Gul Khan’s name popped up in our conversations yet again. This time when I met an old friend and former colleague after a decade.
Most people who have offices around Jang Press on I I Chundrigar Road, especially those working at media houses, are familiar with Gul Khan, the chaiwala. He does not own a restaurant. Instead, he runs a tea/coffee-delivery setup and works out of a small dhaba somewhere around the place where the office of Hum TV is located. At first, he would take the orders himself on the phone and delivered them too. But when his business, and the demand for his tea/coffee grew, he engaged a cousin brother of his to make the deliveries. The name of that ever-smiling person was Wahid Khan. We called him Gul Khan only and he never seemed to mind. Now that I think of it, I feel bad about calling someone with the wrong name. But we were more comfortable with the name Gul Khan rather than Wahid Khan, and since he never objected, we didn’t correct ourselves either.
We were introduced to Gul Khan through Rahma. We had just joined The News and she was our senior. Rahma always seemed to be in a hurry. Like us, she was also a student. She would come huffing and puffing from her university, assign us different tasks and then start doing her own stuff. Once she would settle, she would call Gul Khan to order coffee. Gul Khan’s specialty was his coffee, not tea. Why was it special? Let me explain it this way. When the dalgona coffee craze was on its peak last year, and I finally saw what that coffee was, the first thought that came to my mind was: ye to Gul Khan ki coffee hai. Gul Khan was selling dalgona 15 years ago and what a coffee it was — it had a thick froth on top with sparsely sprinkled coffee powder. He served it in very decent cups (by dhaba standards).
I don’t know how much it is selling for now, we found it very expensive then at Rs20/cup. The price had increased to Rs40 by the time I left. But we did treat ourselves with the coffee from time to time. What we ordered more frequently, however, was his tea. While we could make tea at the office, all of us longed for the ‘paki hui chai’ and Gul Khan offered that. His tea tasted good, the quantity was also considerably more than the usual dhaba tea and the mugs were better too.
We learned gradually that we can ask Gul Khan to bring other stuff too with the tea. He did that without charging us extra and with a smile on his face. So, many times, when we were hungry but were also on a budget, we’d ask Gul Khan to bring maska bun or chips from Ramzani Bakery, a friend who got into the habit of eating chhalia would ask him to bring her that, some other colleague would ask him to bring her cigarettes from the cabin downstairs. After fulfilling our requests for a few times, Gul Khan remembered our preferred brands. When M asked him to get her cigarettes, he knew which brand to buy. He knew the chhalia S wanted. And the chips I liked. He addressed us very respectfully. I was Javeria madam. There was Fatima madam, Lubna madam, Sabeen madam.
When I moved to Op-Ed, I was usually the first one to arrive on the floor in the morning, as I used the office transport. I was there at 10am sharp every day. The first thing I did after settling down was to call Gul Khan and order tea and Lays Salted. Just the call from me would be enough. I didn’t have to say what to get. When I left The News, one of the things I missed a lot about the place was Gul Khan’s tea.
A year or so ago, I visited the building again after a gap of some nine years. I didn’t go to my floor though. It was understood that Gul Khan’s tea would be ordered. When he came with the tea, and he saw me, his smile turned into a big grin. I had one on my face too. Both of us were happy to see each other. He remembered my name and asked me how I was doing and where I was working. When I told him about my current job, he said ‘that’s a good profession’. He told me if he knew I was there, he’d have brought Lays Salted. He remembered.
July 2022