The Making Of The Tea Bag

For quite sometime now I have been using those tea bags which my sister from America gifted me.

These are herbal pouches flavoured with peppermint or lemon grass or ginger-lemon, etc. As such they dont contain tea leaves and are supposed to be wonderful as anti-oxidants. It is usually brewed in plain hot water without adding any milk or sugar. A hot flavoured water is what it is. I got into the habit due to my sister drinking cups of it while here on her India trips. It is refreshing and keeps one away from snacking. It's an anytime drink and does not harm our system.

Usually one bag is immersed in the glass jar along with a cup(s) of water. It's microwaved for a minute. The dicoction is poured into a cup to sip it while still hot. The tea bag is re-used many times over with as many cups of water depending on how many people want to have it. It need not be strong. Just flavouring the water is the essence of this simple drink. It is very easy to brew it in a microwave and serving is much easier without messing around with milk or/and sugar.
The tea bags which sister got were made in Thailand, China, etc.

Of course, I hunted for an Indian product and bought one soon.
I am careful as always, to check for any metal linings due to my habit of microwaving water very often.
I was about to insert the Indian product into the water jar and felt a sharpness while trying to unwind the dip-thread. To my horror, found a stapler-pin fastened at the gather of the bag and the dip-thread.
I had to literally remove the stapler-pin each time I wanted to use the Indian-made tea bag! I went back to check how the foreign tea bags were secured.
They nicely secured the bag by merely threading the dipping thread through the bag itself. It appears very neat, tidy and easy to remove and use with no bother of a possible accident of a short-circuit in the microwave.

This shows much thought goes into even a seemingly small product like the tea bag. The eye for detail is so very essential for any product to succeed.
Have the Indian manufacturers not thought of this? I wonder.
Since microwaving has caught on in India, the think-tanks have to come up with safer products and move on with times.
They don't take the end-users' conveniences too seriously.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why products fail to take off.
Nothing should be brushed aside as insignificant and the example of the tea bag proves this point so very well.

Cheers!
Mahalakshmi