Agricultural life in Rettanai.

If the animals don’t wake you, the temples surely will. By 4:30 the main temples in and around the village are competing to see which can blare prayer music the loudest. The old speakers can hardly take it and emit a mix of crackles and garbled chants.

But a quieter awakening takes place at Mohan’s tea stall. Farmers, eager to get into the fields early and finish their work before the oppressive late morning heat sets in, gather around one of Rettanai’s oldest tea shops at dawn and wake up with Mohan’s milky chai. For forty years, men (and the occasional woman) have gathered at the stall to discuss village matters, read the newspaper and prepare for the day ahead over a cup of hot tea.

Mohan and his early morning customers.

Mohan’s daily routine begins at 3 am when he milks his cows – “it is the first thing I do before I even brush my teeth,” he says. Mohan will go through about ten liters over the course of the day to serve his regular customers.

We visited Mohan on Pongal, the Tamil harvest festival. We wondered if the village tea shops might shut for the holiday, but Mohan opened his stand even earlier than usual, explaining the importance of starting the year on the right foot. “We wake up especially early on this day. Some people might open their shops early and then close them to handle their Pongal festivities, but we stay open all day to start the year right. If we were to close, it could mean that business will be bad the rest of the year.”

As the sky lightened from black to deep blue above the coconut trees, Mohan’s customers began to arrive. Wrapped in shawls to ward off the nippy morning air, they only had to walk up to the stand with a head nod for Mohan to begin preparing their orders.

In the tradition of many south Indian tea kaddais (as chai stands are called in Tamil), Mohan’s setup includes a large copper boiler filed with hot water, a pot of steaming milk and a smaller tumbler of brewed black tea both perched atop rusted tin stoves filled with burning coals. With each order, Mohan ladled milk and sugar into a glass, then strained the tea decoction through a worn piece of cloth before pouring the contents back and forth to achieve the perfect frothy cup of chai.

Mohan pours the perfect cup.

Unlike the dum method of preparation commonly found in north India, in which all ingredients are thrown together in a pot with the resulting cups of chai more or less the same, Mohan’s preparation allows him to make each cup to order. More sugar for the chubby pre-adolescent boy who sat bleary eyed with his wiry grandfather. An extra ladle of milk for the elderly man with a cap of white hair and a stooped back beneath his simple woolen shawl. Cup after cup of instant coffee for the city boy settled in Chennai returning to his ancestral village for Pongal. As he poured, ladled, scooped, stirred and rinsed, Mohan told us his story.

In the 1970s, Mohan’s father, who had been a “very poor farmer” according to Mohan, started the stall in front of his small home on the village’s main road. In doing so, he unleashed a wave of entrepreneurialism that would change the family’s economic fortunes. Mohan’s father used savings from the tea stall to purchase several adjacent properties on what has now become Rettanai’s major commercial strip, which features a string of kirana general stores and small businesses.

The rental income from those properties allowed Mohan to diversify into commercial agriculture. For the past ten years, he has bought a contract to harvest a nearby 30-acre mango plantation. He pays 300,000 rupees (about $5,000) for the contract and makes about 200,000 rupees profit per year by hiring farmworkers and selling the produce.

With these additional sources of income, Mohan does not need to run the tea stall to feed his family. But he says he will not leave it because of the important role it plays in the community. “People come here everyday. They find out if someone needs work on their farm. If someone is going to Tindivanam [a nearby city], they come here and see if anyone needs them to buy something. Where would they go if I closed?” Mohan asks.

The tea shop has given Mohan’s wife Rajeshwari a chance to try her hand at business as well. She has converted the front room of their house, which opens up to Mohan’s tea stall, into a restaurant serving her homecooked food – tiffins of idli, dosai, and vadai in the morning and lunch meals of rice, lentils and vegetable curries in the afternoon.

Rajeshwari, Mohan’s wife, outside of the front room of their home, where she sells hot meals.

The couple is disciplined with their money. Income from the tea stall and restaurant is used for daily needs, money earned from the adjacent storefront rentals goes toward monthly expenses, and profits from their mango harvest business are saved for big expenditures like their children’s tuition fees.

Education will help ensure even greater opportunities for Mohan and Rajeshwari’s children, but will also likely mean the end of the tea stall. Their children are working in Chennai, which Mohan still calls Madras. Their son, 21, completed a mechanic course; their daughter, 22, has received a bachelor’s degree in computer applications.

Mohan says there is no chance his son will take over the shop. “Never. He’s over qualified. This looks simple but it’s a backbreaking job. You need to stand all day and get up early. I want something better and easier for my children.”

But despite the challenges of running a tea stall, Mohan says he will keep serving chai as long as he is able to work. “I am very attached to this shop. I will never leave this place even if I make more money. This is in my blood and it is where I came from. I am very proud of this place. Without tea, I would not have been able to grow my business. I will not just leave it behind.”

Mohan is determined that his children find different work.

The post Waking Up The Village appeared first on Chai Wallahs of India.

A kettuvallam, or traditional houseboat, floats down Vembanad Lake in Kerala’s backwaters.

Drawn by this idyllic setting, tourists come from around the globe to float down the backwaters in kettuvallam, traditional houseboats with thatched roofs covering wooden hulls. With tourism comes an infusion of money into a part of the world where most residents practice small-scale fishing and agriculture. It would not be India if there were not eager entrepreneurs setting up businesses to get a piece of the action.

To get a glimpse of life in the backwaters, tourists hire small canoes to take them “rounding” – exploring narrow canals that snake off the main waterways. They glide past women in hiked-up saris beating their laundry against stones in the water and wave to children running home along the banks after being dropped off from school by a motorboat. It is a relaxing ride, but tourists must remain alert, ducking their heads under low-lying pedestrian bridges and swerving from side to side to avoid getting smacked in the face by jutting palm fronds and drooping vines.

A woman does her laundry in Kerala’s backwaters.

Amid the thick foliage in the backwater village of Kainakary hangs a tire brightly painted with the words “Coffee Hut.” A sign next to the tire promises visitors “spicy tea” and “homely lunch.” This is the work of Preejith Lal, a 22-year-old Keralite who proves the Indian entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well even in the remote backwaters.

Two years ago Preejith started selling tender coconuts, surplus from his home supply, to tourists floating by the three-room house he shares with his parents. “We had this nice space under a mango tree with a good view of the rice paddy so I set up a table and some chairs and started selling tea.” Preejith’s friend Akhil snagged a spare tire from the auto shop where he works as a mechanic and painted the Coffee Hut sign.

Preejith Lal’s Coffee Hut serves tourists in Kainakary, a village in Kerala’s backwaters.

Despite the name, Preejith said most customers order tea. “Kerala is famous for its tea from Munnar,” he said, referring to the hill station some 140 km inland where tea estates cover the terrain. The menu includes a range of flavored teas including masala, chocolate, coconut and vanilla – Coffee Hut’s bestseller.

Preejith has a theory about why his sweet, milky flavored teas outsell coffee. “Coffee is not so nice. I went to drink an espresso at a modern shop with air conditioning in Alleppey,” the town that serves as the gateway to the backwaters, he said. “The coffee cost 90 rupees [about $1.50] and I thought it was not so nice. The taste was so dry and irritating and they just give you some small biscuit. They are even charging 70 or 80 rupees for a masala tea. I am charging just 15 rupees and I give a whole plate of biscuits.”

At 15 rupees, Coffee Hut’s tea is more than double the price of a cup at one of the local tea stalls that dot the backwaters, which typically charge between 5 and 7 rupees. Preejith explained that he provides a different service than these local enterprises. “I serve premium tea mostly to tourists. The local shops use tea that is 35 rupees for 250 grams, but I go to Munnar and pay 150 rupees for 250 grams. I used to charge just 10 rupees a cup but we could not make any profit.”

Preejith’s mother Saima pours a cup of vanilla tea, Coffee Hut’s bestseller.

Before he started Coffee Hut, Preejith’s family depended on agriculture. His father Prasannan worked as a toddy tapper, climbing coconut palms and collecting their sap, which quickly ferments into a sour alcoholic beverage known as toddy. Since he was 18, Prasannan would work for six weeks straight on a palm plantation in Palakkad, about 200 km north, then enjoy a week’s rest with his family. When Prasannan’s brother died a few years ago, he moved back to Kainakary to manage the family’s five acres of rice paddy.

Coffee Hut brings a welcome additional source of income. “With farming, we only get money after harvesting, which happens twice a year,” Prasannan said. “For the first five months of the year we are only spending money. The shop is good because it brings more money than the field.”

Preejith’s mother Saima serves as Coffee Hut’s chai walli and chef, making dishes such as mango fish curry and duck roasted in coconut oil. She said she is happy for the newfound employment. “I like making tea for people and having something extra to do. It feels good to earn and I am proud of my son for starting the business.”

Preejith Lal watches his mother Saima make a pot of tea at Coffee Hut in Kainakary, Kerala.

Preejith, who completed a course in marine engineering in the western state of Gujarat, has ambitions beyond the backwaters. “I am hoping to work at sea and I gave my application to many shipping companies, but we need to give two or three lakhs to get admission onto a ship [about $3,200 to $4,800],” he said, alluding to the fees agents demand for job placement services.

In the meantime, Preejith contemplates Coffee Hut’s expansion. He is considering building a small house next to his family’s where guests could stay overnight. “It would be a new concept for this area. There are many tourists on houseboats, but no homestays.” But he would be sure to do it in an eco-friendly way. “I don’t want to disturb the habitat and the natural beauty of this place,” he said, pointing to the surrounding bamboo groves.

Indeed, while tourism has brought money into the backwaters, it has not come without negative consequences. “Pollution is getting more here. Many of these houseboats are not obeying the rules. Their oil is contaminating the water and they throw all their food waste in the water, which is very bad for the environment,” Preejith said, shaking his head.

But Preejith said his neighbors do not mind the traffic Coffee Hut brings. “The tourists who come here are all nice and do not give any trouble. Plus, the local people support us because they bring their kids here to get ice cream.”

The post Brewing Business in the Backwaters of Kerala appeared first on Chai Wallahs of India.