Spice of Life | Making tea in the City of Starbucks

The truckers in our country tell the desired quality of tea to the vendors by way of a refrain: “Paani patti rok ke, doodh meetha thok ke.”

During our six-month sojourn in Seattle, also known as Emerald City but more popularly as the City of Starbucks, I was the one in my son Sawan’s family to make tea for all of us rising, as I did, earlier than the rest.

Though it makes everyone in the house happy initially, my making tea finds them busy clearing and cleaning the kitchen later. (Shutterstock)

While in the US, I take upon myself the duty of making tea more conscientiously than the task being need-based. I don’t know if my son and daughter-in-law praise me for the tea genuinely, but one thing they confess seems to be convincing, and that being it’s a heavenly feeling to enjoy bed tea in a country which doesn’t have house helps to undertake routine chores.

Though it makes everyone in the house happy initially, my making tea finds them busy clearing and cleaning the kitchen later. I leave a sullied pan, boiled-froth laden gas burner, emptied sweetener sachets, tags and threads of tea bags, besides milk cans and some tissue papers and wipes, strewn around on the kitchen table. My clumsy performance is discounted in favour of my being the eldest in the house and serving the tea, that too in bed.

In most parts of Europe, and all of the United Kingdom, drinking tea is prevalent and there are tea-making kettles and other required material like milk, cream, tea bags, sugar sachets etc in the hotels. But in the US, one has to haggle at restaurants and eateries to convince the stewards and waiters to make them understand the beverage. They will invariably say if we mean “Black tea”. A hot beverage for them is coffee of whatever kind, or flavour.

All through the tea-making, I recall what the home-grown doodh-patti, or only milk boiled with tea leaves, meant to us back in India. The truckers in our country tell the desired quality of tea to the vendors by way of a refrain: “Paani patti rok ke, doodh meetha thok ke.” It means adding plenty of milk and sugar and putting less of water and tea leaves.

Students preparing for examinations are known to be drinking what is called ‘kadak chai’, an effective concoction of tea. Another favourite with them, particularly in the hills is a ‘chai-Maggi’ treat.

However, I dread to read about the tea called thea in Materia Medica by homeopath Dr Samuel Hahnemann. It says tea has such an influence on our bodies, causing many problems, including delirium and anxiety, to the extent that, if one was travelling on a train and consumes tea, one feels like jumping out of it!

My father was very fond of tea. He also generally prepared it for everyone in the house. Back in my village, Anta, he was looked up to for offering tea, especially to the indisposed innocent yokels, who thought tea was a panacea for ills affecting the body. I think I have inherited the love for making tea from him.

Tea, or chai in Hindi, makes an interesting connotation with bribery, when it has ‘pani’ added to its calling, making it ‘chai-pani’. Those babus (clerks) who wouldn’t otherwise ask for greasing their palms for small favours, would conveniently beseech a treat of ‘chai-pani’, with a roped in pre-empting and innocently employed impunity.

I find a Punjabi saying interesting to relate, “Ladaai halle di, te, chah thalle di (Voiced aggression is the essence of a fracas, like the concentrated tea at the bottom of the pan is tastier)”.

The author is a Panchkula based retired IPS officer and an advocate and can be reached at rajbirdeswal@hotmail.com.