Nagpur ki Tapri

Nagpur is a central-Indian, tier-2 city tom-toming the inconsequential fact of being the geographical center of India. Besides, it is home to numerous, to put it mildly, inconsequential engineering colleges that have ruined many a glorious intellect.

A tapri, is a small roadside tea-stall, selling tea, poha (a rice snack) and packed in puritanical white, irony personified, little carcinogen-delivery systems.

Only the most naïve would dismiss the unpretentious tapri. Its appeal is psychedelic and brand recall infallible. There’s many a lesson in marketing to be learnt. Even psychiatrists at CIA’s mind-control facilities (code-named Project MKUltra) are going, ‘There’s something we haven’t figured out yet, Mr. President.’

It fulfills a deep anthropological need, the tapri, that of belonging to a whole, a community. Only ‘work’ and ‘home’ does not do it for man (reference unisexual). Cinema is vicarious, it engages the lazy and the dull. The Cabaret, though more exciting, is still vicarious and has an unmistakable 'been there, done that, let's move on' quality to it. Hence, the tapri. For the man who is in tune with his God-given right to be free and has retained his mojo, to strive to get there.

The pricing is egalitarian and the milieu, liberal; fostering sovereignty, not manufacturing consent. It affords a fresh arena for you to assume a fresh identity! You can be Robin Williams or Chris Hitchens, Arundhati Roy or Golwalkar. 'Who do you want to become?' it beckons, retarding mental illness, hopefully adequately, till you are dead.

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The author has whiled-away many an evening at the Bajaj Nagar tapri outside an engineering college in Nagpur, practicing irony, dissent, playful banter, obscenity in generous measure and a host of activities as inconsequential to GDP growth, as the proverbial lawde ka baal.

‘Lawde ke baal' (in chaste Nagpur phonetics) is a local slang that can be heard hurled back-and-forth among friends at any Nagpur tapri, akin to a group of young cricketers engaged in catching practice. Its sting is not so much literal like other cuss-words but to be unwrapped like a conundrum. It heaps on its addressee the inconsequentiality of a strand of pubic hair.

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