By Anna Notsu
In Meghalaya, people receive and offer tea throughout the day. During my research in the Jaintia Hills, there was hardly a day when I did not have tea. In fact, I often lost count of how many cups I had taken before sunset. ‘Just take it without sugar,’ my companion joked. ‘Then you can take it as many cups as you like.’
At first, I assumed tea was simply a refreshment. Like coffee in many Western countries, it provides an immediate burst of energy. Yet after conducting long-term fieldwork in the Jaintia Hills, I realised that tea occupied a far more important place in everyday life. I often wondered about the slight excitement in the air when someone said, ‘Dih Cha?’ (Shall we take tea?). The question surfaced countless times a day: at home, in tea stalls, during interviews and in the middle of ordinary conversations. Drinking tea lasted no more than five to ten minutes, yet people seemed to welcome these pauses with surprising enthusiasm.
Preparing tea soon became one of my daily responsibilities. Too much tea leaf made the tea black rather than red, while too much sugar instantly spoiled its flavour. After many failed attempts, my host family finally trusted me to prepare tea for visitors. Soon after, I even began to receive compliments from our visitors on my tea. They would say contentedly, ‘You know how to make good tea.’ I was secretly delighted, as if I had received an approval that I had been accepted into Pnar society.
Yet one mystery remained. No matter what I did, whenever I made tea just for myself, it rarely tasted as good. Sometimes I could not even finish the cup. Each sip left an unexpected bitterness in both my mouth and my stomach.
The answer came one afternoon, when I mentioned this to my host father in Shangpung village, where I spent much of my time this year. Drinking tea with him had become part of our daily routine. Coming back from work, he would give me a shout from outside my small window: ‘Dep dih cha?’ (Have you taken tea already?). This was somewhat performative, as we both knew the answer before he asked. ‘Pu em re!’ (Not yet!), I would reply, although I was often already waiting for the invitation. This was a sweet custom of my research life in Shangpung. Even when I had already taken tea, he would insist I take it again, and of course, I never refused.
One afternoon, however, I was washing clothes outside. ‘Chibet!’ (Later!) I shouted back at his usual question. He laughed and replied that he would wait and join me. Then I said, while rinsing the soap off the clothes, ‘That would be better because my tea never tastes good when I drink it alone.’ To my surprise, he nodded immediately and added, ‘Taking it alone is so boring. Tea tastes of nothing. Nothing!’ What I had assumed was my own observation turned out to be shared understanding. Tea was not just something to drink, nor merely a source of energy. Drinking it alone seemed to defeat its very purpose.
For the nature of my research, my everyday life revolved around tea. Outside my house, I was usually on the receiving end. Often, together with my research companion, I went around many homes and tea stalls across the village. At some point during almost every conversation, usually exactly when I secretly yearned for tea, a woman or a young girl in jaiñkyrchah would quietly enter carrying a tray of red tea, along with biscuits and traditional Pnar snacks. Gradually, I began noticing that tea followed its own unwritten rules.
The timing of tea mattered. Tea was rarely served immediately after guests arrived. It usually came later. A friend of mine in Jowai once explained why. Serving tea straight away, she told me, could leave the impression that the hosts wanted the guests to leave soon. Delaying the tea, therefore, was a way of making a statement that they wanted guests to stay longer. It was a quiet gesture to make them feel welcome. This made me realise that I was doing it all wrong when I made tea for others at home – I should not have served it so quickly. What mattered was not simply the tea itself but the manner in which it was offered.
On a surface level, offering tea appears to be an act of hospitality. It expresses warmth, respect and generosity, through which relationships are sustained. Making one feel welcome is part of this offering. Yet people in Meghalaya also know that not everyone is offered tea.
A colleague of mine once said to me, ‘If officers call for tea, that is a good sign. It means your interview went well.’ During my research, I visited government officers, school principals and even judges. In such official settings, tea was not expected. These were busy interactions, and no one was obliged to offer anything.
Yet when someone did offer tea, the interaction subtly shifted. The conversation no longer felt entirely bureaucratic, and my interviewee often wanted to get to know me as a person rather than as a researcher. A relationship that might have ended with questions and answers was extended through a shared cup of tea. The offer of tea rested on the fact that it was not an obligation. Even if I tea was not offered, my relationship with them would not be necessarily harmed, nor did they necessarily need to sustain that relationship. In this sense, sharing tea, then, is a mutual agreement that the relationship is worth continuing beyond a matter of formality or mere hospitality.
Tea does not simply create or strengthen a relationship. It changes the character of the conversation itself. Offering tea can enable a moment of negotiation, in which refusal and acceptance take turns working on the existing relationship.
Over the course of my time in the Jaintia Hills, I also learned that offering tea does not always come with the freedom to refuse it. Much as I loved having tea, there were many occasions when I could not manage another cup. My stomach was already full of sweetened tea from earlier visits. ‘No, kong, no need for tea,’ I would politely insist. Yet I almost never succeeded in refusing the tea. My refusal was usually brushed aside. The host would smile and tell me that I must take tea in her house. Neither of us was performing politeness alone. She genuinely wanted me to accept, and I genuinely felt I had already had enough.
Later, when I mentioned this to a friend of mine, she was unsurprised. In fact, she remarked that I must, indeed, take tea. ‘Of course you have to take tea,’ she laughed. ‘They know you don’t chew on betel nut, so at least you must take tea.’ When visiting others, taking tea was as important for the host as it was for the guest. Curiously, I also remembered occasions when visitors to our own house refused tea and no one objected. Acceptance and refusal, I realised, depended not on fixed rules, but on the particular relationship between host and guest, which was not grounded on any simple social obligation.
After several years in Meghalaya, I no longer think people drink tea simply because they enjoy it. The social work the tea performs is remarkably complex. Tea may be routinely yet carefully prepared, delayed, insisted upon, accepted, politely refused, paid for at a local tea stall or eventually offered for free as relationships shift. Through these everyday gestures, people signal who belongs, who does not, which relationships matter and which relationships are worth carrying a little further.
Perhaps, that is why tea never tasted quite right when I drank it alone. After all the effort I spent perfecting the balance of tea leaves and sugar, what was missing had never been in the cup. It was the people around it.
(The author is a PhD scholar from Leiden University, the Netherlands currently doing research in Jaintia Hills. Her PhD research is part of a five-year project, Futuring Heritage: Conservation, Community and Contestation in the Eastern Himalayas, initiated by Leiden University and Ashoka University. Her research is funded by NWO and the Delta on the Move Foundation)
