To Tea Or Not To Tea!!

Tea_Party

“An empty mind is a devil’s workshop”

This was one of the favorite sayings of my father. There was a reason that made me agree with him wholeheartedly. Whenever I was getting bored or was idle, I conjured up lots of things to keep myself busy. I always made sure I was doing something using my mind even in my times of boredom like reading science encyclopedias, catching up on sports trivia, learning a new hobby or getting familiar with new devices. Now as you can see, I was making pretty good use of my idle time but every time I did any of these things out of sheer boredom, the above words came back to haunt me. Cases in example were what actually emerged from my “workshop” after I did the aforementioned things:-

1. Reading science encyclopedias: Learnt the ability of lenses to concentrate the sunlight in the physics section. Put it to use by using magnifying lenses to burn things, like my mom’s favorite curtains!!

2. Catching up on sports trivia: Found out how baseball is so similar to cricket but broke the neighbor’s windows in my very first pitch!

3. Learning a new hobby: Realized collecting magnets isn’t the same as collecting stamps and keeping the entire collection near the TV can actually make it go bad (guess should have read all the chapters of the encyclopedia closely!)

4. Getting familiar with new devices: Perfected mobile phone use as a little kid by dialing up restaurants from my cousin’s cell and ordering tons of food at his home, most of it without his knowledge (to be fair, I hardly ate any of it myself!!)

The exact same sense of boredom that led me to do the things above was prevailing over me today. It’s not that I have lack of work but just that I am tired of work today. The week’s fatigue was so much for me that I fell asleep the moment today’s work day ended and woke up only at dinner time. Before I could cook something, I realized I had to submit an assignment that involved interpreting survival analysis for a population receiving hip replacement of Charnley implants fixed with Palacos or Simplex cement with a lateral surgical approach without trochanteric osteotomy, on patients with primary coxarthrosis (I hope you realize by now why I don’t exactly want to work right now!!).

Having slept almost entire evening, I knew I wasn’t getting any quick sleep in the night so I knew I had to put my boredom to good use. This weekend for me involves besides other things, cleaning up the house. I decided to give myself a head-start by starting with the kitchen. While cleaning, I found a big stock of tea my ex-roommate had left behind. Since he has left the country, I cannot get it back to him and I am hesitant to just throw it up all away. The problem that I face with finishing it up myself is- I don’t drink tea!!!

While this might be considered normal anywhere else in parts of the world, in our country this is a scenario almost hard to imagine. Every social visit or gathering you visit brings with it the mandatory cup of tea. Most of the times the host will not even bother to ask and you will be presented with a hot cup on your arrival. While my near and dear ones realized me as an exception over time and stopped the habit, every time I went to some new place my refusal was met with looks of genuine shock.

“You don’t drink tea??” was the common refrain with dropped jaws.

Their jaws dropped further when I refused the next choice of coffee (yeah I don’t drink that too!!). My parents always scolded me for this queer habit of mine as it made me look disrespectful towards the host. Well they could have housed couple of coke cans and I am sure I would have hardly looked disrespectful then!

Back to my problem- I opened up the box of tea to look at how this alien drink looks like. I must tell, I was totally overawed by the amazing aroma. The tea grains seemed to be giving me a ‘come drink me’-look! I thought about the repercussions my starting to drink tea will have. For one, it will make everyone in family very happy as I will become socially more acceptable. I will have something new to do but also seem like a fool to have skipped it for so long! But the reason I am currently refraining from making this big decision are due to the first lines of this post.

Everything I have done in sheer boredom has almost always never turned out to be that great! So I will wait now, wait for the moment to pass over. And if the temptation still remains, I might just give it a try. After a hectic week, I never expected the question at the end of the week for me will be- To tea or not to tea!! :)