Doodh Patti Painting

My Cup of Tea

Pakistan is one of the best travel destinations in the world – desert expanses in Thar and Cholistan, Lush green plains in Punjab, mighty mountains in Northern Pakistan, Chitral and Swat, so many unexplored and just to yourself places, what else. Start of some of the world history can still be traced down to Pakistan – Indus Civilization. Moreover, Pakistan being one of the cheapest countries in the world is best for budget travelers. Which is why it is said that Pakistan has a lot to offer to every one; not only to travelers, hard core adventurers, mountaineers, and rural tourists, vacationers but also to anthropologists, archeologists, and researchers? (Also for those who want to sit back and enjoy the ride from the comfort of home). Read about my travel experiences at Doodh Patti - My Cup of Tea.

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Doodh Patti Mind

Doodh Patti Mind

Ya, Ya

What is in your doodh patti chai?

Every person today carries approximately 250 chemicals within his/her body, chemicals that did not exist prior to 1945. World War II was a catalyst for the transformation from a carbohydrate-based economy to a petrochemical-based economy, as chemical substitutes began to be invented for goods restricted or made unavailable during the war. The economic boom that followed World War II supported the parallel boom in the invention and use of chemicals, which are associated with the convenience and flexibility of modern living. About 100,000 chemicals have entered into the market since 1945, and it is estimated that 75,000 of them are in commercial use. Today only about 3% (about 1200) of these chemicals have been tested for carcinogenicity. Nobody knows about the risks of cancer carried by the rest.

Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are toxic substances released into the environment through a variety of human activities. They are very stable and long-lived chemicals that build up in the food chain and slowly poison animals and humans. POPs are lipophilic and tend to accumulate and also magnify in the fatty tissues of living beings. When they enter the body they don’t leave it and are persistent. They are also semi-volatile, which means that they can stay on the ground for a number of years and then be transported hundreds of miles away and be deposited in another place until they eventually end up in animals and humans. They are also subject to global distillation i.e. migration from warmer to colder regions called the ‘grasshopper effect’. For example, a pesticide used in Asia can easily move to Europe.

The pollution of the human body by POPs has occurred together with the appearance of several alarming trends in human health over the past few decades. Almost everything we eat, drink or inhale is broken down by our bodies and then expelled through the process of waste elimination. But POPs are not. As we age their concentration become higher, and their potential effects on our health become more serious. People consuming excess fat are subjected to greater risk. In the United States, a recent study conducted by National Academy of Sciences estimated 20,000 cases of cancer a year, due to pesticide abuse alone. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence of the oestrogen effect of POPs. Many scientists believe that toxic agents in the environment have reduced the average sperm count in men by 42% in the past 50 years, and rising percentage of sperms are deformed and non-functional. Testicular cancer is on the rise, as are birth defects such as undescended testicles and menstrual disorders such as endometriosis. Toxic exposures during foetal development, infant life and childhood can have life long effects including increased susceptibility towards cancer and damage to the immune and reproductive systems. PCBs and dioxins are even suspected to contribute to learning disabilities.

POPs are found in common places. Electrical transformers contain PCBs. Dioxins, furans and other POPs are created during the manufacture of paper and vinyl plastic, which is used in making children’s toys, clothing, polybags and tubing, flooring, pipes and siding. When vinyl is incinerated or burnt in a backyard trash fire, dioxin is formed again. Dioxins are also formed during the manufacture of magnesium and other metals. POPs enter our bodies mainly through food. POPs accumulate in fat and their concentration increases at each step of the food chain. For example, PCBs have been found to accumulate in the liver of sheep. Dieldrin accumulates in the wool of sheep that feed on contaminated land. Children are more vulnerable than adults to many kinds of pollution, POPs being the major one. Many POPs have been detected at significant levels in the breast milk of some women from many countries worldwide. By threatening the health and survival of our children, POPs threaten our future generations too.

PCBs are typical industrial contaminants and can be found everywhere in the environment. In the nutrition chain there is a significant cumulation and in breast milk and in human fat. PCBs are very persistent, hydrophobic, and generally do not migrate. Dioxins and furans have never been manufactured deliberately, except in small amounts for research purposes. They are unintentionally created in two major ways - 1) by the process used to manufacture some products like pesticides, preservatives, disinfectants and paper products. 2) when materials are burnt at low temperatures, for example, certain chemical products, leaded gasoline, plastic, paper and wood. Dioxins can be inadvertently formed during the manufacture of a group of chemicals called chlorophenols, used to preserve wood, hides, textiles, paints, glues, etc. Open burning of household waste in barrels is potentially one of the largest sources of airborne dioxin and furan emissions. Dioxins/furans are widespread in the environment and persist over long periods of time. Although they are most often associated with industrial activities, some natural occurrences such as forest fires are also believed to make a small contribution to their presence in the environment. These compounds have been measured in air, soil, sediments, meat, milk, fish, vegetables and human biological samples.

Green Peace investigations conducted in 1998 in seven Asian countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan revealed:

• Stocks of 5,000 metric tons or more obsolete pesticides, including POP chemicals are stored in extremely hazardous conditions in some of these countries.
• India is among the three remaining known manufacturers of DDT in the world, the other two being Mexico and China.
• India exports nearly 800,000 kg of POP pesticides including aldrin, DDT, BHC chlordane to a long list of countries where their usage is banned. Some of the pesticides such as aldrin are not permitted to be manufactured even in India.
• In Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh, locally banned or severely restricted pesticides are freely available. Green Peace found DDT, BHC, dieldrin and heptachlor openly sold in the vegetable markets of Karachi. Hardware stores of New Delhi stock the deadly pesticide aldrin whose registration was withdrawn more than three years ago.

These findings appeared in a slightly dated article, ‘Living in a Chemical Environment -Persistent Organic Pollutants’ by rashmi sanghi in the journal ‘Resonance’ but are still relevant today. [Daily Times Monitor] 

Think with Doodh Patti Mind

It happened at Lahore School and it's all about Doodh Patti at Think with Lipton Mind and My Teaness

Jalal HB Doodh Patti

Doodh Patti - Tea served by railway in the train (Karachi Express only perhaps) {Thanks JH)

Steeped in Doodh Patti

Rafay Mahmood

"For me, doodh patti is a blessing." So declares Dr Mustafa Ayubzai when confiding in Kolachi about his obsessive tea-drinking habit. For anyone who doubts his love affair with tea, Ayubzai adds, "Whenever I feel down or overworked, I order my peon to get me a cup of tea from a nearby dhaba. I need a cup every two hours just to keep my brain working. Without it, I don't know how I can ever see so many patients everyday."

Ayubzai's craving for tea is something many Karachiites can relate to, if the sales of tea are anything to go by. A local dhaba owner in a commercial area reveals that on average, 1,800 cups of tea are sold daily using a total 30 kilograms of milk. Affordable and addictive, it is the drink that unites college students, journalists, labourers and doctors alike.

Ever ready to serve their needs, doodh patti dhabas have always been a regular feature of Karachi, but surged in number twice in recent history. The first was after the Russian invasion in the eighties, when immigrants uprooted and moved to big cities, and the second in the aftermath of 9/11, when the Northern areas of the country were attacked, forcing residents to flee. Many of these residents wound up in Karachi and opened up doodh patti dhabas. Well-known names include Café Pyala and Quetta Unabi Hotel.

So just what is it about the famous doodh patti that endears it to so many hundreds of people? Kolachi spoke to Zaman Khan (not his real name), owner of a tea dhaba in Saddar, to find out. "People in Karachi are always busy, frustrated, and overworked. When they come to a dhaba, they want something strong enough to take their mind off things."

According to Khan, the trick lies in the boiling technique. "When making my tea, I don't add extra tealeaf. All I do is add extra milk and boil it until the real essence of the tealeaf – in other words, caffeine – is released. At home, people just boil it a little, but here, we boil it for longer, which makes it more addictive."

However, Khan says that this is not a technique all dhaba owners subscribe to. "I don't want to name them, but there are a few dhaba owners who extract opium from its stem, grind the stem left behind and let it boil in the tea."

The popularity of these dhabas becomes evident whenever they have to close, such as during ethnic riots in the city last month. "I did not care about what was going on in the city," confesses Ayubzai, "but when I couldn't get a cup of tea at my clinic during the four days the dhabas was closed, I felt really down – not because of the violence in the city, but because I couldn't get my doodh patti."

On the other end, the ethnic violence resulted in huge (financial) losses for the tea dhabas as well, which is a source of livelihood for thousands of people that sometimes work late into the night. Some dhabas remain open as late as 3:00am. "Hundreds of people visit our dhaba daily in the morning either for breakfast or just for a cup of tea," confirms Mohammad Nawaz, a waiter at a tea stall in Saddar.

Regardless of what is in the tea, however, there is a much simpler explanation for why these dhabas are always thronging with people. "The best thing about doodh patti dhabas is that they are cheap entertainment," remarks Saqib Anwar, a student. "Our group of friends goes to the nearby dhaba every day. It's a place where you can sit and talk for hours, and no one will stop you.

Doodh Wali Chai

Shopkeepers and vendors drive the country's activities and keep it bustling with life and energy. Dawn photographer takes a look at a few business which give Rawalpindi its old city charm. here a tea vendor Mohammad Saddiq pours tea from a ladle for his clients at a market. That is what makes Doodh Patti a delight. No?

About

About S A J Shirazi

S A J Shirazi is a Lahore based writer. His writing on diverse subjects appear in Dawn, the News, Nation, Spider, BootsnAll and other A list publications. Shirazi holds an MPA (University of the Punjab) and Linguistics (Russian Language from National University of Modern Languages) degrees and is working at one of the leading universities. He has authored two books (Izhar, Ret Pe Tehreer) and translated Din Mein Charagh by Abbas Khan into Light Within.

Okay, now that we've gotten that referring-to-myself-in-the-third-person part out of the way, here's the more human, less quantifiable description. I am trying to make sense of blogging and other, still new, forms of social media [Facebook, Twitter and more]. I'm always looking for friends. You can always contact me at sajshirazi@gmail.com. I also blog at Doodh Patti and Logic is Variable. 

Updates: No, I am not trying to change the world. I am only changing myself!


About Doodh Patti

Traveling whirls you around, turns you upside down and stands everything you took for granted on its head. We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

The beauty of this whole process was best described, perhaps, before people even took to frequent flying, by George Santayana in his lapidary essay, “The Philosophy of Travel.” We “need sometimes,” the Harvard philosopher wrote, “to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.” Doodh Patti is about this philosophy.

I also get quires, mostly from my foreign friends, about what is Doodh Patti. The term Doodh Patti (doodh walli chai) is very well know all around in this part of the world we call home and even among those who have travelled as a backpacker to Pakistan, maybe it is new for some.

Here is my explanation, “Tea is taken in Pakistan more than any other drink. You get a cup of tea made by boiling teal  leafs (patti) in water and mixing with lots of milk (doodh) and sugar anywhere. Those who prefer more milk  ask to boil tea leafs in milk instead of water and call it doodhpatti.”

This is my cup of tea. How you make yours? Read more About Me or ask.


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