A hot cup of tea

There is something very comforting about a hot cup enclosed within almost freezing hands. I love my cup of tea. Or coffee. All I have to do is hold it in the palm of my hands and the world just seems so much more comforting and inviting. If I’m sad and feeling very forlorn, the cup in my hands warms me. It reminds me that irrespective of how cold and grey I feel within, there is always a way for the warmth to seep in.

Few people understand my almost religious experience with tea. Not many can understand how a cup of infused water can transport me to a different place. But it does. The fragrance pulls me out of my clamoring thoughts and ferries me to a world of clear crisp mountain air and the scent of the soil intermingling. It takes me to a place where life doesn’t whirr past, it walks along sedately. It makes me feel like even if I rest for just a tiny while, I’ll still be able to catch up.

The flavor of the leaves bursts onto my tongue and with each sip, I taste a new component. My favorite part is when the tea tastes a little bit like the soil it grew in and you can almost taste the various spices that enrich the soil. They say that tea is affected by the soil it grows in. It’s as capricious as wine….I think I have to agree.

I am from a city that thrives on drinking tea. Every alley in my city has a famous tea shop with its regular customers. You’ll see all strata of society intermingling at a corner store where a man in a ratty vest and a blue (or red) checkered lungi is preparing tea. They’ll sip tea in earthenware mugs and dip their naan-khatais and khajas into it. Every tea-stall will have a chhotu and your best shot of getting immediate service is to befriend the boy. He’ll change shops in a few months…so it makes sense if you have 2-3 chhotus that you’re on good terms with. Sunday morning would start with friends gathering at tea-stalls. Bunking classes occurred at the tea stall near the college, never the canteen. Writing or contemplating occurred in tea cafés within bookstores. Life revolved around tea and everybody loved it.

I never was much of a tea person. I couldn’t figure out why someone would want a steaming cup of tea as a pick-me-up. I was always a coffee person. And I could never stomach the concoction of tea leaves, milk, spices and sugar. It was just so overwhelming. And then, one day, when I was incredibly sad, my dad made me a cup of tea. I’m not quite sure which one. He made me a cup of amber liquid with no sugar, no milk, no spices. It was just a cup of steaming amber liquid. The flavors of the earth burst onto my tongue. There was a faint tannin-like taste right at the end and I remember that the tea tasted a little bit like berries and a multitude of other faint flavors that my palate couldn’t identify. I didn’t exactly fall in love, but I found it comforting. Bit by bit, I learnt to love it. Coffee became a means of cheering me up. The strong taste of chicory became a means of banishing thoughts I did not want. It became a means of running away and tea became a means of voicing my emotions. I’d have a cup of tea under the evening sky, on the side-porch with a view of my garden. I’d sigh and mull things over. And then…I’d sit down to write. I’d put words onto paper and I’d get it out of me.

When I’d read about writers writing in cafés with a cup of tea or coffee to get them going, the idea was incomprehensible. How could a beverage be a source of inspiration? And then, after sitting at tea places for hours at a stretch, I realized that something binds us together. In a bustling café, food is the only common thread. People are different and their actions can send you spiraling into a train of thoughts and that will ultimately get you to feel something. And that something is what you translate onto paper. It’s the segmented actions of people in a unified area which makes one come up with ideas.

And so, I’m now one of those clichés. When I’m stranded for ideas, I go to a tea place and I people-watch. I see little kids running around a bustling area and asking for maggi. I see old couples sharing a cup of tea and lamenting on the sights they see. I see young couples holding hands and weaving dreams…I just see. And I think.

And then, when my cup of tea grows cold, I put it aside and put a pen to paper and write.

My learnings from The Alchemist…

I have a quaint relationship with the books of Paulo Coelho. I will always pick up his novels on the day they hit the stands. And yet, I have never ever read his book when I picked it up. I’d always pick up the book and place it in my shelf. I’d even take it out every time I finished a book and it was time for me to start a new one. Sometimes, I’d get through a few pages and then leave the book unfinished for no reason at all. And then, when I least expect myself to read it, I’ll have finished the book in one read.

These books act as my personal guide. I don’t ever completely read Coelho when I plan to. It’s always unplanned and always at just the right time. I read The Alchemist at a phase in my life when I didn’t have much to believe in. I had always believed that life lets you know what to do and it ached harder that I had lost touch with that system of communication. I was dissatisfied and directionless. By the end of the book, life was beginning to make sense. I didn’t have an epiphany or even a flash of insight. What I did have, while reading that book, was a massive headache and a compulsive need to weep. I won’t even pretend that all of it made sense. Yes, the story is lucid but it is in no way simple. It took me a long time to digest it and I still understood it only in parts. For that time, however, parts were sufficient.

I’d been so clueless as to what I was going to do, that my brain had shut down. I’d been trying to listen to my heart so concentratedly for so long that because it wasn’t using words, I wasn’t grasping a whit of what it said. Somewhere along the book, I stopped trying to listen or to figure anything out. And that is when it all made sense.

5 years ago, I wouldn’t be caught dead sitting at a coffee shop and watching people. I would think of it as rude and creepy and I was obsessed with allowing people their privacy in public spaces. And while I was reading the book, I started watching people. I’d sit somewhere and just look- never really trying to understand what I was seeing. I’d come home and sit down to write and that was when I’d hear the Universe talking and that tiny voice in my heart would start whispering. That is when my belief in signs was reaffirmed. All the bedtime stories, where mum said I had a guardian angel looking over me, were beginning to sound true.

I honestly don’t know if Coelho is just *such* a brilliant writer that his fiction, if it were fiction, could alter my perception so much. Or even if his writing isn’t all fiction and if what he speaks of is something he experiences. Both the scenarios work for me. I have always believed that life talks to us. I have also experienced a few of the encounters he mentions. I just didn’t know what to make of them. And what I thought the experiences meant didn’t earn me a good night’s sleep. I felt like I must be delusional coz I certainly wasn’t on crack. It felt comforting to know that someone had experienced somethings similar. Or, at the very least, someone could imagine such experiences. I guess I could always argue that I was just seeing things the way I wanted to see them, but I’d be lying. I don’t believe that life has any whims or even that it indulges in coincidences. It’s too refined a system for that kind of error. And so, what I’m trying to say is that I don’t mind having an author reaffirm my faith in symbolism or showing me more techniques of thinking of the Universe as an abstract entity with a lot of loopholes. I don’t even have an issue if it’s a whole lot of goop and I’m just letting it overwhelm me. What I do know is that books don’t just transport me to the lives of the characters. Sometimes, a book will alter my life in the way a teacher introduces a child to a new subject. It won’t always start as fun or even become enjoyable, but it’ll become a journey worth having.

Why am I saying all this?
Because today, I had a sucky sucky day. I didn’t know why I was dissatisfied. I was in the middle of a good book and I started reading another of Coelho’s works for absolutely no reason. Aleph had an uncanny resemblance to the frustrations I was feeling. I had 9 other works of Coelho on my shelf and I picked this one up unthinkingly. That’s how I seek my answers.

That is how I’m finally writing an entire text after months of incomplete writing.