A land where tea and coffee come to you

I recently began work in Bangalore India and quickly came upon a workplace ritual that is common here in India.

Our company office is located in a five story building, housing maybe twenty other companies. It’s not a big building and I’d guess most of the offices here host no more than twenty employees. That’s just a little background to set the scene. (You can also see a pic of the office building if you check out my photo album – updated today!)

Every day, up to four times a day, there is a knock at the door and in walks a man with two baskets filled with six to eight large thermoses.

It’s a visit from a chai wallah who delivers tea and coffee in very small paper (or plastic) cups.  Each cup holds around four to six ounces of your beverage of choice and costs about 4 rupees.  So, you can get delicious hot tea delivered to you at your desk four times a day for a total of 16 rupees. (It’s approximately 45 rupees to the US dollar by the way.)

Of course, if you were to wander to any of the thousands of roadside chai wallahs you’d save a rupee or two per cup, but hey, there has to be some charge for the delivery service, right?