CHAPTER
.24
A chai wallah turns out to be a type of servant who runs tea to everyone too important to leave his or her post, some like the man with the tray I saw on the train when Miyole and I first got here. I’m not the only one at Powell-Gupta, which has an entire black-glass tower to itself on the outskirts of south Mumbai. Each floor gets its own chai wallah, dressed in white pants, an acid-green shirt, and a saffron neckerchief, the company’s banner colors. At least the woman at the employment office ended up being wrong about needing to buy new clothes. I tuck my data pendant beneath the scarf and leave my street clothes in the narrow hall where we workers can store our things during the day.
“You make the tea, you set up the cart, you bring the tea.” Ajit, the senior chai wallah, leads me though the kitchens in the basement. He can’t be too many turns older than me, but all his teeth have gone brown. “You see if they want anything else, and if they do, you get it for them quick as you can.”
Dayo, an older woman with dark skin and a lilting touch to her words, looks up from her cart. “What Ajit means is, you do whatever anyone says and you don’t foul up.”
Ajit glares at her. “Do you want to do the training?”
“I’m only telling her how it is.” Dayo raises her hands in mock surrender.
“How about you get up to fourteen and do your job instead of trying to do mine?” Ajit says.
Dayo shakes her head and continues setting out the thick glass cups on her cart.
Ajit gives me a cart of my own, complete with a silvery urn of tea, cups, a warming compartment full of damp towels so the people I serve can clean their hands, and a data pad where I can take down any requests.
“I’m giving you twenty-seven,” Ajit calls over his shoulder as I trundle after him to the service lifts. “That’s an easy start. When you’re done we’ll check your times and see if you’re ready for something more challenging.”
“You’re timing me?” I pause midstep. The cart squeaks a meek protest.
“Of course.” Ajit turns. “Pay scale’s based on your efficiency rating. Didn’t I say that?”
I stare at him warily. “No.”
Ajit shrugs. “Chop chop, then. Clock’s running.”
My cart and I ride the service lift up to the twenty-seventh level. The tiny block of numbers at the bottom of my data pad climb higher and higher with the seconds. How long is too long? I hate leaving Miyole alone, even though she’s some used to it. This city feels different from the Gyre, as if it might eat her up when I’m not looking. But we need money. We can’t keep living off Rushil. I can’t afford to be slow.
The lift doors open on a glare of light and a waft of cool air. A wide room with an expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows spreads out in front of me, crammed with a maze of desks and man-high frosted-glass partitions. A man or woman sits at each post, poised above a data entry screen, fingers flying, or talking into the onscreen feed receiver bolted upright at each station.
“Finally.” One of the women spins around in her chair and eyes my cart. She waves me closer. “Miss! Miss?”
I wheel my cart over to her. “Tea, missus?”
“Of course I want tea. Why do you think you’re here?” She narrows her perfectly painted eyes.
“Right so, missus.” I fill a cup from the urn and hold it out to her.
She stares at me as if I’m offering a handful of goat-fouled hay. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I cut my eyes sideways to the cart.
“The towel.” She huffs. “Don’t they teach you people basic etiquette?”
“Oh.” I put the cup down on her desk and slide open the lid of my cart’s warming compartment to fish out a moist, neatly folded linen square. “Right so.”
She wipes her long fingers delicately and tosses the towel back at me. I catch it against my chest.
“Will there be anything else, missus?”
“Now I’ll have my tea,” she says.
“Right so—I mean, of course, missus.” I gesture to the cup I’ve already poured for her, waiting on her desk.
“No.” Her voice is sharp. “That one’s gone cold. I’ll take a new cup.”
I pick up the cup I’ve just poured. There’s no place to stow it except on the top of the cart, so I cram it beside the clean glasses, slopping sticky milk tea down in the process. My stomach knots up and my hands shake with the strange mix of fear and anger. I pour a fresh cup and try again. “Will there be anything else, missus?”
“No.” She flicks her hand at me, and for a moment I see Modrie Reller. All she needs is a fan. “That’s all for now.”
I push the cart around the room, stopping at each post. Not all of them are so awful, but they all want something.
“Take these cups downstairs, would you?”
“Could you see about getting me a mango lassi from that tapri around the corner?”
“You’re going by accounting on your way down, right? Would you drop this scanner back with Dipak and tell him thanks for me?”
“Do you have any caffeine pills on you?’
“And what about some pakoras if you can round them up?”
I try to scratch out everyone’s orders as best I can on the data pad, but by the time I round the last desk, my cart is littered with dirty cups, wrappers, a used finger bandage, and the uneaten edges of some fried, crusty bread, all swimming in a shallow layer of tepid tea.
“You know, you shouldn’t have started with Nandita,” the last man I serve says as I fill his cup. “She’s only been here seven months. You should start with the senior employees first.”
“I’ll try to remember, so,” I say politely, though by this time I feel close to screaming.
I truck the cart back to the lift and ride down to the kitchens, where Ajit is waiting for me.
“There you are.” He’s in the middle of inspecting two newly returned carts. “Try to pick it up a little next time. Your rating’s not too bad for the first day, but still. Try to pick it up.”
Then he sees my cart. “What’s this?”
“I . . .”
He snatches up a dirty glass, dripping with tea. “Why didn’t you stow this in the used glassware bin?” He picks up the crusty bread between two fingers. “And why didn’t you use the compost container?”
“I . . . I didn’t . . .” I feel myself shrinking again, all the strength the Gyre gave me gone. I’m back with my crewe, bowing my head and scraping and terrified. I can’t bring myself to look Ajit in the face. “I didn’t know they were there.”
Ajit laughs. “You’re kidding, right?” He presses a seam in the cart’s side. It swings open to reveal a sliding compartment perfect for dirty glasses. He pushes a button on the cart’s handle, and a compost chute slides out from the back of the cart. “Now you know.”