by Vani Viswanathan
Nighat teaches the story’s narrator how to make tea, and friendship blossoms, with tea at the centre of it all – until they meet again, seventeen years later. Vani tells the story.
I could hardly sit still with excitement, and my little twins watched me, bewildered. Karthik, too, threw me uneasy glances over the magazine that he was reading in the corner sofa. He couldn’t fathom the high intensity of emotions from me, Hema; Hema, who was the voice of calm and reason in the house, Hema whose emotions always stayed close to the straight line on the emotional graph, never dipping into dangerous lows or screechy highs.
The doorbell rang. I jumped up to answer it – it was the grocery store delivery boy, with the special full cream milk I’d ordered. I set about my work immediately, boiling the milk and keeping it ready for the evening. I brought out the other ingredients, fussing about the kitchen and arranging them neatly on the counter. I felt ready for my special evening, when I would get to meet Nighat after seventeen years.
***
I sat in Nighat’s room, marvelling at the brew she’d made me. A heady mixture of strength, sweetness and a zing that my untrained tongue couldn’t distinguish. ‘This is really good, Nighat!’ I told her.
‘Really?’ she asked, amused. ‘My mother always finds something wrong with my tea… it’s always “there’s too much milk”, or “there’s too much sugar”, or “the ginger didn’t soak in properly”. I like it, though!’
‘And you should be proud of it! I can’t believe I haven’t had tea all my life,’ I said.
Nighat and I had met three days ago at the exchange students’ orientation thrown by the university in Ireland. We were the only two from India, and had both felt a surge of relief looking at our brown skin. Nighat was from Delhi but studying in a university in Australia, while I’d come from a college in Chennai. Culturally speaking, we were worlds apart, yet tied together by a strange bond that India sometimes engendered; our differences in language, religion and region were traversed by a general acceptance of diversity, and we learnt, over exclamations of surprise and awe, how mind-bogglingly different life could be in our country of origin.
But nothing prepared Nighat for the lack of tea in my life. The first time I watched with fascination as she made tea, she asked me, ‘What do you mean you don’t drink tea? What do you all have at home in the morning, then?
‘My folks drink filter coffee,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders. ‘But I only had Bournvita… we were told tea or coffee were bad things for children to drink.’ I realised how silly I sounded even as I said it. Much to my dismay, Nighat burst out laughing. ‘I’ve been having tea since I was 10! Delhi mein chai ke bina subah nahi hoti!’ I had always been the laughing stock among my friends in school when we’d go out for coffee and I would order a milkshake. ‘That’s ok,’ she continued, ‘now you’re not a child anymore!’ I nodded, gratefully taking another sip of tea that she’d just poured into a mug.
By the time the two packets of tea dust she’d brought from India finished, we were thick friends. We trekked across the large city to the only Indian store we knew and refilled our supplies of dals and rice, and this time, I bought tea for myself too.
‘For one mug of tea, fill half the mug with water and the other half with milk,’ Nighat instructed over my shoulder as I tried making tea for the first time. I pounded some ginger (‘two inches would do’), put in three spoons of tea dust, four spoons of sugar, and set the vessel on the hot plate. We spent the next few minutes watching the white concoction turn light brown, then dark brown, then boil over. ‘Turn the heat down and let it simmer,’ said Nighat. When she told me it seemed done, I switched it off and filtered it into two mugs.
I watched nervously as Nighat took the first sip. She looked at me as she sipped, her deep brown eyes framed by a fringe of jet black hair.
‘Tell me!’ I said impatiently.
‘It’s…ok! Which milk did you buy?’
I showed her the carton.
‘Oh, this one! Buy the full cream milk the next time.’
***
The exchange trip lasted six months, after which we returned to our respective universities. The first few days back in Chennai, as I battled jet lag, I craved for the evening ritual of a cup of tea with Nighat, listening to her stories in her half-Australian half-Delhi accent, and the general quietness that would accompany our evenings. For a few months, we feverishly wrote emails to update the other about our lives, crushes, college, and movies. Orkut came in, and we wrote on each other’s scrapbooks, and gave testimonials. As Orkut gave way to Facebook, and we graduated to Master’s and employment, the communication became infrequent, and over time, updates reduced to my meeting Karthik, our wedding (which she couldn’t attend), her starting her Ph.D., the birth of my twins, Nighat becoming Dr. Nighat Kaif. We hadn’t met since when I went to the airport at the end of our exchange programme to see her off.
***
Yes, life had changed much in these seventeen years, but the role of tea in my life stayed the same as when Nighat had first poured me a cup and offered a rusk to go with it. I resolutely stuck to the ritual of tea every evening. I also resolutely stuck to the way Nighat taught me to make tea, despite many people telling me it was wrong to mix milk and water (‘You’re making a khichdi’), how much water, tea dust or milk to pour (‘too milky’, ‘too thin’, ‘not kadak enough’), that cardamom added a beautiful flavour (‘I detest that taste’, I told them), or that I should grate the ginger and not pound it. One friend crushed the ginger with the might of his palm and insisted I do the same. After a few years of battling these innumerable suggestions, I slowly stopped offering to make tea for others. When visitors came, I sweetly encouraged them to make their own tea, or asked Karthik to offer them filter coffee instead. I liked my tea the way I made it, the way Nighat taught me.
***
It was finally half-past six. Nighat was expected any minute now. A beautifully-timed conference had made sure she had a chance to visit Chennai when she was in India; she now lived far, far away, in Sao Paulo.
I jumped again as the doorbell rang. I opened the door, and saw Nighat, positively glowing in the dusk light, her still jet black, straight hair framing the face that wore a wide smile. ‘Nighat!’ I screeched and hugged her tight.
Introductions were made, Karthik spent a few minutes making pleasant small talk, the children shyly smiled and accepted Nighat’s gifts, and soon, as planned, the children left for the mall with Karthik. The evening was mine, with Nighat; she only had an hour before she had to leave for Delhi.
We dived straight into talking about life as it was now; we were, after all, updated about major milestones but missed the small details. She wanted to know how I liked my first trip to Australia (‘Everything shuts down by five?!’). How much Spanish did she know, how was it like living in South America? (‘I get by well, and it’s an exciting place to live in.’) What was it like being married, she asked me (‘I got used to it in the years I tried to find answers to that question’). What was it like being single? (‘Lonely at times, but mostly liberating.’)
‘Time for tea?’ I asked Nighat, my eyes glinting. I was pleased to show off my tea-making skills which had considerably improved since our time together. Nighat remembered our ritual and gave my hand a warm squeeze when she saw the rusk packet. When I measured a cup of milk and another of water and poured it into the vessel, she smiled. But when I put the tea dust and pounded ginger in and then set the vessel on the stove, she burst out laughing.
‘What??’ I asked her.
‘I can’t believe you still make tea this way!’
I was aghast. What was she saying? ‘Why, that’s the way you taught me!’
‘Well, yeah… we were kids then! Haven’t you graduated to making it the proper way?’
My face fell. What did she mean, ‘proper’ way? What wasn’t proper about this? I sulked a bit; she caught on.
‘Arrey, never mind. I was just surprised… after all, it has been seventeen years.’
‘How do you make tea now, then?’
‘The usual way, boiling water, putting the tea leaves… oh, really, don’t worry about it. I’m waiting for a cuppa with you!’
Suddenly self-conscious, I set the vessel on the stove.
‘Well, it does smell good!’ Nighat said when I poured into two cups. As we took our first sips, I was relieved that it tasted alright. I wasn’t sure what Nighat made of it, though. I watched as she sipped again, and her deep brown eyes stared at me over the rim of the cup.
‘Tell me!’ I said impatiently.
‘It’s perfect! Don’t worry, baba.’
I smiled to myself. Despite the small diversion, the evening had gone the way I’d imagined it. We dipped the rusk into the tea, and got back into conversation like it had never ceased. As we finished the tea, Nighat asked which milk I’d used.
‘Full cream, like we used to, then!’
‘Oh!’
‘Why, what is it?’
‘I’ve switched to skim milk. Health issues, you see…’
Vani Viswanathan writes fiction and non-fiction, and works on gender, sexuality and development communications in New Delhi. Her first dedicated foray into writing for the world was when she started a blog in 2005. Her writing typically focuses on the marvellous intricacies and laughable ironies in lives around her. She draws inspiration from cities she’s lived in or visited. Her writing can be accessed on www.vaniviswanathan.com.
