Afternoon tea

I am usually an agreeable kind of a guy. I strictly follow the maxim of ignorance is bliss so everything that comes my way I actively ignore. But there are things that make me behave like a dog whose butt someone has doused a cigarette on. This usually happens in the afternoons when I am at home and am denied my fifth cup of tea since morning, because of the milk running out. I make my own tea. Watching the light brown syrupy mass come to a boil has its own fun. I worry about its taste the way a mother worries about the future of her child. The final satisfaction when it turns out the exact amount of sweet, bitter, and spicy sometimes makes me break into motherly tears. But I am denied this when the milk runs out. Of course, I can order the milk but it takes at least ten minutes to reach and the ten minutes with a burning butt is too much to take for anyone. Before I become rogue and start biting everyone in the house, I am kicked out to look for a chai-tapri. 

I don’t have to go far. There is one right across the road and that is where I went one such afternoon to douse my thirst for chai. It is named after a multisyllabic god and has condiments attached to it. True to its name, it has a person always sitting at the same spot who has the looks of a god who has grown up on a special diet of condiments. He also carries a sweet smile that looks extra sweet when coming from a globulous face. Everyone seemed to be saying hello to him before placing the order and I too did it.

Illustration by Prajakta Ostwal

After the necessary but awkward business of bhaiyya-payment-done and okay-sir, my gaze fell upon that familiar yellow wrapper of Parle-G biscuits. I instinctively bought one packet and repeated the whole bhaiyya-payment-done-okay-sir drill. I am not the nostalgic type but the sight of Parle G in a surrounding with the smell of chai with the smell of putrefying garbage in the background is hard to resist. I put my phone in my pocket, held the cup of tea in my left hand, Parle G packet in the right, and started staring into the void wondering why human beings do not have a third hand that magically appears meant just for tearing the wrapper open when one is holding a cup of hot beverage in one of the hands. The chai-wala asked me to not get ahead of myself and keep the cup on the counter and then tear the wrapper. I tore it open but his gestures suggested that I would not be the one to savour the taste of those biscuits. I ignored him and turned around again after having access to the contents of the yellow package. This time wondering why human beings do not have a third hand that magically appears meant just for dipping Parle G biscuits in the chai and putting them skilfully in the mouth without dropping any of the wet gooey mass into the cup. 

While I was standing there like a fool, alternating my gaze between left and right hands, a dog sprang into action and started looking at me with the expectant expression I get from my partner when it’s time to fulfil the promises made by me during a drunken stupor. The kind which mostly involves cleaning of the house. Her eyebrows were stretched up giving me the view of her eyes, and her body exuded the agility of someone who has cornered you in a game of pakdam-pakdai. I am talking about the dog. Yes, it was a she. 

She was wagging her tail and was moving her body as per the movement of my hand that had the open packet of Parle G. I rarely enjoy such power so I started playing around. My hand went left and she went left. My hand went right and she went right. My hand went down, she went down. My hand went up and she jumped with her mouth open coming dangerously close. I withdrew in time and she ended up biting the stale polluted air. I started laughing and turned around to the shopkeeper and the fat man for support but what I got in return were cold stares. The chai-wala took another packet of Parle G out and kept it at the counter. 

I did not want to go through the entire routine of bhaiyya-payment-done-okay-sir drill again. Plus the tea was getting cold. I ignored everyone, extended my hand to keep my cup on the counter but was denied by the chai-wala. I started looking for other places to keep my cup and didn’t get any. I tried sitting beside the fat man and he gave me a look that will haunt me forever. There was a clear difference of opinion between everyone else and me. I thought that the biscuits belonged to me and they thought that every packet of Parle G is the birthright of every dog. 

Now there is one thing about me you should know. I might be a fool who doesn't know his way around the world, but when I have a packet of biscuits open in my hand, I am sure the mouth it is going into is my own. I decided I will carry the chai-biscuit home and have it there in my territory. I asked the chai-wala to transfer my tea from a glass cup to a paper one. He chose the broadest cup possible and in the process of transferring it, spilled half of it with a wry smile. The tea in that paper cup looked like a puddle and it had gone cold. Meanwhile, the fat man to me was still giving the cold stares, and to the dog its supposedly rightful share of Parle G. He was throwing biscuits in the air, one at a time. The dog was jumping to catch, chew, and gobble it, turning to me after every round of play saying something in dog tongue, increasing the syllables after every round. He started with ‘bhow’ that became ‘bhow bhow’ that became ‘bhow bhow bhow’ which I think means ‘jerk’, ‘buzz off’, ‘who's laughing now’. 

I started running back to my house. If I had a tail, it would be between my legs but all I had was a cold puddle of sugar syrup, a packet of soggy biscuits, and a bleeding ego.