TEA SHOPS
The title gives you the exact picture. I am going to talk about tea shops and their significance.
Let's get certain things out of the way -
By tea shops, I don't mean the modern chai stalls, with their posh interiors (and chai worth thousands). The shops I talk about don't serve the fancy varieties of chai (Assam, Darjeeling, masala chai etc). It serves only 3 kinds - strong, medium and light (lite?)
They don't have plush chairs , not even the aroma of tea leaves. They have broken benches, aluminium or glass tumblers and serve a homemade snack. So much for the fancy menu cards in modern cafes!
I really honestly don't know if they exist in any other state than Kerala - even in Kerala, those shops are dying. Sure, we have a lot more 'thattukadas' (a version of roadside food stalls), but they aren't our beloved tea shops - 'chayakkada'.
One final clarification, there are political thinkers like Habermas who talks about the importance of cafes in political discourse and sociologists who talk about gossip as mechanism of social control. But this is not an academically oriented paper, not even close. What I would like to point out is the pure emotional or nostalgic significance of tea shops.
Tea shops were supposedly more fun before I was born. Sure, everything was more fun before (sigh!). My earliest memory of a tea shop is my father buying banana fritters from such a shop on our way back from my school. There was something about its taste that hooked me, so much so that those visits and the sweet anticipation of food occupied much of my childhood memories. It was kept in the open, wrapped in banana leaves. I had no way to know if flies were on it, if the person made it after washing his hands, or if there was anything to ensure hygiene. But I couldn't care less because whatever I consumed tasted of..... GOODNESS.
Not to offend all those chai lovers, but I don't think the magic lies within the beverage. I remember my uncle saying how they had 'kappikootams' (literally translating to coffee groups) where different family members from different generations came together and shared their stories. He said he missed that WARMTH these days. So even coffee can taste like goodness. Again, my dear reader, please keep in mind that these are nothing like the modern cafe.
Because the quintessential modern cafe looks...well, attractive and Instagram worthy. The tea shops, they look broken, old in a non-aesthetic way and makes the heart feel AT HOME. It did for my parent's generation, but does it do that to us?
Either I have an old soul or they have a timeless effect. So this one cold winter evening, I was coming back to home and I was slightly scared because it was starting to get dark and chilly. I was shivering even after wearing three layers of clothes. It was then, that I saw the old tea shop with the old couple who owned it. I had more clothes on me than both of them combined. Yet, there they were, smiling through the cold, smiling at each other with a sense of bliss, which I assume, they had on the day they fell in love with each other. Just looking at them made me warm - a warmth that rises straight from the heart. Warmth that could defeat any cold which no well heated, temperature modulated cafe could ever provide.
There,that's what tea shops are to me - They are my (dying) symbols of LOVE and HOMELINESS. And their beverages are the tastiest - because of their not - so - secret ingredient.
They don't have plush chairs , not even the aroma of tea leaves. They have broken benches, aluminium or glass tumblers and serve a homemade snack. So much for the fancy menu cards in modern cafes!
I really honestly don't know if they exist in any other state than Kerala - even in Kerala, those shops are dying. Sure, we have a lot more 'thattukadas' (a version of roadside food stalls), but they aren't our beloved tea shops - 'chayakkada'.
One final clarification, there are political thinkers like Habermas who talks about the importance of cafes in political discourse and sociologists who talk about gossip as mechanism of social control. But this is not an academically oriented paper, not even close. What I would like to point out is the pure emotional or nostalgic significance of tea shops.
Tea shops were supposedly more fun before I was born. Sure, everything was more fun before (sigh!). My earliest memory of a tea shop is my father buying banana fritters from such a shop on our way back from my school. There was something about its taste that hooked me, so much so that those visits and the sweet anticipation of food occupied much of my childhood memories. It was kept in the open, wrapped in banana leaves. I had no way to know if flies were on it, if the person made it after washing his hands, or if there was anything to ensure hygiene. But I couldn't care less because whatever I consumed tasted of..... GOODNESS.
Not to offend all those chai lovers, but I don't think the magic lies within the beverage. I remember my uncle saying how they had 'kappikootams' (literally translating to coffee groups) where different family members from different generations came together and shared their stories. He said he missed that WARMTH these days. So even coffee can taste like goodness. Again, my dear reader, please keep in mind that these are nothing like the modern cafe.
Because the quintessential modern cafe looks...well, attractive and Instagram worthy. The tea shops, they look broken, old in a non-aesthetic way and makes the heart feel AT HOME. It did for my parent's generation, but does it do that to us?
Either I have an old soul or they have a timeless effect. So this one cold winter evening, I was coming back to home and I was slightly scared because it was starting to get dark and chilly. I was shivering even after wearing three layers of clothes. It was then, that I saw the old tea shop with the old couple who owned it. I had more clothes on me than both of them combined. Yet, there they were, smiling through the cold, smiling at each other with a sense of bliss, which I assume, they had on the day they fell in love with each other. Just looking at them made me warm - a warmth that rises straight from the heart. Warmth that could defeat any cold which no well heated, temperature modulated cafe could ever provide.
There,that's what tea shops are to me - They are my (dying) symbols of LOVE and HOMELINESS. And their beverages are the tastiest - because of their not - so - secret ingredient.
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