Hospitali-TEA

One of the commonalities I found between my home in the Southern United States and my time living in India was both cultures’ love affair with tea.

It is no doubt a leftover from the British both here in the former colonies in the United States and the “Jewel in the Crown” of the British Empire. However, both cultures have deviated somewhat from their British roots and have made it something quintessentially their own.

Something that struck me straight away is how tea in both the Southern United States and India is inextricably linked with hospitality. Being offered a glass of iced tea when entering someone’s home when I was growing up was standard and a hot cup of milk tea is absolutely required in India, even while negotiating a sale with a store clerk in a busy Indian bazaar.

Even the insistence of loading the tea with excessive amounts of sugar is similar between our two cultures. I remember my brother telling me about a friend’s grandmother that used to make a concentrated tea sugar syrup in a large pot on the stove. This was then diluted as needed in pitchers to make what he called “sugar-bomb tea”. I miss the Chaiwalas on the side of the street in India hovered over fires with large pots ladling out small clay cups of “chai garam” and conversing in salty language about whatever with whomever would sit and talk with them.

Something we have lost here in the States is the relaxing pause that is associated with tea. In India “tea time” is very important and it is not unusual to see a shop closed in the early afternoon for an hour or more for tea time. Like the siesta in Latin America, tea time is an afternoon break that requires an absolute stop to whatever business you have at hand so as to relax and slowly enjoy a cup or six of tea. My colleague and I used to call the tea stall outside our workplace our “office”, since we were easier found sitting at the “dhaba” (Indian street food vender) than in our actual offices. Many a day was spent drinking tea after tea, even in the hot summers in New Delhi, sometime 15 plus cups drank before moving on to some other activity.

I’ll admit I now prefer hot milk tea over iced tea but that is likely due to having an Indian wife who would not dare drink iced tea and finds it as strange as some folks here in the south cringe at the idea of tea with milk. Regardless, if tea is not offered or served immediately to guests in our home then rest assured they are unwelcome guests!