An imperial friend

Dr Fahim Chand | Monday March 2, 2026 10:30

Some are socially acceptable.

Tea, for instance. A dignified porcelain inhalation of fortitude. “I’m not coping,” we insist, while clutching a steaming mug as though it contains the secret to stability. Coffee drinkers perform the same ritual, just faster and with more eye twitching.

Other crutches are more discreet. A stuffed teddy bear tucked into a drawer. A particular pen that must be used for important thoughts. The same playlist on repeat because unpredictability is for the emotionally athletic.

We are creatures of habit not because we lack imagination, but because routine is a handrail on the staircase of chaos. We lean on small things so we don’t have to collapse under large ones.

A morning walk. A whispered prayer. A square of chocolate rationed like hope itself. Perhaps the secret is this: crutches are not signs of weakness. They are evidence of adaptation. And if life is a long, uneven road, there is no shame in pausing for tea, preferably with the teddy bear nearby.

I cannot recall a morning when a cup of tea, vigorously steaming in adulthood, politely lukewarm in childhood, did not usher me into the day.

In our kitchen in Lobatse, seated at the long table like minor aristocrats of carbohydrates, my sister Sadia and I fortified ourselves with buttered toast before venturing bravely into the perilous jungles of one-two-threes and the dark arts of long division. Tea was less a beverage and more a chaperone.

It steadied our young nerves. It stood by quietly as multiplication tables attempted to unseat my confidence. The world could be numerically hostile, but we were armed, porcelain in hand.

Naturally, I carried this ritual with me across oceans. When I landed in Canada, that vast and well-mannered expanse known as The Great White North, I assumed tea would be greeted as an old imperial friend. After all, the British had left their fingerprints generously across the map. Surely they had left kettles behind as well.

Alas, my Canadian companions were devoted to coffee, steaming mugs of Java that suggested productivity, urgency, and mild agitation. They attacked academia with caffeinated velocity. That is, until the African connection, namely, me, arrived on the scene. I did not convert them entirely, but I did offer a gentler revolution.

At the very least, I introduced them to the civilised art of British tea consumption, where brilliance unfolds not in a rush, but in a slow, dignified sip. My friend, Dan Ceccacci, would surely attest to that. At the time, of course, none of this mattered. In Lobatse, tea was not a scientific strategy; it was simply how one braced oneself for Crescent School smiling in the distance like an academic ambush.

The mug fuelled spelling tests and fractions long before I knew anything about polyphenols.

We drank it because it was there, and because toast without tea is just bread with ambition. But science, in its white coat and sensible shoes, has since elevated the humble brew to near-superfood status.

It turns out that when we steep those industrious leaves of Camellia sinensis, we coax out polyphenols that boost our immune system and inflammatory pathways, like well-behaved guests at a biological dinner party. I have known this for a while, and each time I read it I feel as though I’ve won a modest lottery: delicious and virtuous.

A moral beverage. A study co-authored by Dr. Nisa Aslam even suggests that black tea may influence markers of inflammation in conditions such as asthma, osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The usual scholarly caution applies, this is not a substitute for medical treatment. In other words, one must still nod respectfully at the treadmill.

As for dosage, the research suggests three to four cups a day, with or without milk. “Khush khabri,” indeed. Before you steep yourself into smugness, however, note that the authors are members of the Tea Advisory Panel, backed by the tea industry. So take the findings with a grain of salt. Just, for heaven’s sake, don’t put it in the tea.