The tea shop days ...

If you are walking through a small lane with a shabby shop and see a wooden bench and hear incoherent discussions and see varied patterns of smoke rings purifying the polluted skyline followed by the sound of laughter ringing through the air and the silent sips on an earthen cup, you would most probably be near the place where i grew up.

Every evening a rendezvous with each others dreams, realities, plans and much more kept us glued to the bench and the earthen pots glued to our lips (apart from when it was time to blow a few rings filled with nicotine and our hopes into the orange light of the nearby lamp post.). Debates, discussions, exchange of news and views were sometimes interrupted by the silence when a damsel not in distress passed by and all of us became her knight in shining armor for some time till a new damsel appeared or the tea shop owner with his gigantic belly which would be glistening with sweat started asking for his money.

Without fail, through heat, rain or cold we met there and lived. It was like an addiction, the day would not be complete without one visit to the place. In the beginning we thought it was just a place where we could smoke and chat unseen by the ignorant world who did not like our ways of living. Later on we realized that maybe it was just those 3 hours in a day when we actually learnt something.

We learnt through each others failures and success, the broken dreams, the excitement in achievement. It was the selfless joy of being happy for the other person, and the want to try and inculcate the good things that you saw in the other. There was no discrimination, everyone was invited (many never came cause they never believed in it. But yes they missed out on a lot.). You could say anything to anyone, your thoughts, your beliefs, the deepest regrets and the basest desires. Anything was welcome and the learning went on.

We moved from school to college, but the bench never creaked under our weights. The tea shop owners ponch ever glistened with the shining sweat, while we grew up. Shom the lazy lump of putty that he is was as always late, and Riddhi was letting out his frustration in the form of dragon fire (thick smoke of the cigarette). I was silently sipping on my cup of tea and was trying to get a glimpse of the last lady that had passed by trying to take in all the details so that i could give a complete picture to the rest of the brotherhood.

Soon we saw shom slowly staggering towards us scratching his right cheek (no he had not been slapped, that was his habit). We were joined by another comrade Sapu soon. The Greatness of Sapu lied in his munificence. He never even spent a paise on either the tea or the cigarettes and till date claims he always funded us in the tea shop. Shom had spotted 4 apparently really good looking women on the way and was about to stalk them home but the tea shop beckoned him more and he had come here. Sapu had this look of utter disgust on his face when such stories were told, but he himself was no lesser mortal and had been caught trying to play footsie with a girl during maths tuition classes when he was in school. Riddhi was an avid listener, did not speak much from the mouth, but he would let know his feelings with his barbaric way of expressing things like a soc on the jaw.

Once the daily niceties were over and the first cups were done with, the regular banter started and it continued till the last round before the shop would shut. Sapu was going off to America to do his masters, Shom was being transferred to Bangalore, Riddhi would be in Calcutta for sometime and i was moving to Bhubaneshwar. It was the last day at the tea shop. Everyone knew, but no one said. It was just like another day.

We got up to go. The old man was bringing down the shutters of the shop, i turned back to take a last glimpse at it, and i could see the past, and for once i knew that maybe we would never meet there again, but when i turned back to see the others, i saw hope that it was not the end. Even on the last day the tea shop taught me a lesson, it taught me to hope and live.

Today when i go past the relics of the shop, i see a new set of students taking their lessons in life, the old man still handing out those earthen pots, the smoke rings still filling up the air. The people sitting on the bench had changed, but the tea shop, and its mystic aura is still the same as before.


Dedicated to the tea shop and my brothers of long ..... brothers never part .... and the ones that do were never brothers !!