Serving free chai in Wembley

Last Sunday, a group of friends and myself conducted a little experiment. We went to Ealing Road, Wembley, made garam garam masala chai (tea) and served it for free to local bystanders and shoppers wondering around. Why? simply to give out of the spirit of love and giving.

Late last year the same group of friends and myself went on a 1 week trip to Gujarat, India called “Learning Journey” to learn about various social development projects that were taking place there. We visited many places and listened to many inspiring people, all the while reflecting on what we had see, what we had learnt and how we felt our own perspectives on life were changing. One of the most interesting projects we experienced was Seva Café. A completely volunteer-run restaurant based in the heart of Ahmedabad (the capital of Gujarat), it serves up an every-changing menu of simple dishes and most importantly, doesn’t charge its customers! Instead you can only pay whatever you feel like paying, even if that means choosing to pay nothing. The people working there do so out of the joy of what they’re doing and the joy of giving something made with love. When you pay for your meal you are actually “paying it forward”, in effect paying towards to the next person’s meal. You the guest are also giving out of love. It’s an experiment in giving.

One of the other cool things about Seva Café is that anybody can volunteer to help out, whether that means cooking, washing dishes, serving customers, or even just decorating the place. And a few us (myself included) opted to do this on our last night in Ahmedabad. It was an amazing experience. Serving people; knowing that you are doing it for free without expecting reward; and knowing that everybody else working with you is there for the same reason and therefore feeling close to them. These things really made it a special experience. Even the guys who didn’t help out could feel the energy.

On coming back to Blighty we decided that we wanted to replicate what we had done over there in some way. Preferrably something simpler than a full-blown restaurant but still as effective. After some discussion we settled on the idea of serving chai to members of the public, and at the same time engaging people in conversation about what we were doing.

And so it was that last Sunday we all arrived at Sakonis restaurant in Wembley (they very kindly let us use their kitchen) and started preparing chai. After cooking for about an hour we were ready to start serving. After that we started pouring the chai into small plastic cups, each with a lovely sticker on the side which read “Made with love, Served with love, Pay it forward!”.

The interesting part was serving the chai. Most of the time when we approached people we got rejected. Some people wouldn’t even acknowledge our presence our make eye contact. Others would decline our offer with a look of suspicion on their face. A lot of people thought we were promoting a brand of chai masala and we had to keep stressing “not a sample, not a promotion”! I think a lot of people found it hard to believe that here we were giving out free chai for no reason other than to give. A lot of people were cynical.

Slowly, for every 7 or 8 rejections we got 1 success, and as time went by the cups started going quicker, and we found ourselves running out of chai. Once we explained what we were doing to people they really warmed to the idea. Some folks wanted to know why we were doing it, which gave us the opportunity to talk to them about our trip to India and what we had experienced. We also put the chai onto trays and went into shops, feeling a little afraid that we’d get kicked out and then feeling surprised afterwards when we didn’t. In fact I can’t remember a single person being annoyed at us even if they weren’t interested in drinking the chai. A lovely couple who were inspired by our idea bought us some sweets to give out along with the chai. And an old lady who stopped by loved what we were doing and invited us all round to her house for…chai

I think we gave away atleast 150 cups of chai before we decided to call it a day. Initially I was apprehensive as to whether the chai would be good; whether people would want to engage in conversation with us; or whether the weather would be good! In the end I think we all felt happy with how the day had unfolded. We spoke to so many people we wouldn’t otherwise have spoken to. It felt good to push past the initial rejections and persist with our offering and it felt good to recieve so many ‘thankyou’s and other nice comments from people. A big thankyou to all our friends who turned up and drank the chai and gave us a hand with serving. Thanks to you guys we always had a congregation of people around our table, which I’m certain encouraged other people to come forward and try out the goods.

Would we do this again? Definitely!

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