Tea
Tea is a social drink in India. It is offered to guests. When people get together, they often have tea while they socialize. When people get tired of working, they take a break and have tea. It may not be very nourishing, but is mentally rejuvenating most of the times.Tea as a threat?
You cannot imagine how a social drink like tea can be a threat. It can be if it is consumed at a stall on a pavement of the city. The stall owner washed the used cups by shaking them in a bowl of more turbid water, followed by a bowl of less turbid water. It can cause enteritis, typhoid, amebiasis, jaundice and similar illnesses. But you would not imagine tea to be a threat to health if it was offered in a meeting of department heads in a tertiary level civic hospital. I myself wouldn’t have believed that possible, but now I do.The story
The tender committee meeting was quite boring. They offered tea at the end of the meeting. I had the half cup of tea, which was hot and sweet. I put the cup down and forgot about it. They did not clear the table quickly, and the cup remained there for some time. Suddenly I happened to look at it, and a wave of nausea shook me. Have a look, both panoramic and close up.
“What have you given me?” I managed to say in a strangled voice amidst waves of nausea. It looked like pubic hair to me. The people around me looked at me in surprise, then looked at the cup and grinned. It was like laughing when someone else slips and falls down. The servant took the cup and picked up the object inside.
“I may die of poisoning” I said. “What is it? Is it human or from a cockroach?”
“It is a piece of wire” the servant said. I looked at it closely. It indeed was a wire.
“Did you not wash the cups before using them?” one department head asked the servant.
“I did” he said. I knew it was true because I had seen him washing all cups in running water while I suffered from the proceedings of the meeting. “That wire came from the tea.”
The grins vanished from the faces of all, because they all had had the same contaminated tea, though the source of the contamination was found in my cup. One department head seated across from me listened to all this, and then put her cup to her lips, about to take a sip.
“Don’t drink it” I said. “Did you not see what was there in my tea?”
She looked miserable. She had seen it, and she still wanted to have the tea.
“OK. Have it. It was probably boiled with that thing in it” O said. She emptied her cup dutifully.
