Between The Squiggles

I grew up drinking tea from as young as probably seven. It sounds weird, but I don’t know how I got into that habit or why my mother didn’t mind. South Asians have this habit of dunking their biscuits in tea, as if it’s some unavoidable part of the ritual. That itself was a delicacy for me – not the tea, but the wet, moist, almost-on-the-verge-of-disintegrating biscuit. You lose interest in that part of the process as you grow up. You just enjoy the tea.

Now I’m not talking about chamomile, oolong, green tea, or any of that fancy shit. I’m talking about black tea — the kind you can have plain, or brew with a bit of spice. believe people who like black tea come to appreciate it through acquired taste. lol

Is this getting boring already? Whatever, just bear with me, although I have no idea where I’m going with this. Will be calling it a night soon anyway.

Anyway, so there’s black tea and there’s…

Then there’s milk tea. The milk is brewed for a while, and then you add tea leaves and brew it again. I do not like people who rush through this process. You can’t get a good cup of tea without brewing it for a while. I personally brew it long enough for the foam around the edges of the pan to solidify. Then you take a tea strainer to pour the tea into a cup. When you hear the tea touch the bottom of your cup and see it pouring through the strainer, both the visuals and the sound can tell you how thick or thin the tea is. We don’t like tea that’s too thick or too watery.

Most days, my tea would turn out just fine. Some days, it would be thin. I’d still take my cup of tea and go to my spot. When I was a kid, my spot was wherever my parents or sister were. I’m guessing it was in my parents’ room, where the television was. I’d probably sit on the ground, busy dunking my biscuit in my tea and watching my mother and sister stare at whatever was playing on the TV.

On some days, we’d have guests over. You’d probably still find me on the ground, taking in the laughter, the echoes, and the chaos that ensued. I was a very shy child. So you’d probably not find me in front of the guests but still on the ground (or in bed) in some room, dunking my biscuits.

“Madonna!” (That’s not my name, of course.) My father or mother would call my name from the living room. “Come and meet Uncle and Aunty XYZ here.” I’d stand by the edge of the door, peek through, and decide not to go out. My parents would have to drag me out later, of course. I’d go out and find cups of tea lying across the living room table – some untouched, some with lip stains.

Years later, when I moved out for undergrad, the habit stayed with me. I would come home after classes, make myself a cup of tea, sometimes one for my roommate as well, and settle in for the evening. You would now find me sitting on my desk chair or in the middle of my bed, sipping my tea. When did I stop sitting on the ground?

Then I got introduced to Coffee-Mate, a powder that apparently made instant coffee less watery. I tried it one day and thought, “Hmm, it’s alright.”

Making instant coffee was easier – you didn’t have to wait for it to brew. You also didn’t have to take a wire sponge to clean the metal pan you brewed tea in. So I cheated. I cheated the distance. I mean, the process. I cheated the process of doing something that gave me something to look forward to. I’ve hardly ever looked forward to doing anything in my life. And here I was, replacing the only thing I ever loved doing with something I could do faster.

By the time I graduated and started working, I was tired of coffee. I was tired of the monotony. I was tired of doing the same thing every day that I didn’t want to. I needed comfort. So one day, I got back to making tea, just like that. (Not that I hadn’t had tea ten million times in between, outdoors.) I made it, tasted it, and was blown away by it.

This was what I was missing. This was what I could look forward to after coming back home.

As I write this, without any clear reason why I began, I think I’ve realized my love for tea was never just about its flavor. It was about the ritual it afforded me – the quiet assurance that after a long day, I could come home to something steady, something familiar.

My God was tea, and the fact I drank it every day since I was seven, while seated on the ground cross-legged, as if some part of me already knew what to worship.

When you sip a good cup of tea, it greets your palate with a fleeting warmth. As you swallow it, you can feel its warmth move through your chest – slow, steady, and comforting in a way the outside world rarely was. A good cup of tea, for me atleast, never loses its warmth – not in the cup, not on its journey to your stomach, and certainly not in the way it makee you feel.