A TEA CEREMONY

Murali and I are part of a group and there they held a virtual tea ceremony, for the early-bird ladies of this group, with a Japanese lady presenting it to us from Kyoto. Very charming, she with a kimono and all that. It was an interesting hour and more with a lot of questions and answers. Primarily there is no way the Japanese tea ceremony can be enjoyed by me to the fullest, because you need to sit in Vajrasana for this. I cannot go on my knees to look for my dropped gold ear stud. And then these days they serve only macha tea, I think it will remain a ceremony, at least with me. Macha tea is the latest fad, a dark green in colour, beaten to a froth with a bamboo whisk and drank from a tea bowl, the final sip slurped with a sound, to announce that the tea is over. Like I said before, not happening.

I will slurp, to announce that I am enjoying every sip but from a rakabi, where treacly, hot and fragrant tea is poured on to a saucer from a continuously boiling kettle of tea. You have to blow on it first, while holding it delicately between the fingers of both your hands. And then you slurp it. And that is soul satisfying.

Or when you are having that small glass cup of hot tea, which you cannot hold between your fingers, but still struggle to do it, by holding the glass from the top and bottom, till you take the first sip. And if that does not wake you up, nothing else will. The flavour of ginger just overwhelms, even as the hot and sweet tea goes down your throat. Even on a hot afternoon. For there is a strong belief that you must beat the heat with a hot cup of tea, specially if you have treated yourself to hot and spicy mirchi bajjis. You do know that these deep fried wonders do not have any time or place to eat. You see someone frying them, you stop to eat them.

In India, a tea growing country, there are enough and more varieties of tea available, but over a period of time you get used to a particular tea brand that you have been drinking for a long time. You can either pick the branded ones or go to the various tea shops, where you can mix and match for colour and fragrance. Of course these days there are the green teas, good for weight loss; the black teas as part of your diet; and the worst of the lot being the teas without sugar. 

I hate it when people, while making tea for you, ask if sugar can be added. In my case it is a case of if tea be there, can sugar be far behind? The thickness and strength of the tea does not come from the milk added to the tea, but it comes from the strength of the tea leaves used, the sugar and the whole mixture boiling to the correct consistency. 

I do love my coffee and I shall rave about that in another piece. But for those who are my friends in Hyderabad, I cannot miss out on the Irani chai. And only recently I got to know that there is a pardewali chai too, which means `malai maar ke'. I drink Irani chai just for the romance of drinking it. And some Irani restaurants serve it from a samovar, some serve it with bun maskaa and still others with the sinful Osmania biscuits. With these sides you never realise when you finished your cup of tea. And if it is an asli Irani joint, then it will be served in the thick, white ceramic cup with a saucer. And if the cup is chipped, the joint is very old. Because it is a thick cup, there is not much tea but because of the thickness of the tea and the sweetness and the milkiness and the Osmania biscuits, you just drink it.

I will probably visit a few, existing Irani joints and write about it separately, for just a para does not do justice to this tea which holds an entire city in its thrall. One can wax eloquent about tea and its virtues and a few of my favourite bandis, but then we started with a Japanese tea ceremony........