A cup of tea: IX (Life with wife)
We get married and even on our first night,
a cup of tea hogs a glass of milk’s spotlight.
I tell her, tea sipped tastefully is an aphrodisiac
and leave half-cup, thinking today, I won’t need much.
That she loves tea, was a blatant lie.
Oh! She married me, through a sly.
In mornings, she hates to make tea.
In evenings, she forgets conveniently.
A cup of tea, a cup of tea,
A cup I crave, I crave constantly
A cup at dawn and my day is made
A cup happily served, in tray neatly laid.
A cup, is it, my darling, too much to ask?
A cup, Patiji, can’t it be your personal task?
A cup made with love, all contents in proportion?
Why do you make cup the cause of much commotion?
Tea, my precious, in not an addiction.
Then why you are suffering from this affliction?
It is just a habit, my prized cup of delight.
Why accepting your flaws hurts your pride?
It is tea that you lied about, saying you liked it.
Will you have married another if I said I despised it?
I may have, for in arranged marriage, all choices are fair
Oh! So now you suggest, I was not the best option here?
Why must we both, my darling, suffer so?
Maybe you or my stepwife, a cup of tea, know?
That’s funny, now you call tea your stepwife
Why not must I, it causes so much strife?
In the end an agreement is reached, we hire a maid
For early morning tea, she’s extra hundred paid
But each cup is a reminder of what isn’t there
And yet my wife, it seems, doesn’t really care.
Dec 2005
5 comments:
Wish one could hire a maid to do thousands of other things that a wife cant/ wont do:-)
Motaji
amit, I believe people do. Sometimes, even when the wife can/will do, for the sake of variety. Reminds me of a neighbour I used to have once...
But, please don't let me give you ideas :)
Oh, all this and a cup of tea! :)
Go on!
From Dudseascrawls.com
Cuptea IW and Tea-Ser for Atra
By Vivek on Tue, 2006-05-09 13:52
IW boss: I am looking for a girl FOR YOU first now:) You need one much more than I need one yet. Let more people sip in this one, for trust me, next one is hot one.
Atra: I have already written these 13 poems on tea, besides many others I wrote before…. there are Chinese and American people who boil some kind of leaves and call it tea: green tea, or mint tea or herbal tea. This series is mostly about Indians and Indian Tea (first few poems describe that), and of course masala chai, which is in IW’s future fav poem.
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Cup full of woes..
By India Whining on Tue, 2006-05-09 08:43
>> A cup made with love, all contents in proportion?
That would be cup sized-D naai ?? Okay with that off my chest, I can now shower lavish praise on Ur poem proper. The way things stand, the honeymoon was over even before it was started eh ?? Sad. I guess with the maid coming in the equation things would surely get back to their even keel. Or wud they ? Awaiting next edition.
Atraa bhaai, nice bits of trivia . Ur comments are, as always high on IQ.
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chai garam
By atrakasya on Tue, 2006-05-09 08:02
Perhaps, it may be possible to gain an insight into a person or a culture merely from how they treat their tea.
Observe, how angrezi manners insist that a woman drinking her chai keeps her pinky extended, as a mark of her feminity. Holding the cup like a man does, is just not allowed.
The japs have an entire ceremony around drinking tea.
The brits got into india on the pretext of having tea (east india company - primary item of trade = tea), and then they stayed on.
India mixes water, milk, sugar, adrak, and you name it, in its tea, like indian culture. Sab kuch khichadi!
And, an interesting tit-bit of info -
Tea, all over the world, is known only by two names - tea, or chai. (Indicating a past global tea trading monopoly by only two entities. ‘Chai’ is the name after the chinese trader, and ‘tea’ is the british name)
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coffee drinkers unite...
By Captain Nemo on Mon, 2006-05-08 14:14
Being a coffee drinker, I could not help but remember Vasu’s statement from ‘The Maneater of Malgudi’ : One doesn’t have to own a coffee estate to have a cup of coffee…[or something very close to that, it’s been ages, so dont remember it verbatim]
Looks like either the rikshaw driver or RKN did a Kaavya Vishwanathan… Sticking out tongue
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A cup of Tea Poems
By Vivek on Mon, 2006-05-08 12:26
Thanks Atra bhai. It is a metaphor for a lot more:)
Old timers from sulekha and DSS know how I served eight tea poems last spring, and maybe you should see the ones on arranged marriage (where mom and dad advice the son about a prospect in terms of cup of tea) Inspired by Eliot’s Macavity and other cat poems, that he wrote to hone his skills as a poet, A cup of tea has evolved into a story of love, marriage and (shh…) infidelity (coming soon)
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Interesting
By atrakasya on Mon, 2006-05-08 06:15
Dude, I like this angle of looking at the relationship - the cuppa as a symbol.
This metaphor is, strangely, not new. For some reason, Indians do equate marital bliss (whether domestic or the one limited to the bed) to a cup of tea.
To this, wisdom uttered by a rickshaw-driver comes to mind - “If someone wants to drink a cup of tea, he should just go to a restaurant and have it. Why buy the entire restaurant to have a cup of tea?”
or, the rhetoric in hindi “Bhai, chai peeni hai to koi pura hotel thodey hi kharidata hai?”
Smiling)
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From desicritics.org
#1
temporal
URL
May 8, 2006
09:17 AM
vivek:
wait for further bumps in this matrimonial journey
kids, taxes -- would push away the urges for morning tea
#2
Vivek
URL
May 9, 2006
12:26 AM
:) Thats interesting suggestion; though this story has its own twists. I'll serve more, cup by cup!
#3
Kush
URL
May 9, 2006
01:59 AM
"And yet my wife, it seems, doesn't really care."
I don't think so.
Need to accept the reality of 21st century wives.
70% house hold work by a maid, 20 % by husabnd and 10% by wives ( like kitty party,hair setting, boddy message..etc).
And uncle, our auntie will say this is a Black lie..
#4
Vivek
URL
May 9, 2006
09:55 AM
Kush:) The poet woes result from his wife's dislike for tea and nothing else.
#5
Kush
URL
May 9, 2006
10:27 AM
Agreed.
For some one it is limited to Tea only, and for some one it extend to ......unlimited thing...
The way today Ganguly is a unwanted for BCCI, even other Players can't even rembember his contruntion.
By the way, one thing I was surprised, why the Husabnd Uncle does not make the tea for himself!!!
#6
Richa
URL
May 10, 2006
01:39 AM
Nice read! Reminded me of Vikram Seth's verse to some extent :-)
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