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Saturday, December 16, 2006


My tea…her tea…

Kiran Desai’s Booker acknowledged Inheritance of Loss opens with a quaint chapter on the ritual of afternoon tea…the lighting of the stove…the gurgling of the tea kettle…and the obstinate but lazy need for boiled camellia leaves… Kiran Desai captures it all and more, and in the process makes me romanticize a daily ritual which probably doesn’t deserve the dignity of the written word…but yet when I picture myself bending over the humble browned sauce pan adjusting the flame, adding a dash of sugar and pouring the whiteness to the golden brownness (it always breaks my heart to see the golden hue of unpolluted black tea disappear in the muddiness of milk infestation), I smile…
I smile at the fundamental difference in taste between a mother and a son ….she likes her tea with milk and I like the homogenized version…
I smile at the magic that these humble leaves create when they blend with water ….oozing out a subtle and aromatic flavor that has pleased discerning taste buds for centuries…
And more than anything else I smile at the chipped cup which i refuse to throw away coz i have grown up drinking tea out of it ...

6 comments:

medusa said...

i know what u mean
the best colour that tea can achieve is obviously when there is lemon in it as well

serendipiduous said...

yes i do love a dash of lemon in my tea as well :-)

ru said...

and you know wht i like best? watching the wispy smoke curl from the cup, while waiting for the tea to cool, so tht u can take that first precious sip...and on wintry mornings its like the most calming thing ever.

uglygirl said...

awww

tui paarish o bote

Runa said...

hey...trust me i am visiting your blog after a long time...yet again i say it makes for a wonderful read...
can't say much about tea drinking habits, as i hardly drink it.

About Inheritance of Loss ofcourse i will spare some moments...I still need to figure out why did that book got tha acclaim that it did. Have read some 80 odd pages and like nothing about it...

Did you enjoy reading it? if yes i will give it a try and try reading it :)

serendipiduous said...

@ wasted:-) Hugs...i have read about 150 pages and i quite like it ...its probabaly the quaintness of teh novel which i find enearing...