Waking up to the aroma of true brew (NOT BRU!) South Indian Filter coffee is my earliest memory - perhaps this was a time I was still in my mother's womb. And this was a tradition I proudly carried on after marriage. One of the beliefs in our tribe is that a girl's culinary skills need no further proof than her ability to brew a good cup of filter coffee and a potful of Rasam. I passed with flying colours on both counts.Each time fresh milk would be boiled and fresh aromatic decoction brewed, I'd "warm the cockles of their heart". You should have heard the proud and smug look on my mother in law's face when visitor's would come to see the new bride and she would tell me to make coffee for them. I was their star daughter in law , a jewel in their crown.
And then fate intervened when i was posted to new Delhi for my first job. The first day at work and it was 10:30. The canteen boy placed a cup of coffee on my table and I hungrily took one sip of it and nearly threw up. What was That? It tasted like poison for sure! A spoon of instant coffee in a cup of thick milk and three spoons of sugar!I spent the rest of the morning fighting a head ache and contemplating the wording of my resignation letter. In the evening I discussed this with a close friend and she said ,"Try tea. It is difficult to spoil a cup of tea unlike coffee." So I cheated for the first time just to save my job.What started out of necessity became a passionate affair in the years to come and soon I could not stand the smell of coffee!
Now Tea, for me, is not a beverage. It is a mood, it is a spiritual thing. I drink it not to shake off lethargy or kickstart my brains. It is not a ritual but a rite and I drink it to celebrate, to savour the moment, to relax, to pamper myself. Tea moments are special when the world around me ceases to exist. Those are moments when I am there and tea is there and the moment exists. Nothing else.
As the japanese say "Zencha ichimi," - Tea is Zen.
One of the contemporary Tamil poets, Vairamuthu,my favourite, has written a whole ode to Tea. Please read it; it is called: Alukoru kOpai.
I have tried a rough translation below but it is tough to capture the essence of Tea or the beauty of Vairamuthu's words in a translation:
Ode to Tea
(Alukoru kOppai by Vairamuthu)
Tea times are flash festivals.
Teacup is a compact shrine
Tea is an accessible God,on call to grant your desires.
Firing up the lips and caressing the tongue with warmth
stroking each bud to wake up to its taste
Sweet and faintly bitter
as it descends down the throat
the blood vessels flare up like blooming buds;
brushing past the heart
like a romantic brush against
the fringe of a lover’s sari.
Arriving in the intestines, it ignites the switches in the brain
and the soul is near salvation.
Tea embodies the five elements.
Earth that has seeped all over the leaf through the roots
Water that has lost itself in the essence of the leaf
Fire that made the sweet brew
A waft of air announcing the aroma of the tender leaf
Sky that had washed the leaf in tiny droplets of rain
The five elements locked up in a cup that bubbles with Tea.
But folks
you do not know how to drink Tea.
You stare elsewhere without looking at its golden hue
You chatter empty words without listening to its bubbles
Drinking tea is not a ritual like kissing a wife of years.
Every sip is a hungry kiss of new love;
Should you not,then,close your eyes
and kiss your tea?
Locking lips with the loved cup
as you take a noisy sip
you must lose yourself and transcend the present
in a momentary death
and rise to the region between
the sky and earth and wander among clouds
and then...
fall back with a thud
again on this earth
You, who do not grasp the essence of tea
how will you understand
Life
Death
God
Love
Atom
Universe
and
my poem
that waits last in your line
palm against its cheek?
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