Fair warning: This is a long, detailed entry about something very small and unimportant. As entries go, feel free to skip this one, but I liked it and had to post it.
Today I had 7 cups of tea. I never liked tea a lot, really, until I came to India. This past semester I’d go to Tealuxe and do work, etc. It wasn’t about the tea, though, it was about the environment, the people-watching, the interesting separation a pair of good headphones could provide. The tea was just a reason to be there. Tealuxe will stay in business for a long while because there are enough people like me who would do that, just go for the vibe, the experience, and not the product. The fact that they apparently have a world-class selection of teas will probably increase their longevity as well. In India, though, as much atmosphere and people watching as there always is, no matter which way you turn, there’s a very different aspect to this whole tea thing.
I’ve been thinking about it and I think it’s the ritual. Today I got up at 5:10 (yea, I’m totally losing it), and, honestly, what got me out of bed was mentally walking myself through the immensely and inexplicably satisfying procedure of preparing my tea and buttered toast breakfast. While I hit the snooze button on instinct, a minute later I actually shut off the alarm entirely and went and did what I had just walked myself through.
Someone, I think Mike or Noel, always remembers to turn off the fans and the lights in the living room and kitchen. Early in the morning there is very little light, but my newly adjusting eyes make out everything fine, anyway. I walk into the kitchen and grab the water-boiler. I fill it up to it’s maximum, 1.5L capacity, as it saves me a trip a half-hour later. Plus it’s easier, in that early morning daze, just to fill to the little line rather than think about your average primary tea displacement. I put the water boiler on its stand and press the button, the orange light on the side lighting up the whole left side of the kitchen in an orange that changes color as my eyes adjust to it, a ripe Florida Orange orange fading to something I think closer to a near-maroon. As soon as the button clicks, a high-pitched, fuzzy electrical whirring emits from the base of the boiler, dominating the early morning sonic landscape with equal aplomb of the shifting light below.
The water on, I open the cupboard and feel around for one of the bigger mugs. I slide it across the counter and turn around to get the sugar. The sugar here isn’t fine a fine crystalline, like it is in the States. It’s thousands and thousands of small but long rectangular crystals that don’t stick to each other. We refilled our sugar recently, so it pours freely, nearly too freely into the mug. These days I consciously blink my eyes and make sure it’s actually sugar that I’m pouring into my sugar. Three days in a row last week I put in salt by accident and had to do this whole ritual over again. Now the salt, which is in the exact same looking container and is not labeled, is nowhere near the tea ingredients. The sugar poured, I put it back and grab a tea bag. We buy these 100 packs of tea bags, and they’re all perfectly folded and arranged inside a small square box. It’s really a brilliant arrangement. Four rows, twenty-five to a row. Tea bag, string. Tea bag, string.
The pitch of the fuzzy water has been steadily rising as I walk around the kitchen. It’s approaching it’s apex as I open the fridge and grab the milk. Cat and Anusha, ever, if unnecessarily, hip-conscious females, have been buying skim milk lately and it’s just not the same, but in the early morning daze I’m just proud of myself that I’ve found a liquid to pour into my tea and not rice or something. The sound of fuzzy water rings its final declaration across the early-morning silence, and dies away. The button clicks back with a plastic thud and it echoes around our small but high-ceilinged kitchen. The echo is short-lived, as the water finally hits a boil and starts shaking.
I pour the steaming water into the mug, keeping in mind how bloody hot steam can be. Nearly lost a thumb a couple weeks ago when I was messing with the water-boiler. If I’ve aimed correctly, the water went directly to the bottom and filled up the mug slowly, melting the sugar into it instantly and not disturbing the tea bag. If done correctly, it looks like there’ s just water in there. I pour in the milk and watch the solid streams of milk start to break apart in the heated environment. They twirl these amazing patterns in the water. Here I can chance a swirl with the spoon to mix the milk, water and sugar quite well. The result is a uniform, pure white liquid.
Now the best part. Two tugs or so on the teabag, held to the side of the mug, and brown shoots straight across the white like the most imaginative scimitar you’ve ever seen. It hits the other side and splits apart, circling around the circumference. If you’re really lucky, for just a little while, the tea infusing into the milky, sugary water makes a pattern that looks like a swirly London Underground logo. It’s absolutely brilliant. If I were a filmmaker, I would shoot this scene from twenty angles, or maybe just one, and watch it all happen. I’d let the lens linger there as the bisected circle breaks down and stops rotating, and the tea takes on that taffy-brown color it should when it’s well-constructed. I know it might sound stupid and fanciful, and it probably sounds like something a starving artist would say, but honestly watching the tea steep into the water is the best part of my morning. If I do it correctly, it’s honestly a beautiful display.
There’s only one electrical outlet in that part of the kitchen, and the water-boiler splits time with the toaster. I throw two pieces of white toast in the murderous toaster and pray. I don’t bother actually turning the dials on our toaster. Ha. What a concept, a toaster that responds to even vague requests of cooking length and intensity. Ha. No, this toaster has a mind of its own, and that mind is a sick one. No matter what the setting, 1-10, odds are good that your toast will either come out looking like a deformed hockey puck or like it hadn’t been in a toaster yet. And attempting to retrieve your toast, via any method including unplugging the devil box from the wall, will fail. I guarantee you. The slider you push to push your toast down to its death, not unlike that memorable scene from Temple of Doom, come to think of it, stays down and immovable until it damn well feels like releasing your toast. Bastard.
Let’s assume it’s one day in ten, and instead of scorching my toast beyond recognition or palatability for any 1+ celled organisms, the bastard manages to punch out perfect, lightly browned, hot toast. It’s only happened maybe three or four times total, while I’ve been here. Oddly, other people here report no big problems. Maybe it’s just me? Anyway, I butter the toast, one side only, and no matter how hard the butter was when it came out it’ll melt on this toast. It fades in to the toast, gives up, really, and I enjoy a piece straight up, usually still at the kitchen counter. I butter a second one and do one of two things.
The first is more usual. I go back to my room and sit down at my desk, check my email, do some dems coding, read the news, maybe talk online, before I go take a shower. I usually am not done with the first cup of tea by the time I take a shower so I just take it with me. It’s a nice feeling to get out of your own shower and still have a hot cup of tea waiting for you.
The other option is much more rare. I’ve only done it twice, but it’s been amazing. As I’ve explained before, our rooftop is a flat terrace that stretches the length of the building. Our stairs go right to the terrace, so we do lots of stuff up there. On the eastern side of the building, the “Rutgers Girls” wing, there is a separate terrace that’s hardly ever open. Once in a while someone will leave the door open overnight, though I’ve only seen that happen twice. People on our side of the building are less anal about doors being locked and whatnot.
This terrace faces directly east. In the foreground is Ring Road, a huge highway that circles Delhi. Beyond that is a huge temple, the Tibetan colony, the Yamuna River, a big stadium/cricket grounds, and the eastern horizon. It’s a rarity, but days where the terrace on that side is open and it’s a really clear morning, there are some truly awe-inspiring sunrises. Typical India that you have to look over 8 lanes of honking, high-emissions vehicles to see it, but it’s well worth it regardless. To sit there, a brilliant cup of tea in hand, the sun rising, a light breeze blowing…
You guys ask me all the time, “So what do you do over there?” Well, when you picture me here in India, picture me sitting high on a terrace, sipping tea, looking off at the eastern horizon ablaze, with my thoughts inescapably wandering exactly the opposite direction.
Then again, if Brother Paul reads this, he’ll probably tear my site to shreds well before hers. Alas.
