The CHAI story

Its blooming luxuriously in faraway Assam, Bengal and the Deccan and brewing in every nondescript household and being sipped by billions of lips around the world. Penetrating deep into everyone’s lives, stories had woven around wisps of smoke that curled from the cups f tea. Oblivious of its significance , the cup of tea, the ‘adda’ in the corner of the street, the peals of laughter, the camaraderie or in terse intense discussions- no matter where, the red liquid spills magic in everyone’s lives.

And in this paraphernalia of tea’s magic, I met a man of the other world. He frantically stirs a thick brown liquid behind a blanket of smoke and grime. In a slew of rapid hand ‘gesticulations’, reaching everywhere over the place, he looks like an avatar of the Durga goddess. And in sync with his ‘gesticulations’ was a bootlicking army of young boys darting from the master to the audience. Their rubber chappals almost eroded away, their feet already chipped and cracked, nails grown long and dirty, hair disheveled, eyes confused, dreams twisted and souls drained of all imaginations. An army of ghosts sapped and squeezed by the master and their destiny. The master who stands tall over them, stirring the liquid and the army looks at him in angst, shaking at the drop of his eyelids and the turn of his chin. Their parched hands transports stories- the story of the master, the stories of their stunted lives and the stories of the audience. And in all this the liquid flows- the ‘chai’ or the ‘sah’.

And on a dull evening after a hard day’s work if you wish to stop by to have a cup of tea behind the corner shop down the road near a stinking public toilet among a sea of humanity, this is the picture that would greet you. The place would be choked with squatting auto driver, beggars, rickshaw pullers, students who hails Hitler yet condemns Lenin, frustrated salesmen who could not sell more than ten herbal products in the day and vagabonds scattered like pigeon’s droppings over the corner. Then there are the regular audience of marijuana induced Bob Marley fans who would come and fire a dash of English, talk about politics, a lot about music aspirations, cigarettes sticking out between their fingers, gulps down tea and lumbers by leaving everyone on the stage gaping at them. You would not see much of the X- chromosomes stopping by at this play. They would rather sit on a plush sofa in an air- conditioned coffee shop, blushing when the boy over the next table stares at her legs and drinking tea ten times more dearer to the pocket than the tea drank by the squatters at the corner tea shop.

It was in the midst of all this hullaballoo that one of the boy in the army caught my attention. He usually sat away from the master and the rest of the boys. Although secluding himself for too long would inevitably grant him the brunt of the master.

One Thursday evening it was the usual din, the usual filing of auto- drivers, rickshaw pullers and the usual business of cheap perfume, urinal stench and plastered smiles. He marooned himself from the rest of the world and withdrew into his own shell. The eyes were dazed and lost, staring into nothingness. The light from the street lamp shone on his hair. Someone shouted his name, but the voice never penetrated inside his ears. Someone nudged him again, but he didn’t budge. After sometime, the clock inside him started ticking again, he shook his head with a slight jerk, stretched his legs a bit, straddled up and joined his army only to be received by a vicious glare from the master who was already sweating under the heat. His indifference was infectious. In his nonchalance and innocence there was a clandestine that revolved around him. With a slight gait, he walked without a care in the world and the sun falling back on his shoulders. As usual his hands got busy carrying the magical liquid, the harbinger of stories. In between his eyes caught my attention and quickly looked away in shyness and with a mild surprise wondered of a female onlooker on his nondescript existence in a place which had no history. Observing him through the rim of my tea glass, with smoke curling up from the hot surface, I contemplated of confronting him. My curiosity heightened to a voluminous decibel and I wanted to unravel the mystery that surrounds this little boy.

I waved at him to come over. Sheepishly he slogged with a slight slapping of his eroded chappals on the floor towards me and as the obedient member of the army, he asked me if I wanted a refill of my tea glass. I nodded a no. He lingered on by asking for anything more. Again I nodded a no. I bought him a cup of tea and a cheap biscuit available in the tea shop. I gestured him to sit down on the bench. I have never seen such shock and confusion in anyone’s eyes. Unsure and precarious, he didn’t know what to do. Scared that he would be ridiculed by his master, he mumbled something in defense. But eventually sat down edgily, frequently throwing furtive glances here and there. At this strange confrontation of sitting on the bench, holding the magical liquid, he looked visibly scared. His band had already thrown him fiery glances and seeing the consternation on his face, I asked him not to worry and gave a reassuring look.

I saw his hands shake as he nervously sipped the tea. Somehow the shift in the picture of being the receiver of the magical liquid from being the usual transporter, didn’t fit quite well in his mind. There seems to be a battle raging inside him. He caught my anxious eyes. Eventually after several rounds of sipping and pondering, I asked his name. Promptly with a smile he replied,
“Don Yadav.”

I think I detected a jingle in his eyes. Then I went on to ask him who kept his name. He didn’t reply. He just looked away to see if someone was watching him. Again the consternation seething back to his face. However he did not protest his anxiety this time. He simply said no one. Surprised by this abruptness, I asked him,
“ then how did you get your name?”
He was staring back into his glass of tea, holding it more comfortably between his hands. He smiled sheepishly and reminisced it gloomily,
“ back in village, we used to watch movies on our school courtyard. And our school peon would bring movies from a nearby town. That used to be the happiest time for us. We used to watch ‘Aandhi toofan’, ‘Don’, ‘Sholay’, ‘Mr.Natwarlal, ‘Coolie’…….. My favorite was ’Don’ and I want to be like him when I grow up. After the movie was over, my friends and I would enact the scenes again and gave it our own different ending.”

I laughed out loud by this guile innocence and boyish camaraderie. For the first time I saw the child inside him got rekindled. The smile sparkled and the eyes belonged to the kid who clambered on rocks and walls back in the village.

“My parents called me ‘chotu’ as I was the youngest and the most notorious in the family. But I didn’t like the name and so I called myself ‘don’ after I left village.”

I smiled back at him. There were questions bombarding in my mind that I wanted to ask, but restrained myself thinking next time. The tea had grown cold in my hands. I gulped down the rest of the liquid. He too apologetically got up, collected my glass and clambered back to join his army and his high arch- browed master who was looking at us curiously. I got up to pay the money and giving a reassuring look at him, I walked away.

For several days I kept on lingering between the thought of going and not going, of unraveling it too quickly or to keep it camouflaged. But human beings are not proficient enough in patience. However several things of my own immediate life kept me from going there. And it was only after twelve days of my ‘funny-strange’ encounter with the ‘chai’ and the young boy that I could go again.

After several rounds of tea and several conflicting emotions of timidity and happiness, the master was reassured that I posed no serious danger to his business whenever he saw ‘don’ contently cantering towards me. Over time he was no longer the snail withdrawn into his own shell, the marooned child. He became the ‘don’ of the village who would enact the scenes from a movie with his comrades after the Sunday movie shows.

February was drawing its close and March just round the corner. Writers, painters and photographers are busy grappling with their tools to capture nature’s changing looks. Sauntering back again to that corner on a late evening, I too basked in the purple hazed sky. The wheezing metro above my head, the din of the evening rush hour, the exaltation of pigeons in the sky, the lazy rickshaw pullers under the tree, the temple bells and the cow dung, everything seeped inside me like a sponge. I was elated yet something gripped me from inside and I could not place it.

As I reached the corner, I knew what was amiss. I could not find his face in the crowd. I sat for a while surveying the place, thinking that the little ‘don’ would jump out from somewhere. But he was nowhere to be seen.I went up to the master who was as usual busy stirring the brown liquid, sweat dripping down his forehead and asked him about the little boy. He gave me a blank look and shrugged his shoulders. The rest of the army too looked equally indecisive and didn’t know his whereabouts. I got alarmed. And yes, I almost missed a new face in the army.

‘Don’ is gone.

It was devastation that hit me and a strange consternation gripped me unarmed. Hopes got scattered with the dust. I had no way to find him. Little did I know that I would never see him again in my life. Just like the slow settling down of ashes after a fire, I left the place and slowly trudged back with a gloomy head. The dusk had given way to a dark cloudless night. Neon lights flooded the streets. Cars, buses, cycles, trucks, human feet snaking each other furiously to some strange destination. The usual pouring of humans and dogs on the streets, the usual honking and the usual dilemma of humans. I kept on wondering about the little boy, whose eyes though lost and dazed, shone from some blissful corner.

And then I realized he was never meant to be in that tea shop. Barely into his teens and absconding from his home to chase pipedreams in a big dark city was no mean feat. Probably I am in no position to fathom what he must have gone through or what forced him to do so. But children are more ‘blindly’ obstinate than adults. Because only children can believe their fantasies. One thing that struck me always was he despised talking about his family and whatever it takes he would never return back to his family and his village. Never showing me the greyer shades of his life, he was always excited talking about what he liked doing and what he aspired to become. It was resolutely ‘Amitabh Bachchan’ of ‘Don’. Usually he would imitate the dialogues from movies and that used to be the most hilarious dialogues ever delivered. I just could not stop laughing. I saw something in him that I never saw earlier when he used to sit alone-it was the quest for innumerable happiness. He wanted to see the world. He was a buccaneer, adventurous by spirit and soul. Somehow he knew it, his rustic life would melt away.

And that day, after he was gone, from some strange corner I was happy. I knew, only children could actually chase pipedreams. I never went out to look for him, knowing that wherever he may have gone, he was on the quest of happiness.