THE ONE WITH BUTTER TOAST & CHAI

A few days ago in the middle of Ramadan, my long lost friend Sana was on my mind. We were five close friends in middle school, who lived in adjacent apartment buildings and would meet every evening in my apartment’s compound at dot 6. It was our sacred hour - secured for some under-the-street-light-badminton, exchanging day’s tantalizing gossip, talk about boys, console each other about our “struggles” with parents, play some more badminton and lord knows what else spontaneity that crossed our anxious minds. 

Sana was the one who was always late for our rendezvous, so we’d go up to her apartment to fetch her highness 😂. There, she’d be sitting and chatting away with her large family at the dining table, drinking chai and “butter toast”. It was quite appalling at first to see someone our age drink tea, but what was even more surprising was their accompaniment with Chai - there would be a huge stainless steel bowl of chilled white butter in the center and a big plate of toasts. Everyone would slather butter on the toast, dip it in chai and take in a mouthful and go back to chattering away.

It was the same snack every evening we went up to her place. Aunty would coax us shy girls to try a bite, but we would politely decline giving some excuse of being full or an honest ‘mom doesn’t let me drink chai’. One day Sana lost her patience at our timid, shy selves and stuffed our faces with chai-dipped butter toast, and oh God was that DIVINE! I wanted to just sit down and devour a few, but damn those manners! 😅.  I went home that evening and told my mom what a treat I had and all I got from her was a stern, “so you had chai?!” But hey no regrets 😂. 

As I sit down today with my version of Chai and Kerrygold butter toast, I think about Sana and wonder whether she still follows her evening chai & butter toast ritual. Is she OK? How is her warm, welcoming family doing in these crazy times? I hope she was able to celebrate Eid with them.