At the tea stall

**Part 1 of n. Attempts at describing scenes from India as I remember them**

The gold plating atop the minaret of the nearby mosque had long stopped sparkling, the sky was beginning to  lose its orange tint and day was fast fading away into darkness.

"Bhai, ek strong chai dena", said Amit to the chai-waala stationed on the pavement outside Anupama's office. The falling darkness heralded the beginning of work for these chai-waalas, whose mobile stalls, host to simmering kettles and various other paraphernalia, provided much needed respite from work for many engineers like Amit. For Amit, the visit to the tea-stall, as he waited to pick Anupama up, had become a ritual - a stimulus to transition his mind from work-issues to family. The vendor duly acknowledged his loyal customer with a quick grin of recognition, despite being flooded by numerous other requests. "Saab, memsaab lunch ke baad aayi thi chai peene", he added as his callous bare-hands lifted the simmering cauldron of milk without a flinch. He poured the hot-milk into a glass containing sugar, moving the cauldron farther from the glass over time, allowing Newton's gravity to work on dissolving the sugar. The addition of sieved tea-water, boiling in a different container, followed by a round of gravity induced stirring, and soon, Amit found himself accepting the glass of tea from the chai-waala. He placed a five rupee coin on top of the steel box that had been converted by the resourceful man from a discarded gift-box, found scavenging at a scrap-dealer's place, to the container of his earnings. 

Amit walked a short distance away from the stall, trying to shut out the clamorings of fellow tea-connoisseurs. Blowing gently on the glass, he cautiously took his first sip of the tea. The taste was not lost on him, and it had the desired effect -- it had been a long day, of work, sandwiched between numerous meetings, and he was glad to have it behind him now.