The Fall is over. The weather changes color from greens and yellows strewn on the ground to what some might call a sullen grey. Winter has been associated with gloom a lot many times. But to me, winters are bliss. Especially Indian winters. The sultry summers are overwritten by misty mornings and balmy days. I can’t say for all, but, for me, it is a good time to work, the weather mild and clement. The one beverage I crave during these mild wintry days is the steaming hot cup of tea that rests beside every table I work. I’m sure it rings true for a lot of you as well. I don’t really know what it is about winters and tea but the wafting white smoke from a hot cup in foggy mornings always manages to infuse a sense of nostalgia in me.
The image that forms a collage before my eyes is, for some reason, the misty winter mornings on railway stations and the ‘chayi’ stalls on the platforms. When the train halts at a station in the wee hours of the morning and you go out in your socks and sweaters and hold that steaming hot glass of tea in your cold hands, that right there is a bliss one of a kind. There are coolies in red carrying unimaginable weights over their heads and in their hands, people bustling away behind their luggage, their eyes focused on the platforms in which their trains would halt. There are people on the newspaper stalls or college students reading magazines or books or standing in groups with their friends. And then there is that immaculate crowd before the tea stalls. There was once a time when tea was sold from outside the train window, served in ‘Matka’ cups. I haven’t had the fortune of traveling by train in a long while. So I am not sure if tea is still sold like that. But those really were the days!
People meeting people, people losing people, people going home, people going away from their homes, the whole place is a cacophony of a constant din that is typical of Indian railway stations alone. The lined-up trains through the mist, the half-sleepy people getting off, the ones getting on board, the rustle and chatters, and in the midst of all, in ardent clarity sits the steaming hot glass of tea that has always been an innate part of the train journeys for all Indians. When the entire country is asleep, railway stations are one of those places which are always alive. Like the teas of Indian streets, the tea brewed in the stalls of the Indian railway stations are some of the best-tasting milk or masala tea in India. “Waise chayi peene ka mazza hi kuch aur hai!” Here is an ode to the teas that made traveling by trains in winters not only bearable but also memorable.
(Read about Masala Chai)
