The tea that drank up the night

The break was a heavenly gateway, a welcome pause — but not for long

A few months ago, we celebrated our son’s marriage to his soulmate—now our dear daughter-in-law. I had invited some of my college hostel mates to the wedding. Meeting the core group after decades felt surreal.

Within the first few minutes, we effortlessly slipped back into our hostel avatars. Yours truly was the prime target of the old boys' group. Every funny mannerism I owned in that era was promptly recalled and put on display.

It took me back to our hostel days in the mid-1980s, when we were in the first year of engineering at Kolar Gold Fields. The hostel stood at the dead end of the town, with no eatery, bakery or tea stall in the vicinity.

The torturous grind of competitive exams during the pre-university course had taken its toll on our psyche. After securing an engineering seat, most of us had completely loosened up. Academic studies in the first year became our last priority. Studying began on a strictly mandatory basis only before the final exams. The preparatory holidays, stretching to more than a month, were sheer fun. We spent our days on sports, wasteful pursuits, or, worse still, no activity at all.

It was a common fallacy among us that late-night hours were the best for studying—cool, serene, and therefore conducive. Barely two hours into the ordeal, however, our eyelids would grow heavy under the humongous weight of sleep.

So the seven of us in our hostel block took an executive decision: a short tea break at midnight to sustain us for another two hours of study. The prankster trio in the neighbouring room set the plan in motion. The executive chef was Kumar. His two roommates cleverly donned the roles of sous chef and materials procurement-cum-accounts manager. The rest of us served as dishwashers on a rotation basis.

For context, today Kumar is a successful self-made businessman, and his two roommates are top honchos in the corporate world. Ahem! Let’s talk about the erstwhile dishwashers some other time.

Well, returning to the flashback, the tea break was a heavenly gateway, a welcome pause from the monotony of the night's study hours. We would gossip and debate over entirely worthless issues over hot tea.

Within a week, the tea break, meant to last no more than half an hour, began to stretch—poisonously—to an hour, thanks to our addictive chatter. In the days that followed, the tea break mutated into a time-guzzling dinosaur that hungrily chomped through our precious study hours.

The fear of the fast-approaching exams, coupled with mounting syllabi, rudely snapped us awake to the perils of continuing the midnight ritual. 

The midnight study-tea break was a sham, defeating its very purpose. Alas, the tea ceremony was aborted forthwith, with heavy hearts.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.