The Monkey Mug

We have these mugs in our house that have Japanese-anime-style whales on them.

Their smiles are wide and innocent, the shade of blue in which they swim is pleasant, not the sad kind that makes you cry inside. Years ago, my parents decided they wanted more of these mugs but the store they bought them in no longer stocked them. So we went online and discovered that there were yellow monkey mugs, and pink rabbit mugs too, a whole world of cute animal mugs that kept their chai hot long enough for them to slowly drink it each morning while they read the paper and ate khakra.

So they ordered the monkey mugs. My mother only had my dad order 6 of them. Each mug is $12 so this felt like a splurge. The monkey’s joined the whales in the shelf, breaking up the sea of blue with their gentle yellow.

She now regrets that decision. These mugs were already a Prized Possession then for their superiority to other mugs. But they are more valuable now because we can no longer find them at all. They seem to have disappeared from the internet as well as the store my mother bought them from.

And the consequence of buying only 6 is very apparent now. Because mugs can break too. “These mugs fall a lot” my mother said, as if them falling was a quality unique to this particular design. So after my dad broke the second to last monkey mug while making some kind of elaborate tea with tumric, jeera and a black tea bag, we are now down to the last Monkey Mug. (edit, there are actually two, but I wrote this before figuring this out and didn't want to change it)

We initially joked that my dad could absolutely not have the Monkey Mug anymore because if he dropped it while making his tea, we would no longer have their cheerful faces looking at us while we poured chai into them.

But somehow things changed. The Monkey Mug became my father’s mug. Coffee and chai are both poured into it for him.

We all have adapted our own mugs in response. My brother gets the squirrel mug, my mother a whale mug, I get the Moomin mug because I’m the only one in the house who doesn’t think it’s a crime to drink chai or coffee once they’re cold.

(The warm drinks inside were a comfort, an escape for me in the first few weeks of the pandemic when the realization began to dawn that I would likely not be going anywhere until the end of the summer. I have a Pavlovian response at this point to the mug rather than the temperature of the drink.)

So mugs are a small comfort in the dryness of our daily routine. Sometimes if I am in a meeting or working in my room, my mother will bring that Moomin mug to me and my heart leaps a little when I see it.

We recently collected some old mugs that I used to have in my apartment. These are larger and are perfect for cupping your hands around while you sip their contents. They are even worse than the Moomin mug at keeping anything warm but I feel joyful when I feel them in my hands.

If joy is in a ceramic mug, I think that mug is worth holding onto.