OK NOW YOUR TURN
pls pls ramble abt any niche interest you have
HELLO THANK YOU
*invokes inner history nerd* so. listen here colonizer and listen good. i will subject you to my random knowledge cuz due to youtube, undiagnosed neurodivergency and most importantly- bad jokes. i have a vari-tea of niche interests but the first thing that came to my mind was my knowledge of the history of how Indians became one of The Top Consumers of Tea.
how did this wonder-drug make its way into our masala covered hearts? what led to the fact that everyday at 4pm the word at the tip of most indians' tongues is "chai"?this is my thesis as a pro desi tea obsessed freak.
This story, like most in our history, starts with the arrival of the British. i would like to insert this picture i found in a video that i laughed at for a solid five minutes:
anyway
technically tea was invented in china, and for a very long time it was exclusively grown there. it was a very high class commodi-tea. it was considered so precious that in 1662 when king charles the second married the Portuguese princess catherine of braganza: her dowry was a chest of tea and THE ENTIRE ISLAND OF MUMBAI (then, bombay) for an annual lease of 10 pounds. let me make that clearer. THE PLACE WHERE A 1BHK HOUSE IS SO EXPENSIVE MOST PPL CANT AFFORD WAS EQUIVALENT TO THIS:
needless to say the brits was so freaking addicted man. they wanted this. so bad.
By the 18th centuary there was a war between the english and the dutch and the brit resources were down the toilet so they couldnt afford to spend all that silver on the trade of tea leaves with china. and china was uninterested in anything the white boys were offering.
UNTIL they discovered something china wanted.
✨Drugs✨
the white boys wanted that tea. and they would do anything. so they started growing opium in india (by that time they had colonized us bruh. they came into our backyard and were like "bro we're such good friends pretty please let me use ur backyard" "ok what do you want to do w it?" "i wanna grow drugs bro" "....ok" "you'll work for me no bro?" "why would i do that" "bro its ur backyard bro" "what-" *england pulls out slavery* "SHUT UP AND DO IT") (dont come at me lmao this is a very rough simplification of what happened)(imma get blocked for this?)
anyway, brits grew opium and smuggled it to china in return for TEA. FOR TEA. 40.
now after the charter act of 1833 (idk what that is exactly but basically brits lost its trade monopoly with china and so now china said we should see other people and it was an open relationship and britian got very pissed but they signed the act anyway i think)
to deal with this they established the Tea Committee (this isnt the first government board specifically for tea. there were plen-tea of others like the Tea Board Of India) which dealt w the extraction of techniques, tea seads and resources from the chinese. this was highly unsuccessful and china was not impressed. this is an example of british desperation they'll do anything at this point. (took everything in me to not insert pictures of how they treated indian farmers. it was *inhales, lets go of anger for my ancestors treatment* bad)
but in the end this qoute i found (undoubtedly by a white man) "fortune favours the white men" came tru and they got their way.
oh you thought i was done? haha babygurl i am not
in 1843 robert fortune, who was a scottish horticulturist, went on a solo trip to china to study (read as: steal) tea plantations. no actually apparently he did study cuz he published a book(i forgot the name).(yes. HIS NAME WAS ROB. FORTUNE. talk about being born for a job)
lemme insert a quick meme here:
(they actually hired him on the spot and gave the amazed man 500 pounds per annum and sent him off to china)
he was to perform what we call The Great British Tea Heist
the brits had found their vigilan-tea
my guy was committed to his role and shaved his head and pretended to be a monk and after 3 months wrote a letter to his company saying "bro i got the goodssss"
lmao no this it what the letter said- "l have much pleasure in informing you," he wrote, "that I have procured a large supply of seeds and young plants which l trust will get safely to India."
NOW they finally had the greens and started planting it in india. over the years indian tea topped the market in britian as the best tea. mostly cuz the white boyz HYPED it up. they even started doing diss tracks for chinese tea. this is something read right out of an advertisment- "indian teas are more wholesome, purer, cheaper and better than chinese teas in every single way". white boyz started saying stuff like they got out of a toxic realtionship with china and a healthy one with india (but they were the toxic ones)
now brits tried to globalize indian tea to get the moneyyy~ from indians.
their first experiment with (another) government body for tea- Indian Tea Association began on the indian railways. these railways were the ancestor of the IRC-tea-C. basically they started making tea on the railway platforms. this started the trend of tea being the signature experience on every indian train journey, from the first class to economy, everyone was having it (cuz trains were introduced and quickly became popular in use). train tea was said to be better than the quality of tea in 5 star hotels. and this converted us from a nation of tea-totalers to teach addcits.
now i just have one thing to say in the end. HOW did the quality decline so badly my desi brothers and sisters? nowadays the tea on trains is basically water but brown. milk is a lie.
anyway. on the end we got it right. we took tea from the chinese and brits and we added milk and we added sugar and we got:
✨chai✨
you have reached the end. congrats.
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One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.
Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.
It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?
Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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