Meri Chai

We are up on the 4th floor of Om Tower, which is at 32, Jawaharlal Nehru Road. If you’ve ever walked down that road, you know how loud and crowded it can be at all hours of the day. Up here at Meri Chai, it’s a little bit quieter, though you can still hear the horns honking down below. We spend most of our time dealing with tea leaves and tasting different batches that come in from the estates. The office usually smells like dried leaves and burlap bags. It’s not a corporate setup with cubicles; it’s more like a series of rooms filled with samples and tasting cups. We take the tea business seriously because that’s what we know. My father and his brothers were in the same line of work, so it just felt natural to keep it going. We don’t have a big glossy brochure to hand out. Most of our customers are people we've known for years. They call us up, ask what’s good this month, and we send over some samples. Sometimes the elevator in Om Tower acts up, so we end up taking the stairs, which is a good workout I guess. It’s a bit of a climb to the fourth floor with heavy bags, but we manage. We’re just regular people trying to sell a decent product without making a big fuss about it.