Babuji, Apki Chai And I Was Surprised

I had just reached the railway station and was waiting for my train to arrive as I had to travel to Jaipur in a family function of my friend. When I asked the Train Enquiry Department, they told me that the train will arrive at 9.00 pm, which meant I had to wait for an extra hour. So I tried to pass my time by having a look at the station and the things happening there.

Since it was a small station, there were very few passengers. I saw a group of boys playing with the pebbles. The boys were all dressed up quite pathetically as their clothes were very dirty and torn. But still they were quite happy with the pebbles and were enjoying to the fullest.

Suddenly I developed an urge to drink tea as it was a cold evening,but to my misfortune, I couldn’t find any tea vendors on the very station. The only tea vendor was sitting outside the station and I couldn’t take the risk of leaving all my luggage on the station just to drink the tea. I called one of the boys from the guys and asked him to bring me a cup of tea by handing him a coin of 5 rupees. He agreed and went to bring me the tea.

Time passed and after half an hour,I heard the announcement which said that my train would be arriving in a couple of minutes. Now I was sure that the child ran away with the money and cursed myself for trusting a ROADSIDE Boy. I stood up to pick my luggage as the train arrived. I was just about to enter the coach when I heard a voice which said ‘Babuji, Apki chai’ (translates to ‘Sir, your tea’)

Surprised with the voice, I looked back and asked him,Why did he bring the tea so late?

He told me, he lost the 5 rupees coin and so he had to clean the utensils of the tea vendor, to bring me a cup of tea!!

– Saurabh Srivastava (on Quora)
(Representational Image)