Skip to main content

The quest for the perfect Hyderabad Irani Tea

By
Those unacquainted with this city’s ethos may find the typical Hyderabadi obsession with Irani Chai (tea) amusing. Some may even accuse them of being chai-addicts, which (justifiably, I may add) is met by strong denial, nay defensive, “Others may as well be called air-addicts or water-addicts then.”

For the younger generation the ideal venue of a get-together begins with Cafe Coffee Day / McDonalds (when hard-pressed on cash!) and might extend to any upper limit when feasible. But before affluenza took over the Y2K generation, Irani Cafes were the most popular meeting venue for the cash-strapped teens. In a bid to appear more Western than the West we have sadly abandoned efforts to modernize our traditional outlets and instead sought to westernize them.

The joyous conversations and noisy ambiance has since been replaced with uneasy silence punctuated with tight-lipped formal conversations. But to my mind nothing beats the cluttered, crowded Irani Cafes that always are vibrant, soulful and overflowing with humanity (that they suit my humble budget is purely incidental! J ) It is a pity that the mushrooming food franchises have rapidly replaced the better among the cafes, and many that remain operational today are poorly maintained. Although many appear to be doing roaring business the uncomfortably untidy atmosphere has been responsible for its customer-base sliding from the middle-class to the lower segment.

And yet, these Hyderabadi cafes come with the complete package: Osmania biscuits (a unique city-variety made exclusively to be munched with tea), bada samosa, chota samosa and a plethora of other bakery items including dil-pasand, dilkush among many others etc.

And Irani Chai is no ordinary tea, as its lovers would philosophise ala cinematic style; it is the culmination of many, many failed attempts for perfection and quintessence of man‟s victory over fatigue and frustration. The Hyderabadi Hindi (Deccani dialect), far receding from the metro heartland into Old City, is still found alive and bustling in these remnants of the bygone era. Indeed, these places are a welcome change from the stiff upper-lipped formality or nocturnal indulgences; they bring us closer to joyous spirit of the unwashed masses.

Meditate on the chaos, coincidences and chasms of human life over a cup of Irani Chai. It is one of the simpler pleasures of life where you feel one with the sea of humanity. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

All-time Hits

The Controversial Caste System of Hinduism

By
Imagine concepts like feudal system, slavery, capitalistic exploitation and anti-Semitism being used to define the core of Christianity! Christians will be outraged at this inappropriate mixing of the core universal values of Christians and societal & historical aspects which merely existed in a Christian world. Now this raises the question – why is caste system defined as the core of Hinduism? Especially as “caste” itself is a western construct. Sounds irrelevant? Okay. Now imagine concepts like slave-trade, war on infidels, brutal subjugation of masses, temple destruction, and forceful conversions marking the core of Islam. It is considered sensible to first understand what the core scriptures speak about the religion and its universal values. The ills of the community & its societal aspects are differentiated from its core philosophy. Now, this brings us to the most interesting question – why is Caste System (caste based on birth) propagated to be the def
3 comments
Read more

Chetan Bhagat : His Literary Style and Criticism

By
Chetan Bhagat’s (CB) recent column created a furore, chiefly because of his audacity to speak for Muslim community and what many people conflate with his support for Narendra Modi’s Prime Ministerial ambitions.   But what interested me most - and what this post would focus on - is questioning of his literary merit (or lack of it). Many journalists ridicule CB’s style of writing and his oversimplistic portrayals of characters sans nuance or sophistication. But I suspect this has more to do with the fact that his readers alone far outnumber the combined readers of many journalists - a point that many don’t appear capable of digesting. No takers for layman’s language! When Tulsidas rewrote Ramayana in Avadhi (a local contemporary dialect then), many conservative sections of society came down heavily upon him for defiling the sanctity of a much revered epic (originally written in Sanskrit). When Quran was first translated in Urdu (by Shah Abdul Qadir in 1798), it faced int
3 comments
Read more

The concept of Dharma in Ramayana

By
The concept of Dharma is not adequately understood by Hindus themselves, not to mention others. Dharma is not a set of do’s and don’t’s or a simplistic evaluation of good and bad. It requires considerable intellectual exertion to even begin understanding Dharma, let alone mastering its use. Is Dharma Translatable? Few words of a language cannot be faithfully translated into another without injuring its meaning, context & spirit. English translations of Dharma are blurred and yield words like religion, sense of righteousness, discrimination between good and bad, morals and ethics or that which is lawful. All these fall short of fully grasping the essence of Dharma. Every language has an ecosystem of words, categories and grammar which allow a user to stitch words together to maximum effect such that meaning permeates the text without necessarily being explicitly explained at each point. Sanskrit words such dharma, karma, sloka, mantra, guru etc., now incorporated in Eng
6 comments
Read more

Trending Now