by Vani Viswanathan
It was foggy, it was cold. An orange ball of a sun, shone weakly, spreading no warmth. In the middle of a square buzzing with vendors hawking their wares – ‘laeptop laemination!’ ‘soaftwaer! Weendows 8!’ ‘kartreej!’ ‘do sau pachaas!’ – I stood, looking in all directions, digging my hands deeper into my jacket’s pockets. A teenaged boy walked up to me. ‘Madam, soaftwaer?’ he asked. ‘Bhaiyya, chai kahaan milega?’ I asked, not bothered about whether my apply-masculine-gender-everywhere Hindi was correct. He pointed to a gully between two buildings. ‘Thank you,’ I gushed, and rushed to the gully even as the boy replied with a ‘welcome.’ Walking through the gully, I saw a paratha-wala. A chaat-wala. A man selling cut papayas wrapped in red cloth. Where was the tea? Ah, there it was – in a stall managed by a boy! I walked up to him, ordered a cup, didn’t protest when he gave me a bigger cup of chai, and took a sip. The Delhi cold seemed bearable, once again.
I took up drinking tea only during college because I felt I needed caffeine and coffee didn’t attract me. Even as I can get high sniffing coffee – the south Indian filter coffee, especially – I can’t handle the bitterness. I think I got addicted to tea, however, only when I was working in Singapore, when I would crave for the ‘teh-c’ (teh being tea in Malay, and teh-c being tea with condensed milk) after lunch every single day, and after a point, needed it every morning to kick-start the day. I needed green tea at least twice through the day, and would go for all kinds of flavours when outside, including the fancy English Breakfast types to Moroccan Mint to apple, cinnamon and even banana-flavoured tea. Tea addiction took a different turn during college in Bombay when sitting in class without having had a cup of tea – sugary milk flavoured with tea, rather – was tantamount to torture. I would power through the first half hour of the first class in the day with my ‘Keep Cup’ full of tea from the dining hall. Oh, the memories! Tea in the evening was such an occasion to look forward to after a nap – some days of sitting with a noisy bunch of friends, some days of sitting with a friend or two, and some days of sitting by myself, watching TV or simply staring outside. College canteen had snacks of some sort to go with the tea every evening, with Samosa or Sabudana Vada being the most wanted, and dry bhel the least. But tea in Bombay was restricted to on-campus times; I did try the famous cutting chai at Samovar, but I have to say nothing excited me about the tea itself, other than the glass it was served in. It made me feel local in a posh place.
I believe tea addiction has reached its peak only now, after I have moved to Delhi. One day without chai, and I feel like some vital ingredient necessary for me to function normally is missing. Now, the good thing about tea is that you can have it anywhere without worrying about falling sick. Not that I am concerned about having street food at all, but when you see someone stirring tea with a blunt knife that he then wipes on a rusting table to get rid of the tea dust, you could get worried. Somehow, boiling tea apparently magically rids it of any dangers.
There’s a culture to drinking tea, I have come to realise. I used to hold the Indian tendency to keep drinking tea – or taking chai breaks – in contempt, because to me it felt like a convenient excuse to shirk away from work. You go to a counter that opens at 10am, at 10.20am and you’ll find no one there. Why? Chai. You go at 3.55pm because it closes at 4pm, and you still won’t find anyone. Why? Chai, again. I do guiltily confess now that I have become somewhat of a chai-drink-shirker because sometimes you just need chai. Post-lunch chai with colleagues is an important activity, as we pick the stall to go to, order ‘kum cheeni’ chais and stand around discussing mundane things. Sometimes, it’s about waiting for your cup and taking it back to work to drink, because you’re swamped. Sometimes, it’s about getting a few minutes of warmth in the sun, and post-lunch-chai-time would find me standing in a little patch of sun that streamed through the trees, unwilling to step away from the meek warmth. During weekends, sometimes it’s about a steaming cup of chai with the friend after a nap and before an outing, standing by a busy road while others smoked nearby. Recently, though, oftentimes, it’s been about getting a cup of chai by myself at different places. Such as in the tight lanes leading to the Hazrat Nizammuddin Dargah, where I sat alone on a wooden bench while the man making tea smoked, and I watched some of the ashes fall into the tea he was preparing. Surrounding me were shops selling miscellaneous things to take into a mosque, and I watched with interest the frenzied activity that I was so alien to.
I feel distant from my days of craving for green tea and of feverish hunt for Moroccan mint. Even though I’d love to get a packet of that lemon-mint tea I got from Istanbul simply for that lovely flavour, chai, kum cheeni seems to be winning.
Vani Viswanathan is often lost in her world of books and A R Rahman, churning out lines in her head or humming a song. Her world is one of frivolity, optimism, quietude and general chilled-ness, where there is always place for outbursts of laughter, bouts of silence, chocolate, ice cream and lots of books and endless iTunes playlists from all over the world. She is now a CSR communications consultant, and has been blogging at http://chennaigalwrites.blogspot.com since 2005.
