During a three-week trip to India, I was captivated by the rhythm of Varanasi’s mornings. Before daybreak, the streets filled with vendors, each surrounded by a steady stream of customers. Among them were the tea sellers — simple stalls with steaming pots, clinking cups, and conversations carried over a cup of steaming hot tea.
It was at one of these stalls that I captured Street Tea, an image later awarded a Merit at PPA’s 2024 Merit Image Review and a Bronze at IPC 2024 in the Reportage category.
Observing the Ritual
What fascinated me most was not the tea itself, but the people who came to share in the morning ritual. Some stopped only long enough for a quick sip; others lingered, chatting with the vendor or friends. Each small exchange added to the story.
I never gathered the courage to drink the tea myself — the cups and kettles were casually rinsed and reused in ways that made me hesitate. Still, the routine carried a quiet magnetism, steady and deeply woven into daily life.
“The day before I took this photograph, I was at the ghats the night they were bombed with C-4”
A major Hindu ceremony had drawn thousands, but I felt uneasy and asked my guide to return to the hotel early. That decision may have saved my life.
Which is why this street scene, with all its normalcy, felt so powerful. The morning after such violence, people still gathered for tea, carrying on with the small rituals of daily life. The contrast remains etched in my memory — a reminder of how photography preserves both the ordinary and the extraordinary.
The final image is cropped slightly to tighten the focus. As anyone who has been to India knows, the country and its people are an explosion of color, but here in this image, color distracted from the story. Stripped to monochrome, the image distilled to its essentials: people, gesture, and light.
Camera settings: Nikon D700, 24–70mm f/2.8 at 32mm — ISO 800, f/6.7, 1/500 sec. Converted to black and white and cropped.
