I think my love for tea started around Class 10. I was behind in history, and my mother, who has always believed in doing something about a problem, would wake me up at 6 in the morning to help me catch up. The world was quiet and the air outside was still blue. She would put a cup of tea next to my books, hot and gentle, almost like a ceremony. That tea was comfort and a signal to begin, and it was how I slowly started to believe I could do better. The love grew over the years. At Heritage Institute of Technology, I kept going back to the small tea shack right outside campus. It had a steel kettle, a few plastic chairs, and barely enough room to breathe, and it was ours. We stood there between lectures and deadlines, between breakdowns and bursts of laughter. I smoked back then, and it felt like part of the ritual. I quit two years ago, and now I can’t stand the smell of smoke. The tea stayed.
In Norman I started drinking more coffee. It happened slowly, maybe first to stay awake, and then it became something more. One ordinary day Nitu, Emily, and I went to Walmart for groceries and toiletries, and I came home with a simple coffee machine. The first time I poured coffee from it, I felt happy in a way that’s hard to explain, as if I had done something kind for myself. After that, every morning I made a cup and stood quietly while it brewed. It gave me a pause, the same softness my mother gave me at six in the morning with her tea.Now I live by myself in Buffalo. I have a small aluminium stovetop pot with a strainer attached, and when I come home from work I make tea in it for myself. Sometimes I look out at the trees, the squirrels, and the birds while I drink it. Sometimes I think that one day I’ll have someone to share this tea with. I still miss that tea shack outside college. Some evenings, cup in hand, I’m back in Kolkata with the sun on my back, and time stretches and collapses at once.
