Ode to a cuppa

Sweet brown liquid you

All seasonal steaming stimulant

Flavoured ginger or elaichi

But never never red

Unless in some distant village

Or Manipuri home

I met you in my boyhood

Slurped out of saucers after church

Or taken innocently from our neighbours

Contrary to my German mother’s wish

We met repeatedly o'er time n space

In pots from melted snow while going up mountains,

Served in crusty glasses along midnight tube-lit roadside bus-halts,

Huge milky mugs in Shanti Kunj

The first sing-song call in the morning in a foetid train

The last gulp before the day’s work ends

You were in our hands as we heard sad stories of broken lives

You offered a set of small comforting welcomes to strangers

Who wanted to tell my wife and I the things that did not come easily to tongue

Is it a wonder that you help shift my night-owlness

Into early-birdnality, as your steaming ginger-flavoured presence

Graces the side of my Bible in morning prayer

Sweet, sugar-laden liquid you

(Miracle: I am still not diabetic at 46)

You reminded me of Bharat when I was in the spic-and-span ‘States’

A stranger, I looked up an Indian cookbook to recreate your spices

And served chai-tea from henceforth

Winning a few converts and making the odd chai-evangelist

As today’s sun has dipped

And twilight is punctuated by crow-cries and hammer blows and traffic rumble

Of our dear urbanity

Another cuppa has disappeared into me (a big one)

Slipping lightly over tongue and soothing slightly sore throat

While fingers tapped keys

Evoking tea