Tea

Sanjay mentions “tea” as the Friday word in his blog and has written a lovely poem. I suck at poetry so decided to share an anecdote instead.

I absolutely love tea and once upon a time could drink innumerable cups per day. Those who are from India can identify with the ubiquitous chai-vallas present all over the country. When I joined my architecture program at Sir JJ School of Art, my best friend’s older sister took me under her wing. She took me to the JJ canteen. This place was famous and reminisced by all famous alumni for being the place where they got “inspired.” Anyway it served the most decocted and therefore rather strong masala tea and batatavada with pav. She told me that if my stomach can take that I am ready to face the five years of undergraduate study. I survived that test and spent my five years of architecture eating all the street food in South Bombay. That has worked wonders on my immune system!

JJ’s canteen was run by a very kind gentleman called Laxman who had kids from his village working as chai-vallas. These boys used to go to school at night and work during the day. The architecture building had these two boys, Sitaram and Ramu, bringing in innumerable cups of chai to give us, teetotalers a good caffeine buzz. I for one cannot go without sleep, so survived sleepless nights on hundreds of cups of chai. The vada-pav was so sad and the tea was equally bad yet I got hooked on it. I always used to tease the guys in Hinglish (mixture of Hindi and English), “Arrey Sitaram jara adulterated chai aur vada pav lana,” which translates as please get me some adulterated food from the canteen. Sitaram, barely spoke a word of English but would always give me a beaming smile and say, “Thank you very much Madam,” without even realizing what it meant. Laxman was extremely compassionate with all the students who lived away from home in the hostels. With the rest of us who lived at home he was pretty particular and saw that we paid our chai tabs on time. The kids had photographic memories and would remember how much we owed them and when we ordered what. Despite the fact that we lived with our parents and not in the hostel, we were equally broke as the students living in the hostel.

One year my college hosted the national convention of all architecture schools in India and everyone’s parents came to visit. My parents were not at all interested but I felt so left out. I called them up from school and threw a huge tantrum so they were coerced into attending it! As I showed them around the campus and introduced them to all my classmates, I asked my dad if he wanted to have chai at the canteen. He said “why not” and we walked up to it. At that time I remembered that I had to pay Sitaram and didn’t want my father to know how much I owed. So I told my father, “Never mind, the tea here is rather bad.” At that very moment, cheeky Sitaram ran towards us and asked my father, “Do you want tea?” and ran back with two cups. My dad asked him how much he owed and Sitaram said “Rs. 200.” My father looked at him with a very surprised expression as chai was only Rs 1.25 then. Sitaram then said that I owed them around Rs 200. My dad scolded me as to why I didn’t pay these guys right away. I said that I always paid regularly. So my father asked me that since when was this tab due. I was embarrassed and said that I didn’t remember but the precocious kid Sitaram squealed saying that it was since the previous morning. Then he rattled of how many cups of tea and vada pav I had since the previous morning. My father chuckled and joked that I had an iron stomach to endure all this and not fall sick but my mother gave me one of those looks that makes you want mother earth to open and swallow you! I really wanted to kick myself for even inviting them over. Anyway I learnt my lesson and decided that if my parents don’t want to hang out with me it is just fine by me!