My Grandmother's Ginger Tea

Today, the 10th of October 2017, it has been TWENTY years since my paternal grandmother passed away. This is also the point where I have lived longer on this Earth without her than I have with her around... Hard to get my mind around that fact but it's true..Last night as I was mulling over my grandmother's memories, I came across a blog post by a family friend's son where he had written about the technique of making a cup of good, strong, ginger infused tea. I cannot think of ginger tea without thinking of my grandmother...so it truly seemed like a sign from above.

Just like my mother's panacea for all ills is a cup of strong coffee, my grandmother's was tea. No matter who comes to our house with no matter which problem, the first word's out of my mother's mouth, before she offers any sympathy or a more concrete solution are,"I will make you a nice cup of coffee!" Little wonder then that my Dad tracks coffee prices around the world so that every time they go overboard with their household budget, he can conveniently blame the ever (and over) flowing coffee!
My grandmother had to start her day with a cup of hot ginger tea. No dry ginger powder for her.. It had to be fresh ginger, pounded meticulously in her brass mortar, and then boiled in water with carefully measured tea leaves. Milk was added separately to the cup along with sugar and then she would sit down to enjoy her first cup of the day.
I remember groggily awakening to the sound of the mortar and pestle at the unearthly hour of 4:00 am at times... Those were the days when my very social grandmother had invited relatives for lunch and had to start cooking literally at the crack of dawn. She made everything fresh, on that very morning, from scratch herself.. no fancy cooks would have ever passed muster with her. But before she began her first self assigned task of the day, she HAD to have her cuppa chai! And hence the sounds that used to shake me awake from deep slumber...I think the only time she ever actually relaxed was with her first cup. After that she was on the go, almost throughout the day, putting many a younger folk to shame with her high energy levels even as she came close to seventy years of age.
Her second cup of the day was when our milkman of more than forty years brought fresh milk. No pasteurized, sterilized, plasticky milk for her. It came straight from the cow and her ten o clock cup
actually had unboiled milk in it. She always claimed there was nothing to match that taste!
On the first of the month, she unfailingly paid the milk bill, with crisp rupee notes which she had withdrawn from the bank that very morning. Oh yes! There was a method to everything she did...That was also the day, month after month, when she made a nice hot cup of ginger tea for our milkman who, after so many years of faithful service, had become family, with the fresh milk from his steel can..
Her third cup of the day was at 4:00 pm, after her short nap and before her evening walk. This was also the time when people would pop in to meet her and to share life's travails over a steaming cup. In those days of no social media,, people actually visited each other and bonded over tea and Marie biscuits.. Simple pleasures but it took them through the daily battle of life...

Today, her antique steel kettle, with its tightly fitting lid, lies unused in my mother's kitchen.My mother prefers to use her own steel vessel with its handle for easy transference of the tea to a cup. The mortar and pestle, which once upon a time, shone like spun gold and were home to finely crushed ginger every morning and noon, are covered with the fine patina of age and memories.. so so many memories.. of sipping tea after being diagnosed with jaundice at the age of seven, after a hectic day at school, after complaining about a sore throat and after getting married when I started brewing  my own tea to coming back for a visit and drinking my grandmother's unmatched to this day ginger tea...