Curiosity is the seed of knowledge!

by Sanman Thapa | 7/10/2025 | 2:45 pm
What does it mean to fight for something as simple as a cup of tea?

For me, it meant risking my job, my education, and ultimately, my left hand.

Before I became a school counselor in New York City, I was a teenage factory worker in Kathmandu, Nepal. I worked twelve-hour shifts in brutal conditions—cramped rooms, broken-down machines, and no safety nets. When my coworkers and I asked for something small—basic tea-making supplies for our night shifts—we were mocked and dismissed. But that simple request ignited something bigger: a movement.

We organized. We stood together. We walked out.

And I lost my hand to a machine not long after.

That could’ve been the end of my story—but it wasn’t.

My memoir, A Fight for a Cup of Chai, is about the workers who believed in something better. It’s about the friendships that kept us going, the quiet leadership that emerged from the factory floor, and the invisible labor behind the global fashion industry. But more than anything, it’s about the long, winding road from silence to voice—from being unseen to being heard.

Now, more than two decades later, I live in New York. I help immigrant youth navigate the very systems I once had to learn from scratch. I wrote this book because our stories—the ones that don’t make headlines—matter. Because labor exploitation isn’t history; it’s still happening. And because healing, like protest, often begins in the smallest of ways: with shared struggle, shared tea, and shared hope.

If you believe in stories that challenge the status quo, uplift unheard voices, and humanize everyday people beyond the headlines—I invite you to read my story.

A Fight for a Cup of Chai is also a powerful resource for the classroom. It’s suitable for courses in social justice, labor movements, global history, and civic education as supplemental reading. I invite educators, organizers, and readers alike to use this story as a tool for deeper dialogue and reflection.

Read A Fight for a Cup of Chai

You may also visit my website: www.sanmanthapa.com for more information about the book, classroom guide, upcoming events, or to connect directly.