The Man Who Sells Tea

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Representational illustration: Public domain.
A poet-scholar narrates the story of a man who sells tea — through verse

The Man who sells tea on the city
footpath once asked me: have you seen

a tea garden ? I weaved a tea garden
in front of him and quickly found green

in one of his eyes and morning mist
(of hills) in the other. I found drops

of rain on his bare skin, beside the
oven, in this tropical summer.

Smoke from a clumsy tea-pan
smiled at us.

He handed over a typical
clay pot of hot tea to me.

And I also found evening
slowly descending

like hilly mist on the
pensive footpath.

***

Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at [email protected].

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