For some strange reason, I never really like drinking regular chai-style tea on any ordinary day, though I do so at work, more to keep awake than for any nudge from my gustatory synapses. The stuff from the machine is too sweet and too frothy and too strong, the bitter aftertaste coming through the overdose of sugar and whatever spices may have been added. On days when deadlines breathe heavily and persistently down my neck, I get myself sparked with a touch of caffeine and tannin and glucose, pushing away the Sandman and staying more awake than I would like to be at such times just in order to get through to the end of the day.
But – and I cannot understand why, even when I keep trying to analyse it – when I am at home for a whole day (less often than I would like, really), I crave that hot cup of chai. And not any ladylike cup either, but one of my favourite giant mugs, of which I have a nice collection that Father usually glowers at, especially when he thinks that I am aware of his actions (I almost always am, but lets him know only once in a while). Just after the maid is done cleaning the house and I am done getting is back in order, sorting out my cooking for the day and thinking about what new I can do with vegetables that seem to make too-frequent trips to my refrigerator, I start getting edgy. The number of yawns per minute that emerge from deep within me increases and the day weighs astonishingly heavily on my eyelids and brain. I try and read a newspaper, but find my head nodding steadily downwards, that black fug that is sleep missed clouding my reactions.
That is when I get up, pat Small Cat affectionately on her pretty little head and march into the kitchen. A small round stainless steel pot is filled with water and set on a lit burner. As it begins gently heating, I choose the mug I want to sip from – my favourite is a large blue and yellow op-art creation with a big handle that is perfectly placed for grabbing and lifting between chops of onion and stirs of sizzling potatoes. As tiny bubbles start forming on the surface of the water, I work quickly to add first a spoonful of sugar – more because the doctor said I should than because I want it – a pinch of chai masala that was bought around the time the dinosaurs went extinct and a small spoonful of chai leaves.
Thereupon hangs a different tale. The chai was bought for the maid when the maid was a different woman, not existentially, but physically. She drank sweet hot tea every morning and wanted it strong, not the usual mildly flavoured water that we prefer. So we got the dust tea, the kind that brews dark and almost syrupy. But the maid soon left (spurred on by my enthusiastic farewells) and a new one came along who was not just younger and more efficient, but who spurned tea with a curled lip and the disdain of a girl who is more used to soda-pop than old-fashioned tea. So, being of the rather frugal sort in some ways, I have been drinking my way through this disgustingly hefty beverage which, in spite of its lack of elitism, does do the job it is meant to: keep me awake.
As soon as the water boils, the tea leaves (or dust) are thrown in and the gas turned off. Then comes the part that I always get wrong. If I catch it in time and add milk and strain into my fabulous mug, it is too hot for me to drink. If I leave it until it cools enough to sip comfortably, it gets too strong and the bitterness makes my tongue cringe. So I have developed a method that will, when admitted, have me excommunicated from the legion of tea drinkers – I strain it into my trusty mug and then add a little cold water. And then slurp, with great pleasure….
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