After spending an anxious night at the hospital, where my son was kept under observation as he was shivering with fever, we were discharged after a few tests, a bottle of saline and some reports that gave us relief. Our bones were exhausted to the core more out of mental trauma, Covid-related anxiety and the helplessness of being in a new city. At 4am as we drove back, my mother video-calls me to comfort my nerves, “Just have a hot cup of tea and see your stress vanish away.” All my life I have been told that tea is a panacea for all ills.
We stepped into the 24/7 ‘chai’ outlet and sank our tired souls into clay mugs of tea, coupled with the famous “bun maska” (buns toasted in butter made famous by the Iranian cafés of Mumbai). Indians love their tea partnered with accompaniments as such. Just a sip of this magical beverage and we felt every ounce of strain slip away.
At home we are classified into two groups based on our style of preparing tea. Communists and the capitalists. I belong to the former because I love my well-brewed Darjeeling tea, with just two drops of milk. My husband and the son come under the latter; they cook their tea in litres of milk with kilos of sugar in it. The kind you will find everywhere, also in roadside restaurants where you have huge saucepans of tea boiling the whole day.
Tea has always been an ‘auspicious’ commodity in my family. Right from the selection, buying of the tea leaves to the brewing of it. My father would visit a quaint little shop in the famous New Market area of Calcutta. He would feel the leaves, rub them against his palms and then smell them to check out the flavour. The shop had varieties of loose tea leaves with varied names and tea leaf sizes. He would carefully choose three kinds of leaves.
Once home, his ritual of spreading a piece of newspaper on the dining table and blending the tea leaves as per a ratio that he alone understood, would follow. The pot of tea is brewed in a very scientific manner, a measured amount of water has to be boiled for a fixed amount of time, the tea pot has to be warmed before pouring the water into it and the tea leaves are then added before the teapot is covered with a tea-cosy.
After a few minutes the tea would be ready to be poured into cups. A recent study by Dr Edward Okello, conducted at Newcastle University, says that- “People over 85 who drink more than five cups a day have better brain function, focus, attention span and psychomotor skills than those who don’t. The skills we see maintained in this group of the very old may not only be due to the compounds present in tea, but it may also be the rituals of making a pot of tea or sharing a chat over a cup of tea which are just as important.” Thus, I am happy for my father’s fetish.
Many friends of mine have begun sipping herbal tea, post-Covid, to kill the virus in the throat. It seems ironical to me that the virus that began in China has gotten many people to believe in the medicinal values of the drink that originated in the same country and has converted them from ardent coffee guzzlers to tea aficionados.
One of them quoted a proverb to me recently, “A true warrior, like tea, shows his strength in hot water.” This reminded me of a tea brand jingle that sang, “If you want it stronger dip a little longer. Dip, dip, dip.” Is that what the Covid-19 trying to do? Test our strength?
Well, as I sit within the four walls of my empty apartment, about to unpack my things, the first thing I do is to put the kettle on. Tea is said to be a literary and philosophical stimulant. I write down this eulogy and at once feel at ease in my new environ because, “No matter where you are in the world, you are at home when tea is served.” — Earlene Grey
Navanita Varadpande is a writer based in Gurugram, India Twitter: @VpNavanita
