Tea and people, or the advantage of the “fast tea” theory

Emzar Jgerenaia

someone would say that is not time to think of tea in the summer heat, when we are sweating all over and gasping for breath, when the heat pesters even persons that are very sensitive to cold.

Or what do the people have to do with it? Yet, it is just the people that have to do with it. Besides, now this kind of headlines is in fashion in the television space under the name of serials, and we are also telling about one long serial.
It was a long time ago when hot Abkhazian sun was burning not only Tbilisians, but the tea plantations spreading there as well. They were very beautiful, smooth, portly, fresh and proud. I remember that foreign tourists were often brought to have a look at them, and I was very surprised seeing an ignorant child among them – I wondered what they were astonished at and what they were examining so feverishly. Yet, I was glad since they gave chewing gum to the children of the communist ideology playing there. Then the whole country was living on that tea and made money. Tea-growers had good incomes, let alone the purveyors and the secretaries of regional party committees – they wallowed in money. I remember even more: Georgian tea wrapped in foil, produced for Tbilisians at an unsightly factory located opposite my house, was a nice gift. We often secretly penetrated into this factory’s laboratory to steal flasks for fishing, there was an aroma there, about which I had read in “The Arabian Nights”. I also know that they brought tea in boxes from distant Ceylon and mixed it up with the local one in order to make it better. The plantations were endless, the whole country was one big plantation.
Then we grew up and now drink “Mariam”, “Webner” and – one can go crazy with it – “Beseda”. We, the Georgians, children of the tea country, drink Russian tea “Beseda”. I wonder, on which frozen field this tea is grown. Or let us take this “Mariam”, no one knows what kind of tea it is, maybe it is not tea at all, possibly it is really so, since scientists and some highly educated specialists (and we have plenty of them) have established after many investigations that Ceylon tea is better than the Georgian one, as far as tonus is concerned. And, in general, it is better to drink a dye stuff instead of tea – it is made quickly and will not raise your tonus, you need not brew, wait, it is fast food – “fast tea”: just drop a bag full of dust and dye into hot water and the dyed water is ready. It does not matter whether it is tea or not, the main thing is that it is dark, besides you do not feel nervous that your blood pressure will rise or tonus will decline. The point is that it is foreign and advertised one.
For instance, “Rita” and “Izolda” tea broke a record – they darkened hot water before putting into a cup. You will not believe, what the Georgian tea is needed for – it does not really have this kind of properties. Besides, so many people were employed in this business, there was corruption and so on, including upward distortions. Everything is over – there is no tea, no people, no problems. Besides, in 15 years Kenya has become the fourth largest tea supplier in the world, they are negroes and deserve picking tea, but we are not negroes, it is not worthy of us to be involved in this business. “Emperors” of ignorance tell me over and over again that our tea is not of this or that quality, that our people cannot do it, we are the chosen people. They say it in order drink Russian tea “Beseda” with a big dose of sugar and, according to the new fashion, discourse on bad quality of Georgian products. We annually import 50 million worth of tea, of which real English and Ceylon tea makes up 5%, the rest is dye stuff. But our tea is very good, it has its place in the world and the world market needs it, and they do not need it. Let them ask us, the fans of “Mariam” and “Beseda”, whether we need it.
Let the modern technologies and “fast tea” be blessed. Just drop and drink. We, the Georgians, are genius, especially when we drink Russian “Beseda” tea and think of the bright future of humankind and the hard lot of Kenyan tea-growers and not about our own economy.