I think my love for tea began sometime around Class 10. I was lagging behind in history. My mother, who has always been the kind of person who believes in doing rather than complaining, would wake me up at 6 in the morning to help me catch up. The world was still quiet. The air outside was still blue. And she would place a cup of tea next to my books gentle, hot, almost ceremonial.
That tea was never just tea. It was comfort. It was a signal to begin. It was how I slowly began to believe I could do better.
Over the years, the love grew. During my college years at Heritage Institute of Technology, I found myself drawn to the small tea shack right outside campus. It wasn’t glamorous. Just a steel kettle, a few plastic chairs, a narrow space barely big enough to breathe. But it was ours. That was where we stood between lectures, between deadlines, between breakdowns and bursts of laughter.
I used to smoke then, too. Back then it felt like part of the ritual. I don’t anymore. I’ve been clean for two years now, and honestly, I can’t stand the smell of smoke. But the tea stayed. The tea always stays.
These days, I drink more coffee. The transition was slow. Maybe it started as a way to stay awake. But then it became something else.
Last week, Nitu and Emily and I went to Walmart. It wasn’t a special day. We were just picking up regular things groceries, toiletries, things that usually fade into the background. But I came home with a coffee machine. A simple one. Nothing too fancy. But the first time I poured coffee from it, something shifted.
It made me happy in a way that is hard to explain. It felt like I had done something kind for myself.
Now every morning, I make a cup of coffee and stand quietly for a moment while it brews. It’s not about caffeine anymore. It’s about pause. About presence. About giving myself the same softness my mother once gave me at six in the morning with her tea.
Sometimes I still crave that old tea shack outside college. And sometimes, while sipping from a chipped mug in my kitchen in Norman, I find myself back in Kolkata sun on my back, warm cup in hand, time stretching and collapsing all at once.
The cup changes. But the feeling stays.
