On February 12, 2014, Narendra Modi, then the BJP’s candidate for prime minister, launched Chai pe Charcha, “discussion over tea,” at a tea stall in Ahmedabad. About 1,500 people gathered there. The video campaign covered 1,000 tea stalls in 300 cities.
Modi called a tea stall “a footpath Parliament.”
In the Ramcharitmanas, Tulsidas’s retelling of the Ramayana, King Dasharatha has promised Queen Kaikeyi two boons. She asks that her son Bharat be crowned and that Rama be sent into exile for fourteen years. Dasharatha is broken by grief, but he keeps his word.
The poem explains it in one line: Raghukul reet sada chali aayi, pran jaye par bachan na jaai. It has always been the rule in the house of Raghu. Life may go, but a promise may not.
“Ek baar jo maine commitment kar di, fir main apne aap ki bhi nahi sunta.” Once I have made a commitment, I do not even listen to myself. Salman Khan says it as Radhe in Wanted (2009).
The film site Filmibeat lists it among the 16 most famous Hindi film dialogues. The wording varies slightly between sources.
Under Section 10 of the Indian Contract Act of 1872, an oral agreement is a valid contract if it meets the usual conditions, such as free consent and a lawful object. “A sale agreement can be oral also and valid,” the Supreme Court held in Alka Bose v. Parmatma Devi, as quoted by the legal site iPleaders. The Delhi High Court has called oral agreements “valid and enforceable.”
The difficulty is proof. An oral agreement is hard to prove if a dispute arises later.
Zabaan is the Hindi and Urdu word for tongue. It also means a promise. The Rekhta dictionary gives vachan and vaada, both meaning promise, among its senses. Zabaan dena, to give one’s tongue, means to give one’s word.
In one of the Akbar and Birbal tales, the emperor Akbar praises the brinjal, and his minister Birbal praises it too. Birbal even sings two songs about it. A few days later Akbar finds a brinjal dish tasteless. Birbal now says that the vegetable is unhealthy.
Asked why he changed his mind, Birbal says that he is loyal to the emperor, not to the brinjal. One retelling puts it this way: “I am beholden to you, not to the Brinjal.”