SIXTY

‘’There are SIXTY cups on a table.

If one falls down, then how many remain on the table ?’’

Raj with a big smile on his face and using the right emphasis on his phonetics asked this to his student friends who were seated in a group around the tea stall on the station platform.

He was sure that all his friends would blurt out the obvious answer.

He had a different answer up his sleeve.

It was mid Nineteen Sixty !!

The group of his ten College students a mix of boys and girls were on this study trip from Bombay to Gujarat.

Travelling in the rugged boogie of the Indian Railways they were enjoying the train journey as their trip took off to a great start.

The train chugged along as all of them had a laugh of their time sharing anecdotes and spending quality time with each other as a group.

Fresh air wafted through the compartments as the train travelled through the ghats and open plains of the terrain.

Students along with other passengers took turns to hang out from the rattling open boogies, balancing on one hand as the train whistled itself along the green lush lands and their hair rustling in the breeze.

All students had carried their home cooked food which they shared with each other which was a delicious insight into the various mixed regional cuisines.

This was in addition to the continued trickle of train hawkers selling their wares from food stuff, cold drinks tea and coffee to books magazines and toys calling out and advertising their products in a nasal repetitive sing song manner.

Suddenly the train screeched to a slow halt as the breaks whined against the wheels that battled the tracks and with flying sparks gradually came to a halt.

As in hundreds of journeys all over the country this one also had been affected by an age old issue and was now stranded between open lands of dried parched patches of earth.

Signal failure !!

After a few hours, news slowly filtered to the irate passengers that there was a major signal failure somewhere down the line.

As it would be a long delay this train would be moving and wait at the station that it was closest to.

After some time there was excitement and a hustle bustle in the boogies as the passengers experienced the slow motions and jerks of the train beginning to move.

In contrast to its earlier speeds of satisfying motion the train now shunted with stop start motions slowly traversing the tracks till passengers sighted the outline of a local train station.

As the engine moved along the tracks with the train driver trying to align the compartments along the whole stretch of the platform the name of the station VADNAGAR loomed in black lettering in English, Hindi and Gujarati on the board of the white bordered station sign post.

Damodar was standing with his son on the platform outside his tea stall.

As the train slowly inched into the station Damodar noticed the expectant passengers hanging out and awaiting the grinding halt.

Some of them had already heroically jumped out from the slow moving train onto the platforms as is a common feature in hundred and thousands of station scenarios in Indian Railway journeys.

He was aware that this train was not supposed to stop on this station and would have zipped past but due to the signalling problem it would have an unscheduled stop.

He had to get himself and his business in action.

His Tea stall had been catering to the passengers who in their zipping journeys would stop for kulhad’s (cups) of the steaming refreshing brew.

He ran the stall with the help of his young son and they had mastered the art of tea making specialising and enhancing the process in their own special way.

He used to buy the tea leaves in bulk - bullock cart delivered -which would be in wooden chests.

It was two of the renown brands from the distributor of the neighbouring city Tea Merchant.

He would then blend both of them in proportions he kept secret to standardise his signature drink.

The milk he got was from the choicest tabela (cow shed)

It was a regular daily two times delivery of freshly milked produce supplied by the milkman on cycle.

The routine of cycling around balancing two aluminium milk cans on either side as he foot peddled tringing his presence with his ‘tring tring’ around the uneven muddy roads was an art in itself mastered by the milkman.

The stainless steel measures which had vertical handles were dipped into the milk cans to draw out the rich milk and poured out required quantity in a visual white flow into the receptacle given by Damodar.

Damodar put this delivery to boil immediately to enhance the life of the milk in the absence of refrigeration.

He had a kerosene Primus stove which he used to pump up to get the pressure of the flame for his tea making and cooking.

Tea making was a very simple process fine tuned by thousands of ‘chaiwallah’s (tea makers) over the years.

Crushing a piece of ginger with a hamam dasta (mortar pestle) he would drop this into a handled deep pan of water on the stove.

The handle of this pan was wrapped and tied around with a rag which helped handling of the very hot receptacle.

When it came to a boil he would continue the process and add the required sugar.

As it simmered and boiled up again he would throw in the blended tea leaves all the time playing around with a long handled spoon and the liquid in the pan got into calculated swirling motions by movement of the pan handle.

As it danced up to a boil he would pour a measure of milk from the milk pot carefully skimming the ‘malai’ formation and obtaining the fat layer free milk.

As he waited for it come to a boil he crushed in the ‘hamam dasta’ a combination of cardamom and cloves with a touch of dried rose petals to a rough mix making sure the green cardamom pods had cracked open to offer their pitch black seeds for a sweet flavour.

In a way in this process the clove aromatic oils also had oozed out from the dried flower buds and the rose petals had enhanced this mix with their presence.

Gathering all of this he threw it into the dancing boiling tea which had now reached colour of a golden shade of brown.

Keeping up the play of rising and falling motions of the tea along with him lifting and pouring out tea back to the pot simultaneously with the spoon also high pressured the extraction and combination of colour and flavours with these actions.

The scraping sounds of the long handled spoon against the pot inner sides accompanied the drama.

This also helped gather tea leaves that were sticking to the side of the pan and forcing them back to centre stage of the act.

Taste of approval only came when he poured a bit of the hot tea from the spoon (accompanied by blowing) onto his other cupped hand and slurping it to a self satisfying tasting session.

Now straining this blend was the last step and this was done by pouring out the whole batch onto a Muslin cloth covered pot.

The cloth was pushed in first to form a slight dipped well and ends of the cloth were tied and knotted around to form a grip and prevent the tea leaves seeping from the sides of the Muslin into the strained tea.

Maximum extraction was obtained by a visually satisfying act.

Twirling two ends of the Muslin it was now squeezed with a simultaneous lift of the muslin tea bundle as a steady stream of hot tea initially flowed down followed by a slow trickle.

Highest torque was applied on both ends to drain and strain out the last possible drop of this golden brown brew.

Once satisfied the bundle was unfurled emptying out the steaming damp tea powder mix into a waste bin.

This would get recycled in fields as plant feed.

The ready aromatic piping hot strained tea was now poured into a curved and long spouted teapot.

Kulhad’s (unglazed clay teacups) were used for the tea to be served to the customers.

The hot tea was poured out from the teapot into these kulhad’s in a vertical threading motion filling each cup with precision.

Some ceramic cups and saucers were kept for the ‘Babu’ customers (People of Indian origin — talking and behaving like the long gone English rulers)

Damodar’s small stall had glass cases displaying his ware on the shelves and in glass bottles with his Primus stove and Tea making station sitting on one end.

There was a small sink attached with a tap providing water for cooking and wash-up use.

A large water storage drum was stationed over the stall.

The entrance centre was adorned with the traditional six inch threaded chain of coal, chilli and lemon hanging to wade off evil.

Biscuits, chocolates, Chivda’s and Farsan sat comfortably alongside the hanging colourful magazines and newspapers.

Posters of film stars and Gods mingled around the walls of the stall.

Lisps of agarbatti smoke wafted around spreading a sweet fragrance.

On one side there was a matka (clay pot) which had a tap and a steel glass chained to it providing drinking water to his customers.

As the group of English speaking students got out from the train and gathered around his stall Damodar got the tea ready and filling the spouted pot sent his son to sell and serve the ‘Gulabi Special’

As Damodar’s son approached the group with the steaming tea pot and ’kulhad’s, cups and saucers (needed as the group looked as if they were from Bombay and English speaking kids of ‘Babu’s’) he overheard Raj’s question and conversation of the group

‘’There are sixty cups on a table. If one falls down, then how many remain on the table ?’’

All of Raj’s friends immediately got to a buzzing interaction and he clearly told them that he would give them just one minute for the answer.

When they protested about the short time he jokingly said ‘OK — I give you SIXTY seconds’

and your time starts now

Tick Tock

Tick Tock

Tick Tock

Damodar’s son did not speak English fluently but being a smart kid grasped the essence of the language and could blurt out a conversation in broken English.

Overhearing this conversation he understood what was being said.

As Sixty seconds lapsed and Raj exclaimed TIME UP all his friends were shouting and screaming the answer over each other.

FIFTY NINE !!

FIFTY NINE !!

FIFTY NINE !!

In the midst of this Cacophony a voice stood out

PHIVE

PHIVE TEE KHUP

DHER BHIL BHE PHIVE TEE KHUPS

(FIVE.

FIVE TEACUPS.

THERE WILL BE FIVE TEACUPS)

Everyone’s eyes turned towards the Gujju ‘chaiwala ladka’ (young tea boy)

He explained in broken English that if

there are SIX TEA cups on a table. If one falls down, then FIVE TEA cups remain on the table.

A nodding Raj agreed and the whole group hailed the lad’s explanation and applauded his thinking out of the box.

Damodar, from a distance, looking up at his son talking to the group and being applauded shouted out to him in Gujarati —

‘Narendra — Tamē prime minisṭaranī jēma śuṁ pravacana āpī rahyā chō ?

Cā jhaḍapathī pīrasō.

Tamārī pāsē bījā kēṭalāka kāma paṇa chē

(Narendra — what are you lecturing like a PRIME MINISTER ?

Serve the Tea quickly.

You have some other work as well to do)

A big smile spread on Narendra Modi’s face as he served the tea, collected the payments and bid the group a goodbye in Gujarati

‘MITRON — Pachī maḷīśuṁ’

(Friends — see you later/ we will meet some day)

He had made up his mind.

He did have a lot of work to do.

ACCHE DIN (Good Day’s) will come and he will lecture like a PRIME MINISTER some other day.