It's easy to let the mind wander to the vibrant imagery of pristine lands, imperial history, or tea time at the Ritz when you think of highly prized teas like the Indian Muscatel and Chinese Longjing. Chai, which is India’s native spirit and my own potion magique, is seen as less romantic. Even spurned by some. And I see why.
It’s a really simple kind of tea, made by simmering CTC leaves, the most basic, mass-produced kind of black tea there is, in watered-down milk. You make it in whatever vessel is lying around. You don’t quite bother with timing the preparation with a stopwatch like you would with a fine tea. You just wait for a toffee-coloured decoction to happen, whether it takes two minutes or five is of little importance. The only way to make chai exciting is by adding spices - fresh or dried - and that’s about as interesting as it gets. No matter how closely you look at the matter in the cup, there’s very little else to chai than nourishment and good taste.
But the case for chai as a beverage worthy of high praise is helped by the fact that it is unique to every home. Every kitchen witnesses a method of preparation that is singular to the family occupying it, especially in the way the ingredients come together. Chai is just tea leaves, water, milk and sugar. But maybe the family uses tea dust instead of CTC tea for their chai because of cost. Maybe they drink chai made with full-cream milk instead of skimmed because that's the one that's easily available in the corner market. Or maybe it's that they prefer to add milk first and not water because that's how they’ve been taught to make chai. These may seem like modest distinctions but if you look closely these choices reveal a family's unique ways - their chosen traditions. Unlike every other tea, chai derives its soul from traditions of families that make it, less so from conditions of the land where the tea itself grows. And this is what makes chai singularly more interesting than all others.
Speaking of traditions, my attitude towards it is quite favourable. For one, participating in activities associated with a tradition - be it of faith or food - has a homogenizing effect that’s guaranteed to get you inducted into a family instantly. It is also the sincerest way of displaying your acceptance of a family’s unique ways. And given traditions are extremely personal, they naturally form the basis of any family’s non-material history. At the heart of it all, the most positive aspect of any family tradition, however messy and imperfect, is that it always teaches you something. About your people and your origins. And traditions teach by example, like all good teachers.
Most peoples' traditions are built around food; this is very true for my family, where scarcity carved out many of our customs. You see, my family’s history is hardly the stuff of wonder. We have incredibly humble origins; my ancestors on both sides were salt-of-the-earth, service class people who lived in a part of north India that’s pleasant but totally unremarkable. Their life was extremely simple and moved at a horse-and-buggy pace. Both my father and mother grew up in such a setting, although they moved to cities for higher education, and they remained city dwellers post-marriage. But for the better part of their growing up years, they lived through extreme scarcity. You ate what nature gave you, not what you wanted. You shared clothes with your siblings, shoes included. You studied to make an honest living, not a high-flying career. To such a family, traditions have little to do with giving or receiving of material objects. Instead, traditions live and thrive in activities like cooking. And so, in my family, food-related traditions were never about maintaining or passing down generational recipes (we didn’t have any, to begin with) but more about, say, how you make the most of what’s available in a season. If anything, these people fussed about mealtime. Never the meal itself.
To this end, I remember my mum telling me stories of her mother’s brutally militarial regime where they had to do things by a certain time every single day unless they had a death wish. Everything about her growing up years was time-bound: you had to be up and ready by 5:30 am, you were supposed to finish your chores before heading to school, and you only ate at designated hours when food was served to you. In fact, with the exception of afternoon tea, snacking remained an alien concept in her family for the better part of her young life.
What’s even more fascinating is that in this family, of strict routines and hawkish mealtime behaviours, cooking happened by way of vague estimations, never measurements. That’s how my grandmother cooked and it is how my mother does too. Even today, between my mother and her four sisters, there’s not one person who can write down or follow a recipe in the conventional way. Everything is measured on the binary scale of thoda (less) and zyaada (lots). You measure zyaada by mutthi (fistfuls) and thoda by chutki (pinches) and sometimes by chammach (teaspoons). For these women, the metric system is completely inessential to good cooking. Good instincts, however, are more useful. ‘And as long as you understand the fundamental characteristics and chemistry of ingredients, you don't need a recipe,’ I remember my mum casually saying once. It’s as if she connects with food on some higher level.
As far as chai is concerned, my mum, much like her mum, is a stickler for nothing else but when she has her daily cup. Chai time is at 4. On all seven days of the week. No matter the weather or mood. But if you ask her how she will take her chai, her response is a lot less assertive: ‘any way that you are making it.’ I could hand her the most abysmal cup ever, but as long it resembles chai and is handed to her at 4 sharp, she won’t complain. Remain quietly disappointed, maybe.
My sister and I take after my mum here. We need our chai to happen at 4. We all consume by the mugfuls. And our chai is always consumed outdoors - on balconies, backyards, and terraces respectively (don’t ask why). Even though our chais are different tasting (my sister has hers with jaggery, I drink without sugar and my mum drinks chai that’s always spiked with fresh herbs from her mini garden), we three pretty much make it the same way - using our hands and eyes and sense of smell as measures. Just the way our mums taught us.
It's strange to say this but looking back the simple act of making and drinking chai is one of the most affecting traditions I have grown up imbibing. There's the chai itself, a rich brew ingenious in its simplicity. But then there's the act of chai which has served as the locus of life itself. In my family, chai exists to move us through the day. It marks both the start and the end. The time with chai itself is a moment to pause and take a break from whatever it is that one is doing. It's our inconspicuous companion, a silent spectator of all life events, and a throughline that connects me, my sister, and my mum across three cities today.
Confined indoors and away from friends and family, I've been spending more time in the kitchen than usual. Mostly to avoid ordering in but also to distract myself with an activity that keeps the hands and mind busy. And despite a cabinet full of teas and coffees from around the world, lately, I've found myself making chai in dangerously large amounts. It's just that I find a great deal of comfort being in the presence of something that's naturally grounded in the intimate idea of home. And nothing else, not even summer’s finest Muscatel, delivers this feeling quite like chai.
I was in 5th grade when I made my very first cup of chai. I had to go on my toes to reach the stovetop properly enough to do all the tossing and simmering. My mum stood by my side, helping only by way of instruction - put some water to boil, toss in a teaspoon of tea leaves, little sugar, some crushed ginger and a little milk. That’s too little, add a little more. Ok, that’s too much now. Toss in just a little more tea. That’s about right. See the colour? That’s perfect. Now put the stove on low and let the chai come to a boil.
You see, there’s no good way of codifying this way of cooking with ‘littles’ and ‘lots’, but embracing it is my way of claiming my family’s food tradition. Sure I chase after recipes once in a while, and with measuring cups, but there’s always this innate tendency to add a little bit of this and that. So if you were to ask me for a recipe for chai a la Meeta, I will never be able to give you the exact measure of anything. Expect close approximations, at best.