Nazir and the Republic of Tea
Nazir and the Republic of Tea
A comic portrait by Denzil Jayasinghe
In the sweltering bureaucracy of 1970s Dubai, on the ground floor of the Chartered Bank, where the air conditioning wheezed like an asthmatic rickshaw, a small, windowless kingdom existed. It was ruled not by any officer or manager, but by a short, balding man in a dazzling white uniform named Nazir.
They called him “tea boy,” but that was a cruel misnomer — the kind of injustice that would befall someone calling the Prime Minister a postman just because he delivers speeches. Nazir was no boy. He was a man, possibly in his late forties, though no one dared ask. His few remaining strands of hair were combed back with reverence and dyed the deep black of boot polish, forming a crescent atop a proud dome of scalp.
His kitchen — if one were generous with the term — would’ve made a Bombay chawl resident weep with recognition. No stove. No fridge. Not even a proper spoon, unless you counted the one that had somehow bent itself in two. There was only a Russell Hobbs kettle that hissed like a scandalised aunty, and a zinc sink that looked permanently offended, as though still nursing a grudge from 1972.
And yet, this was power.
Nazir, without lifting a finger—unless to stir with theatrical flair—held sway over the entire ground floor. Clerks and junior officers bowed, if not in body, then certainly in spirit, to tea-related expectations. The rules were clear: tea would be served in strict order of seniority, as per Nazir’s code of conduct. He claimed it was modelled after the British Army. In practice, it resembled more the tangled hierarchies of a joint family in a Gujarati soap opera. Whether it was Nescafé from the brown tin or Lipton dust tea with a cloud of Carnation, the hot beverage would arrive only when your name had cleared the unseen ledger in Nazir’s mind.
Upstairs was another world. The “top floor,” a rarefied realm of carpets and silence, belonged to Peter Rawlings, the bank’s manager — a man so perpetually pink in the face you couldn’t tell if he was sunburned, shy, or just British. His coffee was made not by Nazir, but by Noor — a farash who handled silverware with such reverence that you suspected he whispered 'thank you' to the tray before every delivery. Noor once spent twelve minutes polishing a spoon until it shone like a full moon in a blackout.
But downstairs — ah, downstairs was Nazir’s undisputed domain. The kitchen, no larger than a walk-in closet, became a democratic republic of gossip and condensation. With the outside temperatures north of 40 degrees and the Dubai sun slapping cheeks without mercy, no one dared step out. So they stepped into Nazir’s haven.
The farashes came in with sweat-streaked collars, ferrying documents between desks like bureaucratic bees. The messenger farashes arrived from the satellite branches — Satwa, Deira, Bander Taleb, Al Shamal — names that sounded like chapters from an Arabian epic no one ever finished. They entered Nazir’s kitchen not for sustenance, but salvation, sweetened and stirred.
Among them was Hameed, the loudest, proudest talker. He spoke English like a kamikaze pilot: bold, misguided, and always ending in disaster. His jokes — often inappropriate, mostly incomprehensible — were delivered with such joy and volume that people laughed from sheer survival instinct.
Niaz, son of Hussein, was his opposite. Both father and son wore the same light blue peon uniforms, and the same expression of inherited disappointment. But Niaz had a quiet dignity and the best English in the building among the farashes, occasionally correcting bank clerks with the solemnity of a school principal and the tact of a sabziwala. This earned him equal parts admiration and mild disciplinary notes.
From the outer branches trudged messengers like Salim Bastawalla, his shirt soaked and his shoes squeaking confessions after crossing the Abra and dodging the bazaar’s aromatic assault course of cumin, sweat, and cheap sandalwood. Nazir would glance up, sniff, and return to his stirring.
And then there were the young bank clerks — fresh-faced, shirt-tucked, full of illusion. They lingered near the kitchen like teenagers at the edge of a school dance, hoping for a nod from the DJ. Nazir, who had the vision of a bureaucratic falcon, ignored them completely. He had no use for the powerless.
Inside the tiny kitchen, two benches hugged the walls like suspicious in-laws at a wedding. There, men sat shoulder to shoulder, sipping tea and trading whispers: tales of managers with wandering eyes, rumours of raises that never arrived, dreams of resigning and opening a grocery store. Hameed would launch into one of his scandalous monologues, often involving improbable cousins and unlikely inheritances, while Nazir moved between kettle and cup like a silent priest at a daily ritual, pretending not to listen, though he never missed a word.
And then there were those purists—or rebels, depending on whom you asked—who insisted on drinking their tea straight from the saucer, as though the cup were a British conspiracy. These saucers, mind you, were designed to hold cups, not the boiling ambitions of a parched man. But drink they did—noisily, reverently—producing slurps so enthusiastic the walls of the kitchen quivered. The kettle itself sighed, ashamed to be part of such uncouth acoustics.
And so it went.
In a city of skyscraping dreams and sand-drenched disappointments, in a bank ruled by British overlords and maintained by invisible hands, it was Nazir—tea man, philosopher, make-believe army general, bureaucrat without portfolio — who kept the machinery of colonial remnants humming. One cup at a time.
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