Sluurrppp!

At a time worthy of a fine siesta am rooted to a chair with a monitor in front.The tea boy arrives.He is a malayali.Giving a smile he places the tea cup at my desk and buzzes around with his tray of tea cups.I raise the tea cup to my lips and even before I take a sip I hear a huge slurp behind me.Not unexpected but a reminder.I quicly rummage in my desk cupboard for my headsets.A life savior at this H-Hour is the music when someone or the other around me would be spraying away the tea into their mouths with huge slurps.

Ever since I was a kid I had grown up with increasing irritation of tea slurps.When I grew teeth and nails I realised they were as horrendous as pulling a piece of nylon against the tip of your teeth or scratching your fingers against the blackboards.Well a lot of people share this sentiment.I once asked Acha the logic behind slurping tea.He said maybe it was to prevent scorching your lips with the hot tea or maybe so that you get the taste of tea in all the nooks and corners of your mouth or maybe just because you loved the sound.Now the third one is an absolute horror and I had solutions for the other two.Why not wait until your tea is cold in the first place and if it was necessary to get the taste of tea why not do it after the sip?You do not have spray it into the mouth.After all its tea.It will find its way.

Sipping my tea I muse on what standards ought to be set for drinking tea.It would be better to alter the texture a little.Maybe we should start taking them with chopsticks or take it as tea tablets like they must be doing in space.Ah in that case,it would be all chomp-chomps instead of slurp-slurps around.But that would be a change atleast.I shrug at the wacky brain waves.They could not be helped.If Ajay had been around he would have had more of such wacky points to offer.Only the other day he was reminding me not to drain my cup of tea completely at a hosts' and demonstrated the same by leaving behind an ample portion of it in his cup for my examination.After all I was the host.My string of thoughts come to an end when someone does a huge slurp behind me.I hurriedly add more songs into my playlist and drain my tea cup.And yeah I can drain it this time.I guess am not at a guest at my desk!