Cup that cheers ☕

My morning is never complete without a cup, sorry, a mug full of tea, made by me, as per my own set standards😊. The tea leaves have to be of a particular make and brand, and has to be brewed as per my prescription. No other tea can measure up to the same standards.

It is not just the taste of tea that matters. Equally important is the fragrance that hits the right notes as the tea is made and the fragrance that one experiences with each sip. One may term that as one of the many quirks that we human beings acquire over a period of time during our existence on this mother earth.

But on a more rational thinking, I find that this addiction for freshly brewed tea emanates from the feel good hormones that get released with the energising fragrance of brewing tea hitting our olfactory system, thereby triggering release of serotonin and dopamine by our nervous system.

Whether in leaf form or CTC dust, mingling of tea with boiling water releases a fragrance that many of us relate with carefree days back from our childhood.

On a personal note, i relate this fragrance with my childhood days when my parents welcomed home any family friend or relative who came calling on us with no specific purpose in mind. Also relates to occasions when I as a child had accompanied my parents to the homes of our relatives or family friends with no specific agenda. 

To put it in simple terms, tea defined moments spent with others in happier times, when person to person interaction were moments to be cherished. And precisely such moments prompt our brains to release all feel good hormones that elevate our minds to a state of bliss, no matter how short lived it was. 

One can perhaps compare the fragrance of freshly brewed tea (or Coffee for Coffee lovers) to similar feel good aromas like fragrance of first rains on parched earth (Petrichor) after a long drawn summer,  or the aroma of coal burning in a sigree on a cold wintery night, or the fragrance of rotis being baked late evenings over a chulha, or the floral fragrances wafting through the air in the still of the night. 

We all have grown up experiencing such amazing fragrances that have released happy hormones within us. 

Probably that is the major cause for our lifelong fascination with such simple yet heavenly aromas.

Cheers to all tea & coffee lovers 😊