Two cups of steaming tea are waiting on the table. Toast is jumping out of the toaster. It’s a Saturday morning. Then a good smell of melted butter on the still warm toast assails their nostrils as they guess about the weekend that is just beginning. Anything is still possible because it is not very late. It is true that the weather is grey at the beginning of October, but the temperature outside is still mild. Suddenly, while everything is silent in this building of a small villa in the 14th arrondissement, someone rings the bell on the intercom. Jean-Yves leaps to answer. Nathalie hears him say « yes, yes, I’ll come down right away ». A few minutes later, he comes back up, looking cheerful, with a parcel in his hands. He already knows that she is going to jump for joy. The parcel arrives straight from Kerala. Well, straight ahead, if you like, because he had to cross some borders, some controls before he got there. It was prepared on the 15th of July, as the date on the long letter from their friend Arjun indicates. A little tea powder escapes from the parcel. It was checked and then closed again. It looks a little dented but it is beautiful, with lots of Hindi logos.

A delight for the eyes. As soon as they open the jar, they transfer the fine tea powder into a jar so that not a single grain is lost.

And now the hills of the Wayanad invite themselves into the flat.

She then found herself plunged back into the heart of the tea plantations, which she had dreamed of seeing for so long, before finally discovering them in 2019.

They remember tasting tea with two women from Catalonia in a small carnute on their way down from the high plantations.

She hastens to prepare a tchai tea, a real one, like over there. That’s good timing, Jean-Yves went shopping last night, and he had the good idea to buy a piece of ginger. And there, for her, there are dozens of memories that jostle in her head. The first chai they had tasted in a Guest-House in the Tibetan quarter of Delhi with Shailesh.

Then, there were the multiple teas shared with the families of Rajasthan with whom they had lived unforgettable adventures.

She sees herself sitting in a tailor’s chair, on the mats laid on the clay or concrete, when she was peeling ginger with Bahumati, Parvati, or with Aja and her brother Panu.

One drink, then two, then a third, she liked it so much. Aja laughed at her delight and boiled the magic drink no less than 7 times to make it as smooth and spicy as she liked.

She also remembers the hike she made with Anoop, one day when Jean-Yves, « a little » chaotic, stayed to rest.

They had taken tea in a small shop. Anoop had told him that in the morning he sometimes came to read the newspaper aloud for the villagers. The merchant had made his pots dance and boiled the tea several times, as it should be, on his small gas stove, before pouring it from its full height into small stainless steel glasses.

Finally, she remembers the emotional tea they drank at Arjun’s house the day he introduced them to his mother. An unforgettable and loving encounter.

She sees Arjun again and the loving gaze his mother used to have on him. A beautiful meeting, without a doubt, one of those that forge beautiful friendships that last forever. It was good.

Back to the parcel: with happiness and delicacy, she then takes out the bag of ground coffee of great finesse. A small note is slipped into the upper part of the bag. This coffee comes from the garden of Arjun and his mother. It was harvested by them, ground and packed in the small kitchen in the right wing of the house, at the end of the path dotted with banana trees and tall trees whose tops seem ready to touch the sky. What emotion! It smells like Indian coffee. In just a few minutes, she finds the wonderful scent of Trikaipetta’s coffee trees in bloom.

Under the coffee bag, they discover a black pepper bag with wrinkled beans. Their taste buds get excited and get ready to taste this highly prized spice.

She sees the pepper plants running along the tall trees looking for the sun and thus producing such a generous taste. It is pure joy to discover the treasures that are in this magic parcel. Spices, tea and coffee from the other side of the world prepared by friendly hands. Here it is propelled in the middle of the Indian markets.

She then imagines the saris dancing at the slightest movement of the women standing proudly behind their stalls.

It’s a whole world of four-colour printing that comes into their living room.

She can still be seen strolling the streets of old Cochin, with Johnson, discovering the spice counters.

They had even had the chance to discover, thanks to Johnson, the historic Pepper Exchange in the heart of the Jewish quarter of Cochin, where the price of the spice of a thousand virtues was set.

Two small sachets of Sambar remind them of the meals they shared at Elsy and Tomas’s house. These meals were always presented with extreme care, there were always several flavours displayed in a gallery of colours that delighted the eyes at first glance.

Back to the parcel, and finally, she opens the bag of cardamom and discovers the small, well-filled pods, harvested a few months ago in the garden of Arjun and his mother.

The smell of cardamom is powerful and sublime everything. Magical, it takes him back to the Mothakkara plain, where they had met the Kurichiya tribe thanks to Arjun, on a beautiful day in November 2019.

A small note is slipped into the bag by their friend. India is the second largest producer of cardamom and Kerala is particularly renowned.

Forgotten the greyness, gone the rainy days, annihilated the days of confinement, overcame the fatigue of travel, here is India which invites itself to us and that makes a crazy good.

Happiness is made up of small things, small gestures. This parcel has crossed borders, taken planes, made stopovers, undergone controls, waited for the end of the confinements here and there, waited also for the lifting of restrictions all along its journey, all this to bring a wave of happiness to two Parisians in search of exoticism.

Through this parcel, she also found herself next to Johnson, in a village of striking fishermen. They had been invited to enjoy a chai with them. Or to walk alongside Arjun, to remake the world in the middle of the plantations.

In no time at all, she rediscovered the taste of shared tea one morning in December 2018. They had had to get up around 4 o’clock and found themselves enjoying tea around a fire in a village in Shekawati. Their host had got up to prepare the fire and the tea before they left because he knew they liked it.

He also got the taste of the tea served at the weaver’s in a small village in the Thar Desert. It was at his place that they had learned to use a loom.

Or the one taken one fine morning on the port of Kochi. It was at dawn before leaving for a great bike ride.

In the Shekawati families, she had learned how to crush spices to prepare the chai and they had enjoyed savouring it in the garden of one of the families with whom they had been accommodated, while leaning against the plastered walls of cow dung. Aja had also taught him how to wash the dishes with sand so that the pan and the tea cups would be perfectly shiny.

A memorable tea had been enjoyed with Shailesh in a gargote in the middle of the Thar Desert. They were the first Europeans to come here for tea and the waiter had enjoyed boiling the precious beverage to perfection.

Of course, they have not forgotten the teas enjoyed on the platforms of train stations or on board Indian trains. It was an unforgettable ceremony that the chai-walaa who boarded at each station and would shout to each other to see if anyone wanted to drink tea on board the train.

She loved this country and its people passionately. Her smells, her colours, her flavours, the encounters they had made had imprinted themselves in her flesh for eternity, and now, through a small parcel, their Indian friends had unexpectedly invited themselves for a stay in Paris. Thanks to you Indian friends who made us discover so many flavours, thanks to you Arjun and to your mum for this instant take-off to Kerala!

Par Nathalie

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)