)

I also recall sending a cousin of mine the tender papers for the Finnish Army as the soldiers would revolt if they did not get their four times a day quota of good coffee.

 I can imagine the Finnish soldiers stopping a war so that they could enjoy their brew! :-)

Stages of the Art of Annikki Part 1

Ever since I restarted this blogging, many of you have been fascinated by the various stages of the art created by Annikki that have appeared on my blogs.

To show you the various stages she went through I thought that I would do a series of blog entries which focuses on some of the more distinct phases of her art.

She was a born artist and could gauge perspective by just looking at someone or something. She is horrible in mathematics so she said she was like a cat which never misses a jump from one point to another. 

Her art in the art school in London concentrated on drawing of models who posed for the class. 

Here are some examples of that period. All the art were pencil sketches

Annikki’s London Art School Class -1964

The first crayon work she did was the house that I lived in in London. I had left for a holiday in the South of France with my friends. Annikki had finished her studies in London and was going to Germany. She stayed in my place till she left. Sitting in the back garden she made a chalk drawing of the back of my home.

7 Woodchurch Road, West Hampstead, London

In Germany, she did not do much art as she was concentrating on her skills of learning the German  language. As she was looking after the three children of the Count and Countess von Schweiniz near Dusseldorf, she picked up German very quickly from them. (The Count was a heart specialist and one of his patients was the ex-Maharaja of Mysore who used to travel to London to consukt him.)

After Germany Annikki returned to Finland for a operiod and here she did some more pencil drawings and she did a duplicate using crayons.

Finnish forests 1965

When she returned to London she did not have much time for art. 

When we got married and moved to a small house in Shawbury (near Birmingham) near my research centre, she did get time to do a couple of sketches of me, and our eldest daughter, Susanna, with me.

Me - 1967

Susanna with me - 1969

 

When we moved to India, although looking after four children. Annikki continued her art with pencil, crayon and her most famous work, a combination of appliqué and embroidery with wool, she made for my mother, Zebras on cloth!

Our Indian  antiques

Daughter Susanna

Self portrait of Annikki with youngest son, Mika

My mother

Daughter  Joanna

Ramnagaram hills

Embroidered appliqué Zebras which took Annikki 7 months to make for my mother in Bangalore in 1979.

When we returned to Finland, Annikki did a special set of paintings of flora and one of Mother Teresa for a talk I was doing about India to the  English Club of Oulu in 1984.

Mother Teresa (1984)

She continued still life paintings whenever she got time from her many other activities.

When Annikki started showing signs of dementia in 2016, our elder daughter, Susanna visited her and tried to  resurrect her atmosphere that Annikki would restart her art. 

The art was still there but it was difficult for her to concentrate as can be seen from some of what she did with Susanna

The skill of an artist never goes away, even with dementia , but unfortunately she cannot concentrate for any length of time any more. 

I thank our dear Lord for giving me such a beautiful collection of her art to live with us. 

Annikki only sold just one of her art works, and even till today I regret having parted with it! 

Part 2 of this series will highlight Annikki's creative designer of house interiors.