Assam Loose Tea House

Our place is House No. 476 in Anwar Ganj, which is right near Agat Chowk. It’s an old building, but it holds a lot of tea. We call it Assam Loose Tea House because that’s exactly what we have piles of. The smell of the loose leaves is everywhere in the house. It’s in the curtains and even in the rugs. When you walk in from Agat Chowk, the first thing you see are the big open bins full of different grades of tea. We use large metal scoops to move the tea into bags for people. Sometimes the dust from the tea makes us sneeze, but you get used to it after a few years. We don’t have a fancy store front with glass windows. It’s more like a warehouse that people happen to walk into. The light is a bit dim inside, but we know where everything is by touch. My grandfather started this long ago, and not much has changed since then. We still use the same heavy bags and the same way of tying the string. There’s always a lot of chatter because Anwar Ganj is a talkative neighborhood. People stop by not just for tea but to hear the news from the chowk. We don't have a mission statement or anything like that. We just have tea and we sell it to anyone who asks.