The Serpent'sTea Cup

Late into the night, I received a call from a friend of mine to announce that a common friend of ours, had just had twins - a boy and a girl. They had baked a huge double-decker cake and had celebrated the event. 

As a friend of mine once asked, 'What is the big excitement in the birth of a child(?) When a virile man and a fertile woman join, conception and birth of a new life are bound to follow... what is the big excitement about it and the need to be congratulating(?!)'

Well, I did agree to him when he told me that. But, this celebration yesterday night was different. This friend of ours was with the merchant navy; newly married, he had to return to the sea to make money for the new expenses they were starting to have. He was in the waters when he heard about his wife being pregnant. The wife had told him that she could take care of the pregnancy as his mother was with her and there was nothing to worry and all he had to do was keep working and send home the money which she promised to save on land for him. The child was born; he couldn't come. His excitement of becoming a father was saved for only the sea to witness. Two years later when he returned, he met his little boy for the first time. He was so excited that he showered all that he earned on the mother and the child. He knew that there was a lifetime ahead and the sea could meet all their needs. After a short break, they knew that he had to return to keep the home running with promises to keep as a provider. This time, it was a five-year contract that he signed. That sacrifice would be worth enough to refurnish the house, spike the bank balance and provide the little luxuries for his loved ones - he thought. He went. 

Everything went smoothly as planned and he received regular photos of new things filling the house - a new car, a new couch, a new set of jewellery... everything that would make his return to land a joy once he landed - after all his life and savings were in his good wife's good hands. 

One day, when he was still in the sea, his mother sent him an SOS and wanted to talk to him. She soon came on a video call with him and showed him the house - it seemed reduced. There was almost nothing - save for the stool left for his mother to sit and weep on. The brilliant wife had skilfully taken off with their son and every bit of investment he had made monetarily. He felt more emotionally drained than financially. He returned.

The house was empty as his mother had shown. She was being taken care of by the neighbours till his return. There was nothing. Everything purchased that he got to see only on the photos were like they never were even there; the bank balance that he was told was his savings was all saved in the woman's name. The car she drove away in, the bags she packed everything into, the child she took away... everything that she said was 'theirs', were now 'her's' to keep. Every woman who does something as vulgar as this must have a family to back her up in such a deal; in this case, it was her father stood by this angel's side - who got a case filed at the police station to keep our man at a distance and a divorce filed at the family court soon after, to seal the deal. Benefit: A daughter to take care of him in his old age with a bag full of free goodies got out of her shrewd investments made with the sweat and blood of another soul. 

When I first met this man, he had just returned from a Tea Shop. It had become his usual routine to go sit there - not for the tea - but to see his son being taken to school on that route in a closed car - who he could see only from a distance. He looked shaken, stirred and sunk - like a ship being rattled in a storm - when he narrated these incidents with his chin on his chest. 

Soon, the nasty divorce battle began; the lawyers fought over the lies, the liars fought alongside the lawyers and finally the judge for whom these battles were not fought for a reason, declared peace and granted at the end the best thing the man had ever received - a divorce. The very same evening, he got married (again) to someone much younger, more beautiful and far more healthier and started a new life cleaning up his dirty slate. This incident made me chuckle at the seaman's unpredictability. Soon, we heard that his new wife had conceived and as things were expected to naturally turnout, delivered twins - doubling his happiness - that like most men, he deserved. 

While talking to him this time, he seemed so calm and collected. He was talking about how busy he is at times that he can't answer the phone like before - times when he would be doing the dishes or changing diapers for the new lives. Life had become calm after the storm and as a sailor knows best, no matter how far a man sails into the deep, he only moves closer to his heart on land.     

The Politics In Tea

'So how would you like to have your tea?' if asked, one would probably start imaging the Darjeeling, the green, the oolong, the silver tips, the golden tips perhaps or maybe even the orthodox or the humble Indian chai being served and sipped with a delight... seldom would any normal one even remotely think that someone actually asked you 'on what you deserve it to be served in?(!)' 'Would it be in a porcelain cup, tumbler, clay pot or coconut shell perhaps...' Somehow, like many other finer and more uncouthed things that happen in India, this question of 'what to serve the tea in', comes with a need to reveal one's caste-based identity-an identity that could determine your dignity, respect and esteem more than anything else that you would not have to work on to deserve the same. 

It is sad yet a reality that in some shops in India and still many homes, there is a 'double-tumbler' system that prevails when it comes to serving tea. In some tea shops, people considered and labelled, 'the untouchables', are served tea in cheaper and/or broken glass, aluminum, clay, plastic or other disposable containers while dominant caste groups get served in stainless steel tumblers or shiny cups made of glazed china clay. If you are too unfamiliar or unslottable into a particular caste or due to some strange reason, your enigma/charisma is such a put off that the tea-master (the guy who brews the tea), will dare not ask to your face the caste you belong to, then your caste is assumed and to make no mistake, you will be served in a disposable cup and anything equally less. Some of these places-shops and homes included-have even separate entrance for different caste groups-usually the higher through the front and the lower through the rear. 

Why does this happen? I don't know. Why does this still happen? I really don't know. Perhaps people do find some excuse or the other to stratify and discriminate. I really do wonder if there is any scientific research done on this issue in this area to prove that majority of a particular so and so community often let glass or stainless steel cups slip through their fingers and in order to reduce loss to the enterprise, such a scheme is laid. Other than that what else can be even close to an excuse?! Ignorance? Apathy? 

Recently, I came across a canteen inside a superior college, in a state that claims to be 100% literate and in a district where a hartal can be declared at the drop of a hat for any (non)issue-where not two yet a 'triple-tumbler' system is still prevalent. Paper cup, stainless steel tumbler, cup and saucer-student, teacher, clergy-you decide who gets what. Now what do I blame it on?! Ignorance or Apathy?! or a socio-cultural idiosyncrasy in a cultural context in motion? Shame, shame puppy shame... 

Technocratic discrimination has dwindled bureaucratic lines and at times rides comfortably in the girdles of our blindness and our failure to even notice these marked stratification and discriminatory lines. This is the same hollow tunnel through which the comfort of the oppressor creeps in along with a support system that encourages these practices. Everyone is to be blamed. Some for being blissfully ignorant, some for being comfortably apathetic, some for being the confident perpetrators and others for being silent promoters and humble acceptors of these practices. Following the tea trail, the ruin of its reign seems to unfold the more and more one tries to ponder-straight from the slavery used to lay the plantation (Have you read 'What Colour Is The Soil In Munnar?!'to the system of slavery that is installed by the way it is served. 

For now, when I look around and see teachers, students and clergy sip through their tea in a hurry-choosing to carefully ignore this simple yet deliberate mistake happening around them in this canteen-situated within an educational institution-in a state ruled by a group that promises equal treatment to all, I am amazed at the complacency of the discriminated lot who choose not to stand up, nevertheless ask-for whom I write this; as the famous quote by an author unknown goes, '“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” 

Well, at the end of the day, how do I like my tea served? Pretty plain, neat and simple-like everyone else's please. Until then, my ahimsa, my way-am boycotting the canteen until they chose to change the cups along with their attitude. Chai anyone?!