Monday Musings - 38

It is instinctive now for me to find a chai-stall everywhere I go. It is as if the brown, burning hot, distinctly flavoured beverage, reminds me of home. Two summers ago, I found a little convenience store by our hotel in Penang, Malaysia. I developed a penchant for Nescafe's Roasted Black Bean canned cold coffee. My morning fix, every day of week. Two weekends ago, I was in Amritsar. A quaint, rickety tea stall greeted us right outside our place of stay. Billa Tea Stall. A shriveled old man made us our tea, less milk and less sugar, the way we like it. He added a dash of spices. Mornings we sat under the summer sun, soaking up the heady city of Amritsar with a cuppa chai.

What a city of eccentricities, Amritsar. Narrow lanes spilling into even more narrow lanes and sometimes a bustling, crowded main street. Cluttered with box-sized stores selling phulkari dupattas, salwar kameezes washed white, mojris and jootis, and bangles, and lassi, and kulfi splattered with a generous dose of falooda. Would you like some chole kulche, or chana chawala, or gulab jamun to wash down the moong dal vadas - Amritsar is a foodies delight. If you ever make it there, check into the Punjab Dhaba- we savoured the most delightful Tandoori Chicken and Amritsari Fish with a buttery black dal.

Such a city of indulgences, Amritsar. We eat, and shop and admire people in throngs - all colours, and classes, and cultures. Boarding up fragile-framed cycle rickshaws, three in a row, and hustling from the Golden Temple, to the Jallianwala Bagh and the market place. On one of our trysts, we discover the acchar wali gali. It's Sunday so we hunch our way into half-open shops and gape into buckets of divine-smelling achaar and take a little bit back home.

Home for me, is now Gurgaon. I have found my chai-stall having by now almost entirely developed an aversion to coffee. This little nook on the Golf Course road- park your car , and settle into cups of chai as long as you like. And, the chai place behind Ernst and Young - open air, and an ecelectic crowd. Best of all, I have found my chai partner too - like noise and silence- and I am ever so elated this Monday!

[More Monday Musings here ]