The New National Tea Depot

Nampally Road is never quiet. We open the shutters early because the tea needs to be ready before the big trucks start moving too much. Our place is at House No. 5-7-570/571. It’s just an old building with a lot of history in the walls. We have big wooden boxes and sacks of tea leaves everywhere. Sometimes you have to squeeze past a bag to get to the back. We sell different kinds of tea, mostly loose leaf. People come in with their own containers or we use paper bags. It gets dusty, and the smell of dry tea is very strong, almost spicy sometimes. We don't have air conditioning, so we keep the doors wide open. Flies come in, we shoo them away. The counter is worn down from years of people leaning on it while they talk. We don't have a website or anything like that. If you want tea, you just come to the depot. Sometimes the supply from the gardens is late, and we have to explain that to the customers. Most of them understand. We drink a lot of tea ourselves while we work. It keeps us going during the long afternoons when the sun hits the front of the shop. We’ve been part of this street for a long time, and we know most of the shopkeepers nearby. It’s just a regular tea business and we take things one day at a time.