Iced spiced chai

Have you ever seen Death in Paradise? It is a British-French crime drama television series set on the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe. If you haven’t seen it yet, you haven’t missed much. Nothing happens other than a numerous hackneyed stereotypes. Just for fun I will give you a quick rundown of the broad events. In the first episode, the “Chief” of the Saint Marie police station, a British cop, gets killed (that’s a pretty good start, I have to give them that). Naturally, another British cop must be called to solve the crime , because there is not one non-British person on the whole island who can do it. No, I mean, that’s literally what the “Commissioner of police” says: “Charlie Hulme was a British cop. They want a British cop to lead the case”. Of course they do! Makes total sense, right? Okay! So this super genius British cop called DI Richard Poole arrives to fix the island’s problems.  He is socially awkward, though. Just like 90% of the male detectives on television (very original stuff).

Immediately after landing in Saint Marie DI Poole declares that he hates the sun, beach, sand and everything else about the Caribbean and prefers gloomy and rainy London weather. Yeah, did I mention that the show is not convincing at all? Okay, so, Poole soon turns out to be a pain in the butt with total disregard for his colleagues who all happen to be native West Indians. He seems to not care about the local citizens, and in fact appears quite irritated and displeased with any human interaction he ever has on the show. For example, while DI Poole’s subordinate kindly drives him around the island, Poole cannot help himself (on account of being a jerk) and ends up saying to her, “To be honest…the whole Caribbean thing…I am sure it’s nice, but it’s not my idea of…..”. He leaves a long pause at the end of that sentence allowing the viewers to finish his thought with any word ranging from climate to civilization. The only conversations he seems to enjoy are the ones he has with his house lizard. True story! 

The show portrays the natives of the island as lazy, unethical, unmotivated, undisciplined etc. to portray Poole as a better, more ethical character by comparison to the natives. Poole must help the citizens, teach them the real tricks of the trade, show them how to conduct investigations, correct their English etc. etc. so they can learn how to fix their own problems. Offensive much? When Poole learns that Saint Marie does not have a forensic lab (because it’s a small island) and that all the forensic evidence are sent to Guadeloupe for analysis, Poole loses his patience and demands that all the evidence be sent back to Saint Marie where he conducts the forensic analysis with his bare hands and eyes. He even says that the island cannot possibly have equipments better than the ones he carries around in his bag. Because England. If an annoying person like him came to our country and started interfering with our business and correcting our English then we would ask him to leave within 48 hours, or may be 200 years, but leave he must. But in the show everyone seems to LOVE him.  The only annoying things that Poole’s subordinates notice about him are all superficial. They make fun of him because he wears suits and boots and only drinks hot tea even in 100°F heat. Somehow they don’t seem to notice anything else odd about him at all. 

Anyway, I ditched the show but couldn’t stop thinking about the hot tea. Have you ever wondered why India doesn’t have a version of iced tea? Thailand has their amazing iced milk tea. Why don’t we? So I experimented to see if it is possible to make an iced version of our spice infused chai. Turns out that it is very much possible. I know it’s a little late in the year for iced tea, but give it a try anyway because there’s still a little bit of warmth left. 🙂