Ask anyone on the
streets of Kolkata how to have the best cup of tea, and the answer will
include the word "bhar". Bhar are small, handmade cups made of clay used
for serving the sweet, milky tea that is sold on the streets all over
India. There was a time when the clay cups were everywhere as well: at
every railway station, street corner or shady spot underneath a tree.
But plastic has rapidly replaced the clay.
But there is one place, Kolkata, India's former capital
and a place that stubbornly keeps one foot in the past, where the
tradition has been preserved. Tea drinkers here, swear by the
superiority of the clay cup. The clay, they say, gives the tea a rich
and earthy flavour. It brings a ceremonial ending to each cup of tea as
well. When the tea is finished, the bhar are customary thrown and
crushed to pieces on the ground.
The bhar, like small pieces of disposable art, are bearers
of the age-old Bengali tradition of clay-pot making. Each cup is made
by hand, from clay dug out of the Ganges river. Communities of potters,
who have maintained the craft for centuries, sell them to tea vendors
across the city, who operate their stalls from dawn until the late hours
of evening.
But Kolkata is not immune to plastic and paper. Ready-made
cups are cheaper and easier to handle, so tea vendors can sell them for
a rupee or two less than the bhar. For now, many stick to serving tea
from the environmentally friendly clay cups, but no one know for how
long the tradition will continue.
Adjaj Kumar, an employee at the luxurious Taj Bengal
hotel in Kolkata, drinks tea at the street stall outside the hotel. 'I
come here several times a day, the tea breaks are very important to me.
Drinking tea from plastic? No, I don't. It destroys the taste and the
experience,' he says. [Karim Mostafa/Al Jazeer
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