Wasn’t this enough to make my tea taste formidable?

The aromatic smell slowly drifted towards my nose. I must’ve been dreaming I thought to myself, refusing to open those tired eyes. As every second passed by, the smell grew stronger. It was the smell of something I cherished. My subconscious mind knew that. The endorphins already started kicking in and I voluntarily started smiling in my sleep.

The smell grew so strong that I could no longer find the will to resist it. I opened my eyes to slowly trace its origin. In front of me was plush green land, filled with trees of varied heights. I was sitting right in the middle of it. I pinched myself. “This can’t be right” I thought to myself.

My senses kicked in and the flight or fight sense shook my body. The friend who had been driving the car was no longer there and in place of him was a note. The car door was opened wide and the car was parked close to the steepest part of the land overlooking the plush green land.

With utmost fear, I opened the little note. I closed my eyes and decided my heart would probably not stand it. I peeked with one eye and saw “You” On the first sentence. I shut it tight once again. Finally I read it and it said,

“You annoying little creature! Meet me at the corner of the shop. I have something you like.”

I stepped out of the car and stretched after what felt like hours. Our drive was something that we had hardly planned but was beautiful nonetheless. Drives were our way of escaping the drama, the chaos and the stress. Being friends was one thing but being comfortable around each other was another level of friendship that we were fortunate enough to have. We’ve gone for more drives than we can count during every point of stress and tension in our lives. He would talk for hours on end on endless highway drives about things I can’t even begin to describe. The topic of the talks changed from drive to drive. One day it’s about a book he wants to write and the next is about marketing of sneakers. There would be moments of tears and moments of roaring laughter but it was never neutral. We would eat in stores by the railway station but would never leave out the exotic places too. Being on the same career path as me, we always had our fair share of things to mourn about and to get frustrated over.

This drive was more like a silent one. Just pure serenity, Sid Sriram music, the joy of the good company was what filled the silence. Driving on the beautifully carved roads on the Western Ghats was serene. The bikers zooming in front of us, the flowers looking down from the hills above, the gradually decreasing temperature, the freshening breathe of air was something I couldn’t ever get bored of.

As I switched back to the present state, the note made me realize that my high hopes of him having been kidnapped, had all gone to waste.

I had thought about all the things possible. He could’ve been pushed off a mountain for the sins he had committed, he could’ve been robbed for money. I thought about what I had to tell his parents and how I had to explain to them that I was a sister that he wasn’t fortunate enough to be born with and so on and so forth. Regardless of which, I was happy he was there, for I knew not how to drive on mountain roads.

After a few minutes of thinking and stretching did I realize, that I was the only girl there. There were about 20 men and there I was doing yoga.

The origin of the smell finally revealed itself to me. There was a giant copper vessel pit, under a metallic shed, out of which steam blew to glory. The giant man accompanying the giant vessel took his hand up so high and poured out the contents of one tumbler into the other. Air gushed past at the exact moment and the aroma danced through the air and right into my nostrils

The beautiful smell of tea.

I walked up to the stall to find out where he was and to inhale more of that amazing incense. The clattering of the glasses, the gush of the water from the tap, the crickets chirping away to glory, the sound of tea streaming into the glass, the sound of the tea being swallowed, the chatter just added more beauty to the location I was standing in.

On the other hand, he was nowhere in sight.

A narrow passage left from the side of the stall.

The passage led to a small stairway which led to nowhere but provided a sweet spot to sit on. There he was on a small step. The place was quite narrow making it more of a hiking experience than just a place to stop for tea. I sat right next to him and looked up to see a monkey hanging from the tree above.

Our legs were dangling from the stair onto the mountain slope that lay below. The stress that had rested on my shoulder lifted away. The weary eyes grew big with excitement. I took in a deep breathe of the fresh green air and exhaled out, what felt like the burden from forever. In front of us was a vast expanse of green land filled with trees and animals exotic. It was not a feast to the eye because describing it as a feast could never do justice to what lay in front of us.

He handed out to me, the hot cup of tea. The vapors from the heat of the tea disappeared out into the cold air. The first sip of tea on my lips felt like the definition to freshness. The taste of the cardamom made a grand entrance into my taste buds. The tea tasted more than delightful. It was unimaginably pleasant. The beauty of the tea, I realized, did not lie with the tea or the tea master.

“So how’s the tea?” he asked.

I was sipping the delightful tea while listening to my favorite music in the middle of a forest with one of my favorite humans.