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Love in the Times of Shakespeare and Kalidasa
Kalidasa, the classical Sanskrit poet, is often referred to as the Shakespeare of India. While it offends a certain passionate section of Indians who insist on using the title the other way around (calling Shakespeare the Kalidasa of England), it also tempts one to make a comparison between the two great poets. Rabindranath Tagore did…
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Indian Paintings: How to See, Understand and Reflect on Them
When a subject perceives an object, the experience of it not only depends on the qualities of the object but on the state of the mind of the subject too. The ancient Indian sages elucidated this point beautifully using the metaphor of a mountain lake. The clear still water of a mountain lake reflects the…
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Understanding the Philosophy of Indian Aesthetics
How we see the world, how we perceive it, it’s greatly influenced by the culture we grow and live in. Therefore, when it comes to aesthetics, the cultural background matters. It matters how some of our senses have been sharpened by our surroundings, while the others have been blunted. In other words, our past experiences…
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Teaism: The Wisdom of Ancient Tea-Masters
‘Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence,’ wrote Okakura Kakuzo in The Book of Tea. The movement started around the 15th century in Japan. It was the time when Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism were seeking mutual synthesis. The pantheistic symbolism of the time was…
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Chai-Chai-Chai: The Story of Indian Tea
You visit anyone’s house in India and you’d be greeted with an invitation for Chai, the great Indian tea. Often it’s not even a question, it’s more of imposition. Indians don’t use the phrase ‘would you like some chai?’ as much as ‘let me bring you some chai’. As a result, hardly any interaction —…
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The Empire of Tea
Tea first reached Europe via whispers. As the travellers kept noticing in the Asian cultures a strange predilection for this divine drink, the gossips and rumours began to spread. This was the first of the series of events that were going to shape the empire of tea. Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1577), an Italian scholar, mentioned…
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The Early History of Tea
From mythology, let’s move on to the history of tea. One of the earliest texts on the subject of tea is Ch’a Ching (also known as The Classic of Tea), written by Lu Yu in the eighth century CE. Lu Yu, the great tea master, began to travel and research tea and water in the year 755 CE.…
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The Tea Mythology
Before there was history, there was mythology. That’s the strange thing about human societies. The origins are almost always riddled with obscurities and only myths and legends can shine some light on them. The same holds true in the case of tea. Since it originated and evolved in the far-eastern cultures, which, historically, have maintained…
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