A cup of tea

It was a quaint old neighbourhood, tucked away from the cacophony of zooming cars and crisscrossed highways. The houses bore a weathered look; their faces streaked with betel laden spittoon, their corners crumbling, and their ledges in desperate need of paint. The street lamps stood there, rusty, like old men; the light of their eyes dimming with age. Tiny cobwebs dangled from the edges of the wiry lattice patterns, unperturbed.  The meandering cobbled road was riddled with potholes, pockets of muddy rainwater dotting the otherwise parched surface. A few men were buying cigarettes from the rickety old shack in the distance, lighting their fresh rolls of tobacco from the burning end of a piece of coir suspended from the jagged edge of a lone nail. They inhaled the smoke deep into their lungs, releasing fuzzy rings of their daily woes into the air; lopsided ovals of smoke that collapsed into nothingness.

Sam stood there in front of his favourite coffee shop. Oriental Coffee House, estd 1958. It was one of those places that he had discovered during one of his nightly sleepless strolls down the road. At a glance, the place had nothing much to offer. Modest square tables coupled with wooden straightback chairs were lined up one behind the other. Identical covers were fashioned out of cheap red and white checked cotton. The only signs of embellishment were tiny porcelain vases with plastic flowers in them that graced the centre of each table; flowers that never wilted, flowers that were never thirsty, flowers that always remained the same shade of magenta. It seemed like the entire room was lifted straight out of a whole sale market at an enviable rebate. Sam wondered how this place could still keep up with the new army of coffee shops that had taken over the city like a plague, with their pricey flavoured beverages and stale two-day old croissants wrapped in fragrant cellophane. But considering it continued to stand there, surviving the repeated blows of half a century of globalization, Oriental Coffee House was surely doing something right. 

Sam looked at his watch. It was quarter past four. Meera was supposed to be there fifteen minutes before. Is she coming? Has she lost her way? Sam took out that precious scrap of napkin from his wallet. He decided to call her. Again. He looked around for a phone booth, but there was none in close sight. The age of pocket phones had driven the familiar standing phone booths into extinction. Sam grew impatient. He didn’t want to be stood up. It would be too much of an assault to his fragile bulbous ego. He looked into the coffee shop and asked if he could make a call. Two rupees a minute, he was informed curtly. He was willing to pay ten. The phone looked like a relic from a different era; big, black, with a rotating dial and a cradle that let out a muffled jingle every time you placed the weighty receiver on it. He wondered if it had been used post-Independence. He dialed the numbers nervously and waited, rehearsing his lines in his mind. The trail of rings was cut short by a gruff voice. It was a man.

“Hello?”

Sam slammed down the phone, his heart racing. Who would that be? Her husband? He remembered Meera wearing an alternating set of traditional red and white bangles when he first met her at the nightclub; the kind that puts women in glass boxes, cordoned off from the wishful eyes of lonesome men. What am I doing here? This is wrong. Sam felt terribly uncomfortable. His collar felt like a crushing noose, tightening its hold on him, till the veins in his neck stood out; throbbing, struggling to break free. The world around him, as he knew it, was all too real. It had no room for childish fantasies. He decided to walk.

“There you are!”

A familiar voice called out from behind him. He turned around to see Meera, standing there, hands folded, with exasperation clouding her face.

“This is the best you could come up with?! I was walking in circles for an hour trying to locate this godforsaken joint.”

Sam was too taken aback to say anything. He had played out this encounter in his mind a million times before, but it hardly ever involved battling a volley of accusations. He looked at the decrepit coffee shop and thought it had been a mistake all along.

“Sorry. Can we go in?” Sam continued apologetically.

Meera smiled her impish smile. “Yes please.”

She walked in with an air of confidence. It felt like she had been here a million times before. Sam followed her to a table by the window. He noticed a damp spot on the wall not so far away. He muttered under his breath and averted his eyes quickly.

“Nice place”, she said, looking around. Two men in soiled lungis, sitting with their feet up at the next table stared at her, their eyes transfixed.

“You’re kidding right?” Sam had never been so embarrassed before in his life.

“Not at all. I like quaint places. Thank heavens you didn’t pick a place teeming with adolescent high-school kids”, she laughed.

It wasn’t all a mistake after all, Sam thought. He felt like he did know her a little. Two steaming cups of ginger laced tea and piping hot samosas made it to their table in response to a mere hand gesture. Sam loved having tea served in earthen cups. The salty texture of burnt red clay fused with the scent of aromatic tea leaves made it priceless. He paused for a second to observe Meera digging into the samosas hungrily like a child, talking with food in her mouth. She was beautiful. She was real.

“So what are we doing here exactly?” asked Meera, casual as ever.

“Umm. I don’t know really. Having tea I guess?”

Meera looked up. Her eyes glinted. “Stating the obvious is not going to help you mister. What I mean is why did you call me last night? After so many days?”

“I wish I knew the answer to that. I felt like talking to someone.”

“And what made you think that I would be such a pleasure to talk to? Not to mention, being up at that ungodly hour?”

“But you were, right? That’s what matters. So, if I may ask, why were you up so late?” Sam asked, his confidence trickling in.

“Well. Let’s just say I have trouble sleeping like you do. Can we keep it at that?”

Sam got distracted by her hand. There were a couple of fading laceration marks below her wrist. The diamond on her finger caught the light of the setting sun. It sparkled. He lost the thread of the conversation.

“What?!”

She moved her hands from the table. “Never mind. Can we go for a walk now? The two men at the next table need a break”, she whispered smiling.

Sam laughed. They paid at the counter and walked out. “Where are we going?” Sam wasn’t expecting this in the least.

“I’ll take you to a special place. You’ll see.”

They walked along the cobbled pavement, guessing the trees along the way. They talked about their lives, in little veiled packets. They talked about how 80’s music still made them sing out loud in the shower. They talked about how they both loved the monsoon. And just like that, the sun bid adieu and rain clouds spilled all over.