Tea-ho-lism

I should have realized this long back, but I ignored it all the way long.

As I left Dementor behind and ran towards my usual tea fellow, I was feeling a lack of enthusiasm for the day. Dementor later told me, “You are addicted to tea! This is not good. What will happen if you don’t have your morning cup of tea?”

I was cheerful after having my tea, so I gleefully answered, “I can’t work, will just feel sleepy.”

I blindly ignored what came next from Dementor, though this time I didn’t have an earphone to plug in.

But the day I decided to quit my early morning tea, is when I realized that I was a Tea-ho-lic!

I would have had a healthy breakfast, ample water and yet as I started the day’s work, I would feel a certain kind of dullness, some drowsiness. Something constantly told me, ‘I don’t feel fresh!’

Each time I cross the tea shop close to my bus stop, my legs long to turn towards the shop. I know, I can’t dare go in, even with an excuse of reading the newspaper, for the shop owner knows my weakness and would coax me with a cup of tea.

So, I started thinking, when did it really start?

It was probably when I entered the small tea shop outside my college in the interiors of Tamilnadu, that I first got hooked on to tea. It’s more than tea actually. It’s about the owner, his family, the ambience of the shop, and his usual customers that makes my day ‘fresh’!

I remember sitting in the shop of Siddharkovil, a village situated along the highway connecting Nagapattinam. I knew the tea shop owner very well. And so did I know his wife, and their two children; a young girl and an elder son, who was still in college. They had a set of usual customers, which included old men, kicked out by their daughter-in-laws, to old sages who in their search for nirvana, had settled with begging and usual woman folk who at times took a snack break. Every conversation is interesting here, no matter what the topic is about. And moreover, I found a great deal of local information; the weather, local political situation, village gossip, views about the outside world, so on and so forth. I have sat in these shops gulping tea after tea, not for the mere taste of tea, but for my interest in people and their views.

Then, my early mornings used to start with a cup of tea and couple of aged men for company smoking heavy cigars made locally. It gave a nice smoky ambiance to the place, though mostly I choked to its effect. If I were lucky, a group of wedding or ceremony attendees would folk in, and the so far dull conversation about the milk price and the amount spent on rearing a cow, would turn into cheerful gossip about who was getting married to whom, or how the girl looks too aged for the boy!

Life is constantly active in here, though for the outside world it might be rather dull. There is some amount of activeness that comes from the owner’s pet, which I can’t ignore. Some times a cat eerily shadowing the room, and at times giant dogs sleeping under the table, to hen that pecks under your feet, and surely not forgetting the lazy goats! They just make the whole picture complete.

All this matters so much that, when I finally went to one of the tea states of India; Assam, I didn’t quite enjoy the aroma or taste of black tea, which gave an aftermath of stained teeth! And realizing that I can adjust with coffee under circumstances, I don’t understand my addiction. Though given a choice, I would prefer to make my own tea, with the same tea powder and the exact precision of the tea and milk, with a tinge of ginger for flavor.

Looking back on my exercise in learning to make ‘my perfect’ tea, the company I had had while drinking the tea, and the endless conversations with people strange and common, friends and foes; I have come to believe… that tea is just my excuse!