Sasti chai

Sasti chai > colloquial hindi for cheap tea, popularly available in road side tea stalls all over India.

She was the best of my friends, she was the worst of my friends.

Every time I looked at her, my imagination just stopped short of an inch of where my myriad mind could take it. It was the culmination of many things. Some religious, some communal and some plain boring and stupid. There were always people who told me that you "should" never take the next step, and there were people who would always egg me on. As for me, I realized at a very early stage : better to keep things simple. When you are young and the world is yours to conquer, there are very little things that can matter. We always look at the equation with a very misunderstood view and always try to factor in as many things that can come to our head. I thought of it too. The "what if" syndrome. For days together, I used to wonder, confusing myself in a web of paradoxes and the sheer difficulty of impossibility and I always used to come to the same conclusion.

I could tell her, but then she would kill me.

This relationship, which was bordering at the platonic, would not last. And I just did not want it to end.

For one simple reason.

She was the best of my friends, she was the worst of my friends.

As I grew up and begun to understand the ways of the world, I still though I should tell her. I should just come out and do it.

"I love you like crazy. I have loved you since the day I laid my eyes on you. I have loved you since the day you said hello. I have loved you forever."

We've all been there. The silly dialectic which confuses more than it explains. The gentle whiff of her perfume, the casual flow of her hair.  The way she used to talk endlessly and the sheer audacity of her moves. I couldn’t fathom for the life of me, what was wrong. And yet, for the longest time, I have been her friend. I was there when she bunked school for the first time. I was there when the principal caught her and told her father. I was still there when she made her first boyfriend, and I was there on her first heartbreak. I was there when she was too afraid to go to the hostel for the first time, and I was still smiling like an ass the first time she stepped out of it.

And for her tea. She made wonderful tea. Now, I am a habitual tea drinker, some might even say that I border on the insane, or maybe an addict, but I love my tea. The day she made me my first cup, things were never the same. I used to frequent her house, sometimes, only for the tea. She started with a faint rush of chamomile and then slowly, the educated graduation to the Darjeeling. There was no mistaking that in a very short time, she had a mastery over the alchemy of tea.

The night I received a phone call from her, when Ryan had broken up with her, I went by her place to offer a shoulder. I still remember the ruffle of darija, the sweet Leones tea she made, and it took all my senses to stop myself from just leaning over and kissing her. The aroma of the blend made me shift into a dimension, which friends must never cross into. My move must have been bold, for she stopped me early and asked me to leave.

There was no going back to the moment after that. i couldn’t explain anything to her after that, neither could I try to reason with her. It wouldn’t have been very difficult, but there she was.

The best of my friends, the worst of my friends.

I used to tell myself, this could never happen. The very thought of it needed to be quelled by some compelling reason, no matter how wayward it sounded. And my world really fell apart, the day she met Yohan. For someone who was in love with a girl for a lifetime, I couldn’t find one wrong thing with him. He was perfect and ideal for her, every way I looked at it. I knew she was happy with him and he was happy with her. I tried to be the "good friend" that I always had been and I never actually saw any reason why things should change. He would laugh with her, he would cry with her. He would laugh at her idiotic jokes and he would love her tea.

When she began talking to me again, she complained about how we wouldn’t hang out together anymore or how we wouldn’t go hunting for new brands of tea. Man, she was crazy about her tea. She would ask me over and I would never go, saying that its Yohan's job now, not mine. I still couldn’t tell her. My feelings took a back seat and all I was concerned about now was the happiness of a friend.

The best and the worst.

Chalking out her interests, Yohan, would be the perfect boyfriend. From Chinese to Moroccan, From Oolong to Iranian, he bought her the most exquisite tea samples from around the world. She loved it. And she loved him for it. My interests were lost on her and devastation struck when I saw the ring on her finger one day. I have never been so crestfallen nor so angry at myself than that day. I blamed everyone except myself and I wept. For the cowardice, that kept me from telling her how I feel, now I couldn’t but hate her.

She was the best of my friends, she was the worst of my friends.


A couple of years earlier, I saw her while I was shopping on the streets of Mumbai. She looked a tad older than she should have been with a strand of grey here and there. She looked lost and in despair, and yet I couldn’t help but fall in love with her all over again. As I approached, she looked up and her eyes showed a flicker of recognition, as they lit up. 'Arun! Its been so long!", she said. I couldn't help but smile as i acknowledged with a curt reply as i commented on how frail and despondent she looked. Asking her If she was alright,I couldn’t help but notice her eyes. They had lost all color and were simply dim.

I learnt that Yohan had left her just a couple of weeks back chasing some rich sassy tail. As it turned out, she didn’t have such a fairytale life after all. The engagement broken, the family at a spat. All her interests waned, I sat her down at the nearest tea joint and offered her some tea. After the first sip, she spat out the fluid and yelled, "This tea tastes bad! Arun! You have a very poor choice of tea!". I took a long deep breath and calmly replied, " Yes I do. i didn’t realize it for the past 10 odd years, but I do like my tea simple. Sasti chai."

I took her in my arms and I kissed her. Not a care in the world, for that moment was with me forever.