Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Chai!

Dilli has a vigor and zest all its own, most of which even the sweeping surge of modernity is hard pressed to contain.

Picture this: its about 11 a.m on a thursday morning and my first day in the offices of a busy large corporation (BLC). Hundreds of worker bees hunched over flickering screens and busy excel sheets, the hum of profitable conversations counting millions of rupees of buying and selling, I trundle over to the office table size pantry room where weary old kattoo is hunched beside the coffee machine. I am about to politely interrupt his reverie when something large and busy bustles past me into the pantry room rubbing his hands in utterly undeserved glee and booms "Kattoo , yaar - ek BADHIYA si chai pila de..!"

Kattoo bursts into action as if called by Dalai Lama to invade China and turning purposefully towards the coffee machine, with as much zest as his twenty year old body and 7.2 mm of turning radius will allow, pushes the big red button which says TEA on it, watches intently as weak tepid tea dribbles into a cup and produces it with a flourish. One sip by big bustling man and he erupts "waah kattoo! mazaa aa gaya!!" and trundles away happily.

Its inane - a meaninglessly celebrated and overinvested moment of the day and yeah, its incredibly Dilli!

1 comment:

Shipra said...

oh this is actually lovely!
The world could use more charming moments like this...