Chai is tea, tea is chai: India’s favourite hot drink By Nupur Roopa

I remember jumping up to sit on the kitchen counter one afternoon. My five-year-old self wants to watch my mother making chai. She pushes me away from the gas stove but I am indignant and refuse to hop down, although I do move away a bit.

The water bubbles. She adds sugar, then takes a flat steel grater, balances it on the edge of the pot and grates in adrak (ginger).

“Why do we add this?” I ask, watching the shreds fall into the bubbling water.

“Child, I have to hurry I don’t have time for your questions,” she says. I sulk but I know that, being a doctor, she has to get to the hospital on time. I will ask grandma, I tell myself.

The ginger threads dance in the water. Then she adds the tea leaves, turning the contents of the pot brown. Stirring, she adds milk and lets it simmer over a low flame, still stirring. After a few minutes, she removes it from the heat and covers it. I hop down to watch the next step. She strains it in cups, puts them on a tray, and carries it to the dining table.

I run out. I have no interest in tasting it but am proud, boasting to my friends: “I know how to make chai.” By the end of the day, I have memorised the process forever.

I don’t want to ask to taste it because I know if I do, she will dilute it with more milk. “Children should not drink tea,” she would say. I hated that pale milky liquid.

The first time I tasted real chai, I was in grade three. I had scored good marks on a maths test and ran home that August afternoon to share the news with my mother and grandparents as they were having their chai. Basking in the appreciation and pats on my back, I asked if I could have chai. Mother refused, but grandfather smiled and poured some into a cup. I took it and breathed the aroma in deeply. I took one sip, then the second. The creamy, rich beverage warmed my heart and spirit and at that precise moment, I became a chai lover.

I yearned to make chai but wasn’t allowed. “What if you spill the boiling water and get burned,” my grandmother would fret. Finally, when I was in grade five, she reluctantly allowed me to make it under her supervision and soon I was making it alone.

I felt so accomplished, measuring water, grating ginger, and scooping sugar and tea leaves to add to the boiling water. Watching the tea leaves spinning with the ginger. Then adding the milk and watching it lighten the chai and simmer, steeping the flavours. “A good cup of chai needs a slow fire,” I was told, something I follow to this day.

Fast forward a few years, and I am on my way home on a bitterly cold January evening in Indore. The sun is on leave and the wind drills into my bones. I enter a silent, cold apartment – my mother isn’t back from the hospital yet and my grandmother has moved to live with my uncle since my grandfather passed away.

I need chai. Soon, I’m sitting with a hot, steaming cup, sipping it slowly. I close my eyes, savouring the sweet milk, sharp ginger and cinnamon. By then, I was experimenting with spices and adding what felt right at the moment – cinnamon, fennel, green cardamom and more. I would add lemongrass, holy basil and peppercorns if I had a cold or sore throat.

Chai is tea, tea is chai

Chai in India is a drink for no reason and for every reason, morning, afternoon, evening and night. It lifts your spirits while studying for the maths paper or learning chemistry formulas. It spices college gossip and fans rumours. A welcoming or parting drink, to convince friends and family to stay longer to share more stories.

It brings everyone together. It is served in homes, board meetings, college canteens, cafes and at weddings. “Chalo chai ho jaye,” (Let’s have tea) is heard every day.

Tea is chai in India. When, where, and how the first cup of chai was brewed is still up for debate, but the stories from our elders give us an idea about the evolution of this delicious, addictive beverage.

Prerna Kumar, founder of ChaiVeda and purveyor of medicinal blends, says: “The early reference to tea is found in the Buddhist texts where the monks drank some kind of tea while fasting and meditating.

“They made tea from foraged tea leaves and perhaps added certain flowers to the decoction to help them feel calmer.”

But how did tea become chai and give birth to chaiwallahs (chai sellers) and chai drinkers?

I remember sitting with my grandfather and a history book in grade 10. He could make history dance in front of your eyes but I wasn’t enthusiastic about that day’s lesson. It wasn’t about kings or queens or battles, but the dull history of the everyday drink. How interesting could it be?

Grandfather pushes the book away and tells me to just listen.

“Tea,” he began, “comes from China.”

With that, he launched a history lesson replete with scenes of Britishers drinking tea, tea traders at seaports and expansive green tea plantations in Assam.

The English were introduced to tea when the Dutch East India Company began to import it into Europe in the 17th century, and its popularity gradually grew. By the 18th century, the English East India Company was importing enough tea from China that it was considered one of the company’s main assets. But there was worry over China refusing to renew the English trade monopoly and a search for alternatives began.

English botanist Sir Joseph Banks suggested that the English in Assam grow tea there in 1778 after it was discovered that the Singpho tribe in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh drank a wild tea plant. But there was little interest until China broke the monopoly in 1833; two years later, tea growing in Assam began, food historian Mohsina Mukadam from Mumbai elaborates.

The Assam Tea Company was formed in 1839 and started marketing in Europe. Tea wasn’t a widely known beverage in India and it wasn’t until the start of the Great Depression in 1929 that the company looked at the Indian market to move its perishable stock, Mukadam added.

They started mandatory tea breaks in factories; tea-making demonstrations in markets and in homes where women could watch from the purdah (a screened enclosure); film screenings in villages to dole out free tea samples. Free tea on the purchase of saris. Tea sold at railway stations. But tea still wasn’t becoming as popular as hoped.

“The British were overconfident about changing our food habits,” grandfather smiled. Indians were wary of this new beverage. “We took it, added spices, milk, and sugar, transforming tea-making forever.”

Now I’m completely fascinated with the tea lesson.

Author and chef Sadaf Hussain, a lover of food history and stories, tells me later: “Britishers gave us the habit of tea but … we Indianised the recipe to suit our taste.

“We were used to drinking ‘kadha’ [herbal decoctions] for ages and we innovated tea into something similar by using spices, milk, and sugar. The addition of milk was … to increase the quantity as tea leaves were expensive and, India being an agricultural country, milk was easily available.”

Today, India is the largest consumer of tea in the world, the second-largest producer and the fourth-largest exporter. According to Tea Board India, the country produced 1.34 million tonnes of tea in 2021, about 80 percent of it for domestic consumption.

Masala chai

Basic masala chai is tea boiled in a mixture of milk, water, sugar, and any or all spices, like cardamom, cinnamon, clove, ginger or black pepper.

Every family has a special chai recipe. “Some like a mild version, others enjoy it strong,” chai-making is personal, Sadaf says. Some like ginger or cardamom, or both or neither, he explains.

“There are around 20,000 ingredients that have been added to tea around the world,” shares Prerna. “It is mind-boggling … Anything that can be added to food can be added to tea.”

Masala chai can include herbs, spices and flowers – black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, fennel, ginger, holy basil, liquorice, nutmeg, rose petals and more. The best chai is inspired by the masala dabba (box of spices), a quintessential presence in Indian kitchens. Ginger and black pepper are good for digestion and warming. Cloves, with their antiseptic properties, are good for sore throats and cardamom can elevate your mood.

I will never forget my Mumbai neighbour Sumathy Aunty’s masala chai. A new bride, I had reached Mumbai early that morning and was taking my stuff upstairs when the apartment next door opened and a lady draped in a sari dashed out, smiling over her shoulder in the way people in Mumbai do when they need to get somewhere. I was new to Mumbai and wasn’t aware of what a feat it was to catch the trains crisscrossing the city. Every second counted and could delay you. That evening around seven, Sumathy Aunty knocked and asked me over for tea. What blossomed thereafter was a unique friendship between me, recently married and in my early twenties, and Sumathy Aunty, who was in her late fifties.

We would sip chai with farsan or chivda (fried lentil and flat rice spiced snacks) and sometimes, on rainy days, I would make mangodis (spiced lentil fritters), a speciality of central India, where I’m from. We exchanged recipes and cooking tips from our home states and she shared life skills to survive in Mumbai, a city that, for a small-town girl like me, was quite stressful.

Her chai was a caramel brew that always made me crave more. It had ginger, fennel seeds, cardamom and lemongrass, but there was more to it. When asked how she got it to taste this way, she attributed it to a mantra she chanted.

No two chais are the same, even the process and the mindset of the person making chai play a huge role, according to Prerna. “My husband is able to discern a difference if I am unhappy with him for some reason while making tea,” she laughs.

Making chai

Here’s an easy, basic chai recipe.Bring a cup and a half of water to a boil in a stainless steel pot, then turn the heat down so the water just simmers. Add in about an inch of ginger, grated, and a teaspoon of chopped lemongrass, a pinch of cinnamon and two teaspoons of sugar. If you have any other spices you want to put in the water as it boils, go ahead, variety is definitely welcome, as the chai map of India shows.

Let the mixture simmer away for a few minutes then drop in two teaspoons of black tea leaves.

Once the water darkens, add a cup of whole milk slowly, stirring the whole time until it starts bubbling again. To aerate your chai, take ladlefuls of the mixture and, lifting your hand about a foot above the pot, pour it back in. After a few minutes of aerating, turn off the heat and cover the pot to let the chai rest a bit. Then strain it into teacups and enjoy.

‘If you’re Indian, you must like tea’

South India has been a coffee stronghold for many years but things are starting to change as the humble chai made its way into people’s hearts and chai shops serving a variety ranging from ginger to masala and lemon hold pride of place along with “Kumbakonam coffee” houses, writer Chandrika R Krishnan shares.

“Recently, a newly opened tea shop in the suburbs of Chennai sported a sign: ‘Tea is liquid wisdom,’” she says, “and why not, looking at the steady footfall it experienced,” she adds.

Moving north, “In Old Delhi, Bhopal [central India] and Lucknow [northern India], no one asks if you will have tea, but just offer it. If you are an Indian, you must like tea and cricket,” laughs Sadaf.