Humanity divides itself into two classes every morning at Suzie's Deli on 30th Street & Park Avenue.  The first species of human beings empty a hurried stream of black coffee into their cardboard cups. This done, their limited intelligence and imagination exercise the option of adding (or not adding) a spot of milk and some sugar. However, this sequence of robotic actions is not the last of their mechanical tasks.  Soon, they are on their way bustling with borrowed energy to carry out more mindless activities. .

I belong to the second species that makes up human beings. Even in the midst of a rush hour, we take the time to pause and ponder by a neatly arranged shelf of tea bags. Do we want the refreshing after taste of an Earl Gray Tea that will moisten our taste buds and flow down our throats gently with the soothing after taste of milk? Or do we prefer the stern calmness of a lake of green tea, the surface of which is dotted with lotuses and other plants that we cannot name? Or surely, this is a day for tennis, and so what if we don't have crumpets or strawberry and cream at our disposal -- we can surely shout forty love in our minds even as we stare at our computer monitor that stands stoically by our glass of English Breakfast. The walls of the most forlorn office cubicle melt away when dissolved in a glass of tea, as the tea drinker takes pause to observe a planet full of coffee drinking people bustling about and doing things in their little enclosed spaces for activities, that are in the broader scheme of things of no importance at all.

The earth has a future, and history books will record that a large part of it was made possible by the tea drinker. The TD might be a monarch without robes, but like any member of royalty, has an immense responsibility to maintain an upright bearing when in society. A large part of this conduct is derived from the method deployed when sipping a cup of tea.

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Not having anything better to do with their cups, coffee drinkers will sip coffee loudly in an elevator. This is a sin. In a world bombarded with noise and advertising, elevators are the last standing sanatoriums of silence. Cars honk on the streets. People mutter inanities under the ground in the subway. Driven from their natural habitats, irritable hummingbirds chirp loudly in make-shift gardens. Bill O'Reilly shouts across the thin walls of our neighbor's houses as Americans sit in their apartments.

Given this cacophonic world that we have created, it would take an inconsiderate idiot to disrupt the silence in our elevators. Either that, or the criminal slurping would be the result of the actions of an automaton, a product of our times, where stillness not contributing to the bottom lines of our companies is frowned upon, compelling a person to engage his or her senses all the time.

The tea drinker is not caught in this conundrum. The string of the tea bag that drapes itself over the sides of the cup, a vine on a garden wall, provides sufficient distraction during the elevator ride. Captivated by this image, the tea drinker will never break the sanctity of the elevator ride.

The first step in the process of learning how to do something is to understand the optimal way of not doing that particular thing.   The optimal way of sipping tea is not to sip it in an elevator.

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Here are five events that create of the aesthetics of tea sipped in the optimal way:

1. A bicycle wheel passing through a puddle in the aftermath of a on a hot summer day.
2. A Boris Becker touch volley - subtle, but final.
3. Feelings experienced during the next to last scene of a particularly beautiful movie, where the audience wants to see the conclusion, and at the same time, doesn't want the narrative to end.
4. A complete awakening brought about by a sign of comprehension on a child's face.
5. Listening to a Beatles song after a few hours, and wondering how you didn't hear those voices for every second during that Beatleless time frame.

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A sip of cola takes like a can of cola. A sip of coffee tastes like a cup of coffee. However, a cup of tea is like a life well lived, every sip different from the next.  

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Lunch is over. The afternoon reminds you of its presence in the outside world. Drops of lead settle on your eyelids, even as your co-workers display previously unseen energy levels. At such a time, you hold on to the vision of something nameless, yet pure. It fills you with a sense of hope. You take a gentle sip, and reflect on how far from you, you really are. You resign yourself and decide to have a sip of coffee.

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© COPYRIGHT 2002-2012 Arun Krishnan