Tales of tea

The tea simmers in the fertile cup, brimming with joy to cuddle the delinquency, is clasped by the lines of the palm foretelling the incessant urge to live. The smoke rises to the nostrils carrying flavored incense, every sip imperceptibly evoking an incessant urge to take another sip down the throat. What is left behind at the bottom of the cup is the hegemony of parched residue, brown & bleak, and if it’s the Eldorado turning into a distasteful frivolousness, it’s time to order another cup of tea. 

The tea, sliding over the tongue in orchestrated rhythms, is tolerant of the emotional prolapse scuppered in the ‘sighs’ and the ‘globus hysteria’ in the throat. It soothes the inner conflict as if the conscious has been swallowed by absentia; every sip cautious of our casuistry and piteous validations. The unruly tears cut through the lips; ‘tears’ & ‘tea’ in coalesce, often the salt mixed with sweet.

How tea has been adaptive to our solitude, so often just being there as a friend? The imperceptible lather on the top tests our resolve to either mix it with the depth that holds it, or in our sheer perceptibility of fear, we remove the burgeoning crown. ‘Tea’ is discreetly amorphous and our life a ‘perfect conundrum’.  We sip it, the river flowing through the ravine carrying the eroded emotions. It seeps in us; the autonomy to channelize its flow gradually diminishes. Then we think if life is just a savoir faire of morals that we have no control over or how easily disgruntlement settles through our ricocheting distress. Can life ever be a flavored occupancy of our impassioned perceptibility? 

One fine day, the rain drops squeak on the window pane. I open it to let in the insipid flow, touching the physicality of me that stands in deception, conspicuously holding a hot cup of tea. Why I enjoy tea during rain, I often ask? Is it the wetness of its lonesome pride that nudges me with its precipitation? I also carry the lethargy poured on to me of its incoherent journey from the clouds to the coarse ground. ‘Tea’ is my rescuer; I shiver less. I still want to watch the rain, not at the window, so I fall back softly against the pillow. Has my tea collected any drops of rain? Has it pompously inhabited the unrestrained flavor? The taste, through remains unchanged…

The sassy ‘pakoras’ brimming from the hot oil, brought to the table, look a bit disoriented without the tea. ‘Tea’ can do without these sartorial greasy ‘full-toned’ crispers but they look helpless without it. Doesn’t tea help squash them inside the mouth like a squeeze ball is delighted by the press of the palm? Is there relationship atavistic or the piquant consanguinity of tea has benefitted from the provincialism of the ‘pakoras’? Many find its combination a poisoned chalice, knowing it’s a pyrrhic victory but the maudlin mediocrity is laid to rest when the crunch bites the teeth; along comes a warm slush to take along the discursives.      

If ‘pakoras’ are the tantalizing rough & tumble coveting ‘tea’, the winter war-front cannot be won without a tea flavored with ginger and cardamom. The sun now hides behind the heavenly carapsse. It has become a will-o’-the-wisp, and I allow the miasma of cold snuggles & sniffs to rogue me off my warmth. To stop the cold currents leapfrogging, ‘tea’ now from a petty indulgence becomes the animism to provide cure. The winter Sun has perhaps taken an effrontery to my ‘cupid love’ for tea. If sensibilities did die a death due to non-awakening, ‘tea’ has helped to get the rhythm back, for the ‘Sun’ has now become a anthracite pleased by its anomaly.

My true sycophancy towards tea has still not finished yet. I believe in valued relationships; unyielding and substantial. Tea helps to overcome my scruples, and in case sententious vulnerabilities wear me down, frequent ‘tea theosophy’ renders the courage to be righteous. If all this sounds like a moral rectitude swimming in vainglorious pool, I am not an adversary to it. 

The pullulative distress, today, has curbed the flow of serotonin; I feel unclaimed! ‘Tea’ is my neurotransmitter.