As Sweet as Honey

5




After school, we threw down our schoolbags, and stretched out with her after our tiffin. I had begun reading an abridged version of Silas Marner, and was struck by the description of the bright coppery gold of a little girl’s hair. Would Oscar have hair like that, or black like ours? Aunt Meterling did not know. She listened to our questions, answered what she could, and spoke about other things on her mind.

“Distractions,” whispered Rasi.

“There are just a few requirements for good tea,” Aunt Meterling said one rainy day, as if that had been our topic of conversation, when we were all sitting on the veranda. I was watching the rain pound the earth, making small puddles, beating down the plants. The rainy season was calming down. No longer did people dash by with umbrellas and overturned baskets on their heads. To me, the sound of rain was intoxicating, a conversation between earth and sky. At the beginning of the season, I knew some people held monsoon parties—“drinking as much as the rain poured,” said Grandmother—and danced into the early hours. Now, the rain ceased and began again, no longer a steady presence. We were lucky to escape the flooding of the towns on lower land, the tremendous damage to crops and homes, the fierce mudslides. Madhupur seemed in a bubble, warding off ecological disaster.

“One, the tea itself must be good. Not fancy, but just strong. Then you let it sit awhile while it steeps. But when you pour it, it must be hot. And when you drink it, it must be nice and hot as well.”

Here she paused to give us a look, as if imparting a secret. “But not to scorch your mouth. And a porcelain cup is good, because it will retain the heat. A little milk, a little sugar …” And here she sighed, relished the teacup in her hand.

“It is good around three in the afternoon, when the heat of the day is still strong. When you can feel the sun. If someone starts dinner outside a little early, then the whiff of wood smoke in the air is good. But you know, the smoke is better on a rainy day. When it is nice and summer hot, you want to smell only the sun and whatever flower the breeze carries.”

Again she paused. We breathed in, seeing if there was wood smoke anywhere.

“Only the first three mouthfuls will be good. You must relish them: its heat, its flavor. After that, you will drink only the memory of that first taste, until you drain the cup.”

“What about the sugar? Don’t forget the sugar,” said Rasi, who had heard this story before and was idly playing with a top.

“Yes, you must remember not to stir the sugar in too forcefully in the beginning. In fact, a little sugar should be left to coat the cup’s bottom. Stirring too hard fans the tea and makes it cool. Now you are rewarded with a sweet ending taste.”

I was still too young for tea, but my personal favorite drink was Coca-Cola, which I was also not allowed to have but had tasted once at Mary Angel’s house. It was like a liquid jewel, and I planned on drinking a lot of it when I got big, and to bypass tea entirely. Grandmother’s friend Dr. Kamalam, who was also our family doctor, said that tea wasn’t good for children or adults, that good water, thinned buttermilk, or light juice from fresh fruit or coconut was better. But Meterling was fond of tea, and got a soft, dreamy look when she drank.

Those first three sips, said Nalani when I told her what Meterling had told us, those first three sips are so precious to her because she lost Archer. That’s why she thinks the flavor can’t last to the last drop. Three sips and gone.


Another day, in another distraction, Meterling told us about a poet.

“Our island has many poets, did you know that? It is always poetry we rely on, some of us, to set the tone for our days. Everyone thinks of Tagore, or Kalidas, but there are many more alive today. One of my friends is a poet, and she works, ever present, at her desk in the morning chill, moving her pen across the page. Perhaps she uses a pencil. If her window is open, you can hear the slow tap of her typewriter keys. She was my classmate at school, and she wrote poems even then.”

This is what Meterling told us when we asked her if she was not sad that Archer could not see his child. We thought that sorrow would eat her up, as it had eaten others in our family, tales we heard that we never knew if they were true or not. But Meterling hugged us close, and said no, no, that was what the poet was for, what poems were for.

“She is our inspiration when we feel bad. No matter how deep our heart drops, my friend the poet will pull us up out of dangerous water, somehow, with those lines, her magic cards, bring us up bit by bit so we can choke out the water, pull oxygen back into our breath.”

Meterling carried the poet’s books about with her on occasion, but mostly they stayed in her room on a shelf, thin spines edged neatly together. There was a pile of paper bound together with a ribbon as well, blank pages for Meterling herself to fill up when the time was right. To that end, she kept some fresh pens and a few sharpened pencils in a long, narrow wooden box.

And when will the time come for Meterling to pen her own thoughts? We wondered about that mysterious force that would rise up somehow, in a cloud of ink and erasure, and take her away from us. We knew so little about writing. There was a hundred-year-old man who lived near to us, a famous author, said our grandmother. He needed very little contact with the world, it seemed, and mostly penned his famous work in foreign hotels on holiday. He asked only for quiet. Once he paid for a family of bleating goats to be removed from his neighbors’ garden, supplying them with milk from his writing income to make up for their loss. He was eccentric, and just a bit scary, and the poet sounded just as bad. We certainly did not want Meterling to end up a writer!