The 'Cha Bar' in the OBS @ The Park Hotel

Where in this part of the world would you go, if you had the sudden urge, to have a cup of Ladakhi cha? Or a cup of Kashmiri kawa? Or Japanese Macha? Or Malaysian teh tarik? The answer is, Hyderabad. In a city where Irani chai reigns supreme you’d be surprised there is a place which serves Arabic spice tea, Moroccan mint tea, Russian caravan tea, South African rooibos, Thai lemongrass tea and more than a hundred other varieties of tea and coffee. Those who had been to the ‘cha bar’ in Oxford Book Stores across the country would know what I am talking about. I had been to one such store in Hyderabad sometime last week. One on my visits to Delhi I had been to the OBS somewhere near Janpath and had a cup of masala chai which made me very good which is not something that usually happens whenever I am in Delhi. I had then thought how nice it would be if someone had the bright idea of opening an OBS in apna Hyderabad.

Quite miraculously, not long after I had that thought, an OBS opened right in Hyderabad on the busy Road No. 1 of Banjara Hills. I dropped in there once soon after and checked out not only the place but also the tea. I wasn’t impressed with the store because of its location and also its size. I felt it was way too small and I did not go there again. I had then wished that OBS were a bit larger and more swish. I was quite taken aback, about a few months ago, when I read somewhere that another OBS had opened at the Park Hotel. Though I did not go there right away sometime in January I happened to drop in at the Park OBS for a book reading and came away sufficiently impressed to tell myself that I’d drop in for a detailed survey very soon. Last week I got the time to pay a visit to the OBS.

It is a pity to see a large bookstore, the kind Hyderabad hasn’t seen before, with not a single soul in it. I was the only customer in the store at the time of the hour, around half past six in the evening, me and about half a dozen sales assistants hovering around. I browsed around for a while and hoped someone would drop in because I was on the verge of creating a world record for being the only customer in a large bookstore for the longest time. I was wondering if I too should make a quiet exit and let the sales assistants relax when somebody walked in. Two people sauntered in and I knew right away that they weren’t the book buying sorts and not very soon I was proved right. I overheard one of them asking the sales guys if the store stocked Intermediate text books. Only in Hyderabad can we find people whose idea of a bookstore is of a place where one buys school and college textbooks. I felt like walking up to the guy and taking a close look at his face. But he walked out even before I could get anywhere near him. He certainly seemed to be the sort of guy who would no doubt go home and tell his family and half the people in his neighborhood that he had recently walked into a big bookstore in a big hotel that did not stock Intermediate textbooks as if he had made a major archaeological discovery.

But the fact was, forget textbooks, it did not have what I wanted. ‘Tinkle’ magazine? I asked. No. Orhan Pamuk’s ‘The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist? No. ‘Outlook’ magazine? No. Even the OBS tee shirts they had stocked were of one size only- Large. I suppose they expect all their Hyderabadi customers to be of that size. No wonder there weren’t many customers in that store. Since I lost all interest in buying anything at OBS I decided to check out the ‘cha bar’ and got the surprise of my life when I took a glance at the menu.

The menu of the ‘cha bar’ at OBS listed no less than 119 (yes, one hundred and nineteen) varieties of tea and coffee. There was the standard Masala chai, the South Indian coffee, and something called the ‘Sau Meel ka Cha’ (100 Mile Tea) that the menu helpfully told me was what truck drivers had on their long trips. Since I had not driven to OBS in a truck I settled for the standard Masala chai. I was also intrigued to read that cha bar also offers teas from Darjeeling (Malkaibari, Gold) Nilgiris (Tiger Hill, Craigmore, non such), Kangra, Sikkim, Nepal and tea margaritas, dessert teas, Ceylon tea, green tea, Oolong, Chinese (Lapsang souchong, song lou etc), herbal teas, ayurvedic tea and even ‘mother and child’ tea, coffees, assorted snacks and so many other varieties of tea that it would take me two years to sample all those teas even if I managed to drop in once a week. I discovered that the masala chai served in a glass tumbler in a quaint holder just like the one I had at the Delhi cha bar, was really good and worth the thirty bucks I had to shell out for it.

It felt really nice to know that at last there was a place in Hyderabad I could come to if I was bored of Irani chai. It struck me that cha bar did not offer Irani chai. But it is all wasted on Hyderabadis because for us Hyderabadis there is nothing like a cup of Irani chai to make others on the road nervous with our driving skills. Also, not many would be bothered to drive down all the way to the Park Hotel which is in Somajiguda (near the Necklace Road MMTS station to be exact) to sample the varieties of teas and coffees. The Park and the OBS opened sometime November last I guess, that is six months ago but still probably doesn’t get more than a couple of visitors a day which is a real pity because OBS is a nice joint. For a change I wish the Park had opened somewhere in Jubilee Hills where the crowd would have done justice to it