A kettle
Tasneem: This reminds me of my youth, I mean really – I looked at it and thought, ‘Oh my God! They’ve got the kettle!’
Whenever we used to go home during Eid (we have two Eids and during Eid al-Adha, when we slaughter an animal in the name of Allah) we used to go to the village where my grandparents lived. It is a very long way and we had to travel by ferry boat.
I can remember first thing in the morning when we used to go and
the ‘chai waller’ (the ‘tea man’). He used to come and sell tea in
this [the kettle], already made. You’re travelling all day and the
tea was so beautiful, much better than you’d do at home. So it
reminded me of that.
Sofina: This kind of kettle was in everybody’s
home to make tea.
Tasneem: And it is still around now, if you go to the bus stops in the terminals, you will see little lads selling ‘du tucker, du tucker, chai, chai’. They are selling tea and they have small glasses. In Kolkata they have tumblers, clay tumblers, where you can have your tea and then throw it away. In Bangladesh, you would have small glasses and the sellers have a bucket of water and they clean the cups in the bucket.
Also, you’d have a bigger version of this and it was always on the stove, the water was always on the boil so that people could take baths or showers or whatever.
Sofina, Bengali Men's
Group
Tasneem,
Coram
