Growing up in the Western India and having spent more time at a tea stall than in a classroom, I never questioned why tea is served in a typical small cup made out of cheap glass and why the cup is only half-full.  "Ek Cutting Chai laana", that's what you would yell out in Hindi to order a cup of tea at one of these tea stalls. You sit on a broken wooden bench or a stool — a "moodo" made out of bamboo, old bicycle tires, and jute threads — and enjoy that hot cutting chai poured through a beaten-up aluminum kettle. It's a norm and it's a nuance.

I adore such cultural nuances. They tell a great story. Cutting chai is not only such a nuance, but it's also a medium where people gather around a tea stall, order a cutting chai and engage into conversations ranging from how the prime minister should run the country to why the local cricket team lost the last match. Everything is up for a debate.

I maintain an enterprise software technology and business blog here. The purpose of this blog is to share anything and everything else — my stories, my learnings, and my rants — in words and pictures.

I hope I can serve Cutting Chai and you would gather.

Photo courtesy: Vikram Singh