A cuppa chai makes the world go round!
With due respect to Mary Poppins, I believe!
My first visit to Varanasi was fateful!
During my last visit to Varanasi, my friends and I fixed a chai stall where we'd meet within a time range, giving us the freedom to wander off in our chosen directions. Sometimes, I'd stay back as my friends wandered off to eat something, or to return to our hotel, to observe the surrounding people, and sometimes to engage in light banter.
Chai seems to be the lifeblood or lubricant of much Indian society. If you permit yourself a pause, you will often notice men (women rarely while away their time at chai stalls unless they are students, or young corporate girls) squatting, sitting, sipping chai, and chomping on a biscuit. A spirit of companionship envelopes them, and they converse.
Indian masala chai is thick and sweet.
Indian masala chai is thick, sweet, and cooked. I use the word 'cooked' on purpose. The word 'brewing' does not do justice to the process. In the old days, the chai wallah served you sweet chai, but nowadays, they often ask you if you want unsweetened or lightly sweetened chai. We are becoming more conscious of the ill effects of too much sugar and are compensating for our love of other sweets with unsweetened chai.
Chai doesn't help slake your thirst, so I assume one reason people drink it is to avoid falling ill because of the poor water quality from our taps. I remember traveling to a town called Shahjahanpur in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh with a lawyer. We were fighting a ridiculous consumer case, and made a dozen trips to the town over a year. The lawyer drank only chai, claiming he did not trust the water.
My introduction to the culture of chai.
When I was a few months shy of my 17th birthday, I joined my engineering college in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. Kharagpur introduced me to chai, and the Bengali culture introduced me to the 'adda' culture, something I wrote about in another post. The adda sessions were transformative, sending us on flights of fancy but also encouraging us to explore many topics and to be open to different perspectives. Chai was the lubricant; any intoxicant would have us falling over each other, creating a messy, amorphous lump.
An endless supply of chai in an aluminium kettle, and chai served in cracked china cups was our winning formula, as we'd sit in a circle, exploring many universes in our minds.
Chai at unscheduled stops.
My train journey to Kharagpur from home took forty-six hours, assuming the train ran on schedule. If not, the journey could take over fifty hours. We could never get a reserved seat and often traveled in crowded, stinking, unreserved compartments. When I see the condition of the trains these days, I wonder how we survived those journeys.
The train often stopped midway between stations, and young urchins always materialized out of the gravel bordering the tracks. They'd march up and down the tracks, announcing their gift from heaven–chai served in earthen cups we call 'kulhads.' Do not even try to pronounce the word 'kulhad' if you are not Indian!
I will break for a short voice note on the photographs.
For those interested, I pronounce the word, ‘kulhad.’ Listen well!
I also made a YouTube Shorts video.
I mixed photographs with AI-generated videos, using Midjourney AI.
Do watch it and subscribe to my channel!
https://youtube.com/shorts/8nRhkSqnOhc?feature=share
Continuing the tale….
We'd drink the chai and throw the kulhad away, confident that Mother Earth would welcome this humble tumbler into the earth.
"Ashes to ashes, mud to mud, earth to earth", sang the priest. The days of sustainable living have passed into history, and chai wallahs serve chai in horrible Styrofoam cups, which kill our planet. Now, in cities, if you want chai in a kulhad, they charge a premium, which few people wish to pay. The attitude seems to be, 'save some money now, and let the kids look after the planet.'
Cutting chai in Bombay.
Years later, when I moved back to Bombay, this time in consumer sales, shopkeepers introduced me to 'cutting chai.' They explained that since they have to drink many cups of tea daily, they split the chai amongst themselves and their visitors. The delivery boy serves chai in a cup with a saucer. Half of the chai goes onto the saucer, and half stays in the cup. The shopkeeper offers you a choice of drinking from the saucer or the cup, and I remember them beaming whenever I opted for the saucer. In their minds, I became 'one of them' and was no longer a snooty manager who loved his air-conditioned office.
Few people knew that we didn't have air-conditioned offices back then, and we often sweated in our dank offices.
My first visit to Varanasi.
Then, I moved to Delhi, and after a year of heading the sales business in Delhi, my bosses asked me to look after the business in Uttar Pradesh. Varanasi was the first place I visited in Uttar Pradesh, and it turned out to be a fateful visit, causing a sales representative to lose his job with us.
I remember taking the train to Uttar Pradesh and arriving at the station at about 3 a.m., and taking an auto-rickshaw to an old colonial-era hotel near the Clarks Hotel. The hotel's name has disappeared, and even an extensive Google search threw up nothing. Maybe I should ask DeepSeek to help me out.
I remember the hotel with some fondness, even though the rooms were musty and slightly damp. The hotel had a magnificent lawn out in front, and large rooms I could roll about in, if the mood struck me. I never did roll on the carpets because the hotel's housekeeping was suspect. They served us relics of colonial-style food, or Indian food if we chose. Since I preferred lamb chops to butter chicken, I usually opted for the relic of colonial tradition.
In those days, I had a favorable view of Colonial India, which stands in stark contrast with my fierce antipathy today.
In the morning, I went to the distributor and grilled him till lunchtime, at which point my sales representative joined us. After grilling him further, I summoned him to Delhi and caught the train back. That was the last day of his employment with us–if the need arose, I was a ruthless devil.
I roamed the markets and the gullies on my subsequent trips, once even spending an evening at the ghats, drinking five bottles of water, after the 'lu' pushed me towards intense dehydration.
Which do you prefer – chai or paan?
Shopkeepers in Varanasi love paan, and they always offered me a choice between paan and tea. Their red, paan-stained teeth and tongue were never an appealing sight, and I started touring Uttar Pradesh a few months after I married. The prospect of returning home to my wife with red, stained teeth and tongue never appealed to me. I'd say that the visual image of her greeting me, arms akimbo, as I entered our apartment with red lips was always intimidating.
So, chai was always my preferred beverage, and I remained stubbornly deaf to their gentle arguments in favor of paan. In the end, most of them considered me too Anglicized for the pleasures of paan and served me chai instead.
Paan has a tradition all to itself, and in the old days, even royal women loved their paan. Urban women in India love their paan, but they choose their paan with the utmost precision. There is an art to making and choosing paan, encompassing the type of leaf, ingredients, and coating. Westerners will never understand the close link between paan and music soirees. I will be honest and confess that I don't understand the link between the two, but my attitude stems from my dislike of paan.
Shopkeepers and others always accepted my preference for chai over paan, while letting me know, non-verbally, that I was constantly compromised by not indulging in the supreme pleasure of paan. Even though chai often increased my thirst because of the thick, sugary coating it always left on my tongue, it was infinitely more preferable to the blasphemy (in my mind) of paan.
There is a holy tradition associated with paan, and a sacred tradition related to chai. Sometimes, the two meet each other on the street, greet each other cordially, and move on. Most often, these two walk by each other stiffly.
If you are eating paan, you will not follow it with tea. The reverse is possible, but only after you rinse your mouth. When you speak of chai or paan, you tread on holy ground. Be careful where you step and what you say!
Whichever way you go, enjoy the experience. Chat, listen to music, and drown yourself in nostalgia if you must. Always remember to savor the experience!
Great post. I have had some great masala tea which made me feel jittery, mellow or as mellow as possible while a little jittery. Masala tea is also good with a little cardamom mixed in. I like the instant packets from the India store. Masala chai is very good as long as it hasn't been sitting too long so need to go to high traffic chai stall or tiny cafe. I chew on mittai sweet grains of tiny paan together with tiny sprinkles sold as breath fresheners at the Hindi film DVD store which is no more except for cell phone accessories, candy and tea biscuits. This in Little India part of New York City also know as Curry Hill district renaming of Murray Hill. Often go to a spicy chicken fast casual tiny restaurant called "Rowdy Rooster" but they don't have chai. The manager remembers meeting student friends at aunty's chai stall after classes at a top 10 Hotel Management College in Mumba, which was 45 minutes or so by train where he lived. He is a restaurant manager but also pastry chef who worked in the bakery at Juhu Beach Marriott which has 3 swimming pools, 6 restaurants and the aforementioned bakery. I need to ask him about Chai although I think he liked it as a student and being with student friends or just friends. Thanks for the great post on Chai in Benares and the great pictures of the "oldie" men drinking Chai.
Well you have everything you need in Delhi. Little India in NYC is small with a spice shop, sweet shop, 2 authentic clothing stores and pretty large grocery and a lot of Indian restaurants all over the city. And out in New Jersey around Edison there is a lot. But I think a lot of people from India doing well here visit back home in India as much as the can.