A Teacup Called Desire

| Prasanna Venkatesan | October 2025 | Short Story |

A row of shiny, steel tumblers gleamed beautifully, throwing a bright pattern on the large milk boiler nearby. The tea master, a thin yet pot bellied man, looked flushed from all the heat he had just received. It wasn’t from the milk boiler, though. Right opposite to him at the bill counter sat the real reason. A mustached walrus of a man who had the beadiest of eyes and the nimblest of fingers. Holding an anorexic pencil with just his fingertips, he deftly wrote the bill in one hand as he managed the cash in the other. His enormous jowls shook as he moved his eyes between the bill, the customer and the cash he received. He paused from counting the money and massaged his palm a bit. His pudgy hand still tingled from the slap he had inflicted upon the tea-master. He looked across the shop at the tea master’s clean shaven face and found solace in the fact that it would have probably been more painful for his cheeks than his own hand. 

How he had had the nerve to offer tea in a steel tumbler to that Lower Puram boy was beyond the Walrus. And that too in front of his eyes, he thought to himself as he folded and popped in a betel leaf to calm himself down. 

He watched as the server brought in an empty coconut shell from a pile, and the tea master poured in the tea once again. The server then walked slowly and placed it on a table where a young boy and a girl sat. The boy didn’t move, he sat there staring down at the tea without picking it up. 

The gall this lot had these days, thought the walrus to himself. They no longer removed their Mundasu (headscarf), studied in the same schools as the Upper Puram children did, ate with them at school thanks to some government scheme, and drank the same water through those same damn pipes that the government had installed. Well, they can drink the same tea as others but just not from the same tumblers, he said to himself and grinned. Not in his time.

Mugan had turned fifteen that morning and had finally saved up enough to have tea with his best friend Vennila at the most famous and most expensive tea shop in the district. The most famous one for a reason: the taste was divine, the proportion of milk to water to tea perfect, the temperature just fine and the large dollop of froth on top made it a heavenly drink on a hot afternoon. They charged three times the price, had Clyde Electric Fans, wooden tables, fancy chairs and served the wealthy landowners of the town.

Mugan looked down at his dusty tea, a small fly had managed to escape imminent death by clasping its feet onto the rough fibers of the coconut shell. He looked around and saw two men seated nearby. Their table was exactly under the large fan, they were well dressed yet rough looking, wore large gold rings and drank their tea in silence. But what caught his attention was the shiny and clean steel tumblers that they were drinking from. He looked once again at the tea served on his table. He was unable to fathom what exactly motivated his own Lower Puram people to come all the way here and spend their hard earned money to finally sit at a table and drink from a dirty coconut shell when others drank from clean steel tumblers. He looked at Vennila and just stood up without touching it, kept a twenty paise coin on the table and walked out.

The walrus watched him, the boy looked surprisingly clean considering where he came from. The girl who followed him, not so much. He had an uneasy calm around him, strong yet quiet, but he was from the Lower Puram region; he wore neither a proper shirt nor any footwear. The Upper Puram men were well dressed, had large twirling moustaches, always had a Thundu (hand towel) over their shoulders and they never stepped out barefoot. He would know, he was one himself. He had grown very quickly to be the wealthiest among them, probably the wealthiest in all of Tirunelveli, all thanks to a brass tumbler locked up in the lower drawer. He got it for a pittance from his accountant brother-in-law, who had siphoned off a cache of valuables from the Harcot Nawab’s hidden treasury. Now, nobody knew this except his wife, who brought in tea on some of the days in a flask.

And on those days, the walrus would stay late in the shop after all his employees left. Lo and behold, in a few weeks, he would manage to open a new tea stall in another busy area or a bus terminus. Like this, over the years, he built a chain of ‘Aasai’ tea stalls in the district whose selling point was an excellent brew of tea served piping hot in shiny steel tumblers sourced specially from the newly built Salem Steel plant, in a modern setting. It soon became a symbol of novelty and prestige, and even the middle-class customers who were used to glass tumblers or aluminum mugs at dusty stalls started aspiring for. He reserved the heavy steel tumblers for the Upper Puram customers in each village and the well dressed outsiders. He reserved the coconut shells for the Lower Puram residents, and by some twisted logic, he was under no doubt at all that the money they paid carried the exact same value once they left their dirt-ridden pockets. And hence the twenty paise coin from a Lower Puram boy went into the Upper Puram cash box as an equal and lived together happily.

Mugan cast a final sideways look at the stall as he walked away,  but didn’t notice a crisply dressed gentleman who watched the entire scene unfold as he sat at the farthest table, eating a cream bun. This gentleman had been watching for many weeks now and had finally decoded how the Walrus had grown from a thatched roof to a chain of twelve modern shops in just under a year.

The well dressed gentleman followed Mugan. The boy seemed an ideal candidate. A young, naive underdog who now had a taste of the unjustness of society. He watched the upright stride that remained unwavering even as he crossed the streets of Upper Puram and entered the outskirts of Lower Puram. 

The sun seemed to shine brighter there, the mud houses with colourful crooked windows, patches of wet cow dung smeared on the road, a pair of dogs sleeping near the public pump, a few pigs grunting around in the slush and a beautiful pond on the banks of which sat a Temple for Mariamma. That was Lower Puram, home to families of cleaners, dhobis, cobblers, hairdressers, farm hands, potters, and funeral musicians. And the rare cobbler. 

Mugan entered his home, pulling back the old wooden gate behind him. No sooner had he greeted his mom, a little forlornly though having missed the famous tea on his birthday, he heard a knock at the door. A decent looking stranger saluted them with a very elaborate traditional Vanakkam. And over the course of an hour, Mugan and his mother, Pechi, found to their great surprise that the articulate stranger was actually a close relative. He was Mugan’s long lost uncle, Naagan, who had finally returned home after getting lost as a child. And adding to their good fortune, Naagan, who had a thriving textile business in Rajasthan, offered them a handsome sum of money seeing their despicable condition and in addition, a well paying job in his enterprise for Mugan as well. The only condition being, Naagan had to start back to Rajasthan very early the next morning, and Mugan had to accompany him immediately. An overjoyed Pechi fell down and thanked Mariamma profusely. She then invited him to stay overnight and start the next day.

Only the street dogs bore witness as Naagan, and behind him a hesitant Mugan, crept out to the road later in the dead of the night. Naagan had insisted on not waking up Pechi and had persuaded Mugan to pack his things silently and proceed with him to Rajasthan. 

Mugan, who had been rudely woken up around three AM,  felt it quite odd that his uncle insisted on starting so early and that too without saying goodbye to his mother. But on the other hand, he had in one stroke wiped out their debt and left them with a handsome sum of money. He must have his reasons, Mugan convinced himself. Holding onto the hope of a wealthier future, Mugan followed closely behind his uncle. 

They navigated through the winding bylanes, entering Upper Puram through the side roads and turned into the main road leading to the bus stand. They soon spotted Naagan’s car parked under the banyan tree. It was a red Standard Herald Mark 2. It looked beautiful and also expensive, thought Mugan.

But suddenly Naagan motioned him to stop mid-road and said, “Before we leave, there is something precious of mine that this wretched man has taken and hidden inside. It pains me to ask of you, but would you help your dear Uncle?”

Mugan looked at his Uncle’s sad droopy eyes and then at the car and finally at the building his Uncle was pointing to. “Aasai Theneer Kadai” (Aasai Tea Stall). It was the Walrus’s shop. He turned to his Uncle and nodded vigorously.

Naagan drew the boy in and hugged him tightly and said, “I knew you wouldn’t refuse, after all, blood is thicker than water”.

He continued, “But you must be careful, my boy. We have about fifteen minutes before the Gurkha comes on his rounds. But do not worry, it would take you just a few minutes to get in and retrieve it. It is hidden in the lowest drawer of the cash counter. Once you get it, put it inside this bag and throw it out.”  “And then get out of the shop”, he added as an afterthought.

What must it be, wondered Mugan. He then asked, “But what if the drawer is locked?”

“Oh! Think you’re clever, eh,“ said Naagan, suddenly turning brusque, and gave a tight smack on the back of Mugan’s head. “I jammed the lock when I was paying the bill today. Just focus on what I tell you boy! Obedience is the key to success! Don’t you want to send money to your mother each month?”

Mugan was fuming inside but didn’t show it on his face. He calmly looked at him and nodded. 

Naagan handed him a torch and let out a low whistle. A giant man came out of the car and ran towards them. How that large figure folded himself inside that car remained a mystery. But for the first time, he felt a great deal of unease. Maybe his Uncle wasn’t really the man he seemed to be.

Naagan and the giant quickly went to the shop front and inserted a pair of crowbars on either side of the shutter where the locking mechanism was. Naagan deftly moved to the exact point where it wedged under the locking rod. And then, with a low grunt, the giant, using the crowbar as a lever, slowly lifted the shutter by a foot without breaking any of the locks. Both men held it there with their combined strength, their muscles straining to keep the shutter open. Naagan asked Mugan to crawl in, and he then crawled slowly like a crab walking sideways.  

Once inside, it was easy to identify the cashier’s desk. And just like his Uncle said, it wasn’t locked. With silent anticipation, he slowly pulled it open and shone the light into it. An array of brilliant colors reflected the light from his torch onto the white ceiling.

He brought it out and held it up. A large bejewelled bronze tumbler fit for a king. 

“Aii Mugaaa! Come quickly, I can hear the Gurkha’s whistle,” hissed Naagan under all the strain of holding up the heavy shutter.

Mugan scooted across the hallway, tumbler in one hand, and slid face down near the shutter, slowly slithering out his free arm under the gap. He felt something crushing his finger and let out a muffled scream. 

His uncle took his shiny boot off Mugan’s hand and whispered. “What did I tell you?? Hand over the bag first!”

“Uncle, I have it on the other hand, pull me out first!”

“The bag, Mugaa! Quickly before we get caught!”

Muga felt confused. Where would the bag go if he got out first? He couldn’t understand his Uncle’s behavior at all. Then it fell into place. 

The Gurkha’s whistle pierced through the night once more, this time much closer than before.

The giant was sweating profusely and breathing loudly through his mouth as he held the shutter up with all his strength. “Mugaa! It’s now or never!” grunted Naagan.

Mugaa pulled his hand inside and just lay there. 

Naagan flew into a rage, but he let the shutter down carefully. He whispered once more very clearly so that Mugan could hear him. “You wretched, dirty dog! You will rot in prison when you get caught in the morning! I gave you the chance of a lifetime, and you behaved exactly like your kind!”. And then he left.

And inside Aasai Teashop, Mugan had heard every word. It broke his heart in a way he had not experienced before. Not even when his best friend Irulan disappeared forever just before his Upper Puram lover got married to someone else, or when nobody turned up for his mother as she kept vigil on his father’s body for three days before the Walrus allowed them to bury him in the village burial ground. None of them broke his heart as much as these words did, because he now realized that he had trusted this stranger for the sake of money, so much so that he didn’t even say goodbye to the only soul in the world who truly cared for him, his mother. And come sunrise, he would be hauled to prison, and only god knew when he would be able to see her again. 

The darkness didn’t help alleviate the hopelessness, and Mugan switched on the torchlight to keep him company. He could make out the steel tumblers arranged in two neat rows, they seemed to gleam even in the darkness. Gleaming perhaps from all the power and snobbery. And behind those two rows were some rows of glass tumblers, and below them on the floor, a mountain of coconut shells. And with nothing to do inside that dark, damp tea shop, he started counting those glasses. Two rows totalling ten tumbler-davara sets for the ten families of Upper Puram. Below them was a large mound of coconut shells. He surmised there were at least a hundred and fifty or more shells in all. Seemed quite right, he thought, as there would quite easily be a hundred and fifty families in all of Lower Puram. The irony of it was not lost on him. The tea shop made money primarily because of the voluminous customers from Lower Puram. But the best tumblers were not reserved for them. 

The unjustness of it all turned into a silent resolve inside Mugan. A resolve to drink tea from one of those shiny steel tumblers before he was discovered and arrested when the sun came up. He looked around and found the stove, a teapot, some tea leaves and sugar, but no milk. And he knew he had no way of getting milk at this hour. 

His heart fell along with the torch in his hand. And in the rolling flashes of light, he discovered a tall grey coloured metal box with a handle. He scrambled to it and pried it open. It was an ice-box, they called it a refrigerator that miraculously kept things from decaying for days. Only the rich could afford it. And inside that miracle box, he found milk. He now had everything he needed, and so he brewed a cup of tea and was ready to pour it into a shiny steel tumbler when the early morning light caught a red ruby off the brass tumbler. Mugan stopped himself. 

A quiet smile crept up on his lips.

And it left his lips only after he sipped a nice mouthful of tea from the ornate brass tumbler, touching and examining the stones embedded on it, turning it from side to side as the warmth of the tea spread all over. Meanwhile the entire room slowly seemed to darken to a deep black. The gems on the tumbler glowed in different colours that soon merged into a smoky apparition that took a somewhat wavy human form like the vapors of the tea itself. Surprisingly the facial features seemed quite clear. Mugan’s wide eyes could make out a long pointed nose, thick, long dreadlocked hair, slightly sunken, round eyes, long eyebrows, round, protruding ears and a full set of pearly teeth adorning a coarsely bearded jawline. He knew he ought to have let out a scream or should have at least grown fearful. But he did neither. He felt no fear, no strangeness of thought upon seeing the apparition. In fact he just felt a quaint sense of kinship with it.

It finally opened its eyes and looked at him. The pupils grew slightly larger as if in a state of slight surprise upon seeing him.

“Ask what you want, the new Master of the Cup,” it spoke.

“And who might you be?” replied Mugan calmly.

“Oh! I have no name, Sir. Whenever heat is brought upon the cup, I appear.”

“Appear?” asked Mugan. 

“From the eternal smokeless fires.”

“Ok! What do you want of me?” he asked warily.

“Oh nothing at all, on the contrary I must fulfill your wish for today,” it replied.

“Today? What are you? Are you a god? So I get one wish a day?”, Mugan rattled off, his curiosity overcoming his wariness.

“Yes, only one a day. And you cannot ask the same wish twice,” it responded calmly.

“I could ask for anything in the world?”  Mugan was getting excited.

“Anything that can be touched and seen. I cannot make anyone hate or love or feel any sort of emotion. Nor can I take a life. And you cannot wish for more wishes because they cannot be touched and seen,” it countered.

“But I do not understand why you would do it. If you are so powerful and you could have anything in the world, why would you serve someone like me,” asked Mugan. While the creature seemed sincere he just couldn’t believe it. Years of living in a sidelined, almost invisible community had made him distrustful of good fortune in any form.

“Because I was trapped by a spellcaster millennia ago. The spell broke me into pieces and locked each piece inside an object. And because I am from fire, I show myself when a little bit of heat is applied on the object”, it replied.

“Oh! So your object is this cup. Then I shall call you Koppai Bhootham (Ghost of the Cup).” It seemed to chuckle back in answer. 

“But why did that spellcaster bind you in the first place?”

Bhootham seemed to evade him and said, “It is almost morning, master of the cup! I sense the movement of people outside. And you are in a particularly vulnerable position. You must quickly order me to help you escape from here unnoticed. I cannot help unless you explicitly ask”

“Oh! There is still time, Bhootham! Tell me, who cast you here?” Mugan replied unbothered. 

“You are losing time, Cup Master!”

“And you are wasting some more!” he snapped back.

It sighed and began. “It matters less who cast it rather than why it was cast. If not him, there were others who would have. We are called by many names in the many regions of this wide earth. I was created in the deserts, much like how all other life is created by nature. While you are made of the five elements fire, water, earth, space and air, we are made of just two – fire and air. The folks who lived in the lands south of the Himalayas were the first to sense us. They gave us many names like Yakshas, Bhootham and Pisachas. We live right alongside you in spaces that you cannot see, touch, or hear. You use those senses to grasp space and earth, of which we are not made of. But we come into your thoughts and into the smells that surround you. Those senses can understand fire and air. We cannot see your body, but we see inside it, your emotions and your sounds. We are a race far more ancient than yours, but we were once like you, made up of all the elements. Over millennia, we shed the elements one by one and, in the process, grew closer to the primordial being that created all of us, a being beyond elemental intelligence. We didn’t realise that as we shed each element and in turn the senses they controlled, we gained access to other, more evolved extra sensory perceptions. And the race of the Djinn, to which I belong, is much coveted for their powers over afterthoughts and foresight”. It paused to catch its breath.

Mugan had listened to the Bhootham with rapt attention, unmindful of the crowing of a faraway rooster. It continued,

“There were some among the race of men called Mayaavi or spellcasters who possessed an uncanny ability to smell us out from the crevices, holes and unused wells where we lived. There was one man in particular called Solomon who captured eighty one of us and enslaved us to various diagrams. I for one, was bound to the pentagon, which split me into five pieces and sent them to five corners of the earth. Each piece was instructed to latch upon the first thing it set its eye on – which were a lamp, a ring, a carpet, a whistle and a cup,” Mugan involuntarily pressed his fingers tightly on the brass cup. 

“Now, any man who possesses any of these objects can summon me and use my powers to his advantage. And for over eight thousand years, I have been a slave to thousands of men and hundreds of families, all the while making their desires come true while I suffered, not knowing what became of my own family. Your human life is so quick and short, you are blessed. But we Desert Djinns are far and  few, and we live for very long.”

“So, your previous master was the Walrus?” asked Mugan.

“Yes”, it replied.

“Now I understand!” exclaimed Mugan. “The walrus used your powers to obtain vast fortunes of money and build a chain of tea shops. That wretched human being who has neither  a neck nor a brain.”

“You joke, master. Having got such vast fortunes of money, why would anyone want to set up a tea stall and work?” Bhootham replied.

The Bhootham was right, thought Mugan. 

“Let me explain, master of the cup. Like I said before, I am endowed with great powers of thought and foresight, but I cannot conjure or create gold and riches, for I have no powers over earth or matter. But I can foretell, I give certain ideas to my master to manipulate events in ways that their wish finally appears to have been granted by a chance of fate. A more intelligent master, like perhaps the master of another object of mine – the lamp, would have opened a thousand tea shops, hotels and Inns with the ideas I gave.”

“Ah, so who are those other masters, Bhootham? Of the lamp, ring, the whistle, the carpet and the lamp”, asked Mugan frantically.

“The last of the masters of the ring, the whistle, the lamp and the carpet died without heirs, and they took the secret of these objects to their graves. They are my masters no more, and those objects of power are deeply buried under the earth”

“That is good for you, isn’t it? But when did they die?”

“Many centuries ago! But leave that aside and now ask what you want, Master, what is your wish for today?”

“Oh, I am unnerved, Bhootham, that someone would unlock the shutter anytime now and catch me. I cannot think of any wishes when my future looks so troubled. I must ask that you go back into the cup and leave me to my fate”, Mugan said and put his head down as if in sorrow.

“Oh, Master, I pity you, but you have a bit of time to settle your mind because the Walrus will arrive in only about 12 minutes from now”, the Bhootham tried to assuage him.

“Of what use is twelve minutes of freedom for a boy who didn’t even say goodbye to his mother?. The moment he draws the shutter, my life is over”, he muttered back with sadness.

“Oh not if you hide behind that mound of coconut shells and count to four, like the number of spoons of tea leaves you must put in to boil for a superb cup of tea,  then when the shutter opens and he turns around you stand up and walk exactly six steps east, like the number of times you must boil and cool a cup of milk, and then hide behind the pillar facing the doorway. Then count again till eleven, like the number of times you must pour and repour the tea to make it the most delicious tea in the world. Then crawl on all fours quickly to the road, turn right and walk leisurely to the bus stand. You would be safe then on.”, the Bhootham rattled out innocently without realising it had been tricked into granting a wish without Mugan asking him one. 

Mugan smiled to himself and quickly memorized it. He did not intend to cheat the poor thing, he actually had a deeper reason in mind.

He reached out and grabbed the bronze cup as he got up. 

But Bhootham interjected, “The missing cup would not go unnoticed. The walrus would track you down by midnight, much before you can wish again. And it is not a pretty fate I foresee for you, Master”

“You know the Walrus, I cannot keep the cup back and let him grow more powerful!”

“But young master, you will certainly die if you leave with the cup. I can foresee no future where you are alive and still possess the cup”. The Djinn was growing concerned for the young master. Once the wish was granted, the Djinn was free to go back into the cup and remain inaccessible till the moon went around the earth and came back to the same place. But this brave young man was much like him, fighting against the oppressive Walrus. And this tugged at the Djin’s heart in unexpected ways and kept it from leaving.

He frantically urged him, “Master, I can hear the walrus’s car. We have but two minutes before he unlocks the shutter. You must not get caught, Master, you will not survive the aftermath.”

Mugan understood that there was no future scenario where he would see his mother’s face once again, except the one where the cup went back to the drawer. The price for that scenario was to let an animal like the Walrus grow richer and more powerful, spreading his hate by serving his folks in those coconut shells. It tore his heart, this terrible choice he had to make. 

He finally made peace with it and let out a deep breath, keeping the jewelled brass cup back inside the drawer.

“Goodbye Bhootham”, he said. “Time for you to go and for me to leave”

The bhootham smiled and said, “Goodbye, young master, these last few hours were a great relief after a long time. I only wish we would meet again someday.”

He smiled and said, “Alas! You cannot Koppai Bhootham! For my wish for today is to set you free!”

*** Some years later*** 

A white Ambassador car broke down some distance away from a very crowded tea shop on the Theni highway. It was called “Koppai Tea Stall”. A man quickly scooted out of the car to the tea shop. 

“Vanakkam. One Special tea, for Madam”, the assistant said. 

“Master one special tea! For Collector Madam!” shouted Vennila, straining to be heard above the din.

Inside the shop, the tables were full, and people even stood between tables to get their hands on a cup of the famous chai. Every bus that traversed the highway stopped there,  for there was no tea in the entire district that tasted as good as this. The buses,  of course,  brought in all manners and races of people. And once they entered the shop, nobody cared where you were from or who served you. Lower Puram, Upper Puram, steel tumblers, glass tumblers – none of it mattered. All they wanted after a tiring journey was a cup of heavenly tea made exactly like how Bhootham had described. And who better to make that cup of tea than himself, thought Mugan as he mixed the milk and the decoction into a magical concoction that seemed to remove all boundaries and differences.  

“Collector Madam likes it without sugar”, yelled Vennila again.

He glared at her and started making a new one without a word.

Meanwhile, in the car, Collector Aruna was having a bad week; she was rushing to an important meeting when her new car surprisingly broke down. She was likely to be late for the review meeting with the Union Industries Secretary on the steel shortage and mitigation measures. India was discreetly preparing to enter East Pakistan in support of a citizen revolution led by a Bengali man named Mujibur Rehman. And India needed every gram of steel it could get to forge bullets, shells and weaponry. Aruna looked once more at the memo, her district target was to collect one metric tonne. She had about 700 kilograms thanks to the generosity of the rural folks who gave pots, pans, steel almirahs, cookers, utensils and anything that had iron in it. She was still short by 300 kgs. The Industries Secretary, an Anglo-Indian who spoke passable Tamil, didn’t take too well to excuses or as he said in his anglicized Tamil – Sack-Poke.

Meanwhile, her assistant gingerly walked back and handed the piping hot tea to her. Despite her troubles, it brought a small smile to her face. A warm cup of tea served in a beautiful cup fashioned from a coconut shell.

After about a second, a small bulb switched on inside her head. There it was, her 300 kgs.

She looked at the assistant and said, “Schedule a meeting tomorrow with all the large tea shops and hotels. Everyone will be asked to deposit all their steel cups, Tumblers and Davaras with us. These coconut shells shall do instead till we get this war over with.”

If only Mugan had heard her, he would have been reminded of the Bhootham’s words – that your wish would finally appear as if it had been granted by a chance of fate. 

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_{Prasanna Venkatesan describes himself as a slightly introverted person who often finds himself caught in the crossroads of existential questions. To the outside world, however, he is an engineer who works with hard, cold data for a living, yet finds joy in writing stories filled with warm what-ifs and intriguing speculations grounded in common sense. He has a deep love for the land that birthed him—its ancient culture, folklore, and people—and his stories are firmly rooted in them, even as he explores the unbelievable within these beautiful tales.}

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Photo by Shreya Gowri on Unsplash

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