(well, here in Seattle I am savouring the aromatic coffee - my sis makes great coffee with freshly ground coffee beans.. but am feeling a few nostalgic pangs for the elaichi cutting chai back home..)
the old tea vendor, who owns the stall in the roadside corner
with his prized possession - an old aluminum kettle
battered and pitted with age, with a crooked handle
yet beaming and gleaming with a daily scrubbing -
fills it with water and plenty of milk
into which he flings a fistful of black tea leaves
along with cracked cardamom seeds with their split skins
along with fistfuls of sugar – the sweeter, the better -
he then puts the kettle on the fire with its leaping orange flames
until the viscous light brown fluid comes to a boil
and rises up in frothy turmoil which he pours out into
plain glasses in steamy streams
to be sipped in the noisy symphony of passing traffic
and savoured in the harmony of kindred company- Rita Putatunda
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