Beverage hierarchy: It's a mugs game

"Two cups of tea for my visitors," requests a colleague, adding for good measure, "and I'll have a cup as well." The cup is actually a misnomer because the management's instructions are specific. Tea is to be served in mugs for office staff, though visitors are permitted the use of a cup and saucer, the same as for senior staff, while those next in the pecking order must make do with cups - but not, alas, saucers. Nowhere is the hierarchy of the Indian office more apparent than in the hallowed corridors of the pantry where the distinction between those on probation and others who have been confirmed is acutely observed. The fine balance between the bone china tea cup and the ceramic coffee mug might appear of little consequence, but there is no better reflection of one's professional status than the ritual of tea service in the Indian office.
 

It isn't just the cups and spoons that merit distinction. The highest echelons of power earn you a tea bag accompanied by a dainty bowl in which to dispose of it; a step lower and you've earned the tea bag but not the bowl, so perforce you must cast it into the dustbin and earn an irate memo from the housekeeping department, or into the saucer where it seeps into a puddle, leaving untidy drips over your shirt that tests the patience of your spouse. The mugwallahs have no choice, their brew served "ready-made", a potent blend of milk, sugar and tea. Senior executives qualify for mixed or cooked tea, too, should that be their preference, but with sugar served on the side. Junior staff wanting "bag tea" must bring their own stock of tea bags, but will be dispensed hot water, though, mysteriously, in a glass. Interns qualify for paper cups, but no more than two a day. Coffee for senior staff stands automatically approved, may be occasionally entertained in the middle patriarchy, but is discouraged by most managements at junior levels, a hangover from times when it was considered a sophisticated, expensive beverage. Coffee served in Indian offices is, therefore, mostly always insipid.

Visitor requests for green tea are automatically accompanied by a plate of cookies, but should the guests want mixed tea, with or without milk, don't count on the biscuits unless you specifically ask for them. But the pantry boys are likely to even out the score by serving thin arrowroots instead of the desirable digestives.

Inter-office meetings could test the mettle of most management interns but not of these intrepid tea boys - a black tea here, a ready-made cup for the boss there, coffee without sugar for two, regular tea for everyone else, served in bone china for the heads of department, sans saucers for those next in line but eyeing promotions, in mugs but with saucers for those in human resources in charge of the pantry, and in plain vanilla mugs for the rest - irrespective of their content. It's a reflection of India's chaotic democracy with all its caste factions that most of us grasp instinctively but which foreign visitors would likely consider insensitive.

They may rarely get it wrong - and then there's the chance of deliberate provocation - but add visitors to the office meeting and there's a chance of their gloved hands trembling slightly as they're thrown off kilter. The tea service, after all, isn't just the carefully nurtured edifice of the company's public face - it is a repository of feudal inheritance that the self-service dispenser with its attendant democratic values, simply fails to match.