TEA ADDICTION - A story

Few retired persons had a daily meeting in a part in the city to kill time by discussing various issues of the city, political and other national and international affairs, over a cup of tea with the result, certain persons became tea-addicted.

Tea addiction is generally classed as one of the least bothersome addictions. The main signs of tea addiction are headaches, brown teeth and dressing like your grandparents. Those who have been inflicted with tea obsession often feel helpless due to how inexperienced medical professionals are on the subject, as they normally say to patients, "let's have a cup of tea and discuss this."

Tea is the third most common reason for not sleeping, coming in slightly behind depression, and the main reason - that it is not yet bedtime. People often think that people addicted to the caffeine in tea don't sleep well as they drink too late at night, whereas actually it is usually because the person is lying awake anticipating the morning's first cup of tea. This can lead to problems, especially if you wake up to find you are all out of tea bags.

Tea can be drunk with sugar, with sweeteners, and with relatives, who will often complain, "This is too strong for me." Tea is also versatile as it can be consumed in any situation.

Tea is great in all situations. Often after good news people will say, "Let’s have a cup of tea." It has also been used over the years during arguments, mainly because a fresh cup of tea can cause major burns if poured directly onto a moaning partner. Tea has also been customary at funerals over the years, although in recent years there has been debate as to whether there is any justification for causing major burns to corpses.

After the success of the AA for alcoholics, many people who were addicted to tea joined the TA, but were left baffled when their first assignment was a 9 month stay in Afghanistan. Of course, after realizing the TA was actually the Territorial Army, they instead set up Teaholics Anonymous, a place where groups of people of from all backgrounds can sit around discussing their experiences. Tea is strictly forbidden, so members tend to bring strong alcoholic beverages. Things get very confusing on every third Sunday of the month as the AA and TA have to share a hall and members often claim to belong to a different group than they came in with.

I still recollect when sometime back, the  senior citizens meeting almost daily in the park over a cup of tea, could not get the tea which comes from a little distance either by making a call or giving a missed calls for the number of cups required.  On that day what happened, the senior citizens – Dewan and Madan - addicted to tea were not having the mobile of tea vender to give two missed calls to have two cups of tea.  Thanks to the fast communication system, one of them made a call to me as I was away to Delhi to get the mobile number of tea vender – to whom we call as Shotu with love – to either give them the contact number of tea vender or give him two missed calls to get two cups of tea.

To make it sure that they are not deprived of their tea, I gave him the number and also to be doubly sure, made two missed calls to Shotu.  Dewan on getting the number was anxious to have tea, also made two missed calls.  It happened so that they got four cups of tea but in the meantime, one more tea addicted – Ashok has joined us and enjoyed the evening with real addiction for tea by offering one cup to Shotu also, what he later on confirmed, on phone to me.