Tea Tales

Without a doubt, the most important plant in the history of civilization is the Tea Plant. These days a minimum of three cups of tea a day is needed to at least function on an acceptable level. And shockingly my average tea consumption in pre-IIIT days would be around 1-2 cups per week! How did I survive for that long without regular dosage of tea, you ask? I have exactly the same question, and it seems that this would go down as one of the mysteries of my life!

In college the good tea-sources were rare, and shockingly the best tea was served by the mess guy during breakfast… Although the major tea-source for all of us was the coffee shop. Every 2-3 months I would settle my account with that guy, and it would always be in multiple thousands! The initial salaries once we joined the corporate world were used to pay all his debts By the way the only thing the image on left has to have with Tea is that this a shot of a coaster that was covering a cup of good hot tea…

Recently I had two great(!?) experience at making tea, so as I sip the vending machine pathetic tea I’ll pen down the tea-tales.

Diwali time, I am at home in Raipur. Mom and the wife are busy with Diwali preparations, and they shockingly entrust me with the great responsibility of making the evening cuppa tea. Generally I make decent enough tea, be it Masala Chai or with Cardamom, or Ginger, or simple plain tea. Here too I was confident that I’d make okayish tea, except that the spoon size had changed… “No problem”, I thought and put everything as per approximation thinking that I at least have the sense of the quantity in which the tea would taste good. How wrong I was as I proceed to demolish mom’s and the wife’s trust spectacularly. That day I accomplished the impossible of making “bitter” tea

I thought this was the low point; there was no way I could get any worse. I gathered the scattered bits of my confidence and proceeded into the kitchen again to make tea – this time back in Hyderabad. The spoon sizes were back to normal, and I started to make tea. As I opened the box containing the tea leaves, I found that it was empty… “No problem”, yet again I thought as I remembered that the wife had brought some tea bags back from Raipur. Earlier too I have cut tea bags and poured the contents in the milk and water to make drinkable tea, why should it be different this time? I cut a tea bag and poured the contents in the boiling water. The colour looks different, I thought once but did not pay any attention, put the burner at low flame, and proceeded to catch up on the India-Australia match. 5 minutes later I was back in kitchen to see that I have accomplished another impossible – I have made tea that is light green in colour. The tea bag box caught my eye – Lemon Tea Bags, under preparation it said – no milk required, only water is needed.

Now I am afraid to make tea ever again. Who knows what impossible would I achieve the next time around?

QoS, Fashion, Golmaal Returns

The weekend was dedicated completely to movies. It had been a long time since I saw any movie, my last visit was for Kidnap, and I’d come back sorely disappointed. Next whole month was not at all conducive for movie watching, with pathetic releases, and the good releases coming during Diwali when I was blissfully gaining some kgs at home.

So I started the movie marathon with Quantum of Solace. As usual I had very high expectations of Bond, but he failed to deliver anything special. The cameraman was so high on adrenaline during action sequences he was not able to hold the camera stable at all, almost all action sequences were “shaky”. There were no gadgets from the future, no sexy cars; all James Bond had was a high-end cell phone. Till now all Bond movies had shown the finger to reality – Bond leaping off a cliff, getting into a plane mid-air to escape, Bond jumping on a hot-air balloon, Bond on a speed boat that runs underwater too, a car that turns invisible [ok, this one was a tad tacky]. This time there is nothing, and I mean nothing to make you believe that Bond is someone special with access to cool gadgets. He is nothing but Jason Bourne this time around.

Next up on the agenda was Fashion. Madhur Bhandarkar again gives a realistic movie, but it was too slow for my taste… Maybe it was the sumptuous lunch I had just before the movie that was working its wonders, maybe it was the slowness of the movie, but I was definitely nodding off. Page 3 was mind-blowing, after that Madhur Bhandarkar has never been able to match himself.

Golmaal Returns was the last movie for the weekend. And that was I’d say the best movie I saw in the weekend… Totally senseless, and total timepass movie. There was rarely a moment when I got bored. With ample references to earlier movies – Golmaal, Tashan, Black, and Ekta Kapoor serails – this movie rocked. Loved the bit where Tushar Kapoor’s sister in the movie [Kareena] is named Ekta and shown to be a K-Series addict and the way the soap names are used in the dialogues. No sense, all fun – that I how I’d term this movie.