Chai Khana 1962

Same pyali, third generation

In 1962, Sheikh Kareem set up six benches and a single samovar at Rang Mahal Chowk and started selling one thing — doodh patti, boiled hard, poured from height. Sixty years later the samovar is still the first pot lit every morning, and the shop has grown exactly once: his grandson Bilal opened a second counter on Main Boulevard Gulberg so the office crowd wouldn't have to cross the old city for the same cup.

Sheikh Kareem poured the first pyali in 1962; his son Rashid kept the samovar through the eighties when everything around Rang Mahal changed shutters; Bilal, the grandson, opened Gulberg in 2019 and still drives the dawn milk order to the old city himself.