The great tea experiment.

If you’ve been tracking my time in India via social media, you may be acquainted with one of the characters of my daily Indian life, a person I call “the vested tea man”. This gentleman strolls about the office, politely depositing cups of tea and coffee on the desks of everyone on our floor, including myself. Not surprisingly, this has served to make him one of my favorite characters in the story of the summer I’m spending in India.

Yesterday I initiated an experiment with him. Before I explain, let me provide you with some background.

During my first days in the office, the vested man would come to my desk and ask me if I would like him to bring me a cup of tea or some coffee. I was delighted by the novelty of the situation and sometimes requested tea, other times I’d ask for coffee. I never perceived myself to be asking for one more frequently than the other. I enjoyed some variety in my warm beverage consumption (By warm, I actually mean absolutely blazing hot. I don’t know if they just make beverages in India hotter so that they still seem warm relative to the ambient temperature or what, but this will definitely be a summer full of burned fingers and taste bud casualties.).

But one day, he didn’t ask. He just showed up with a cup of coffee for me in the morning. And every day since then, in both the morning and the afternoon, he’s automatically delivered coffee to my desk.

Let me pause to clarify that I am by no means ungrateful or complaining about this state of affairs. I’m downright giddy every time he places that unbelievably hot cup in front of me. But my curious and scientific mind won’t rest. Thus, the experiment.

I found out on Wednesday that one may order additional beverages outside of the routine morning and afternoon deliveries. Here is the experimental procedure:

At least once each day, I will request a cup of tea. I will take record of the time of each petition and count the number of times I ask for tea before he:

A: begins to automatically bring me tea.
OR
B: returns to asking me for my beverage preference.

As of today, I have made two requests for tea: yesterday at 12:30 pm and today at 11:23 am. Yesterday’s was a jilted, awkward interaction. Today there was difficulty determining whether or not I wanted milk in my tea, if the tea should be brewed in the milk or in water with milk added later, and what kind of tea I wanted. In the end, I received steamed milk with some sugar and both a green tea and assam tea bag in it.

We’ll hit our stride soon, my vested friend.

Happy Friday.