A city runs on places where nobody has to explain why they are still sitting.
Irani chai is served by the cup, but the café gives Hyderabad something larger: permission to pause in public. Tables turn into waiting rooms, debating chambers, informal offices and neutral ground.
The point is not nostalgia for bentwood chairs or old signboards. It is access. You can arrive alone, order something modest and temporarily belong to the room. Different lives share a surface without needing to become the same.
Roads move a city. Tea gives it somewhere to stop. That is infrastructure too.
IMAGE: Teja011 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · SOURCE ↗
