The name sets you wondering, and, after pondering over it and getting nowhere, you enter the café to satiate your curiosity.
You realize you are headed for something different, or maybe even unique, when a young stewardess at the entrance to the café showers you with a smile that radiates warmth, and her fingers move synchronously. You quickly realize she is actually welcoming you, without a word spoken.
You are at Talking Fingers.
As you enter, the aroma of the finest of Assam teas overwhelms the senses.
Located by the iconic Dighalipukhuri – a large lake – in the Assam capital city of Guwahati, the tea boutique and café is small and can seat only around a dozen people, but it is there with a two-pronged mission.
Once settled at a table, Farhana Naznin comes and places a card before you, with a smile as warm as before. She turns over the pages from where exotic names of teas stare back at you.
Speech and hearing-impaired, she helps in making the choice of tea by pointing at particular names that one might prefer.
Besides Farhana, there are Gitumoni Thakuria and Lovita Nath, all specially-abled.
Ranjit Baruah, a tea entrepreneur, started this tea boutique and café in May this year and, by his own account, it is still fledgling.
The two-pronged mission that he had in mind while fine-tuning the concept was to promote Assam tea and provide employment opportunities to specially-abled youth.
Speaking of Farhana, Gitumoni, and Lovita, Baruah says they are all graduates and their disadvantage does not stand in the way of their empowerment. They just need a little hand holding, he says.
“They are brilliant and have taken to the work like fish would to water,” he says, the pride in his tone unmistakable. They do all the work right from the moment a customer steps in, from taking the orders to preparing the tea and food.
The conversation then veers to the teas on offer at the café. According to Baruah, there are around fifty varieties of traditional Assamese teas and wellness and beauty teas.
“These are all made with a lot of care,” Baruah stresses adding these are made in his start-up, Aromica Tea.
Baruah and his wife founded Aromica Tea in 2018, and the company sources the tea from organic gardens in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, supporting local producers to create a steady market for their produce. The company offers products like Aromica Bamboo Shoot Tea, Aromica Blooming Green Tea, Aromica Blue Tea, Aromica Chamomile Tea, and Aromica Chamomile Tea, to name only a few.
One brand stands out for its name among the rest arrayed on the wall shelves: Zelenskyy Tea.
“Yes, I have named it after the Ukrainian President, he is my hero,” Baruah says, adding it is his tribute to the courage and valor of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Aromica promotes Zelenskyy Tea as “really strong.” A black tea for which Assam is famous, Baruah says it has captured the imagination far and wide with orders coming in from the domestic as well as the foreign market.
Recounting the days following the launch of the brand, Baruah said that the Ambassador of Georgia to India – Archil Dzuliashvili – had met him at Guwahati and purchased 20 packets of the tea.
He said the Georgian Ambassador hoped to make the tea brand popular in his country, which is a neighbor to Ukraine. “He also said that he will get in touch with the Ukrainian Embassy to make the tea popular in that country as well,” Baruah said.
“Zelenskyy has rejected the U.S. offer to escape from the war-torn country and decided to face the might of Russia. This shows how strong he is. The Assam tea is also as strong as Zelenskyy,” explained Baruah.
Priced at Rs 100 for a 200-gram packet, Zelenskyy Tea is one of the affordable options in the company’s current catalog that has teas and tea blends that incorporate health benefits with natural herbs and other ingredients.
Coming back to Farhana, Gitumoni and Lovita, Baruah says he feels content that their families are happy with what they are doing. “We are in touch all the time and they tell me how happy they are,” Baruah says.
The idea to open a tea café involving specially-abled youth struck Baruah when he had interacted with a couple with similar disabilities at a trade fair in New Delhi a couple of years back.
Aromica Tea has just launched a tea packet that is Braille friendly. The Braille contains the product description, content inside, price, net weight, manufacturing date, and expiry date.
"I was so impressed while interacting with this couple at the fair that I decided to do something for the specially-abled through tea," Baruah said.
Soon, Baruah's search for youths with similar disabilities began. "It was not an easy job," he said. But with help from Signable Communication, a platform working for empowerment of specially abled youths, Baruah managed to launch his project, Talking Fingers.
At one corner of the table at Talking Fingers are two small flags; one is emblazoned with the word ‘assistance’ and the other with the word ‘bill.’ As one holds up the ‘bill’ flag, Gitumoni comes up with the bill.
A pleasant evening comes to an end.
Walking down the road enveloped by a rain-induced mist and the many lights reflecting from the waters of Dighalipukhuri, a few words on a framed poster hung on a wall of Talking Fingers resonate: Deaf People Can Do Anything Hearing People Can, Except Hear.
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