soulworks.

Mesona chinensis

Drinking Rooibos tea while watching Arrested Development with my sister this evening, almost instantly I was transported back in time by the taste of the drink.

1996, Primary school, afternoon class on the third floor. I remember this vividly because of something my class teacher did to a classmate. The boy was Indian (I try hard to remember his name, but I couldn’t), with a canned drink on his table. He popped it open during a lesson, and our teacher went ballistic about it. A cardinal taboo in class supposedly:

The teacher quickly grabbed the can out of his hand, and chucked it into the bin.

Now, why is this memorable to me? I related the taste of the Redbush tea with a drink that I’m familiar of, and that drink was the one that the class teacher threw away when my classmate only had a sip of it.

My observation at that time, the boy came from a poor family. Perhaps I was wrong on that, but I felt really bad for him. The boy just bought the can of drink, just had a taste of it only to be thrown away. I wonder how he felt at that moment.

What I’m getting at is that I am deeply a sympathetic person. Too deep, I think this controls me most of the time. Too often a thing that another person innocently enjoys gets taken away too violently, without any empathy consideration.

To wherever he may be now, I wish him all the luck and happiness in the world. What goes around, comes around.