TeaTalk:101

About 5 years ago, when the world was shackled to the indoors because (ok pause, the best My Little Pony song just shuffled in my playlist ...ok 2 minutes later, back to Hozier ) of Covid, I was making chai for my parents . I don’t know exactly what was so different about this specific pot of chai, but it was then I was knighted as the house’s chai- brewer. Since then, every 5 p.m. chai time has been hosted by yours truly. .. low and behold, I’d become a woman in the kitchen.     Since the times of Martin Luther and the Reformation or Thomas Hobbes and the Enlightenment , women have been chained to the indoors as the house’s cook , among other “homemaking jobs.” Although today , standards have be gun to change in the west drastically , the stereotypical “cook” being female remains ...or does it? Alongside the “female cook,” there lies the opposite of the “male not-cook.” Expected to be the money-makers in society, men apparently don’t have the time or skill to be good c...

This Friday was a harbinger of a new goal: write like the unnamed kid that had Mrs. Valentino before I'd read Cat in the Hat Now, I can say I have good vocabulary (ignore the fact I know harbinger from Genshin despite never playing the game) but the oxford dictionary kid is a level I am still far from for many reasons, but we don’t need to get into the minut e . As Mr. Unnamed has imprinted his essay in my head, the thought of him has found refuge with my other goals: getting into college, opening a bakery once I’m a rich lawyer, causing the third Boston Tea Party, and becoming a master of spinjitzu . Ninjago references aside, I don’t know this kid ( well, he’s a man now but for dramatic effect, he’s going to stay ‘kid’), yet his writing alone has marked him.   The question of someone being marked or unmarked is one of opinion. In the U.S., my parachute-bound self is quite noticeable , but in Mumbai, hardly anyone would bat an eye at my presence alone.   Guys can you ...