Bed tea

For those who have never heard this term, it is a charming relic of our colonial days, when some major-domo was supposed to serve his masters tea in bed. In today's egalitarian India, the concept has survived after a fashion, and, in government guest houses and such, still represents the height of luxury. The idea behind bed tea is to be gently woken up with a refreshing cuppa and the morning newspapers. In the IIT guest house in which I am, bed tea, along with the morning newspapers, has survived and is going strong. But there have been some small changes. You are, in fact, woken up by a buzzer, which sounds like a macaw being inexpertly assassinated with an electric drill. And then served a cup of tea so sweet that you could easily go into a diabetic coma as you imbibe it. All this at 6:30 a.m., like clockwork. I'm not complaining: I still think the whole idea is quite charming and write these lines in order to make some humble suggestions for improvement. Mute the buzzer, let the benighted guest add his own sugar. And oh yes, while I'm about it, India's premier technological institution could easily make reliable, Skype-enabled Internet available to its guests: it's perfectly reasonable to not have international dialling available in the guest house rooms, but most guests, specially the foreign ones, might like to talk to their nearanddearlovedones, as the expression goes. If bed tea needs to be axed in order to make this possible, so be it -- I noticed that each room has an electric kettle and teacups, so all that's needed are tea bags and sachets of sugar and coffee.