t(here) By Tulika Varma
There —where i live— at six a.m. every morning—except sundays— my father boils one cup of milk and two cups of water in a steel pan, and adds three teaspoons of darjeeling green label tea, and brews it for twelve minutes. this makes three cups of brown Chai, which we drink, sitting on the floor by the courtyard in our house. americans love their chai-tea lattes, unaware that their name for it translates to tea-tea with milk-with-milk. i have only ordered a chai-tea latte once— i said, “can i get a short chai-tea latte please?” and it tasted like four-syllable lie dusted with cinnamon. in november 2015, the news reported floods T(here), my mother told me—on the phone—about how she woke at 4 a.m. and the lawn had disappeared. white foam settled over brown corpses of children and cows here, i imagined a flood of brown Chai that would tear down the starbucks here, all that would remain is soft brown tea leaves that i could sink my feet into. it would smell like darjeeling green label.
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