The tea seller

The tea seller around the corner is an old man. He sits at a shack with an aluminum kettle and a cold stove for company, waiting, for people with caffeine withdrawal symptoms. And if someone comes up, he lights up a stubborn stove with his wrinkled fingers, blackened with soot, to heat the tea he made in the morning.

His favourite T shirt is faded pink and has an embossed logo of an Italian clothes manufacturing brand. Below the T shirt is a pair of thin, eager legs, wrapped in a short skirt made from an old table cloth. A prominent pair of bifocals competes for your attention with an equally prominent pair of incisors.

The flavour of every installment he brews is characteristically erratic, with the quantity of milk, tea leaves, water and ginger having varying degrees of randomness. The only thing constant is an unfailing overdose of sugar.

The tea might be inconsistent, it's cost isn't. Rs. 2 per glass on a pleasant day. Rs. 2 per glass on a humid day. Rs. 2 per glass when he’s happy or even when his young son didn’t come back home for weeks. Rs. 2 for every quantum of brewed imperfection.

I do not see him everyday. But whenever I’m at the paan-shop near his shack buying the odd strip of gum, he walks up and offers me an unsolicited glass of cutting chai: an act of voluntary generosity that makes up for the tea that is deficient in all that it’s supposed to be.

Its been this way for over two years now. And in the last two years, all I’ve always said to him is “ek chai” or “kaise ho?” Wonder what his story is. Somehow, I’m afraid to ask.