The man held a cup of tea in his hand and smiled faintly

A man with a thick moustache stood at a small roadside stand in Dhaka, quietly drinking cha. This is the capital of Bangladesh, a city where cars, people, and dust all seem to surge forward at the same time. At a simple table set just at the edge of that constant clamor, he pinched a white porcelain cup between his fingers and offered me a faint smile. In India, tea is often served in unglazed clay cups, but here porcelain appears to be the norm. One can’t help worrying about what happens when a cup breaks, though the people using them clearly give it no thought.

In Bangladesh, incidentally, what many would call milk tea is not referred to as chai but simply cha. A single word can alter the feel of a drink entirely. Even within the same Bengal region, the name changes the moment one crosses a border, which says something about the fickleness of language. Tea itself was brought here by the British in the nineteenth century, yet it has long since taken root as a daily necessity. Morning or afternoon, with or without a reason, people drink cha.

Dhaka on Google Map

Comment via

日本語