aaaah chai, tea, cha, even tea latte...so many names and so many forms but completely essential to the existence of civilization. But for this tea, we would all want to kill the person who drones on in front of us or turn the frenzy on ourselves! Tea allows us the comfortable, slurpy silence. It makes the inanity of social banter bearable, even pleasurable. The bengalis have made tea drinking and conversation almost ritualistic. "Adda" is synonymous with penurious surroundings and the completely disjunctive, highly intellectual exchange of ideas. Where would Alexander Pope's world of intricate faux pas and delicate morals be without the ornate china tea sets to give it a beautiful center? In fact, one can tell that a person has completely given up the desire for any human company when s/he gives up drinking tea!

Introduction to Poetry

"I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means."

-- Billy Collins