Ginger Tea

 You bring a cup of water to a boil and put in some sliced ginger. The aroma fills the air and you add a dash of sugar and let the flavors incorporate. Then you add the milk and eventually the tea leaves. That’s how Mr. Bagchi liked his tea, and through his twelve years of marriage there have been various ways in which he has tried to bring his wife up to speed. 

But his wife had other more pressing matters to attend to always. There were the children’s breakfast and school lunch boxes to prepare, his father’s pills to administer, the milk to be boiled, his office clothes to be pressed, or some such, so she never really had the time to dilly dally over a cup of tea. Also, the little time that her husband took each morning when she handed him her version of the tea was her time. The cup she handed him was sickly sweetened with too much milk, always too much milk. He would take the cup and put down the shield of the newspaper he had been hiding behind and would proceed to enumerate where she had gone wrong. This ritual had started in their first week of marriage and had remained unchanged. Through the years Gauri had transformed from a timid girl who hardly knew how to make tea into a formidable cook who could dish out complex menus like it was child’s play. If she wanted, the recipe which he had repeated time and again was not so difficult to follow. In fact, sometimes when she was alone, she would brew herself a cup at her own pace and enjoy it while listening to some radio. 

But that small window of time that she had with him, away from the scruples of the daily domesticity reminded her of a time long gone, when they could talk without one of the children coming in asking for help in Geography, or asking for a test paper to be signed or asking to go to some friend’s house, or when their conversations didn’t comprise the father’s next doctor visit or the plumbing to be fixed. There was a time when he would bring white lilies for her, wrapped in newspaper, on his way back from work every Friday. He knew she liked a single rose, yet he would bring her the white lilies and she would grudgingly accept each time indulging it as his little rebellion. Now she would get gold jewellery on anniversaries and birthdays, which she would dutifully show off to her mother and the neighbours, but she secretly desired the flowers. This was her time and she was not ready to part with it, like she had parted with the morning walks, the occasional theater visit or the lilies.

And so it went, until Mr. Bagchi stopped complaining one day. It happened quite instantaneously, like a band-aid being ripped off. Gauri wondered and wondered what would have happened. No matter how much to his distaste the tea was, he would always finish the entire cup. It is not as if the sweet milky tea was inedible, it was just not his variant of the light ginger tea. For all these years, she had led herself to believe that he had come to like this version, he just did not like to admit it. She told herself that the little banter they exchanged each morning was just a tease, a secret dance only they knew the music to. But things changed overnight. Nowadays, he would take a few sips and just leave it at the table. At first she did not think much of it but it bothered her more than she would like to confess. One day, after he left for work and she was relatively free, she took the cup and sipped. It was not terrible, it was exactly how she had been preparing it for years. So what had happened now?

Mr. Bagchi had not really thought too much of giving up that sweet milky sherbet that his wife passed off as tea. He had always been a connoisseur of tea. A couple of weeks before him dropping off the morning tea ritual, he was lecturing the office boy on the way of making the perfect cup. Neetu, the new girl who occupied the adjacent desk was mildly amused and told him that is exactly how she prepared her tea. Mr. Bagchi was ecstatic to meet someone who shared a passion for the perfect cup of tea and would remonstrate how he missed this dying art. One thing led to the other and Neetu invited him for a cup of tea at her place. She lived right next to the office after all, so it was convenient. The tea she made in her small apartment was so delectable that he got instantly hooked and one morning as he sipped the cup Gauri handed him, he closed his eyes and decided enough is enough. He had tried it all, coached her, rebuked her, coaxed her and cajoled her - nothing seemed to get through. Why did she have to be stubborn about everything? Had he not provided everything for her and all he wanted was a little peace in the morning before he started his day. But she would not give that to him. Yes, very early on in the marriage he had once joked about her father calling this juice tea. Yes, he had said that tea is for the classy and not the commoners. Why did she have to be held up with that, could she not let it go? She has time for everyone in the house but him. Anyway, this was perhaps the only time that they actually spoke with each other and while they could sit and talk peacefully she would rather have him tell her the same thing again and again and again. Mr. Bagchi decided to pay Neetu a visit before going to work and at the cost of sounding inappropriate asked for a cup of tea. The lady was obliging and even if she felt this was an imposition she did not show it. He sat and drank the tea in peace and even made some small talk while he was at it, all the while wondering what was stopping Gauri from enjoying this time with him. 

Somehow he made mistakes at work, sent mails to the wrong people, and was easily irritable. As the week progressed, he refused to touch Gauri’s tea and visited Neetu each morning. Gauri on the other hand was perturbed by her husband’s rebellion. She started smelling his shirts before putting them in for a wash and one day, he found a strand of hair which was unfamiliar. Her worst fears were confirmed. She stopped listening to radio, her curries were salty that day and she forgot to water the flower pots adorning their little verandah. 

After a week, she decided to give in. She had to eventually part with the last semblance of a bygone time. As she diligently sliced the ginger, she told herself that she had had her time and all must move on. The flavor of the ginger and sugar was so heady that she prepared another cup for herself as well. She arranged them on a tray and went and sat across from him, picking up her cup and holding it up to her lips. He put down the newspaper. Another person sipping tea beside him at this hour in the morning is something he had forgotten. This happened only in the beginning, this was the time when he would have called her tea something akin to juice and somewhere down the line she had become too busy for this time. He could smell the ginger and the light and perfectly brewed tea. He picked his cup, took a sip and closed his eyes. This had to be the most perfect cup of tea he had had in his entire life, each element coming together so beautifully. This was bliss. They spoke of something in the newspaper, something about the neighbour and something about their day. 

After finishing, as Gauri was taking the tray away, he said, “Now can you make two cups of your tea?” She smiled and went to the kitchen. That day, Mr. Bagchi went straight to office and came back with a red rose. Gauri held on to the single stem and said, “Get your lilies next Friday.”