Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Tea-time

A cup of tea. Sometimes a steel tumbler. Sometimes a china with blue prints and a nice saucer -  La Opala. Several flavors to savor for different moods and different occasions. With someone or a group of someones or alone. There is a dialogue that happens between the cup and the drinker, between the tea and the taster - quiet, profound somuchso that volumes may be written on what transpires between the ingredients from their different origins in the liquid that it got brewed in by the hands in its different moods that gave just that amount of tea leaf and just that many grains of sweetness, between the range of tastes as the temperature cools down between the time it got off the stove to the last sip, and the umpteen things that goes on inside the drinker-taster before, while and after drinking. A cup of tea. Sometimes I think the real companion at tea-time is just the tea in the cup and that all other details are over and above that companionship, and oftentimes that is the one least appreciated except as a taste that remains as a reminder of the fact of tea-drinking. It is the little things.