My Experiments with Tea

Gandhi experimented with truth and wrote a book about it. He thus inspired me to delve into the mysteries of the next most elusive thing in the world- the perfect cup of chai, more than 60 years later. That, by the way, gives new meaning to the phrase "greatness is its own reward". If, like me, you grew up on a healthy dose of the X-files, you will know that the truth "is out there". Fortunately for us, tea isn't. Quite readily available in fact.

Step 1: Procurement

If you were to go to a store and check out their tea section for the first time, you would be overwhelmed by the the number of options available . I did not have a preferred brand, had never tried flavored or green tea. Or mint tea or ginger tea or spice tea. In fact, berry and orange-flavored tea didn't even appeal to my senses. It finally came down to inky-pinky-ponky. After all, experiments require a healthy dose of luck.

Speaking of luck, I had read a status message a few days ago in which someone's boss had asked them to look at just the bottom 20 resumes out of a huge pile they had received. His logic was that if they weren't lucky, he wouldn't want them working for his firm anyway.

Step 2: Making a hypothesis (I might be mixing up experimental method with the 'scientific method' as taught in my 11th grade biology class)

In this case, the hypothesis was simple: 'I can do this'. It was also vague enough to cover all possible outcomes. Eg. I can make great tea, I can procrastinate, I can give it a shot, I can fail miserably etc.

Step 3: Putting my hypothesis to the test

Decided to go with cardamom tea, mainly because I like the smell of cardamom, and I had a packet-full of it lying on my shelf that I had no other use for. Not going into details at the moment. Saving that for my patent.

Oh, ever noticed how vague patents tend to be? Like, if they are talking about a single effective catalyst, "it is a metal or metal salt (chloride, sulphate or carbonate or derivatives thereof) belonging to group I-VII" (that's practically every metal there is!) "...with or without heat treatment at a temperature between 20 deg and 1140 deg C". Sometimes I wonder why they even bother.

Step 4: Results and conclusion(s?)

I realized what I had been missing all these years. Oh chai, how do I even begin to express my feelings? Also, I decided I could do much better. Overall, I concluded, the experiment was a success in that it validated my hypothesis (as I knew it would-- ooh, I'm psychic :))

You might be wondering about the picture. I know you know. Still, it is best to make things clear. In the immortal words of Shaggy, it wasn't me!