My Cup of Tea

Dwaipayan Bora

Sunday, May 15, 2016

The art of making tea is part of the culture of many nations. While there may be variations in preparation, tea is undoubtedly one of the most popular drinks in the world. The English people like their tea and it is well known that they have put much emphasis to determine the way a perfect cup is prepared. Assam got its name for tea through them when Robert Bruce introduced Assam tea bush to Europe in 1823. By then he had identified that local tribes’ men the Singphos were already cultivating and brewing tea. Now tea is virtually our national drink.

Upper Assam is the core of Assam tea industry. For me this area is another home, as I have stayed there for long. The verdant surroundings of tea estates lining the paths of many a tour is etched in my mind. As many friends or kin are part of this industry, it was quite easy to sample and taste different varieties of tea. Daylong trips to tea estates were commonplace and these meant witnessing the manufacturing process, visiting palatial bungalows and being attended to all conceivable needs by liveried butlers. At the end of these grand tours when the senses are exhausted by treat-filled offerings, a fine cup of tea became the perfect parting shot for rejuvenation.

It is very difficult to prepare a perfect cup of tea, because it is not merely a matter of the right ingredients but also conditions like temperature, timing, the pot etc. Our modest office tea boy Baruah, knew the taste too well and through his skill, he had cultivated on us a taste, which made us crave to sip his tea every day. He produced a consistent drink with flavor, colour and sweetness, which attracted colleagues from other departments to our workplace.

Once I came to Kuwait, I hankered for tea with the same taste trying various options, but had to settle for a lesser taste. As a perfect cup of tea became like a lost soul to me, I had the opportunity to visit Munnar, a tea growing hill station in Kerala, last year. In this town, we visited the Tea Museum of Tata Tea in Nallathanni Estate and met our tour guide Mr. George. He was in charge of guiding a group of about thirty adults, mostly Indians and a few foreigners. With his baritone voice, he announced through his portable microphone, that this would be an hour long tour, and those who may not be interested in investing this time, can opt out now. However, once the tour starts one must maintain discipline and raise questions only when given an opportunity. His no-nonsense attitude resonated within the visitors as they fell into place, and there was silence and rapt attention. Like a captain of a ship, he got the approval of our confidence in him for this tour. After a short pause, he started with an unusual poser – “How many of you have constipation? Raise your hand.” As each of us looked on to the other, almost everybody in the group raised their hands. Reassured of his finding on this health condition, he started his onslaught on the English way of preparing tea, which he attributed to be a wrong food habit that we Indians imitated blindly. He alluded that the tea loses its healing capability of an antioxidant when prepared with milk and sugar, causes gastric, leading to bloating and constipation. Food, which should take 12 hours to digest, takes a longer time, causing deep stresses of constipation. His simple summary of a complex medical problem had a powerful effect on everyone, all of who accepted the hypothesis quite approvingly. He continued that in the great epic Ramayana, Hanuman brought the Sanjivani herb to awaken the fallen Lakshman. This Sanjivani is nothing but the modern day tea, which has the power to heal and restore life. He gave examples of the Chinese and the Japanese who mostly have a lean body as they drink tea prepared differently. Accordingly, tea should never be prepared with milk and sugar and instead prepared by adding tea leaves after bringing the water to the first boil. At the end of the tour, I felt a sense of reawakening. Thus we went to the museum stores to buy a few varieties of tea and resolved never to taste the already endeared taste.



My discoveries on the subject of preparing a nice cup of tea continued thereafter. I chanced upon an article “A nice cup of Tea” by George Orwell, the English novelist, journalist, and critic, published in the January 12, 1946 edition of the Evening Standard. Here he laid down eleven rules, every one of which he regarded as golden. His first rule was that, - “one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues, which are not to be despised nowadays—it is economical, and one can drink it without milk—but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.” According to him “one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes”. He writes that “one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea.

Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste”. His last rule was that “tea—unless one is drinking it in the Russian style—should be drunk without sugar. A true tea lover would not destroy the flavour of tea by putting sugar in it. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you do no longer taste the tea, you merely taste the sugar.”

To bring to rest the various postulates on the way of making tea, British Standards Institution in collaboration with various professional organizations and experts created a scientific formula for the perfect cup. They developed the standard BS 6008, in 1980 to help professional tea testers in their work. In essence, it states that one need a pot made of porcelain, and there must be at least two grams of tea to every 100 ml of water. The temperature can’t go beyond 85 degrees Celsius when served but should be above 60 degrees for "optimum flavour and sensation". They have also come up with the best pot size and goes on to state that the perfect brewing time is six minutes which extracts the flavours from the tea leaves.

Thus, the art of making tea has now become a science as other standard organizations like ISO followed with their own standards. However, for a layman like me, these specifications doesn’t help much in getting the perfect cup of tea, as I still love the Baruah way of making tea. Hence, there is quite a reason when poet Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that “Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea."

Dwaipayan Bora is an engineer working in Kuwait Oil Company and a resident of Kuwait for the last nine years. As a freelance writer he contributes in various newspapers , magazines and websites.

s