Tea – three observations

2009

Tea is ready. Three cups of tea are lying on the breakfast table, full of steaming hot tea, and rich with aroma of fresh mint. But tea is not visible at all – the cups being covered by plastic coasters. The pan, tongs, filter and spoon are lying in the sink, ready for being cleaned. The gas stove is cooling down, having finished its morning chore. Containers of tea and sugar have gone back to their scheduled locations. The one gallon, 2% fat carboy of, bought from WAL-MART has been returned back to its rack in the fridge, slightly emptied. A ceramic plate containing warm, toasts of bread is lying by the side of tea cups, along with a knife and butter spread. My darling notebook computer is waiting, a few feet away in the living room, inviting me to switch it ON.

All seems well organized. The breakfast table is keenly awaiting its morning participants. My wife is enjoying her early morning deep slumber. My daughter and son-in-law are getting ready for post-breakfast commute to job. Their two sons are in deep, carefree vacation recluse in their own, separate rooms.

But two minutes back? Everything was topsy-turvy. Tea was boiling hard in the pan. My hands were ready with tongs in one hand and filter in the other; All around me on the cooking platform were lying the containers of sugar and tea, milk carboy, a plate containing ginger, the hand chopper for ginger, empty cups and saucers. A toaster was busy with bread slices, on a side table, adjoining the breakfast-table. The kitchen was hot with all these morning routines.

And an hour before? The kitchen was in deep, dark slumber. All these things were also at rest on their respective positions. The mint leaves were gently being swayed in light breeze of wind in the backyard. The tiny world of our home was dormant in its early morning sleep. The tea maker and users all were lost in sweet dreams.

And I go on sliding back… and back… and back… in yet distant past.

1979

A morning thirty years back; I am sitting on the dining table of my posh quarter, surrounded by a garden, as also a kitchen garden; well dressed up to go on my job after a refreshing, hot ware shower bath. I am superfluously glancing through the headlines of a Gujarati daily, keenly awaiting call for tea. Mu wife is busy in her morning chore of tea making on a roaring primus stove. A maid servant, living in an attached servant quarter is mending the vegetables for lunch time in the kitchen. A milk man, on a bicycle had just delivered fresh milk of more than 10% fat, which the maid had received, much before we got up. That milk has been heated and is awaiting storage in the fridge after cooling. A portion of similar milk of yesterday, has already been dumped into today’s tea; after skimming out an inch thick layer of cream. My wife is instructing the maid to boil collection of such cream for last ten days and boiling it to make Ghee (saturated butter). A small containing special spice for tea, ground by hand by the maid is shining beside the containers for tea and sugar, on the cooking platform. Just opposite me, on the dining table, is a pot containing hot, spicy and delicious Indian breakfast made from rice crispy and potatoes.

Our daughter, presently working as software manager, forty miles away, is only nine years old and is lost in her fairy tales world. She is going to wake up much later to attend a nearby elementary school. Our twin-sons, only four years old are snoring in bed, with their governess.

But the tea is going to be of the same taste.

1949

With the fifth child in her womb, my mother is sitting on ground floor of a three storied, narrow house of a dense residential locality (called a POL). She has barely been successful in lighting up a heavily smoking, charcoal stove. My father has just returned from his overnight job of a railway wireless operator and is keenly studying the fresh news in a newspaper, waiting for tea to be ready. All of us four siblings are deep asleep on the second floor in beds on floor aligned in a line.

Just a few minutes back a shepherd woman has delivered fresh milk from a brass, country milk pot. ( Bogharana), of course abundantly diluted by water ! As if obliging us, she has given extra milk in less than a quarter full of milk measuring bottle! There is no cooking platform here. All items needed for tea making are brought and placed by her side from a store room behind kitchen. A glass kerosene lamp is hanging dead from a wooden peg on the side wall of the kitchen. The lamp has just been put off after daybreak: the same lamp with the help of which , I had finished my home work, yesterday evening and copied numbers ONE and TWO with earthen chalk on my slate.

But that tea is not for us siblings. Our parents somehow managed to ensure that all four of us drink milk and milk only – morning and evening – though they themselves live frugally. A little away from her lies a round, brass box with lid, tinned by my mother herself; containing dry tortilla, roasted by herself from the leftover tortillas of yesterday. These will constitute our breakfast with milk, when we wake up.

The charcoal stove is not going to coo, down (like the primus or gas stove) after tea is ready. It is going to get its siesta only after lunch has been cooked.

However, tea is going to have the same taste.

………………..

Three cups of tea: one by a mother, another by a wife and the third one by self.

Shall I say frankly? I like the taste of tea made by myself.

…………….

I remove the plastic coaster from my cup of tea. I see droplets of water from condensed vapor. I see the tears of mu mother, formed in her eyes, due to the irritating smoke of the charcoal stove.

Translated from

ચા તૈયાર છે – ત્રણ અવલોકન