Above: doing Mha Puja in Patan. At this yearly ritual Newars worship the divinity within, then cap it off with an enormous feast. Thanks to Rajman Bajracarya for his hospitality!
Belwo: Oh, those beautiful boys--room-mate / co-conspirator Alden (right) and I during Tihar
Fair readers, y'all deserve a little something to eat to sustain you across this wasteland of words. How about a cup of tea.
Get a hold of the cheapest, strongest black tea you can, from assam or ceylon. (all the better if the box has a picture of a beaming indian family on it.) the best stuff for chai (Nepali "chiya") is called CTC (cut-tear-curl), and comes in little pellets. toss in a teaspoonful of these little nuggets and a cup of water for each drinker, and turn on the gas. Add spices: fresh ginger root, green cardamom pods, maybe a clove or two. Cinnamon's too obvious, but black pepper is delicious if it's chilly out. And add sugar--nice, unrefined, rich jaggery, or (sigh) more authentically, the white granulated stuff. Don't be shy. We're going for near-syrup consistency. Bring all this to a raucous boil and don't turn it down until the house smells like (a sanitized version of) a Kashmiri spice bazar. Then add milk, rich sweet whole cow's milk, or (for more authenticity) the stuff that comes in little plastic baggies, robbed of its fat and adulterated with bad water and milk powder. Add almost as much milk as there is tea, and bring it back to a boil for a couple minutes. strain it into little cups or grubby glasses and serve it piping hot to everyone in the vicinity along with bland, dry little cookies. don't let them refuse. repeat five (5) times a day.
note that this tea is not for those with hypertension, insomnia, or restless leg syndrome.
um...and maybe not for our diabetic friends either!
ReplyDeleteSuch fun reading your notes Jon! Thanks for sharing them.