In a village in Wayanad where nothing looks the same as before, a tea-shop owner is giving away tea, snacks and lessons in moving on. “We will overcome all this. Things would change, and people would come. And I will have the same business of more than Rs 20,000 a day,” says Muhammed Basheer, the tea stall owner of the landslide-hit Chooralmala. Some of his regular customers are dead. His old shop is a pile of debris. Basheer got help from many places and he has set up a new shop.
When Basheer opened his tea stall last Tuesday, a few of his old customers dropped in, gave him a hug and left silently, having a cup of tea. The usual chatter was missing, but they turned up as if to make themselves believe life could be normal again.
As soon as the disaster struck, he ran to the spot where the shop was, thinking that he could save something valuable from the shop. But Basheer was shocked to see that debris, slush and mud had filled his tea-stall; his source of livelihood.
I want to be the same Basheerikka of the village till my death.
Basheer, Tea shop owner, Chooralmala
Basheer said it was the support of people from all walks of life in the village that instilled in him the confidence to reopen the tea-stall. The major share of the financial help came from the Deeniyat Education Board, Kayamkulam, then a Rs 50,000 assistance from the Indian Union Muslim League, and a group of well-wishers from the USA, who also chipped in to help Basheer restart his life.
He had been running the shop for the last three decades. “I want to be the same Basheerikka of the village till my death. Though many people helped me in resuming the shop, I have to buy everything again, starting from huge vessels to spoons that I had bought at various stages of my life,” he said.
Earlier he had four helpers to run the shop and he would stock up a truck-load of provisions for a month. Now he procures items in small quantities. “We cannot depend on people too much as all of them have their share of crisis,” he added. Even amid all these hardships Basheer considers himself a lucky because his wife Khadeeja and three sons survived.
Two more shops opened in the village the other day. There were around 40 shops in the village before the landslide.
