“Don’t boil tea, just brew it!” — Every morning while sipping my morning tea, I remember this comment from my friend who is a tea lover. “Tea should be sipped in its own flavour without adulterating it with too much of milk and sugar.”

Yes, he is right, but I do not pay much heed to the science of making tea, because rather than the flavour it is the feeling of waking up to the day that draws me to the cup of tea. The day slowly emerges, and I drift into my routine after the morning cuppa. Along with that, a broadsheet newspaper always gives a kind of kick-start to the starting point of the day, slowly gaining momentum… 

Never a tabloid for the morning! The day should brew this way, not just boil all of a sudden with something sensational that causes turbulence as if the air carrier falls into an air pocket while you are taking a nap. But sometimes the equation changes…

As I open the morning broadsheet, a photograph grabs my attention. It was already seen the previous evening via social media and TV, but it struck me – the people of a nation literally capturing the President’s House of a nation and the first citizen going into hiding. 

Political turbulence beyond words. It was not an image of mob fury, but something emerged out of compulsion of the Sri Lankan natives where the economy nosedived like never before and people even starved because of the decline in the crop owing to many reasons.

Something had been brewing in the island nation for the last couple of years but now it reached the boiling point. When political decisions go wrong, the people suffer and they retort.

What made the people storm the house of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa risking their lives in the nation under curfew? When you feel your future, your very life is at stake, you take the law of the land into your hands. When you have no cooking gas in your kitchen, no teargas can disperse you, says Lanka experience.

But things are not always that easily comprehensible.

When I heard the news of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead during an election campaign, I was a bit too intrigued and shocked. He was a right-leaning leader, a nationalist who wanted to strengthen the nation’s defence power. He tried to revive the economy of the nation through his economic strategy, pet-named ‘Abenomics’. 

There were bouquets and brickbats that he got. Still in the nation that is considered one of the safest, without much political violence or gun violence, a former Prime Minister was shot dead. Incidentally, his assailant is a former member of the Japanese Navy, also known as the Maritime Self-Defence Force.

What made a citizen pull the trigger like this? Political enmity? Mental turbulence? Or something else? I am baffled because blood terrifies me. The world needed Shinzo Abe.

Remember, Beatles icon John Lennon was shot dead on December 8, 1980, as he was entering his apartment, by an ardent fan Mark David Chapman, who was said to be mentally unstable. At times admiration also turns violent. Inscrutable is the way the labyrinth of the human mind functions. 

When Mahatma Gandhi was at the prayer meeting, what made Godse pull the trigger aiming at the chest of India’s Father of the Nation? Nationalism? Patriotism? History intrigues, and at times it shakes you. The bloodstains in history pain you.

As I thought of the leader who led India to Independence without bloodshed thus setting a model for the world, yet another image appeared last day. The new bronze cast of India’s national emblem of four lions, standing back to back atop the new Parliament building in New Delhi, as part of the Central Vista project. 

The new lions looked a bit too ferocious for me, as is the case of thousands of others. When Emperor Ashoka installed the Ashoka Pillars with lions, it preached peace because he had converted into a Buddhist, shedding all the elements of violence within. His lion never roared, and they never reflected aggression or violence. 

However, the first sight of the new makeover with the “lions with bared fangs” send a shiver down our spine. Why should we roar when a smile is enough? In the childhood tales, the lions never terrified us and they wandered around smiling – from Panchatantra to Disney’s Lion King.

As the roar reverberates, a kind of anxiety brews within me. I close my eyes for a while. My morning cuppa is getting cold even as the roars of the day are awaiting me!