Laal Saah

Words by llakshee Nath

Magazine | Issue 03

When I utter the word ‘saah,’ the sound flows out with a subtle susurration. The long vowel follows like a broad tail, petering out with a sigh as if to rest somewhere or wander into the nooks and crannies of nostalgia. I wonder why it is called black tea in English. With no added milk or sugar, it is anything but black. I like the Assamese phrase for it - ‘laal saah,’ red tea.

On a whim, I raise my Borosil glass mug towards the setting sun. There are shadows in my laal saah. Through the red liquor, the nearby buildings and the blooming petunias on my balcony have turned into shadows. Even the sun, through the glass, seems like a faraway beacon. It occurs to me this could be some kind of a sign for the present to bow out as if setting the stage for an entry. What else waits to appear in my saah, I wonder.

In my fifties now, with each sip, I let my mind wander with the long vowel of saah. And while I am at it, I would like to believe that the tea leaves of my saah have come the Singpho way - riding on elephant backs plucking leaves from tall tea trees in the forest, in the easternmost parts of Assam. I have heard stories of how the Singpho people brewed the tea leaves for its therapeutic qualities, sacred ritual offerings and to honour guests. If they had not treated Robert Bruce to a bowl of this beverage, the tea trees would still have been kaanhor baati standing tall and wild in the forest unlike the obedient pruned shrubs in the large commercial estates.

Drinking laal saah was a fascination as a child. My first sip was as a toddler in the Tipling homestead in Upper Assam. It was a gesture of indulgence, I was told, offered from my grandfather’s kaanhor baati, a bell metal bowl. I have no memory of this. Children were not given tea but milk for their growing bones. I do remember, however, the thrill of holding my first laal saah in my kaanhor baati - molten liquid jewel pooled within a golden bowl. To a five or six year old, it was the baptism of having arrived, or so I thought. Now I know it was the gift of indulgence of my grandparents’, sitting in the large mud plastered kitchen in the 1970s, far away from parental controlling gaze. As I look back, my first bowl of laal saah, came with the fragrance of the crackling firewood under the kettle, the monsoon rain drenched courtyard and the sodden plants outside. With no milk, no sugar my laal saah holds a warm memory in its jewel toned liquor in the light of the dancing flames.

The diffused light of humid summer afternoons, especially in Upper Assam comes with a numbing effect as though cajoling one to sleep and indulge in dreams. And that's how the entire household napped after a lunch of steamed rice, maasor tenga, and vegetables from the backyard. This light falls in a quiet transparent tangerine shade where I see my grandparents sitting in the front veranda of the Tipling house, looking out towards the long driveway ending at the road with paddy fields on the other side. It is their quiet moment together while the rest of the family is deep in siesta. My grandmother is draped in a cream silk mekhela and cotton sador; her salt and pepper hair oiled and held back into a chignon just above the nape; her forehead bright with a coin sized vermillion dot, of which a few light sprinkles have strayed onto the tip of her nose. My grandfather is sitting next to her in a white khadi cotton dhuti and half sleeved vest, his thick milk white hair brushed back. Holding their bowls of saah, they talk in low voices usually of a list that needs attention - a fence needs mending, which bamboo grove would yield strong poles, selling the areca nuts, the cow is yet without a calf, rice variety to try next, papers for the Printing Press, shops needing repair in their market. To a listener the conversation is mundane, the everyday accounting of income and expenditure. It was the privilege of a secure present that planned a future. As a child, attempting to nap, their talk through the window, soon lulled me to drift away into my own world.

It occurs to me now; the silence between their words held more than what their conversation gave out. Their pauses to sip laal saah, hyphenated a quiet sense of contentment in their companionship. They had raised a large family on a large chunk of land after clearing the forest, cultivating paddy fields, growing their own fruit orchard, vegetable yard, starting a printing press and setting up a market. None of that remains now but it is this moment that quietly slips into my Borosil mug as a mellow tangerine shade that comes with a hint of lemon juice in the laal saah - a perfect sip for summer afternoons.

The sun has dipped further turning my saah into a scarlet shade. I find in it, the colour of flouting rules especially the untold ones, like the one when I walked into a hut on the other side, to ask a girl if we could play. The veranda where my grandparents sat had a few thatched huts towards its left. A small protruding part of the flower garden demarcated the two areas. These huts were for those working in the printing press and the paddy fields. There was an unspoken rule for us children not to trespass into their privacy. The girl and I sometimes spoke across the fence. Her tone I note now, held a hint of taunt which made me guilty of the house standing behind me with the long driveway and the flower garden. Standing in front of the girl’s hut holding an old shoe box, I have a vague memory of being caught in a frisson, looking back to see if my grandparents were up from their siesta, the discomfort of being ordered back.

The memory of that afternoon is a fading image at the periphery like the edges of a forgotten black and white photograph. At the core remains fragments of playing with dolls fashioned out of old clothes, doll sized mattress, sheets and pillows fit into the old shoe box. Each time I went to Tipling, my eldest aunt and granny made dolls and outfits to play with. These were carefully stacked under granny’s bed before I returned. These I carried with me that afternoon to play with the girl.

The childish contentment of finding a playmate soon turned into awe when she asked if I would have some tea. She must have been the same age as I or a little older maybe. At first I thought it was part of our little game. She deftly pumped the kerosene stove in their little kitchen, put a pan of water to heat and threw in pieces of dry bay leaf with cloves when it came to boil. She dropped some tea leaves and closed the pan with a lid taking it off the fire. While the tea leaves steeped in water, she put an iron kerahi on the stove and quickly roasted some bengal gram, stirring quickly till the brown skin split revealing the golden kernel inside.

Inside the cool mud plastered hut, the fragrance of bay leaf and clove infused laal saah and roasted gram floated between our sips off the steel tumblers. I was in awe of her and a little peeved too. She was already in the adult world where she could make decisions to light a stove, brew tea and also roast grams to offer to her guests. I don't remember her face or her name but what has remained with me however is the memory to replicate that laal saah with bay leaf and cloves. It is this laal saah I often turn to, looking to untangle myself from frayed nerves.

The sun has set and my mug is empty except for the few stray grains at the bottom. There are no shadows in my mug. The petunias and the buildings have returned in a darker hue. As long as there was laal saah, it held the sepia tones of quiet companionship, sisterhood, and indulgence with a sense of spaciousness, all together in a gentle bonding as is the nature of liquid and also of memory. No milk, no sugar. Simply the tea leaves, left to steep in boiling water with the heat turned off. The result is what the water holds lightly within its molecules - a deep shade of red or a light tangerine or a scarlet with an earthy taste.

Ilakshee Bhuyan Nath has worked on television and radio as a presenter, narrator for documentaries, taught in school, trained corporate employees in communication and soft skills, and most importantly raised two daughters. An avid reader and traveller, she explores the local neighbourhood with equal curiosity as the larger world outside. A postgraduate in English Literature and a diploma holder in Journalism and Mass Communication, journeys and stories fascinate her. Her articles and stories have been published in The Best Asian Short Stories, Jaggery Lit, Café Dissensus, few anthologies and newspapers. She was commissioned to bring out two Coffee Table Books, documenting Indian handloom weavers’ entrepreneurship journey.