Tea

There’s three things about tea. I’ll try to keep it concise.

One, tea is not always caffeine. You have all the flower drinks – dried up flowers steeped in hot water. They’re all usually pretty good. Very soothing. Kind of old people-y but comforting. 

But see the thing is, sometimes it’s not even a drink. You pour it all the same and a lot of people prefer it hot. Myself, I pour my tea online because I don’t live close enough to my best friends to pour them actual tea. And in any case, if we do get together, we probably would not be drinking tea. Maybe coffee. Wink.

Two, I used to be one of those people who drank ten cups of tea a day. And this was chai. I loved tea the way North Indians make it – unhealthily. I boil tea leaves with milk, sugar, ginger, elaichi and bay leaves. People who knew me even as recently as two years ago would know me as a Tea Addict. I was always drinking tea. I could drink a pot of it myself. Sweet, milk tea. 

And then something happened in the recent past and I no longer really consume a lot of flour and potatoes. It was really difficult at first because most of the tucks I ate was maida and alu! But three months into cutting off those items brought out a really weird unintended consequence that I stopped consuming sugar and dairy as well! This in turn meant that I no longer really make or drink chai a lot anymore. I do drink a lot of red tea in office and strong, bitter black coffee at home. But no sugar, no milk. 

So my point is, don’t make assumptions about people. They change without you being a part of the process.

Third and last, no one knows what tea costs in Mizoram. And I say this fondly because I am always bemused by euphemisms. Mizo are not straight-talkers. We say one thing to mean something else entirely. This is very difficult terrain for someone who usually shoots straight because she was raised by people who didn’t know how to lie very well. In my life, I have learned to navigate through these cloudy waters where people give other people ten bucks or five hundred or seven lakhs as tea money. Oh, I’ll treat you your next tea! but what the tea actually is, is unclear. Because clearly no cup of tea costs seven lakhs INR. I find this euphemism particularly fascinating. The price of tea in Mizoram, if they don't tell you outright, has its own rules and economy.

Maybe we can discuss this over tea. Wink wink.