Well, well......At last I realize that I am wiser...The tea that I had been sipping since my childhood isn't actually tea! That's what I have been made to understand...
Let me elaborate, and this might be a tedious tale for the fast-paced youngsters (I am counting on my contemporaries, the "mid-forties-oldies", to take a glance at this write up).
My earliest memories of "tea" (the inverted commas are meant to signify the importance of the beverage being discussed) goes back to my mother, aunts, grandmother and elder female relatives telling me to refrain from sipping it as the brew could potentially darken my skin tone. Though I am not sure why this was said, I guess during those days drinking tea was an "adult thing". Since our parents were mere parents and were neither our friend nor confidante, we had no option but to follow their dictat to the t. Nevertheless, it was not until I reached my teenage years that I had my first cup of the golden brew. Milk tea with sugar, sometimes flavored with bay leaves, cardamom and/or ginger, became a staple in my daily routine. One cup of tea was a must everyday, and by the time I reached my twenties, the daily cuppa doubled, trebled and multiplied many times over.
Once upon a time (read, my childhood years), tea liqueur without milk, or phika saah, was an almost non-entity in the average Assamese household. If the host posed the question, "Will you have phika saah?" to the guests, it was automatically assumed that the host was miserly. Phika saah, when at all was consumed, was served in a bell-metal bowl, with a piece of jaggery to go with it in the village households. The only sophisticated exception was in the tea-table layout of the tea-estate managers and the remnants of the British-time people.
Decades passed, and amenities increased. Manual work lessened, life became easier and better; lifestyle diseases slowly entered every home. And with that, milk-tea laced with sugar faded into the oblivion. The erstwhile miserly "phika saah" slowly became a familiar beverage. Hosts stated straightaway to their guests that milk is no longer used with tea. Milk-tea is now an exception, not the norm. In addition, the "taah" (accompanying food item) which came with "saah" (tea), changed from poori-potato fry - omellete, to sweets-samosa, to cream-biscuit, to digestive biscuits - to nothing!
But tea was tea till this phase. Let me talk about the confusion that followed.
During my youth, tea was either orthodox or CTC, with the former associated with aroma and phika saah, and the latter with economy and milk tea. But slowly, many appellations surfaced. What was earlier technical now became quotidian. Oolong, pu-erh, white, yellow, first-flush, second-flush, silver-tip, etc were uttered in everyday conversations. In fact, I was told that sencha, matcha and bancha were subtypes of unoxidized green tea! "Silver needle" and "white peony" are not embroidery types, but are types of white tea, and so on. To this long and confusing list, another agonizing variant, tactically named "herbal tea" or "tisanes", joined the queue. Herbal tea, I was told, is actually not related to "tea", but is everything else but tea, which includes rooibos, chamomile, hibiscus, peppermint, blue-pea flower and a lot many more, packaged and brewed like yesteryear's good, old tea! So despite being "not tea", it has forayed into the tea-table with such a vengeance and aggression that in many households camellia sinensis (original, real tea plant) has become a non-entity.
Also, the simplicity of brewing tea leaves to serve as mere "tea" is fast becoming obsolete. Flavoured with exotic additives like vanilla, chocolate, jasmine, hazelnut, maple sap and what not, sipping a cup of tea is akin to going to a seance or treading an unknown path. Then there is this "tandoori tea" which I had the opportunity to taste in Jaipur this year. I had this misguided notion that "tandoori" was a term associated with rotis and chicken; it was a huge shock to see my mundane tea reach such "tandoori heights"! I wonder what would have been the reaction of Charles Alexander Bruce and Maniram Dutta Baruah to this complicated state of affairs.
My life was not pitiful till that fateful day in March this year when I was informed that all this time, my ancestors and I were being fed garbage in the name of tea. While I knew that the best quality tea got auctioned and was imported, I always found solace in the fact that we, the common people, were supplied the medium or low quality types of tea. I also thought that I could buy the best tea by paying more. A few of my relatives, including my maternal uncles, had worked in tea-estates, and their visits were eagerly awaited as they always brought good quality tea (as assured by everyone around me), wrapped in airtight silver packets. But alas, my thoughts were doomed. I was again informed, by multiple sources - both actual and virtual - that what had been served to us in the name of tea all these years is nothing but the leftovers, or garbage. It seems nowadays the only real tea comes in unbelievably expensive sachets which are not available in our regular gela-maal stores. Tea tasters, who I always thought were limited, highly trained and gifted professionals, are now being produced in crops, thanks to various online guidance and crash courses. So, I am at my wits end as far a tea is concerned; I wish I could connect with Mr Bruce for his precious inputs in this matter.
But life is unpredictable - one can never know its mysterious and unforeseen ways. Let me quote Robert Frost here.
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
So, I took the other road to satiate my greedy palate and throat. One fine evening years ago, thanks to a smart friend, I ditched my companion tea, for a less complicated partner, which goes by the name "coffee". Life became easier with plain black coffee - no milk, no sugar. Straight out of the bottle, and with plain hot water, I found magic again.
Just when I was getting used to the feel and aroma of coffee and life was becoming a comfortable mundane, my cousin met me for coffee at a beautiful cafè one evening and shattered the peace of my mind. She asked me which coffee was my favourite - arabica, robusta, luwak, filter, etc. I stared at her. She, oblivious to my terror, went further to enquire how I liked my coffee to be prepared - with aeropress, pour-over, French- press, mocha-pot, drip, kalita-wave, vaccum-pot or something else. I guess I blacked out soon after, because I do not remember how the black coffee tasted that fateful evening.
And thus, the complications started, all over again.
