I am sitting in front of my computer, listening to my favorite “Vital Signs” song:
Ye shaam phir nahi aaye gi
(This evening won’t come again)
I am smiling and sipping on my favorite Lipton Tea, while my fingers are keying in this moment in time.
All in all, a very coordinated effort is going on between my mind and soul. But take “Lipton tea” out of this equation and I’ll be left to a bored-to-death person listening to an archaic ancient group which historians remember by the name of ‘Vital Signs’ from early 90s and writing these disjointed words.
“Lipton Tea” – these two words stir deep memories in me. The earliest memory of Lipton tea in my life is drinking it with my maternal great grandfather (paR-nana).
This portrait to the left, by the way, is of Sir Thomas J Lipton; not of my paR-nana!).
My great grand father was born in 1896 and lived till 1986. Until his last days he had a habit of making a cup of tea around 3 pm, and whenever I was around (which I always was) he used to pour some tea in my cup too. After that both of us would start watching PTV which started its daily transmission around 4 p.m. and sip on our tea.
Grandfather had migrated to Pakistan from India in 1947. He used to tell me all these great political stories from the old days, the Caliphate Movement, First World War, Quit-India Movement, Second World War, the Pakistan movement and finally the emergence of Pakistan.
He told me that until 1900s not many people in India knew about drinking tea (except for the tea growing areas of Darjeeling/Assam etc). British and whatever was left of East India Company at that time owned all the tea plantations in India, Ceylon (SriLanka), and Africa. Raw tea leaves were sent to London at Lipton Tea Company and after being processed and packed, was brought back to India and sold at exorbitant prices to the local people, on whose land the tea grew in first place.
Grand father told me that in the early 1900s Britishers used to set tea-stalls at street corners all over India and used to offer ‘free’ tea cups to Indians to promote the Lipton brand. In the beginning tea drinking was fashion at the high echelons of Indian society. Nawabs, and Rajas used to drink it in parties but within years its use grew all around and it even reached the far-flung villages of India.
The accompanying picture to the right is a tablet that was placed at Bahawalnagar railway station in early 20th century. It is now placed in Pakistan Railway’s Heritage Museum at Golra Sharif near Islamabad. It advertises making of hot tea in 5 different written scripts; English, Devnagri, Urdu, Gormukhi and Bengali.
Grand father told me that drinking tea at 3:00 p.m. sharp was a British tradition brought to India. British used to drink tea two times a day en-mass. First time was at 3:00 p.m. (called ‘low tea’) and then again at 6:00 p.m. (called ‘high tea’). Low tea and high tea were the names given to this tea drinking habit just like breakfast-lunch-dinner.
The invention of the habit of afternoon tea is credited to Anna, Duchess of Bedford, who in about 1840 began taking tea with sandwiches and cakes to ward off “that sinking feeling” around four o’clock in the afternoon. Since the upper classes ate dinner fashionably late, Anna and her friends found that tea and small cakes were perfect to tide them over between lunch and dinner. Her idea soon became the fashion, and an English institution was born called ‘low tea’.
I guess grandfather and I kept the tradition alive in Karachi till 1986.
Last time I was in Pakistan I saw tea stalls and tea-shops at almost every street corner. It looks like the whole population now craves tea. And it is a part of our daily life. I won’t say its addiction, but would rather recite the famous sher by plagiarizing it a bit:
Chai se gharz-e-Nishat hai kis roo-siaah ko
Ik gona-e-bay-khudi mujhay har dum chahiyay
(Who the cursed-face needs pleasure out of tea
All I need is a place of solitude.)
Tea is also an essential part of Urdu literature. Shafiq-ur-Rehman who along with Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi is perhaps the greatest humor writer of Urdu invented the term chuhaas which rhymes with pyaas(thirst) and means a thirst of tea.
Go on & please enjoy music & Lipton ofcourse. Well nice post really. lipton is one the best selling tea in Pakistan. Lipton he to hai mera jawab
BTW, OWais, wonderful choice of title. reminds me of those Lipton spots on tv about:
chai chaheaye, kon si janab
lipton umdah hai
lipton leejiyay
Interesting post, but I am a little perplexed at the worries about the impact of our tea drinking habit on our trade deficit. This last fiscal year, Pakistan’s total import bill was around $28 bln, and out of this the tea import bill was around $250 mln.
We do have a large trade deficit, around $10 bln, but the way to reduce that is to export more, and diversify our exports, especially into engineering goods.
The other thing is that in an era of free trade, and a single global market, such concerns are a little misplaced. Imagine, if the European and American consumers of Pakistani textile products decided to economize on their use of textiles! We all have our own specializations, and there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of those.
Now, I will go back to enjoying my cup of tea, made out of imported Kenyan tea. :)
verysmart, we do import tea but I dont think that most comes from India. I think, most comes from Africa. Although I also think that having more trade with India is a GOOD thing for larger reasons.
I will try out your recipe but from the sound of it, not sure.
Owais, great post. Being a bona fide tea-guzzler, I fully related to this post. I like the story of how low tea was invented. Do you have a reference? I’d like to explore it a little further. The point raised by Adil is pertinent as well – we are a nation of tea-addicts and we don’t grow it enough to meet even 10 per cent of the demand. This is true for palam/cooking oil as well. We love to add oil/ghee to our food and don’t produce enough of it. These are major imports after petroleum products of course.