Tea Time Photographs…
Tag: chai ki dukan
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चायबाज़ अर्चना (Chaibaaz Archana)
Archana Srinivas is my favorite Tea-Photographer. Her images of Tea are as refreshing as having Tea on a rainy day itself! Archana is a design consultant and Photographer based out of Banagalore, India. And I was only very very happy to have her participate in the series of ChaiTalks on Chai ki Dukaan!I have totally enjoyed reading her responses, and I am sure everyone here would love the following offline interview!________________– Why Tea?Drinking tea is for me, an experience where I hold the hot cup in my hands, watch the steam disappear into the atmosphere, the aroma of tea with hints of ginger, cardamom or cinnamon soothe my senses and my mind. I take a sip of the heavenly concoction and float away into a world where words combust to form images and coffee just jolts me back to reality. (No offense to coffee drinkers;-)– What if you had to make a flavor of tea, what would you have in it, other than Tea leaves?Regular tea leaves with freshly smashed ginger is an all time favorite. Cardamom, Lemongrass and freshly-plucked Tulsi leaves come a close second.Lately, while traveling across India, we have learnt that as much as the ingredient enhances the flavor of tea, it is also at what stage you add the ingredient and it just amazes me the hundred-odd ways of making the humble ‘chai’…– Tea in a cup? or Tea in a steel glass? or Tea in a kulhad (earthen cups) or tea in a paper cup? or tea in a glass? and why?The early morning ritual of tea made by my dear husband is always in a giant ceramic mug, the late-morning tea, when you just need a mouthful is usually in a small steel tumbler, the kulhads come out when there are hot samosas to go with it, I am a sucker for ceramic mugs, so I just wait for opportunities to make chai so I could savor the experience of drinking out of lovely mugs.Chai in gilaas is so ‘desi’ just love the feel of dunking Parle-G in chai. Chai in paper cups with delicious, unhygienic vadas in quaint railway stations.As much as I love looking at tea in dainty porcelain cups and saucers, I just can’t have tea the English way;-)– What is your earliest memory of Tea?I recall walking into the kitchen as a toddler unable to reach the counter, seeing this huge stainless steel flask being filled with scalding chai every few hours and then being devoured along with homemade savories and bakery butter biscuits.– Do you remember when you had tea for the first time? Is it related to why you like tea so much?I don’t recall if it was the first time I had tea, but the experience was so much fun.My mother was having chai and she poured some for me in a shallow steel glass and put a handful of ‘Muri’ puffed rice in it. I sat watching the gentle crackling sound of the puffed-rice in the chai with utter delight and then slowly scooping out the soggy delicious ‘muri’ and then glugging down the tea!– Your favorite brand of tea and why?At home I always mix two brands of tea, Brooke Bond Red Label & Taj Mahal. One for the strength and the other for the flavor. This concoction works very well for us.– Your favorite website related to Tea and why?My blog ‘A Cup of Chai…’ where I post my daily cups of chai, an interesting personal project where I capture the mood associated with drinking a cup of chai. The simplicity, the mundane-ness appeals to me.Flickr~ I have some really hard-core chai loving photographer friends. Their photographs of chai are very inspiring.– If Tea was a person, what would that mean to you? What would that person be like?Mr.Tea would be strong in character with various surprising flavors to his personality.– Your favorite T-picture please…I am pretty partial to all the photographs of tea that I shoot, but here is one in which the ‘Tea fairy’ seems to be blessing this gilaas of celestial beverage!
– Your favorite T-quote“Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage.”~Catherine DouzelPlease do visit Archana Srinivas Photography page here on FACEBOOK and enjoy the beautiful images! -
Cha
The english word tea traces its roots to the name for tea in the Chinese Amoy Dialect: Te (pronounced tay). Cha is the Mandarin Chinese word for tea. Some countries use both. It’s not unusual to hear someone in England request a “hot cup of cha”.
Text copied from a Tea Calendar that I bought last year. -
Chai walon ki Jai
Chai Ki Dukaan recently crossed 75000 hits !!! Congratulations and thank you !!!!
Am out on a longish drive this weekend, and drove a almost brand new Ford Fusion yesterday for about 5 hours straight… I am surprised with the smoothness of the car, never expected Ford to be this smooth… will write more when I am back ! -
And the winner is….
For those you do not know what this post is about, read this and then this.
So I made chits with all the 15 names as you see below 🙂
Folded them properly, and made sure there I did not have a clue of which chit had what name….
Decided that there should be more than 1 winner, so picked up 3 instead… and here are the results !!!!
Congratulations Teekhi Mirchi, Subbu and Geet…So now the three of you can choose a picture each from the Holland post, and write to me at prashantbhardwaj[at]gmail[dot]com with the picture details, and the address you’d like me to ship the photograph to !!!
Thanks people for participating 🙂 and apologies to those whose names did not come up in the draw this time! come up with ideas to have your names in the winner’s list and we will do something similar in June 🙂
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The Draw of Tulips
So this is the list of people who commented on the Holland travelogue and their names are going in the draw tonight..
1. Rhapsody
2. Joy
3. Geet
4. WishesGalore
5. Jas
6. Iya
7. Reeta
8. Deeps
9. Aarbee
10. Sam
11. Reema
12. Vaishali
13. Rahi
14. Teekhi Mirchi
15. SubbuThe name which is picked up gets to choose a photo from my previous post, and I will send a print to his/her place. There might be slight changes in how the print looks as I would manually edit it this time, instead of using Piknik.
Tell me a way to make this draw more interesting…
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Chai ki dukaan: by Chaibaaz Sunny (चायबाज़ सन्नी)
Time for some more Chai 🙂
The picture comes from a small tea stall in Banaras, UP, India… The city of a million and more stories, located at the bank of Ganges and said to be the oldest living city in the world… Banaras. Also known has Varanasi or Kashi.
Sunny, who has taken this picture is one of the very few people who proves that its not really the camera but the photographer who takes pictures. He is capable of producing excellent pictures, using his basic point and shoot camera and is a source for inspiration for many!
Click here to enjoy some more of his work.
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ये कहाँ आ गए हम, यूँ ही साथ साथ चलते
चाय की दुकान crossed a landmark yesterday night…
50000 foot falls… no lets write it again..Fifty Thousand
पचास हज़ार !!!
and I am thankful to everyone who has been here once, twice, or many times !!!I have always maintained that I write for myself, to clean my system, to make myself happy, to vent out, to share a laugh, to avoid dropping a tear, to be honest to myself…
That still stays the primary reason for this blog’s existence, however I would be lying to myself and to everyone who visits, if I do not agree to these visits being a key motivator for this long journey…
मैं अकेला ही चला था जानिब -ऐ -मंजिल ,
लोग साथ आते गए और कारवां बढ़ता गयाThank you शुक्रिया धन्यवाद благодаря 谢谢您
hvala ti tak bedankt kiitos merci Danke σε ευχαριστώ grazieありがとうございました 감사합니다 takk dziękuję obrigado mulţumescблагодарю Вас gracias tackFor the records…
The blog used to be called
Life as a (W)hole when it started… reason being that I was talking about life, and everything about it… and the hole signified that everything was going into this blog hole…
It became चाय की दुकान… Sometime in August last year… almost one year ! Read more HERE…
For the love of numbers: Today the main page gets about 100+ hits everyday with an average visit length of about 3.5 minutes…
60% of visitors are from Asia, 30% hits from the US, about 5% from Europe…
74% of visitors use Windows XP, 17% use Vista, 2% Linux and 1% Mac OS (I wish Mac Users were more… seriously)
35% users see Chai Ki Dukaan on IE7, 34% still use IE6, and 29% are Firefox users…And
Thank you Again everyone… hope to see you around !!!
P.s. (thanks to Mayuri for the idea)…
This weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 1-3rd August’08), all your Canteen ki चाय, Roadside ढाबे की चाय, Parle G Biscuits, Tiger Biscuits, समोसे, Bread पकोडे are on me !!!
Enjoy yourself and share the bill with me, I promise to reimburse !!!
पर ऐसा मत करना के,
खाया पिया कुछ नहीं
गिलास तोड़ा बाराह आना -
MP Diaries : Bhopal to Ujjain
We had slept pretty late last night, and were not sure what was in store for us today… so the mood was lazy, and the conversations slow..but at the back of our minds we knew there was much to see, and much to go to… so we kinda picked up some pace and go ready around 1130 hrs and had our breakfast at a Haldiram types restaurant just outside our hotel !!!
Oh, yes ! I am back to finishing off my MP travelogue 🙂
Here are the first few parts if you have missed them :
Delhi – Kanha
Kanha and around
Kanha to BhopalWe wanted to go to Bhojpur, had heard nice things about it, a 1000 year old incomplete temple, world’s tallest Shivling etc etc and we also wanted to go to Ujjain… ok I wanted to go to Ujjain (I feel some connection with Shiva and hence all the Jyotirlings come into the list of places I feel good about; and the Shivling @ Ujjain happens to be called MahaKaal too)
Talked to a few people and found out that there was an intercity express to Ujjain from Bhopal at 1700 hrs and will take 4 hours to reach Ujjain…
Now this made perfect sense, we could take an auto, go to Bhojpur come back, pack our bags and leave for Ujjain… come back to Bhopal tomorrow and take it from there… super..
So after talking to a few Autowallahs, and doing some bit of not to successfull bargaining we agreed to give the guy 270 bucks to take us to Bhojpur ( around 25 kms away from Bhopal) and bring us back…
The drive was fine, the sun not too strong and once we were out of the city between the farms it actually became must pleasent !!! I realised how much Wheat MP must be producing looking at the wast span of the golden fields all around !!! lovely view it was… Did stop at a few places to enjoy the calm and finally reached Bhojpur…
The Sprinklers for Wheat Fields…
The temple is massive, and was my second stop next to the river Betwa (The first being Orccha), and we were surprised at the size of the Shivling too… no wonder !
A Kiddo who was there with his parents for a Pooja…
Renovation work in progress at the Bhojpur Temple…We spent a good couple of hours at the temple before we decided to move back to Bhopal and catch the train !!!
Aro at Bhojpur
A Local Musician at Bhojpur…
The return journey was equally nice and we did manage to reach the station on time too, rather before time… I remember buying the tickets and then coming out of the station to eat something… how could we not…
So this time… we had rasmalai, some other local mithai, some tea, and some cold drinks, not in this order though 🙂
Soon enough the train journey started again, this time a different flavor… General Coach, Wooden Benches, not too crowded though 🙂
A Passenger in the Intercity Express from Bhopal to Ujjaindid take us close to about 4 hours, but enjoyed every minute of it… talked to people, took pictures, got a small lesson on gun management from a Railway Policeman too 🙂
Catching Hope 🙂
Sunset from the Train…We reached Ujjain around 2100 hrs and checked into a hotel near the station only… Learnt that the Bhasm Aarti starts at 0500 hrs in the morning and we should be in the temple by 0400 hrs to get a decent view !!!
Arobindo in the train…
The General Compartment we were in…Now this meant a quick dinner and sleeping without much talking !!! And that happened too !!!
More to follow…
B/W Newspaper Colorful News 🙂Some Data now..
Bhopal – Bhojpur : 25 kms
Auto fare : about 250-350 bucks depending on how you bargain…
What to do in Bhojpur : Nothing 🙂 just sit back and relax
Train for Ujjain from Bhopal : Intercity Express @ 1700 hrs everyday
Fare : 50 rs. for the General Class, You can take that ticket and enter the reserved compartment too where the ticket can be upgraded for about Rs. 17 for that coach… the difference is better seats only !!!
