The Purple Chair Meditation

 

What a Chaotic day!

 

I was finding it difficult to sleep. It was not peaceful or reassuring when I turned off the light. My mind screeched in the darkness. So I switched it back on again and found that I was less afraid to let my thoughts tumble out. Tired, after a hectic day and an eight hundred metre swim, I was somehow still disturbed and restless. The first annoying factor had been an altercation I’d had with the condominium management.  In 42 degrees Celsius, the guard room did not have even a fan. The new manager cited protocol and all manner of excuses not to install one, callously stating that it was a holiday for his office the next day, so maybe two days hence, he could try and rectify the situation. God, this annoyed me. I shot off an email to the secretary of the society, but it meant the guards would have to endure another two days of inhuman conditions, at the very least.

A lot of other things also happened during the day.  There was labour all over my apartment.  In the gruelling heat, they kept all the doors and windows opened, all through the day. I realise that they had to in order to repair them, but it was unbearably hot sitting indoors and worse outside. The rollers of most of the channels of the aluminium sliding doors and windows needed to be changed. Their locks had to be replaced and other minor adjustments made. It took the whole day, and to endure the hot and humid weather with drill machines and hammers banging away was tough. There had been no time to write in my journal as I usually did and this meant that things were not quite put into perspective at the start of the day.

 I did complete sundry chores and respond to emails. I also managed some reading and then somehow did an hour of meditation in the heated cacophony but this only brought the underlying restlessness to the fore. I needed to write, but the moment I thought of getting out the laptop, something else needed attention. I was fasting, but this did not seem to quell the growing anxiety building up inside, either. A vigorous swim helped, but at the end of the day when I also had to switch rooms, as the air conditioner in my bedroom had stopped working because the erratic power supply that came and went every five minutes had blown something, it was the last straw.  I was grateful to have an alternate space to sleep in, but there was so much else playing on my mind. 

Unable to sleep, when I turned on the light, the first thing that caught my eye was the purple chair. Styled vaguely along the lines of furniture developed during and around the brief reign of Anne, Queen of Great Britain [1702 – 1714], this particular chair had once been part of a set of six dining table chairs. I remember it from those years when we lived in an apartment in Tivoli Court in Calcutta’s Ballygunge area in the 1960s and, also later, when we moved to Delhi, living in a rented bungalow in Maharani Bagh. This set, however, was replaced when we moved into our own home in neighbouring Friends Colony.  A new ornately carved set of six, also a variant of ‘The Queen Anne’ style, was made by Yasin in his workshop in East of Kailash. I remember my father would visit him often to check on the progress, sometimes taking me and my sisters along. Papa had chosen the design himself and wanted to ensure that Yasin and his associates did a good job of copying it from the foreign magazine he’d found the pattern in.

My mother used four of the old, now replaced set, to play Bridge with her friends and the two remaining chairs have stayed with me for well nigh thirty years; moving when I did, like faithful friends, from Delhi to Gurgaon. There was a time when I used to sit on them to work, drawing, writing and embroidering for many hours.  Now, these regal but old chairs grace my meditation room, which is where I slept last night. During meditation, I sit on one of them, with a cushion under my feet. They have, over the years, been upholstered in many different hues and fabrics.  At this point, they don a plain, cotton handloom textile which has a fine rib-like structure even though it is technically just a plain weave, dyed in a sort of lush lavender bordering on lilac, with a hint of purple.   

The front legs are round and narrow with a simple moulding of two circular parallel lines, at top and bottom. A narrow waist-like indent which creates an hour-glass figure between the two protruding lines of the upper set is one of the distinctive features of these otherwise non-descript chairs. The back legs are based on a square format. The base is about two inches, slowing increasing as it rises upwards carved in an  arch, curving in and then a little out, but not as far out, as the base of the foot. An upholstered high back with a slight slant arches back, slightly away from the seat of the chair. This is finished with a swoop on the top, like a wave coming from the left, rising at the centre of the back-rest and then vanishing on the right side. The effect is simple, yet quite regal. The legs are slender and polished in a dark shade of mahogany but most of the moulding and colour have been chewed into by the three black Labrador puppies that lived and grew up with us, leaving a rather mottled effect, revealing the raw sienna of the wood’s natural colour. 

 

 

  In my hurry to get the room set for slumber, I had picked up the cushions from the diwan and just dumped them on one of the chairs. The visual I saw, in those moments before I finally did fall sleep, despite the innocuousness of its mundane-everydayness, made a rather enchanting picture.  Carelessly piled, one upon the other, were four puffed up squares of peach, beige and lavender.  A rich peach with a slender, four-sided piping in a shade similar to the lilac of the chair, but in a chequered rib fabric, was the first to sit on it. Under fluorescent light, this lilac piping looked strangely blue; almost a sky blue. Piled on top of this were two in beige, squared off with a lavender line around their middles, a charismatic bulge spilling out on both sides. But one of the beige pillows was clearly more assertive than the other. It had managed to push the lower one awkwardly off centre while it sat above it, albeit slightly tilted too, but poised nonetheless. Above this, was another one of those soft and cuddly, comforting, swollen with poly-fill, sixteen inch squares, in the same colour and fabric as the chair, complemented by peach coloured piping.

It made an appealing picture. I loved the way all the colours had come together. When I had planned the scheme for this room, I chose lilac because it is said to enhance concentration while meditating. Beige offset the blandness of a single colour scheme without distractions. But I decided to be a bit daring and added rich peach. Just one square cushion, to bring out the blues in the lavender and keep the beige warm, preventing a dirty, greyish influence seeping in via the lilac. Laxman, who upholstered the chair and made the cushions, did not approve. But I liked the peach; it added character without detracting from the intention of the lavender.  These colours had never looked as good together as they did that night. The ad hoc, careless way I had dumped them seemed oddly comforting. I marvelled at how it was all balanced, despite the lopsided arrangement and smiled. It had a touch of synchronicity: cushions vying for space by almost toppling each other off the chair eloquently reflected my state of mind.

 

In that brief moment of quietude at the end of a hot, sweaty and chaotic day, as I looked at this visage, reminisced about the chair and observed the cushions rising oddly up its high-back, echoing the madness in my head, I found solace. What a day it had been: in addition to dealing with labour and callousness around me, I had also, inadvertently, been locked out in the veranda with Mahipal. The aluminium guy in showing off his workmanship by sliding the door shut with a flicker of his wrist, did not realise there was no one inside the apartment to let us back in. And by the time I realised what he was about to do, it was too late. The door latched shut with as satisfied a click as the smile on Islam’s face. Well, we were lucky, it was seven in the evening so we did not face gruelling heat and sunshine and Mahipal had fortuitously left the front door open, so Islam called his assistant who was waiting down below, on his mobile, and we got out soon enough. But then I had to make the rounds of three ATM’s before I could withdraw cash to pay him. A lot did get done. I even spent a couple of hours working on some embroidery later in the evening, but could not write and therefore sort my thoughts out.  

 However, when I finally turned off the lights, I had been oddly reassured by my ruminations around the purple chair and cushions. The more lopsided and random life is, the more there is to it. And given time, everything find’s its own place is the insight that finally allowed me to relax enough to fall asleep.

Restrained Rebel

She is not an artist by profession, but an economist and a cultural anthropologist, who finally decided that art was where her inclinations lay. Through her elaborate educational process, she discovered that all the things which ailed the world could not be solved, as she had hoped, through what she had studied. Instead, she took to making abstract art, using nails, glue, cement and other tactile material. With emphatic gestures she layers cement and paint, slashing her canvasses and stitching them up again; sometimes adding fragments of the lyrical, Urdu script, from letters her mother wrote her. She works with textures and moods in protest and in reconciliation.

                                                       

 We share some things in common. We make art, and enjoy Western Classical music and poetry too. I wondered if there could be a parallel in the way we worked, even though our medium of expression is different. Curious about her process of working and the materials she paints with, I went to meet Saba Hasan at her studio in Safdarjung Enclave in Delhi.

 

Walking up two flights of stairs, I entered a semi-dark room, where a young man was seated at the piano. The simple harmonies that tinkled across the room were so poignant that for days thereafter I listened in deep silence, searching for those sublime notations in memory. The music was written by the French composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau for the harpsichord, later transcribed for the piano. Composed mostly for social gatherings of a rich patron, Rameau’s eighteenth century compositions have a soulfulness that defy the images of debauchery associated with the time. The piano was being played by Saba’s college going son, Aman, who was home from the US for a holiday.

Saba is also a student of the piano. I however, no longer play. My piano is too old now and the piano tuner has given up. So I console myself, saying that years of playing have enhanced my appreciation and enjoyment of the music that others play. However, this is not the whole truth, because I do miss playing the piano, a lot. But, it will have to do.

                                                                          

    The piano is in Saba’s living cum dining room where the wall running parallel to the dining table is covered with masks, collected from all over the world. And the table has become a make-shift work space. Strewn with jottings from verses, books, pigments, stones and her laptop, this arrangement caused her husband’s much chagrin for it curtailed their socializing at home. The studio is one floor above. It is no ordinary barsati but an elaborate space with large French windows on all sides, letting in plenty of light. It was a hot summer afternoon, but the air-conditioning so effective that one did not feel the heat. An expensive, pine-wood work table took centre stage of this studio, while most of the wall space had canvasses stacked against them. Over cups of green tea, looking at her canvasses, we discussed the inspiration behind her art.  The studio is built atop her residence which overlooks the deer park in Safdarjung Enclave and Saba says that peacocks come visit her during the rainy season. The studio sits virtually in the middle of the floor space, and I momentarily imagined peacocks with their feathers spread out, frolic in the rain, circulating the perimeter of the studio walls in an ecstatic dance, watching the artist at play

 

What an inspiring place to be able to work in, I thought to myself, as I sat down to work the next day, my threads, fabrics and other tools spread out on my bed. I have a study, where I normally work but, somehow, I find it very comfortable sewing on the bed. It’s spacious and sitting against the back-rest, my feet sprawled on the bed, is good for my posture: I do not hunch over the fabric as I embroider. I looked out of my window on the eighth floor in Palam Vihar and sighed: no chance of any peacocks dancing here. Instead, I have dull grey pigeons and their smelly poop for company, with the occasional, yellow beaked Mynah to add colour.

Saba has a very involved process of working which could take as long as six months to a couple of years to finish a canvas. She works with unconventional materials, using thick cement and so much Fevicol that an art restorer once told her that she could build a house with her canvasses. Saba says that when working, she does not ponder on a definitive idea, nor try and build any kind of narrative. She just lets her emotions guide her. When you talk to Saba, she is very articulate, well read and highly opinionated. And the latter is reflected in her canvasses, albeit in an abstract sort of way.

 

The heavy impasto and multiple layering give a much textured look. The canvasses are burned, or slashed and then stitched; the cement left to crack and then rusted nails hammered in. Listening to her speak of her process, I could feel the violence, the dissent, rebellion and anger which I often hear when we discuss art and her views on other issues. She says, “There is a protest, there is conflict, resistance. There are wrongs in this world, I do protest.”

Though not a practitioner, or a believer in organized religion, Saba was born in a Muslim family in India who chose not to go to Pakistan at the time of partition. She is married to Amit, a Hindu by birth. Amit’s father and grandparents were from the North-west frontier, now in Pakistan, and had to forcibly leave to take refuge in Delhi. Neither Saba nor Amit practice their respective faiths. Yet, despite this, she feels upset at the kind of prejudice there is regarding Muslims today. I guess, identity is something we have been conditioned to find, through profession, nationality and the religion we belong to, whether we practice or not. And even though her work is steeped in the abstract, the underlying thoughts do pertain to and arise from engagement with the physical world.

Her art is difficult to define. There are many definitions of art and I think each artist, more or less, re-defines this by the art they make. And as such the parameters of what is art or not are in a constant state of flux. There was a time in the history of art when abstract work was related to the spiritual dimensions of being, but I wondered, as I studied Saba’s canvasses, if this was true of abstract art today. She speaks of her art, as “a visceral, emotive response to the world” which seems to be more about emotions than detachment from being in the world and dwelling on the essential spirit that is unchangeable, unaffected by the dramas of life that move us to tears, rage and more.

A lot of my own work, because of the process by which I erase form rather than create it, could be classified as abstract, but that is not how I think of it. The works I do also arise from what I am feeling at the time. It’s usually at an intense, emotional state, when there is little mental clarity, that I do most of my embroidery. I am not as focussed on the divine to access the essential peacefulness of the spirit as I am able to during meditation. But in the process of letting the thoughts spill out, not always analyzing them, I do feel refreshed. I also find the repetitive process of embroidery therapeutic and calming. Saba, on the other hand, reveals that she experiences complete physical exhaustion, with a mental high. Becoming quite obsessive about what she is working on, her mind she says “doesn’t stop ticking”.  

 

 In the 1970’s, when Saba was debating career options, art was not something those with good academic grades opted for. It was somehow not considered a reliable profession because earning through art could be a very difficult task. I relate well to this, not because I made similar choices, but this prejudice has tailed me throughout my life and being a full-time artist has been difficult to adjust to. Somewhere, deeply embedded in memory, is the idea that this is not work and even today, I do my embroidery late at night when all my other work is completed.

 

She does not use vibrant colour. Most of the canvasses in front of me were in shades of ecru, ochre, white, beige and different tones of brown or grey and black. A heavily textured, off-whitish canvas stares at me: it looks as if sand granules have been used to form the base texture. In some places, waves of this textured surface overlap each other. It is a bit like the sea-shore, without the softness of sand and in between two such layers, a rigid, white space of plaster, cracks. And then some nails come into focus. Small, blackish things protrude from the surface. They are not straight but bent, some this way and some the other, evocative of a torturous path. Some nails are embedded in the cracks and even though they are small, they create a sense of foreboding.  

The work disturbs: I feel the violence that has been enacted and of the response of the material that’s been violated but I also see elements of restraint. After all, the material she uses is inanimate; the nails being hammered are iron, not another human being bashed against a wall. It’s like when I sew, thoughts go in and out of the fabric, causing a rupture in its construction, which is evocative of the way I feel, but the repetitive motion is meditative and heals the rupture in my equanimity. The feelings may be angry or venomous, but the actions are restrained through such processes: the emotion sublimated. In Saba’s work too, I get a sense of something similar being enacted through her art-making process .
                                                                         

I see frustration and rebellion in the way that I assume Saba must throw the thick layers of cement and plaster, for the textures I see on her finished canvases. These highly tactile canvasses, which could support the roof of a home, seem as solid as her convictions. A thick layer of white cement is left to crack in changing temperature, without controlling the moisture as construction workers do when they carefully build the walls of a home. I Imagine Saba cracking open somebody’s close mindedness, in a similar way. Then as she nails it in, I laughingly envisage that this is how she keeps the dimensions of a mind she has opened in place: by hammering the point in.  

Whose Land is it Anyway...

Truckers @Bijwasan

At the outset, tea was the focus; my window to the world.  I was looking at people on the streets who made and sold tea; at truck drivers sipping tea at the chaiwallah[i] stalls or dhabas[ii] as I passed by the Hindustan Petroleum depot at Bijwasan en route to Delhi, and more. This street life interested me but gradually I saw that drinking and making tea was integral to everyone’s daily life. Whether it was going to an exhibition opening or interviewing an artist, dropping by to see a friend, reading a book or reflecting over the previous day’s events over a morning cuppa, everything seemed to be linked to tea, including the dramas with my domestic help. However, the flavour that one found in the street settings was in many ways a contrast to this. And these people with their different life-styles and culture added that extra dash of colour to the canvas of my ‘garam masala chai’.   

Govind

When I started consciously looking around me, my first encounter was with Govind from Bihar who had a moveable cart as a tea-stall, just outside Celebrity Suites in Palam Vihar. I had barely left home when Bhupinder, who was driving my car, pointed him out to me. I was surprised not to have noticed this stall in all the years I have taken this route to Delhi, so ventured enthusiastically to take photographs but Govind was hostile. I was not about to be derailed on my first stop so explained what I was doing. He was neither impressed nor interested and barely seemed to listen. It was not a great start for me but I persisted and it took a good half hour or so before he eased up. He made some tea; I’d just had some before leaving home, so Bhupinder had a cup. Govind kept his utensils clean and neatly arranged. He served biscuits and gutka[iii], supari[iv] and crisps along with tea. People came and went, but not many. He was rather self-conscious and did not respond affably to questions about his life. Physically, he made quite a picture: well built with a growing pot-belly, bulging out from beneath his pale blue T-shirt, under a khakhi-coloured jacket whose buttons were left open and, his odd, sort of pointy, knitted cap.

Bhupinder drinking tea at Govind's tea-stall

 He was not to be seen in that space for a long time, after that. The cart lay abandoned for months and then, one day, he was serving tea again. I went up to say hello and asked where he had been and was told that he’d gone home to tend the fasal[v]. Sometime later, I found someone else at the stall. His younger brother had come to take care of this business while Govind handled farming duties back home.

On my exploration, I was to discover that numerous tea stalls, in and around Delhi, were run by people who had migrated from other parts of the country. I was also intrigued by the idea that tea, which was not really a native drink, but ‘imported’ into the country by the British, had somehow become the mainstay of the man on the street, both as a beverage and a business.

Naina Devi's customer

Historically, this expansion of tea consumption, brought about through the development of ‘chai’, occurred only after 1947. The evolution of this kind of tea, made by boiling tea leaves in a mixture of milk, water and sugar, with optional spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, clove, ginger and black pepper, came about with changes in the technology of tea processing. The full-leaf black teas were replaced by CTC ("crushed, torn, and curled") leaf which not only enabled tea estates to double their production but consumers could brew stronger infusions from smaller quantities of the more potent, tightly-rolled leaf granules. This lowered the cost of producing tea, making it accessible to the common man on the street, such that sixty-five years later, it has acquired a strong ‘Indian’ identity. 

Coming from Gurgaon on the outer Ring Road, just near Vasant Vihar, an old woman sits near tyres and tubes catering to a steady custom from the neighbouring petrol pump. White haired and petite, she squats comfortably on the pavement, making tea and omelettes. I love these omelettes rustled up on the street, with plenty of green chillies and stuffed between two slices of white bread. She also serves mathris[vi] favoured by workers from the petrol pump. 

Ramvati at work

There was a tremendous amount of curiosity from helpers at the gas station and passersby as I took photos of this diminutive, forlorn looking woman busy at work. But she was too busy serving her customers to even notice or care who came and did what, as long as you drank and ate something from her stall. It was winter and she was clad in a pink saree with a russet, almost dirty brown coloured shawl, carelessly wrapped around her shoulders with cheap nylon socks covering feet that were awkwardly shod in black plastic chappals[vii]. Sitting against a discoloured, greyish wall, surrounded by bright white eggs, dull aluminium pots, black tyres and tubes, she made an interesting study.

Every time since whenever I passed by, I saw her dressed in the same printed, pink polyester saree I’d photographed her in, when I first stopped by for tea and an omelette. Then, I noticed she was missing from her spot by the petrol pump. I thought that the MCD[viii] must be doing some sort of clean-up and she had been asked to move. Some months went by, I kept looking out for her and then one day her pink saree caught my eye. 

Ramvati on my second visit

 I was curious as to why she had been missing for so many months so stopped by to talk to her. It turned out that her son had cirrhosis of the liver.  He’d been admitted into hospital, so she’d shut shop to take care of him. She complained that he drank too much and as a ‘baccho ka baap[ix]’ his behaviour was irresponsible. Ramvati and her husband Hangal had come to Delhi from Burari in Uttar Pradesh, as she recounted: “When India fought the 1965 war with Pakistan and Lal Bahadur Shastri was the Prime Minister of India.”  Ramvati was, by her estimate, over sixty years old, had been married at the age of fourteen. She and her husband lived in a jhuggi[x] near a private school in Vasant Vihar.

I came across another migrant tea-stall lady in Palam Vihar, right at the Delhi-Gurgaon border post. The ample bodied Naina Devi was dressed in a printed salwar kameez[xi], wearing a pale olive-ish green sweater embroidered with red and white flowers over this, and a peacock-ish blue dupatta covering her head. She sat crossed-legged on her cart, inside it, making tea. Her young daughter Poonam played nearby while Naina served a steady stream of customers. Residents of posh Palam Vihar, labour working on construction sites, local policemen, drivers from neighbouring houses to passersby who came on foot or riding motor-cycles, all patronized her stall.  Naina Devi hails from Ajmer, Rajasthan. Naina was the only one left here with her stall because at the time of the CWG[xii] clean-up, the authorities had moved everyone else away. She now had her cart positioned at the periphery of some private farm land and paid to park it there. 



Naina Devi with her daughter Poonam[top left],

 the security guard[top right and bottom left] 

serving some customers[bottom row centre] 

Her husband worked in Delhi for a ‘company’ while she sold tea. Naina was friendly and asked why I wanted to take photos of her and her cart. She posed obligingly and so did her customers. Her clientele was mostly labourers who took the tea in plastic bags because it dispensed with the tedium of buying, carrying and storing an aluminium kettle. To others, she served tea in plastic cups. Unlike most chaiwallahs she did not make tea in the ubiquitous aluminium kettle. She used a cup-like ladle to pour milk into a dekchi[xiii] where she ‘cooked’ the tea. This was also used to pour tea into cups. For those who took tea in the plastic bags, a small, ridged, thickened, greenish glass, often seen in a chai ki dukan[xiv], was used as a measure.

Serving tea in plastic bags

A pile of debris lay beside her cart. I assumed it was either left there or swept into a corner at the end of the day and wondered why a dustbin could not be used instead. Some labourers drank the tea sitting on their haunches on the pavement, crouching on a large stone or on the ground itself, comfortable almost anywhere it seemed. But when it came to disposing of the cup, they just chucked the plastic cup in the air, letting it land wherever it did, uncaring of cleanliness. 

Dhabas outside Bijwasan Oil depots

Most of these people seemed to come from rural areas and small towns. They come as labour to build other people’s homes or as businessmen, selling tea in between harvesting the crop in their village lands.  Did this create lack of a sense of belonging? Was it their reason for not keeping the place clean? I also noticed that the dhabas patronized by truckers in Bijwasan just threw their garbage onto the street.  The trucker drivers didn’t seem to notice or care. They kept their vehicles in tip-top condition but did not care the same way for the streets they roamed. Mongrel dogs sat at their feet and fed off the garbage whilst they sipped tea and chatted. This apathy reminded me of countless occasions when I’ve seen even relatively affluent households sweep garbage away from their doorstep onto the street, as if the responsibility for cleanliness and hygiene ended there. It has always irked me to see people deface the walls, throw refuse onto the streets from moving cars, spit and urinate on the road. They do not think the streets belong to them, which really baffles me because, if they do not belong to citizens of the country, then to whom do they belong? 

Post independence, advertisements promoting tea encouraged the idea of an energy-enhancing drink which was good for individual and national health. Some even suggested that tea had the ability to create “alert, energized citizens”, free of the "lassitude" that the British commonly attributed to their native subjects”, towards building the ‘New India’.  Sixty- five years on, a lot has changed: we have been advertised as ‘India Shining’, ‘Incredible India’ and more. Tea, once the elite Colonizers’ drink has become a national beverage but has it made us the “alert, energized citizens” of the envisioned New India? [xv] 

Glasses and mugs being brought around for sale to dhaba
owners at Bijwasan

Realistically speaking, neither tea nor any beverage for that matter, can possibly take on such an onerous task; however we can, but do we? The larger question that troubles me is why is it always someone else’s problem, fault or garbage?  When will we start taking responsibility for little things in our daily lives and feel a sense of belonging? Delhi is made up of a large migrant population. My own father’s family came here after partition and there are many of us who have thus become Delhi-ites or residents of Gurgaon. These migrant tea-wallahs made me question the idea of belonging: what does it take to claim ownership in little the things that make up a nation?

 

---

[i] Tea sellers

[ii] Roadside eatery

[iii] Tobacco mix

[iv] Beetel nut

[v] Harvest/crop

[vi] Savoury biscuit

[vii] chappals

[viii] Municipal Corporation of Delhi

[ix] Father of children/parent

[x] Slum dwelling

[xi] Loose,pleated pants and tunic

[xii]Commonwealth Games

[xiii] Saucepan/cooking pot

[xiv] Tea shop

[xv] Quotes from Tasveer Ghar

Minding My Cardamoms...

I find it difficult to function when there’s too much going on inside my head. I need a fair amount of time to put things into perspective, whether it’s an exhibition I have seen or people I have met or even articles or books that I have read. These engagements lose their charm when I have to switch off and tend to mundane issues or push all the connections I am making with myself, through these interactions, to put my mind elsewhere. Some may see it as not being disciplined and often I wonder if indeed I do not have enough self discipline and am indulging myself too much by delving deep into things that do not necessarily have an apparent function in the everydayness of living.

This week was an intense one. I enjoyed every bit of what I did.  Some exhibitions that I saw were thought provoking and the ideas were reiterated by things in the world around me. One artist had made a video of birds flying, talking about the logic of birds. The concept was evocative because I have a lot of pigeons living around me and ever since I saw that video, every time I see them make those formations in the air, I begin musing. This adds to my tension because there are articles and reviews to write, emails to respond to; the plumber had promised to come but hadn’t and on top of everything else, my internet and phone line was down. Could I really afford to sit idly contemplating pigeons in flight?

Be present, I keep reminding myself, deal with things as they come up. I know that when I do so, life is easier to handle and complex things fall into place effortlessly, but I still falter. I enjoy being deep and intense as much as it irks me because everything seems to take an age to put into perspective and ideas keep coming up, often when least expected. There is always so much to do that 24 hours are just not enough. The older I get, the more I want to do and explore in life; I feel restless, thinking, will I ever get it all done?

This morning, I decided I wanted a different flavour of tea. Earl Grey or masala chai made by Mahipal or Puja didn’t appeal, so I decided to make some cardamom tea. Not the pakki hui chai[i] they brew on the stove, in the kitchen. No, I opted for the elaborate process of mixing the tea and spices in the tea pot itself, for a more delicate flavour and fragrance.

Mittals in Sundar Nagar have a ready-made pack of cardamom tea, which is part of their ‘natural range’ and it’s already got the cardamom seeds mixed in with Darjeeling tea leaves. I find Darjeeling a rather tricky brew. If you leave the tea leaves a tad too long it becomes karva[ii]. I like a good colour but the lighter brew, so I add some loose leaf tea.  For each cup of tea I plan on drinking I grind three to four hari elaichi[iii] along with their skin and let it sit in hot water for a couple of minutes and then add the ready-mixed cardamom tea with a pinch of loose leaf tea. It’s a delicate and involved process. I have to keep a close eye on the colour, adding more of the loose leaf if need be. I taste the brew till I get it right: neither sweet nor bitter. I then strain the tea into a thermos to keep it warm, which I then sip leisurely, most often as I write. 
 I like a white cup to drink my tea in. It shows off the colour of the tea to its best. Today, the tea has a lovely orange tinge, veering somewhere between a mild russet to auburn, softened by the whiteness of milk. It’s a warm, mid-tone, delicate in hue and on the tongue. But, while brewing, it tested my nerves, especially when I stirred it well to ensure the leaves were infusing all their flavour in good time [so as not to let the tea get bitter]. It was so muddy that I never thought I would get this delicate flavour. It looked completely undrinkable, almost as bad as dirty dish-water. And when I added the milk, it looked like a complete disaster. I hadn’t done this ritual in a while, so felt as though I had lost the knack of getting it right. But then I let it settle a bit, and as the dull green leaves, fully opened, and settled at the bottom of the glass pot, I felt reassured. All was well; I had not brewed it too long or added too many tea leaves. 

In those tense moments - yes, getting the tea right does create some measure of tension; I was reminded of the way thoughts brew in my mind. When it gets crowded, as this week had been and everything gets stirred by added stimulus of going places, meeting people or surfing the internet. When I have to deal with all manner of things from household repairs to a neighbours brush with the condominium management, pay bills, contentious dialogues with the servants and so much more, the blah, blah in my head screams overload! My body goes into a sort of paralytic mode, refusing to get up in the morning and then moves as if it is a leaden log. It certainly feels like something nasty is brewing inside.

But, as I do yoga, write in my journal, meditate and do some healing and affirmations, let it all settle, the different feelings and thoughts find their own space, and the previous day and its events and engagements are gradually put into perspective. In a sense, I do what I did when making the cardamom tea: keep looking at the brewing thoughts, feeling my way through the information that has built-up quite sub-consciously, to ascertain, through the maze of ideas, what it is that I am really thinking. This sometimes takes the better part of the day and requires a great deal of discipline to see through but it feels good once I have done it. I find that it’s all right, life’s good! The brew has a perfect flavour and colour. Everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be.

All is well in my world. I haven’t got lost in the maze of ideas. There really is no conundrum, its completely clear, well a little diffused because I like milk in my tea, but the crisis that seemed to loom in my head is under control. It is uncanny how making this particular tea this morning, needing to focus, because I had not made it in a while, ensured I was fully present to its process. In that mental silence, distracted from the weeks cacophony of events, the correlation I made between the process of brewing tea and thoughts mulling in my mind reassured and reminded me to have faith in the elaborate ritual of introspection that I had cultivated.

For no matter how intense it gets, or how hellish the brewing in one’s head can seem, it really is not that dissimilar to making a cup of flavourful, cardamom tea.

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[i] Cooked tea

[ii] bitter

[iii] Green cardamoms