Story from a Tea Stall

The woman appears to be in the mid-50s. A tea stall owner. Busy, enjoying, has her own circle of life.

The husband and wife built a business some 30 years ago. The place is gushing with tea enthusiasts. There is busy activity at the stove, rush to open milk packages, wash emptied glasses, serve guests all at one time.

The tea is served with a content, confident and responsible smile. Credit to the enthusiastic lady who has assumed her role in the days of people who need tea to get through their day with energy.

Her day apparently starts every day at 630AM. The tea stall platform is about 20ft by 10 ft. Reasonably clean; appears swept a few times in a day. Four poles and shanty roofs made up of polythene wraps give the place shade from Sun or Rains. The place is right next to pavements and on the main street, adjacent to a Bank, a small eatery and a travel agent office. There are few sitting stools and a couple of benches that make the place welcoming for visitors. There appears to be no rush to vacate those sitting.

There is a four-wheeled trolly mobile stall with a clean well-painted top and an aluminum surface area to house the tea factory!

Each spot on the surface of the stall has its own space and use. The surface area that mounts a gas stove, a large vessel for boiling tea, the small storage cabinet that can hold the tea powder, sugar, the tea masala, the raw secrete ingredients that make the tea masala (etc. Ginger). There are few nails that either hand the ginger shredder or a small knife or a tea filter. The wooden mesh that holds the stall's metal top has few newspapers neatly folded and kept for some packaging use.

Just beneath the main stall surface and by the side of one trolly were few cloth bags for materials storage and on the other side the Gas cylinder that supplies gas to the stove.

The other end of the area had a small yet neatly kept cleaning space with few vessels. One of the vessels collected all cups and glasses that needed a rinse after a drink of tea. The other one held clean water. There were small soap cases carrying utensil cleaning material.

The lady swiftly moved from her tea maker to cleaner to a server to cash collector responsibility. She seemingly had a few supporting casts with her. A bank security guard happily indulged in her business, helping when she ran out of milk and needed to purchase a few bags from a nearby store. He would help her in hanging the battery-operated lamp when the sunset and darkness started setting in.

The lady seemed to know a lot of people by name. Obviously, they were frequenting her stall often, perhaps daily, perhaps many times a day. There were unsettled transactions of the past when customers she knew owed money but she appeared unperturbed, perhaps due to prior familiarity. It appeared quite a convenient way to build a sustained stream of business as the relationships appeared to be maintained and nurtured through such concessionary practices of have tea now, pay later. There were side offerings available which mean bundling of business was a possibility. The offering of smoke cigarettes, small chewable sweets, and local biscuits. All made sense because tea often requires a company and people often have a lot weighing on their minds; different times of the day bring different moods and situations that warrant differently served tea and these add-ons appeared to bring that flavor of the day to stall customers!

The day easily brought hundreds of walk-in customers each day. It served business customers by sending tapped vessels with 50 or so glasses of tea at a go. That is a lot of footfall for a small tea stall. The stall is surrounded by restaurants and other smaller stalls and yet maintained a different position for itself.

Why? Why did this stall survive 30 years? How did it retain the same place of operation when government officials are known to hassles small businesses? Why did customers show up again? Why was the lady happy with her work? How did her own family progress in all these years when spending better part of her own day in the streets? Did her kids turn out well? Did they progress in life? What was the measure of their success in her eyes?

Life surprises us pleasantly on all these counts. We often think, debate, brainstorm about the betterment of life and yet feel lost or longing for real action on the ground.

Here I was, faced with the reality of life and encountered someone who really had found the purpose of life, the importance of working hard, showing up for people when they needed support, offering them motherly, sisterly hope, and making all-round and hard to believe progress in all aspects of life.

It was humbling to witness this through an extremely satisfying and fulfilling chat over a glass of tea!!