By March 2, back in Calcutta, we were noticing that the tea we brewed
in my inlaws' apartment didn't taste right. No matter what kind of
leaf we used, it ended up tasting blunt and characterless. So I
popped downstairs to the nearest grocery store and picked up a bottle
of water - forgive me, it was from a subsidiary of Coca-Cola - and
tried again. The difference was night and day: now it really tasted
like tea. Also, after drinking a cup, I saw that tea made with the
bottled water didn't leave scummy residue on the china the way the
house water did.

Now that we had a phenomenon, the explanation was ours by just asking.
In the spiffy high-rise complex where my sister-in-law and
brother-in-law live, the water comes from deep wells. This water has
a high concentration of iron, my engineer brother-in-law explained.
Later on, we tried brewing tea using tap water from another relative's
apartment in a different part of Calcutta. It was fine.

The only remaining mystery was how we had failed to notice the iffy
tea we'd been drinking during the couple of days in Calcutta at the
beginning of our trip, before we took off for the hills. Maybe jet
lag. Maybe the distraction of being surrounded by people you haven't
seen in a long time. Who knows?

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html
BRO wisdom: REMEMBER YOUR FAMILY IS WAITING FOR YOU