Delhiwale: Bazar’s tea pot chai
Lalchand’s tea stall in Old Delhi’s Chawri Bazar has thrived since 1974 despite many closures around it, offering a stable spot for diverse patrons amidst a changing cityscape.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Delhi chai stall depends on a stainless steel kettle, and never on some pretentious bone china tea pot — the kind sighted in BBC adaptations of Jane Austen’s teatime novels. This roadside stall in Old Delhi’s super-chaotic Chawri Bazar, however, possesses almost that type of tea pot. “Very najuk (delicate) ketli,” says the busy tea stall man.
The city’s pavement tea stalls are distinguished for their fragile place in the world. They might be in existence for decades, yet every evening after the stall closes for the day, the long-time street landmark vanishes, as if it had never been. Tea stalls also keep closing permanently all the time. Lalchand’s tea stall is among the exceptions.
In fact, it was mentioned on these pages more than seven years ago when Lalchand looked very different (his white moustache was then still black). So much has changed in the intervening time—no thanks to Covid. Many places in the vicinity have shut down, such as the much-loved Walled City Café & Lounge in Chhatta Shaikh Mangloo and Amour de Café in Bazar Chitli Qabar. Many places have come up as well (such as one Instagram-friendly eatery with a jaw-dropping view of Jama Masjid’s gumbad—guess its name!)
And tucked within this dramatically altering world is the stabilising consolation of Lalchand’s tea stall, surrounded this afternoon by very many patrons.
The stall has spawned a complex eco-system, patronised by a wide band of citizens, including Chawri Bazar’s rickshaw pullers and labourers who, at night, sleep along these same paves.
Lalchand, who founded the stall in 1974, sits daily on his share of the roadside, lording over his wooden chowki packed with stoves, kettles, cups, pans, biscuit canisters, and the bone china tea pot. His hands are constantly in a blur—straining the chai into cups, flinging fistfuls of sugar into the boiling tea, grinding the ginger (a great mass of adrak lies on one side), splitting open the cardamom shells,,and also swiftly processing the payment transactions with hurry-hurry customers.
On being queried about the reason behind his establishment’s remarkable longevity , the poker-faced Lalchand momentarily appears confused as if asked why the Red Fort is red. Next moment, he wordlessly returns to his chai-in-progress.