This tea stop in a tourist city is unusual in many ways.
It is a self help tea stall where people serve themselves and leave the payment in a box. The owner does not supervise this. The stall provides one home made snack each day as a package.
The owner lives behind the shop and and cleans the place, replenishes tea and the snack periodically.
There is option of using paper cups or regular ones. If the visitor used crockery, he or she is expected to wash and dry them.
There is a calendar and a board adjacent to it where regular visitors can leave an order of extra tea or snacks for the next day, with their telephone number. The owner would confirm the availability on phone.
The owner being a Gandhian thinker has been on this experiment for twenty years. He does not want to give up this experiment. His intention is to cultivate honesty as a virtue. There are occasional instances when people used his services without payment. As most people are regular visitors from the neighbourhood, this experiment has survived.
During my student days, when news papers used to cost only fifty paisa, there were booths in public places, where news papers were sold without an attendant. People were expected to drop the cost in a box. But this experiment failed in a short time.
It is an ever more greater challenge now-a-days, as I realise that people tend to be more self indulgent and selfish.
However the owner, who is a senior citizen now, believes in continuing this experiment to invite people to be honest. He has a pension from the government and as this experiment does not incur a loss, he is determined to show the way for others. He told me there are few others who have recently started this unsupervised tea stall practice.
I remember seeing open shops without the owners supervising the sale in Meghalaya. There are many such shops on the road side. Obviously people are honest for this to be common.
I wish, truth and honesty would become inherent to our social fabric!
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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