Chicken wars

Baby the chicken: Another day, another fight in chicken land. One fine day, Crazy Cookie was admiring creation in the front yard, when our human mom came out of her house, caught her, and apparently made a video with her. The story would have ended here, if it had not been for Daisy, who put it in mom’s brains that the chicken that mom had caught was actually her. Additionally, she boasted that she was number two in the pecking order. Understandably, Crazy Cookie saw red, and declared war. Our world would have come to a bloody end, but Lazy Laurie saved the day. Scroll to read the poem I penned about this earth shattering event.

The chicken is in the kitchen
The chicken has escaped from her prison
The chicken has a story to tell
This chicken is on a mission.

The chicken is going to put up a fight
With all her power and might
The chicken named Crazy cookie
Has a wrong to put right.

Daisy the chicken will dearly be paying
For hypnotizing mom into saying
That the chicken on the screen was she
While all the time in the coop she was laying.

Crazy Cookie was the real star of the show
In the end she even took a bow
While Daisy lied about her pecking order stats
Crazy Cookie sat patiently as a doe.

Now Crazy Cookie brings war to the coop’s door 
Daisy is concerned to her very core
She knows that she has been beaten
As soon as she hears Crazy Cookie roar.

As Daisy dodges Crazy Cookie’s relentless attacks
Her cool all-star demeanor cracks
She cries and begs for mercy
As she shields herself from beak smacks.

“Stop”, yells Lazy Laurie
Before things turn truly gory
“As the topmost chicken of this pack
I command you to end this story”.

Continues Lazy Laurie, “I declare
Crazy cookie as chicken number two, fair and square
While Daisy will take spot number three
And now we end this sorry affair”.

With that declaration the two chickens stop
As they shake off their dust, sideways they plop
“I concede” says Daisy to Crazy Cookie
“You are the star and the chicken on top”.

-- Baby the chicken.

February in Elf land

February started off with a mad hair extension craze. Leena went color crazy putting all sorts of extensions in her hair. In her usual zealous way, she took all the hair off her barbie and started re-hairing her. Regrettably, that project is currently on hold. I fear that it is going to need my input before the poor Barbie gets her mane back. While on the topic of incomplete projects, I would like to happily report that my Ganesha art work finally is complete after I stuck the cutout on a black background. This project stood in limbo for two years before I finally got it done. I guess there’s hope for Barbie after all! We did put up a bunch of art work made by the girls. Slowly but surely, we have been moving ahead.

Johan and Tanya made a dog cart for Rosie. Her back paws are now completely unfunctional. Picking her back up for a walk is a heavy task. It is also dangerous for her, since her paws flip while dangling. If the walker is not watching, her paws can end up scratched and bloody. Rosie loved her cart. It has been useful in giving her front end some much needed exercise. She even gave Kylo Ren a chase! It was back to the good ol’ times.

Other than that, it was another month, another car for Elf land. Johan bought a BYD electric car from Lehigh University. Johan, Rosie and I decided to go to pick it up leaving the (elated) kids behind with Kylo Ren. We left one evening and made a little trip out of it. We ate, slept, drove, slept some more and moved until we reached Bethlehem, PA. They had our favorite Waffle shop, so we got to enjoy some grits!

After breakfast, we checked out an electric BYD city bus that Johan was also bidding on. It was nice enough, although a lot of work to make into a camper. We then went to see the car. My friend Sushil lives there, so our plan was to meet up and for me to visit his office and lab while Johan did the paperwork. It went without a hitch. I had a fun time checking out Sushil’s lab. He is a professor at Lehigh Valley.

Once back, we left town as quickly as we could. The drive was uneventful. We came back around 4 pm. The BYD electric car is a nice addition with quite a long range by our standards.

Other than buying vehicles at regular intervals, Tanya has been spending some time behind the wheel learning how to drive. She is learning stick shift on our super cool Mercedes jeep and automatic on our (other super cool) electric car Solectria. In short, life has been chugging along.

Rosie the dog: Well my friends. I am okay with life chugging along, but why, oh why, would one take a 100 year old grandma dog on a road trip? I really don’t need that kind of chugging. But that’s precisely what happened the other day. Just because I looked somewhat eager to get into the van, my mommy and Papa decided to take me along for an overnight trip. I must say, I was pretty rattled, physically and emotionally. I literally trembled for many miles before a familiar smell calmed me down. When my people stepped out of the car, and came in with foody smells, my brain fog cleared and a smell made it’s way into the depths of my memory. That was the smell of sausage. Instantly, I could remember all the times we hit the road, and how my people would come back with meaty treats. Life was not so bad after that. I had a merry old time in the back of the van, howling to my heart’s content and getting all the meaty treats without having to share them with Kylo Ren. I still trembled, but it was more out of excitement than nervousness. Despite all the positives, I was happy when we got home. Home works well for a dog my age. Let’s hope my humans don’t plan anymore such adventures.

Kylo Ren the dog: I don’t have much to report about this month. But my life was not devoid of excitement. Tanya took me inside a store! We walked through the dog aisle and my eyes popped out! Here were rows of treats at my snout’s reach! Oh, if only I didn’t have the awful muzzle on, I could have eaten my bellyful. Unfortunately, it was not to be (sigh). One good thing was that I did get a pig ear on my way out by the generous store people. The bad thing is, I don’t like pig ears. I am a civilized dog and don’t appreciate such barbaric treats. I did eat it though. It wasn’t too bad (yum).

Punxsutawney Phil clears the air

Daisy the chicken: Who goes there?

Groundhog: Why, hello there! Punxsutawney Phil here.

Daisy the chicken: Oh my goodness! (Gets star struck and faints).

Groundhog: Hello? Chicken, are you okay? (Pokes Daisy with his snout a couple of times). Oopsie. I think I scared her. To tell you the truth my friends, I am NOT Punxsutawney Phil (hee hee). I was jesting (continues poking and nursing the fainted chicken). I decided to blog here in order to put the common misconception to rest. I read that Daisy the chicken mentioned in her last blog that Punxsutawney Phil bit a mayor’s ear. However, this is false.

Allow me to elaborate. I am the biggest fan of Punxsutawney Phil. He has worked tirelessly to elevate us groundhogs to stardom. He has befriended many a mayors despite being in an extremely groggy state when he is unceremoniously yanked out of his safe spot every February to predict the onset of spring. Now before you dismiss this achievement, realize that this means he has to adjust to a whole different body temperature in minutes and then actually hold a conversation with a human. And boy, has Phil delivered! Not only has he predicted the arrival of spring with super high accuracy (he is correct a whopping 39% of the time), but also at his current age of 138 years he has outlived generations of groundhogs ( to the uninformed, our lifespan is 6 years). Yes, my friends, ol’ Phil from Punxsutawney, PA is your regular Groundhog God! (Licks chicken beak a few times to revive her).

“What about Daisy’s claim that Phil bit the mayor’s ear”, you may ask. As it turns out, the groundhog who did this is a cheap Phil wannabe. This was actually Jimmy, an “official” (smirk) groundhog of Sun Priarie, Wisconsin. Well folks. You get what you pay for. If you are going to ask some random groundhog about the weather, the said groundhog will do exactly what most of us mortals would do in that situation. We would try to rip away the offending object between us and our hibernation bed. Jimmy isn’t wrong. He just isn’t Phil. He just isn’t groundhog God. So, please, kindly stop associating paparazzi rumors with our Phil the great, who is now back in his cozy hole in Punxsutawney, PA.

Daisy the chicken: Opens eyes and stares. Wait, what?! So you are not Punxsutawney Phil? Ladies! Intruder! Attack!!

Molly, Johan’s French love

It came out over breakfast this morning. The story of Johan’s French love who he actually brought over to the US. I should be devastated. But I am a sucker for good stories, so here it is!

When Johan was 21 or 22, before he went into his electronic school in The Netherlands, he went to France with his buddy Hans for a camping trip in his Citroen GS break, a station wagon. They went to campground Chanteraine in the South Eastern part of France. It is close to Nice, France. They both worked for their living expenses while camping. Hans was cleaning the toilets and Johan was doing electrical and mechanical repairs at the campground.

A side story before we get to the main one: While at the campground, Johan repaired a crashed campground Unimog. The campground owner was impressed and spoke about him with the mayor of a nearby small town named Les-Salles-Sur-Verdon. The mayor owned an Alpha Romeo with a broken alternator. He asked Johan to repair it, which Johan did. The mayor was impressed. Since Les-Salles-Sur-Verdon was about 60 km from Draguignan, the nearest big town where they could find technical help (1.5 hrs via a mountainous road), the mayor offered Johan a shop and all the town’s technical work. He would be able to fix their electronics and machines and live in the nice, warm climate. Since Johan was about to start his electronics school, he turned that offer down.

Moving on, Hans and Johan were visiting the nearby beach at Verdonplage. In those days, people drove their cars to the beach. When they arrived, he saw a pretty woman with there with a Citroen DS 20, the car that he had been looking for. That was too good a combination to resist, so he walked over to the woman and asked her about the car (in his best French). While they were speaking, a little boy came out of the water. Oh! Thought Johan. But then he kept the conversation up, still hopeful. But then the husband followed. Johan wisely shifted his attention to the man and expressed his interest in the car. The man said that he was planning on selling it since their family with the kid didn’t fit well in the car. He was looking for a station wagon! Johan said, “hey I have a Station Wagon!”. They were all thrilled. The man asked him to meet him in some town the next day.

It was a mountain town (name’s forgotten). There the man asked him to follow his car. They drove to a large Chateau. Johan worried whether this was mafia(!). But the woman and kid came out of the Chateau. The man had a large tennis court and asked to play. Johan refused. They went swimming instead in their large pool. They bargained over the price over rounds of swimming. The man offered 700 francs. Johan swam a round, and asked for 2500 francs (maybe). Then the man took a round and counter offered. They finally settled on 2000 francs. The wife brought out finger food. They had a nice time. They decided to meet the next day and transfer the title at Draguignan.

The next day all the paperwork was done. As the man was driving off in his station wagon, he said something in French. Johan understood it as, “she needs love”. “No worries”, thought Johan. The station wagon that he had just sold had problems too.

Back at the campground, Johan was in the bathroom when he saw a mole next to him. He caught the mole in a bottle and brought his prize to the car. He set it down on the hood. The mole started scampering on the hood and fell promptly into a hold down to the chassis of the car. Johan got a shock and started looking for it everywhere. But he couldn’t locate the mole. He was traumatized that he had sent a creature to an untimely death. In honor of the mole, he called his car “Molly”. “Molly”, the Citroen DS, was later put into a shipping container and brought over to the US. She now lives in our barn!

After their vacation, Johan and Hans started driving direction Normandy. However, the transmission stopped working. They weren’t able to change gears. The Citroen DS has a complicated transmission, so they took it to a mechanic. He said that it had no hydraulic oil. Uh oh. The hydraulic oil was insanely expensive. The young and poor guys didn’t want to spend money on this. They went further and found a junkyard close to Normandy. They asked the junkyard guy to give them hydraulic oil. He went around with a hammer and punctured all the tanks, while they collected the oil to drive their car home.

The ride home was not without adventure. In those days, there were border patrol at all the European countries. To make his way back to The Netherlands, they had to go through Belgium first. At each border, they had to pay export and import duties. To avoid that, the boys decided to skip the border agents and take a side road into Belgium. They thought that evening would be the best time to escape unnoticed. However, once it got late, they realized that their headlights could be seen for miles! So they drove in twilight with their lights off through tiny dirt roads. Farmers from nearby farms knew what they were doing, and laughed and gave them thumbs up signs. However, they miscalculated the roads in the dark, and ended up only 300 ft behind the border security area. They freaked out and gunned the car! They drove in a frenzy to the nearest town and parked the car behind a church and jumped out expecting cops behind them. Luckily for them, the car chase was a figment of their guilty imagination and no cops followed.

The Dutch border waved them in without a second glance. To finally get the car legal, Johan drove with his dad to the German border. At first the agent didn’t want to give the import papers since the car was already in the country. Johan told him the story truthfully. The agent loved the story and asked him to drive to the next agent, spin his car around and come right back. They gave him his import papers when he drove in! There ends the story of Molly, the Citroen DS.

Molly the mole: Now hang on a minute. Molly’s story hasn’t ended without a word from me. Let me tell you what happened to me, the central character of this (mis) adventure. Here I was one minute, out for my morning sniff in the toilet, and in a bottle in the next minute! Just because I am cute and blind, humans think it’s easy to grab me. So I was grabbed, bottled and placed on a hood. But what the man didn’t know was that I was handier with a bottle than Remi (the rat hero in the movie Ratatouille). I dropped the bottle, scurried all over the hood and jumped into an escape hole before the offending man could say “mole”! This sweet but misinformed youth proceeded to look through the whole car to find me and make sure that I didn’t die from finding in the chassis. Honestly, he spent so much time on looking for me. What he was unaware of was that the chassis had a hidden hole that I had long escaped through. How did I know about this hole, you may ask. Well my friends, having grown up on a campground, I was more intimately familiar with chassis than any auto mechanic you have out there! Years later the guy did find that hole, sans my skeleton!

I watched this youth looking frantically for me all afternoon. I had a nice view of him, sitting in my arm chair on the bathroom ledge with a snack in my hand, and goggles over my eyes (Ok, the last part is a lie. I can’t see, remember?). He lovingly named his car Molly after me. I spent the rest of my days in that blessed campground, happy in the knowledge that somewhere in the world exists a car named after me.

Love is in the air

Kylo Ren the dog: I don’t know about that. I haven’t seen my junkyard girlfriend for ages. When I do see her, she just snarls at me and hides under the truck. I guess she has broken up with me. But don’t you feel bad for me. I think I am safer this way. She looks so mad at me that I am afraid that she will break my skull. A broken heart is infinitely preferable.

Coming to my wife, she doesn’t show me much love these days. Although she has stopped snarling at me lately. She gets bored mid-snarl and wants to nap.

So I am back to being a merry old bachelor. That could be a bad thing. But I have Leena in my corner and she is determined that I show my best side to the ladies. She made me a bow! Take a look at my picture below. Don’t I look handsome?!

In other news from these parts, Leena decided to read a story to us dogs the other evening. Guess which book she picked?! It was one written by my own paws. It was a compilation of all the animal blogs from last year! Leena sat with us and read the stories. I was so happy to remember all the wonderful things we had done last year. But the most fun part was when our names came up in the stories. Leena would call our names out loud. I would pick up my ears and intently listen to all that she had to say about me. It was one of the most relaxing evenings of my life. I fell asleep sucking my paw.

Rosie the dog: Love in the air? It most certainly is. I am so in love with my Papa. I have intensified my yowls. As soon as he comes in a room, I yowl and drag myself to him. But if he tries to cuddle up, I drag myself away. It’s called playing hard to get, and I excel in that game!

Tanya has been showing some extra love to me these days. She was massaging my back the other day. At first I loved it, but after sometime I yowled her away. She is sitting with me a lot these days too. Hmph. About time! Yes, my husband Kylo Ren speaks the truth. Leena did read to us. At first I made a noisy din to drown out her voice. But when I heard her reading out my name, I calmed down and fell asleep. Ah, bliss.

Daisy the chicken: Love is certainly in the air. The girls caught me cuddling against Rosie in the front yard today. They ran to tell their mom. Of course, as usual they didn’t catch on to the real story. I was pretend cuddling with her so that my beak got close to her food. I helped myself to a belly full of her meal. Heh heh.

We chickens have been exploring the yard a lot these days. We inevitably end up in the mud room in hopes of some food. The other day Kylo escaped and almost turned us into food! I think he is still seeking revenge from our heist where we had tied him up. We better watch out.

Now that spring is coming (according to Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog who once bit a mayor’s ear, haha), we have been laying eggs. We have been trying to hide them in new nesting spots to escape the human eye. But they always discover our stash. Our plan is to keep trying. Wish us luck my friends. Lots of love from the animals at the Elf land.

January at the Elf land

January is already behind us. It has been a whirlwind month. We got back from India on the 2nd and got into the swing of things very quickly. It felt like a cold month after the warm and sunny India.

Johan and I have been out and about quite a bit. We went to the camp for a long hike. We have also been going to the Corner room for breakfasts every Friday. It’s not as fun as our Zeno’s nights, but it will do.

Both Tanya and I got our ears pierced. So there was some painful excitement to make up for the cold weather. January is also a big birthday month for us. Leena had her 12th birthday with her friends at a trampoline park named Get Air, followed by lunch. Then I had my birthday. Johan and I went to Webster’s to hang out and eat lunch and in the evening we all went out for dinner at India Pavilion.

Of course, the most fun part about our birthdays are always the mornings when we sing happy birthday and the dogs howl! We had our traditional ceremonies for both the birthdays.

Johan bought a huge coal hauling truck from the junkyard and it was quite exciting to bring it to our place. The truck had sat unused for many years and there was no telling how it would perform. We pumped up the tires and put some hydraulic oil. Then Johan drove it while I followed him back. It was a bit of a hair-raising experience.

Kylo Ren the dog: A bit?! C’mon mom. It was a downright horror show. Here I thought I was the lucky one going on a car ride with my mom and dad. We ended up in the junkyard. I thought it was going to be a date with my girlfriend. Instead, dad started working on this monster truck and mom started helping him. I was on leash behind the truck.

Now there’s one thing you may not know about me. It’s a blip in my otherwise flawless character. I am really scared of the idea of getting left behind. So if there is a family car around, I want to be in that car. All of my being gets consumed with the idea of getting inside the said car. If I am not in the car, I am stressed. And when I am stressed, I throw all kinds of tantrums. These include, and are not limited to, whining, barking, crying, jumping, pacing, drooling. You get the picture.

I proceeded to do all of the above and more after I was tied to that monster truck. My mean mom and dad ignored me. When they were finally ready to leave, I jumped in the car! But my nightmare was far from over. Dad did not join me in the car. He went in the yellow monster truck. I was upset.

You may recall that I am really smart. My mom got another taste of my smarts that day. She noticed that I look at all the side roads for oncoming traffic. I even look up and down a train track to check if there is an oncoming train.

All my efforts and excitement got me very tired that afternoon. I was happy to get home and stretch in my crate. Here comes my dear wife Rosie. Over to her.

Rosie the dog: I am the heart and soul of birthdays at my household. As soon as the humans start the birthday song, I join in with gusto. I howl out my well rehearsed birthday song much to the delight of the birthday girl or boy. Even at my age, I rock the birthday celebrations much more than Kylo Ren. Also, thanks to me, we dogs got birthday presents wrapped in gift wrappers. They were mostly treats but Kylo Ren also got his old, chewed up toy wrapped up in a bit of paper. My silly husband Kylo Ren thought that the wrapper was the gift. He tore the wrapper apart, dropped his toy, and ran to his crate with the wrapper hanging from his mouth. Gawd.

Crazy Cookie the chicken: I am pleased with Leena. She has been giving us hot water every morning. Our coop is unheated. Mom insisted on not heating the coop for the fear that they may come to feed us one morning and find chicken barbaque (over done) from the accidental fires that coop heaters sometimes create. I am happy. I don’t fancy becoming chicken barbaque. But absent a heated coop, the daily servings of hot water are very welcome.

Oh yes, a baby Cooper Hawk has been hanging out in the pine tree in the backyard. I think he is after the sparrow or Blue Jay. At first we were wary of the hawk. But we soon realized that it was scared of us! So if it ever comes near, we flap our wings violently and the hawk quickly retreats in a far corner. Oh, time for bed. Good night!

Kylo the Einstein

Kylo Ren the dog: Mom gets mad a bit too easily, as is evidenced in her last blog. Getting mad over tea? C’mon mom! I saw my mom fuming over tea (while drinking tea, haha), and I was observing her. I could actually see the heat emanating from her head. I thought I better take a closer look. So I ran to her. As I got closer, I found that she looked cooler. But if I sat down, she looked hotter. Hmm, I was intrigued!

To confirm my hypothesis, I ran around at top speed multiple times and then sat down many times (until mom yelled at me to settle down). Each time mom looked cooler when I was running than when I sat down. How could I see the heat, you may ask. At this question, I would like to (not so) humbly point out my dog powers that allow me to observe physical phenomena more acutely than the humans.

I puzzled over this observation. Obviously mom’s head wasn’t actually getting hotter and cooler because of me. And then it came to me. Daisy the chicken told me the other day that she had read in the newspaper about the theory of relativity discovered by Einstein. According to Einstein’s calculations, a body should appear cooler to a moving observer than an observer at rest. Bam! So I wasn’t going crazy!

Clever fellow, this Einstein. I googled him a bit and there’s a thing or two that my mom could learn from Einstein. For instance, Einstein thought that one should view world’s problems with a puzzle mindset. This means, rather than despairing at them, like she often does, one should view them as a puzzle. With this approach, you may be able to find a fresh approach to solving them.

I can relate to what Einstein is saying here. Just like him, I don’t despair over world’s problems. Just so you know, I am more intimately familiar with some of the world’s problems than humans. Now before you scoff, let me bring your attention to the salted sidewalks. You humans with your cozy boots may not realize, but the salt cuts through our delicate paws. But do I despair? Do I shrink in a corner and refuse to go for a walk? Nope! I get right out and solve this puzzle to the best of my capacity. This involves walking in the snow and cleaning my paws in puddles as much as possible.

Another world problem: have you noticed the quality of dog food? Well, my friends, let me tell you. It’s the worst! They use things like roadkill and rancid fat in dog food. But do I despair? No sir! I just refuse to eat my food until mom cooks special dinners every night with some real meat (freshly cooked and frozen).

In fact, if I look at Einstein’s seven rules for a better life (you can find it in references below), I think I follow them all! As I have mentioned in my previous blogs, I am very smart.

Daisy the chicken: Oh, enough with the self praise, Kylo Ren. Before you climb your high horse, allow me to remind you that it was I who told you about Einstein.

I like Einstein. He looks like the right kind of rooster. You don’t believe me? Check out his pictures. He has perfect hair for a nice nesting box! But yes, there’s a lot more than that that Einstein has to offer. Einstein did get one thing wrong though. He thought that one shouldn’t allow politics fill one with despair or rage. But, how is that possible? We the chickens live and breathe politics. It’s called the pecking order. By now our avid readers know all about the pecking order. If I go down this order, I am filled with despair. If a chicken tries to push me down, I rage at her and won’t shy away from plucking her feathers or jumping at her with my Kung Fu moves and loud squawks. I think such rules can be applied to humans who work under a large political framework that is disparate from their lives. As long as they pay some money, they can ignore politics. But for the hands on, self governed species such as chickens, this rule doesn’t apply.

But, don’t you feel bad Einstein. You still da rooster!

Ps: Take Kylo Ren’s take on relativistic thermodynamics with a pinch of salt!

References:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/einstein-rules-better-life/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17526-4

… And now I am mad

This is an epilogue to my previous blog post called “A cuppa history”. Something was missing. When I thought about it, I realized that my tea story with its happy ending had misplaced optimism. I had forgotten an essential element. What became of the poor living conditions of the tea plantation worker? Dreading what I would find, and expecting the worst, I looked it up.

Just as expected, the living conditions of the workers continue to be terrible. They live in broken houses with no toilets and defecate amongst the tea bushes. There are reports of minors working full time, and women, as usual, get the lowest wages while pulling the maximum weight.

Of course this comes as no surprise. Once terrible living conditions have been established and accepted, the group in question rarely gets a better deal. The post-independence, Indian (Swadeshi) label added a jingoistic ring to the tea but no longer did our esteemed and formerly concerned revolutionaries and politicians cared about the living conditions and exploitation of the tea workers. On the contrary, once the tea craze caught on, production ramped up, thereby adding to the workforce while having a similar or even lowered living conditions than the past. No surprises, right?

Surprise! Fast forward to 2015. There’s an article in business-humanrights.org that talks about BBC’s investigation of the inhumane living conditions in tea plantations in Assam! Wow, just wow! So the British started off with inhumane living conditions right since 1850s. And now they launch a new investigation and publish their holier-than-thou findings in 2015!

As expected, pandemonium follows this “research”. British tea brands such as PG Tips, Tetleys and Twinings say they will work to improve the living conditions, following the special insight that they have gained from this report. Harrods stopped selling some tea products, and Rainforest Alliance, which is an ethical certification organization, says their audit process may have some flaws. Popcorn anyone?

Assam company, which owns these plantations, calls the allegations “baseless and false”. The great Tata, who Indians will swear by, said that its membership of Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) demonstrates its commitment to improving living conditions in the tea industry. So Tata says, hey! I pay membership to this fraud organization ETP and so we’re in the clear!

Lastly, Taylors of Harrogate, which owns the Yorkshire tea brand, told the BBC that they were “extremely concerned” by BBC’s findings and are “exploring “investigating as a matter of urgency”. I guess it’s so urgent that its being explored urgently since about 175 years. I have no words.

I write this while drinking my cup of tea and am filled with sadness and a guilt that was never mine until yesterday when I explored this topic. So what’s the solution? Giving up tea? Drink water? That is possible. Any other fruit or milk drinks will have similar horror stories. Of this I have no doubt. What a sad state of affairs.

Reference:

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/bbc-investigates-inhumane-working-conditions-in-tea-plantations-in-assam-india-brands-respond/

A cuppa history

While in India, my parents and I had discussions on a variety of topics over cups of tea. One of the topics turned out to be about the history of tea.

My parents mentioned that tea was not historically a part of Indian drinks. It appeared nowhere in the list of drinks that Indians had. Traditionally it was lassi, milk or fruit juices. Tea was popularized by the British. They set up tea stalls at every nook and corner of Indian streets. They would serve chai for free in stylish cups and saucers. My mom herself recalled drinking such a free cup of tea in a fair as a kid! They also mentioned that places in Haryana still serve milk. This fact was somewhat corroborated by friends from the region who said that they serve lassi and milk to their guests.

India is a tea crazy country. This is a fact beyond all facts! The idea that tea was popularized in the last century by the British and post independence India was intriguing to me. So I read up on it, and as it (often) turns out, my parents are right on. The history of tea in India is interesting. So here’s my Indian tea history 101!

Historically tea is a Chinese drink. As mentioned above, Indians traditionally drank milk, yogurt based lassi and fruit juices. The British got their tea addiction from the Dutch and the Chinese. Alas, the Dutch sneak in here as well. They seem to make frequent appearances in most of my stories!

Moving on, the Chinese exported tea to the British. In return, the British were exporting opium to China. The Chinese emperor understandably did not approve of this trade that created addicts in China. And so China abruptly ended tea trade with the British in 1800s. It confiscated the opium and destroyed it. The British sent warships to China, but ultimately felt that they had to own the tea. A botanist name Robert Fortune stole tea seeds from China.

The British had explored India and found wild tea growing in Rangpur, Assam around 1830s. The British proceeded to establish tea gardens in Assam with the seeds from China (and maybe local Indian tea as well). They were met with a stiff resistance from the local Assamese people. The Assamese fought against clearing their jungles for tea gardens. Furthermore, they would not work in the tea gardens. As is typical British, they brought in migrant workers from various parts of India to work on the tea plantations as indentured laborers. These migrants faced inhuman working conditions, disease, malnutrition, debt and high mortality rates of up to 50%. The British tried to keep these working conditions a secret, but it did come out. Although some rich Indian babus working for the British had taken to tea drinking, the condition of the migrant workers forced Indians to give up tea.

Around the 20th century, the British tea markets started to stagnate. That’s when the British turned to the India to expand their tea market (in 1903). The Indians were slow to take to tea. Tea advertisements in 1911 still showed white people being served tea by the brown people.

Tea hubs opened in 1920s and 30s as political and cultural hubs. Later they even became meeting places for pro-independence Indians and intellectuals. In the 1930s and 40s (during the depression), tea was aggressively promoted in railway stations across India. Free tea was offered, or one paisa take-home single-use tea packets were sold.

However, tea was not fully accepted in 1940s and 1950s. This is because Gandhi and other nationalists argued that tea was an imperialist, anti-Indian drink. The poor working conditions of the migrant workers were highlighted and tea drinking was discouraged by the freedom fighting revolutionaries. The advertisers replaced colonial messages with promoting tea as a Swadeshi drink, with revolutionaries featured in the advertisements! This is mind boggling to me. The British advertisers actually used freedom fighters that would ultimately kick the British out to increase sales on a British product. Wow! So very short sighted. Anything for a quick buck!

Darjeeling and Assam tea were expensive. But slowly production was improved and cheaper grades of dust and fannings of tea were marketed. This brought tea to the middle class. It was only post independence after tea estates and tea wholesale came to the Indian hands did tea take hold in India. The marketing also shifted to show rich Indian ladies patronizing tea drinking. Tea was deemed Swadeshi (Indian) in 1953. The shift from the full leaf black tea to the crushed, torn, curled tea allowed the customers to come up with a stronger infusions than the traditional (read “boring” from the Indian point of view) British recipe. The Darjeeling leaf tea did not lend itself well to the spicy milky tea that catered to the Indian taste. But the heavy, Assam tea captured the Indian interest. Indians then proceeded to add their spices, milk and sugar to make strong “kadak” brews that have now gained worldwide popularity.

Now one can find the “chai” tea in many cafes in the US. Chai tea has now come to be synonymous with the spicy Indian brew that we have all grown to love. But it will be remiss of me to end this blog without adding this note. Dude, chai means tea (as the Indian Spider man would undoubtedly tell you). So can we all agree to call it just chai (and not chai tea)?!

References for the image are included at the end of the blog. Many of the images are from the Priya Paul collection.

References:

https://www.npr.org/2010/03/28/125237353/the-tea-thieves-how-a-drink-shaped-an-empire

https://www.historyofceylontea.com/ceylon-publications/ceylon-tea-articles/the-british-ad-propaganda-the-journey-from-tea-to-chai.html

https://www.seriouseats.com/indian-tea-history-5221096

https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/how-british-used-indian-railways-free-cups-women-to-make-indians-tea-drinkers/711106/

India trip: Part 4. Musings

This trip to India has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me. Due to various reasons, Corona Virus being the biggest, I was in India after a long gap of four years. I found that a lot of my parents’ way of living was unchanged. It was like I had never left. But there were also big, noticeable differences in how Indians live their lives which were interesting but also very unsettling.

Due to various reasons, my lifestyle back in the USA is overly simple. For one, we have never used a TV. When I was a kid, my parents refused to have a cable connection so that we would concentrate on our studies and not get distracted. I hated having no TV as a kid, but liked the idea as a grown up. TV is distracting, but it’s the advertisements that are a bigger bane. One thing that I have noticed is that due to lack of our exposure to ads and Television series, our family is living in a bubble while the world has moved to a different place. This, combined with our general disinterest in shopping, made this trip a funny, eye opening experience. I must also mention, countries such as India and the UAE have been prioritizing glamor a lot more than the USA. This is an opposite world from 25 years ago.

During our flight to Dubai we were bombarded with glamorous ads of Dubai. The Dubai airport is also an over the top show of goods and glamour. There were shops after shops full of perfumes, liquor, chocolate and expensive jewelry. We had our first cultural shock right there. The all pervasive smell of perfume was overwhelming to our underutilized noses and we quickly retrieved to a resting space. They space had lounge chairs arranged in various formations with people resting on them! It hilariously reminded me of a scene from a typical science fiction movie, or a Robin Cook book! However, the chairs looked comfortable and were just what we needed to stretch our tired selves and so we proceeded to join the scifi cast!

Getting to India, on a first glance, things look the same. Ladies in sarees, the strays, and an occasional cow on the street. But I soon realized that the wad of cash that I was given to spend by my dad wasn’t going to help me much. Unless I was happy to leave obscene amounts of change with every purchase.

India has become cashless, and most people pay by scanning a QR code that all stores display. Urban India is also into extreme shopping, which seemed to be a disturbing trend. Amazon is everywhere, and they also have a company named “Swiggy”, which delivers anything people want in 10 minutes to an hour. People will sometimes use Swiggy three to four times a day to order anything as per their immediate whim and fancy. Swiggy is akin to Aladdin’s genie. It produces whatever you desire in very little time, with a few clicks and without moving from your house. This creates an endless opportunity for instant gratification, which, of course, ultimately creates dissatisfaction and prevents people from being grounded. Not even to speak about the pollution from all the drivers moving about, the plastic packaging waste and money wastage. So this was undoubtedly the worst trend that I saw.

On the upside, the elderly and disabled can benefit immensely from this system, since you can get things on your doorstep. This is particularly useful since the traffic is a nightmare. But if you think further, the nightmare traffic is created partially by the goods movement by Amazon and Swiggy. We patronize them, thereby supporting the bad traffic. As a result of this traffic, now we sit at home and patronize them further. We still lose out by not getting an opportunity to step outside, thereby using our bodies lesser, and pushing our minds into a rut. This results in more disability, which gives even more business to these companies. What a vicious cycle.

My rants may suggest that I didn’t like being in Hyderabad, but it actually had the opposite effect. I wished from all my heart that I lived there and would be a part of the craziness that is India. It would have been gratifying to be a part of the solution in a country that gets an impressive number of things done, when compared with the meagre amount of resources that they have access to. Despite the Western world squeezing every last bit of resource out of India, pushing regulations that make India poorer, pushing waste that make India dirtier, pushing their GMO seeds to compromise India’s agricultural capacity, and making regulations that they have no recourse against, India functions remarkably. But there’s a lot wrong with the mentality of the population there (as in any other place). A change is desperately needed.

Getting to my parents, their world seems almost unchanged for the most part. There is a nice rhythm to their daily routine. We had a nice, easygoing time there, with us spending a lot of time with cups of tea, sitting around and chit chatting. The kids got a chance to connect with them. Tanya is amazingly in tune with them and their ways. Leena is too, but she is mostly busy either reading a book, or crocheting, or doing some other activity. Tanya would join in the family discussions. Leena, on the other hand, only talked about this animal or that bird! The other topic that Leena would endlessly talk about was general trivia. She is full of trivia and keeps doling them out. Sometimes we stared jaw dropped, or sometimes we laughed, but it would get a little much after a while. Regardless, we all had a great time chit chatting our days away. It was the biggest highlight of our trip.

We came back refreshed and with a lot of material for me to work on this year as I move further into writing. Hoping for, and wishing you, a great year ahead.

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