Earl Grey...and Eliot

Earl Grey. The best beginning. Teabags, somehow, don't have the authenticity that brewing provides. Remember, ye who read, never to boil tea as so many Indians do; boil the water, switch the flame off, feel the tea leaves between your fingers, speak to them, then sprinkle them lovingly on the water's surface.

And cover. And let it brew, brew, gently, let the spirits of the leaves awaken and find their windows, to float in a sky of water, on carpets of water, greeting one another, locking fingers and letting go.

Tea Centre at Churchgate, Mumbai is the place. Ask for the Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe. FTGFOP1. Have it black and without sugar. Tinkle the bell if you want the waiter to arrive. There's a pretty girl from the North East who smiles so gently, somehow reminding me that I can sit there as long as I like, as long as two short stories. Sit back. Breathe. There's a piano and someone might decide to play.

In that homely calm of green sofas, I see the faces of people I have known, loved and shared a 2-cup pot of FTGFOP with, of conversations, words suspended in the air, moving like bees in fresh amber, like fingers on a shadowy afternoon harp, webbing my story with the stories of other beings.

Time for some verse. ~R sent me an audio clip of Eliot reading out The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I said, Good Lord! when I heard it. I told her it made me imagine Jerry caught and bound, and Tom peering at him with a smile, shaking his head, feeding him Eliot before eating him up.

Then I googled and found the site I've linked here, and it has a basket of clips, including The Wasteland. As I said to ~R, it's interesting that Eliot doesn't accent the 't' and 'p' as in lines like 'spit out all the butt-ends'. That's closer to my Indian way of reading it.

I was disappointed though. After having spouted these lines on local trains, in office cubicles, on narrow dusty streets, in dingy cafes with scowling waiters, I want my Eliot-lines my way, not in his bland correct steady way. If he were to climb out of his grave to read out his own work to me, I'd politely thank him, offer him some of my black Earl Grey and then hum and haw till he left me alone with his poem.

I return to my teacup. It's different from the one in the picture. A deep gloom of orange earth-water in a well of white. Now it's empty, like a white corpse, a statement of porcelain, ready for peering students in white coats.