Love for coffee and writing has influenced Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian at Tata Sons, to write a new book ‘An Extreme Love for Coffee.’

“I love having coffee while looking out into the sea from my house. One morning when I was having coffee, I was thinking this is a magical beverage and there are many, many stories in every cup of coffee. I wondered how I could capture one such story,” Bhat said explaining how the idea of writing the book came to his mind.

This is his third book but the first fiction and it took Bhat about 8 months to complete. “I thought a novel like this would help people discover Indian coffee. The story evolved as I kept writing it. As I wrote it over several months, the magic, mystery and adventure all came to light,”he said.

Bhat is passionate about both coffee and writing so it was not difficult to shift from non-fiction to fiction. “I actually enjoyed this process because when you write fiction, you can dictate the story. You can take it into directions and build the characters the way you want. You also start living the story as you write. I started living the lives of Rahul, Neha and the coffee ghost (characters in the book). The characters seep into your mind till you finish writing the story,” Bhat said.

The book is a story about two young people, Rahul and Neha who follow their passion for coffee. The adventure starts in a Starbucks cafe and from there it goes to the plantations of Coorg and from there the story then goes to the graveyards of Japan and other parts of the world. “It brings adventure and travel together and there's a bit of magic and romance as well. But at the heart of the book is coffee. The novel celebrates different varieties of Indian coffee,” Bhat said.

“Every reader will get to know a lot more about Indian coffee. Be it filter coffee or any other variety of coffee. Again, I do not want to spill the beans about the kinds of coffee. I feel the reader will step out of the book and become more passionate about coffee. Its a nice, simple and easy read. That's the kind of writing I like. I would say a wonderful story about adventure and magic with lots of coffee to feed your soul,” he said. The book has been published by Penguin Random House.

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