Cups and Saucers

I go to this small, cheap Muslim establishment (I would have called it a restaurant, but I do not think that the definition of a restaurant includes this place) for my tea breaks (please don't ask me tea breaks from what ?!?). The tea over here (and at other similar establishments) is slightly different in flavor from the usual Mumbaiyya road-side Thela tea: its milkier, sweeter and less strongly brewed. As one of the waiters puts it: 'Ismein kaala paani kum hota hai...isliye jaada tasty hai'. Well I have to agree with him on it being 'jaada tasty'...I am hooked to it!

Anyway, today in between the moments of trying to be mindful of drinking my tea (a Zen practice...I'll talk about mindfulness at length some other time), I observed again what I have been observing for the past many days: people pouring out the entire contents of their cups into their saucers, and then proceeding to finish their tea within a couple of minutes. This time however I decided to take this observation to the next level.

The first step was to deduce approximately what percentage of the tea connoisseurs patronizing this place (touch of sarcasm there) actually drink their tea like this. So what do I do? I resort to the ever helpful mathematical realm of Statistics. Now lets see...first I need to choose a sample space (now what exactly had the Prof said about sample spaces? Something on the lines of 'it being representative, to a reasonable degree of accuracy, of the entire set...'? Oh fuck it...this isn't for a mathematical journal! I think my not sticking to the precision and accurateness that mathematics requires will suit me just fine!). So, as my sample space I decide to pick out ten random folks and observe their individual idiosyncratic ways of drinking tea (at the cost of being cursed for staring at them while they try to dilute the fatigue of the day with their precious cup of tea).

Now it turns out that 8 out of the 10 folks I chose, had tea via the saucer to mouth route. That would be 80%. Its a substantial percentage; substantial enough to make the remaining 20% look like there is something different about the way they were drinking tea!

So how does one explain this? Obviously drinking tea from the saucer is some kind of custom, but all customs usually have a logical starting point. There must have been a reason why some man (or woman...these feminists!) in the past took up the cudgel, tightened his balls and said: 'No way am I going to use the cup. Why use a cup when you have a saucer?'. This perfect logic would then have attracted some followers, who then attracted their own followers, until it became a cult following, and produced an army of tea-from-saucer drinking soldiers.

But what could have that reason why the whole thing started be? I see plenty of reasons why the cup, as a tea drinking instrument, is superior to the saucer. Or in other words why the saucer, as a tea drinking instrument, is inferior to cup. Or in other words this business of drinking tea from the saucer just doesn't make sense!

• a cup has a handle and a smaller circumference, and hence it is easier to direct, and control the flow of tea into your mouth. Being able to direct and control the flow of tea into your mouth would directly control your tea drinking experience
• owing to the smaller exposed area to the environment, the tea would remain hotter for a longer duration in a cup. And it just makes sense to want a hot drink to remain hot for as long as possible
• drinking tea from a saucer requires the additional effort of pouring the tea into the saucer from the cup. For an amateur, this manoeuvre could involve loss of tea on account of spilling

So, what could have been that mysterious initial motive for drinking tea from the saucer? Maybe we shall never find out.

(Oh by the way...the name of this establishment is Rahat Restaurant)