Garam Tea Chat

By Padma Shandas

 “I am a self-made man!” the man declared, his voice climbing a triumphant note. “I ran away from home at seventeen, joined the army and figured out what I wanted to do in life. There was no one to show me the ropes, to guide or comfort.” He went on describing his challenges, the critical moments, the paths he took, the hard work.

“Wow!” I said. Then I fell silent, because I was awe-stricken by his commitment and courage. I looked at the balding head and the eager, bulging eyes. His forehead was marked by a hundred lines, alive, analyzing, thinking. But it was the rigid contour of his lips that caught my attention more. There were no laugh lines bracketing the mouth as he spoke. The corners of his eyes didn’t crinkle either.

Obviously he was serious about his life, what he had achieved. A “self-made” man.

I knew such talk as a sign of confidence in America. Such a man is looked up to as a role model. 

Then it occurred to me he had forgotten to mention something; actually many things: he came into a world that was going on for several millenniums, for one.

I tried to imagine his parents. May be, just may be, he didn’t have parents; nor a grandparent who might have offered a wrinkled hand to hold on to when he was a teetering toddler. Nor did he have a brother or sister who once gave him a hug and brightened his mood. Never did he have a baby-sitter.

He would never have gone to a pediatrician either.

 Why go so far back, I thought. What about the breakfast he ate that morning?

Even assuming that he had made it himself, where did he get the bread, or the muffin? Who baked it, who milled the flour, who harvested the wheat, who planted, watered, weeded the field? Who tilled the land? Where did the coffee he drank come from? Someone must have spent hours and days picking the coffee beans in some country, cleaned them, dried them, shipped, roasted, powdered, canned and sold them. If he considered the sugar he added to the coffee, could he ignore the sugarcane farmers, the sugar factory workers, the packers? How about the cows that gave the milk for his coffee? Who raised them and fed them and milked them?

As he entered his car, he said, “I am late for my meeting. Not that it matters, because they are all my employees: in my pay-roll. Each and every one of them!” I didn’t know what to say.

I still recall the day. It was a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. What would he do for Thanksgiving? I wondered to myself, as I started to walk away. Somehow, that was a bizarre thought. And I felt sad.

But, wait a minute, didn’t he say, they all worked for him? In other words, they made him who he was? Still, he calls himself a “self-made” man!

I took a quick look at your website and it appears to be much like the stories I hear on National Public Radio while driving back from work–relaxing and insightful!

— Gita Bhatia, Gaithersburg, Maryland