“The tea and snack joints at Mangalwara Chowk have always been very integral to the town of Pipariya. During the 1950’s and 60’s, there were two very popular joints here. One of them was called ‘Bharat Hotel’ and belonged to a Sindhi fellow. Sindhis came to this town after partition and set up small scale confectionary shops. The other one was run by Mr. Shyam Jaiswal. These joints were the hubs of all the political and social gossip in the town. In those years, the place was known as Jhanda Chowk. It is believed that the chowk was built to hoist the Indian flag in the year 1947. Later on, it was renamed as Subhash Chowk (in honour of an Indian Independence Movement figure Subhash Chandra Bose) through the efforts of Mr. Radheyshyam Gupta, who runs a tea shop at the Chowk. In recent years, it has become synonymous with the neighbouring Mangalwara Bazaar and is popularly referred to as Mangalwara Chowk.”

- Quoted from a recorded conversation with Sri Gopal Ganguda (60), a local civil rights activist and a business merchant in Pipariya.