This Tea Shop in West Bengal Runs Without an Owner!

Imagine you are walking down the street, feeling the urge for a steaming cup of chai. You see a shop that has everything you need to make the tea, but no one to make it for you. What would you do in this situation? Walk away and search for another tea shop? But what if you decide to enter the same shop and make tea for yourself and your friends? Hundreds of people do this on a regular basis in a tea shop in Serampore, West Bengal. No, it’s not a free service offered by anyone, but a business built on trust and loyalty that has been running for over 100 years. A business that operates without its owner for most of the day without incurring losses.

Every morning, Ashok Chakraborty, the owner of the tea shop opposite Serampore’s Chitrakali Babu crematorium, opens the shutter, prepares the basics, and leaves for his work. Yes, the tea business is like his side quest, apart from his full-time job. When he returns from work, he finds a wooden box filled with cash and his supplies empty. But what happens during the day is a true example of responsible and loyal community engagement.

Travellers, office-goers, and passersby stop at this tea shop, make tea for themselves and their loved ones, relish it, and leave cash in an unattended wooden box, or come back later to settle the dues. This happens almost every day, with Ashok trusting his tea shop to customers who become entrepreneurs for a short while to satisfy their tea cravings. This ritual has been going on for more than a hundred years, and reports say that Ashok Chakraborty has never encountered a significant issue with payment defaults or theft in his years of business.

What truly makes this shop unique is not only the loyalty of customers and the trust of the owner but also the fact that, in today’s world of constant theft and dishonesty, it’s the chai that binds people together while upholding the principle of trusteeship.