Basics of Chai

Basics of Chai

I shall warn you this is not a ‘How to make a Chai’ tutorial. At this point, when your fingers can take part in the scrolling marathon (of kilometers) on social networking ‘tracks’, you could change the lane and Google the same. This is about Chai. Read Chai as Tea if Hindi references offend you for oh so strong reasons and then we could come to a peaceful alliance calling it Tea. I could have called this ‘Chaha’ given to my Marathi identity, but you see I don’t support communalism and moreover it includes a ‘haha’.
I took a week off because I really needed change of thoughts. This is a polished way of saying I am growing old and am happy but sadder, so let’s go home and drown into laziness. I thought a lot about my life and what could be done to make it better. After calculating the amazing possibilities, I chose one – Of gathering more possibilities by having a cup of Chai. And then life took unexpected turn and I started thinking about Chai in a never thought way. Why do we drink Chai, why it came into existence, why didn’t it come to prominence like step sister Coffee. See this post could have been basics of anything if I had been an observant of every single thing at home but it was destined to be Chai! I know am making this more dramatic by referencing stuff like destiny, but maybe it is a reflection of what we do with life. If we do not understand why things did not happen the way we wanted – Destiny.
I have had tea since kindergarten I guess. Or maybe that’s how far my memory lane extends. Mom always used to dilute it with milk. I did not like this version of tea much but it was a win-win situation for ladies in the house. I hated drinking milk and her purpose of being a mother was served.  Yes, one of the prime duties of every mother is forcing her child to drink a glass of milk every morning. So baiting the child with chocolate powders (that somehow ‘boosts’ the child’s mental/physical growth) or in my case diluting it with tea served the greater purpose. As I grew older the dilutions were mild and I could taste the actual Chai. I absolutely loved the taste until coffee came into my life though it couldn’t stay longer.
So my curious mind went on exploring the discovery of Chai in India to find that it was actually Chinese later brought to India by British to minimize the Chinese monopoly on Tea. But do not judge it like other Chinese products. The seeds were sown in Assam and Darjeeling and 19th century onwards it became the recreational drink in every Indian household contrary to its elite status in the initial phases. I still do not get the point that coffee enjoys the elite status these days. Elite not in a sense that only a few have access to it but Instagram and its commercial cousin Facebook are flooded with Coffee pictures. Chai is somewhat left behind in the race or rather it enjoys being away from the paparazzi. Like why is it always Coffee with Karan and Chai pe Charcha depicting coffee as soci-o-glamour and Chai soci-o-politikal. I certainly agree that Chai do has masala in it but then it becomes medicinal. A lot can happen over a coffee is a date while Chai pe bulaya hai is end of your dating career. The expected end I meant, unexpected end might be Abhi toh hath mein jaam hain.
This is not a war between Chai and Coffee. Both are best in serving their universal purpose of inducing caffeine in our bodies either in those expensive cafes or cutting chai glasses. Tea is black and brown and green and yellow and off-white (my diluted version) consumed in all forms and does not face racism. How charming of Chai! And out of those amazing possibilities of making my life better the below quote summed one up,
‘Life is like a cup of tea, it’s how you make it.’
(This quote is highly plagiarized)