Chai
My flatmate asked me the other day “Why do you love chai so much, man? What is so life changing about this that you spend fifteen minutes every morning making it?” and at first I couldn’t even understand the question, I mean, what’s not to love about chai. But I’m also the type who likes to deconstruct these questions and actually ask myself “Why? Why do I love chai so much?”
I remember one specific moment vividly. I was living in the US, I had been homesick for some six odd years, and I saw a picture of my friend sitting on a footpath with that signature glass cup in his hands, steam wafting from the hot drink inside, and all I could think of was “I want that life. I want to be where he is. I want to be sitting on the footpath with a cup of steaming hot chai in my hand, waiting for it to cool while talking about art.”
It became something of a bucket list item for me to drink that bakery chai and talk shop about art and theatre. The reason I specifically wanted bakery chai is because it is the everyday hot drink of choice. It’s affordable, available everywhere, and there’s a miraculous nationwide standard of quality that is maintained. As a college student in the US I had had plenty of time at Taco Bell, Waffle House, and Subway where $5 could feed me for an entire day, but I had completely missed out on the experience of being a broke college student in India.
Right out of college I had achieved The American Dream. I had a high paying corporate job, I was living in a high rise apartment in Midtown Atlanta, driving a brand new sedan, and spending weekends in New York, San Francisco, and Miami. This was it. I had made it. So why wasn’t I happy? Why didn’t this feel fulfilling? Why did I feel so trapped? Was this my dream at all?
It took me a long time to realise that one picture of one friend drinking one chai had helped me realise a deep seated longing that had been simmering inside me. I wasn’t homesick. I was a longing to be a part of something else, somewhere else. I was looking to the future more than at the past.
I so badly wanted to be among those who dedicated their life to art. To be among those who never seemed to have enough money but who could sit for hours over one chai and talk about their work. I wanted to be in a hand-spun khadi kurta, wearing handmade artisanal jewellery, kohl lining my eyes, and working on plays written by Indians, set in India, and performed in Indian languages.
Was this daydream realistic? Wasn’t I already living The American Dream? But was it my dream? Would I be able to adapt to such a drastic lifestyle change? I didn’t know, so I took baby steps. I tried for a year to incorporate the performing arts into my American life. I watched plays and travelling Broadway musicals. I took an acting class hoping to find more opportunities from there, but nothing materialised. With a restrictive work visa and struggling to find a community of artists in Atlanta, I decided that my best bet was to move back to India. If I was going to give this a chance, I had to do it properly.
A year later I was back in the city that I grew up in, yet a completely different person. I had left India a few months after turning 18 and so when I moved back at 26, it was my first time living in India as an adult. I had to get my first bank account and cheque book and a tax ID. It was a strange dichotomy of being at home while experiencing so many things for the first time.
The friends I had grown up with were all off in other places, living their lives. I had to make a new set of friends, and I was lucky enough to find them. They were the artists whose company I had been craving. I could spend hours listening to them talk. I had so much to learn, so much to catch up on. I felt so American, so out of the loop, like an alien in my own hometown. But I so badly wanted to be a part of this life that I adapted quickly.
A year later and before I knew it, I realised that I was living the moment that I had been pining for. I was rehearsing for my first play as a full time actor, we had a break and went across the road to the bakery for a ten rupee chai, served in that classic glass cup. It was a boiling hot day and we still drank boiling hot chai and talked shop about art and theatre. I was finally living the life I had been craving. I can’t remember if I smiled to myself or not, but I’m definitely smiling now.
Since then chai has been an integral part of rehearsals, shows, and meetings. Every time we take a break from rehearsal, we drink chai. Before a show, we drink chai. I’ve had chai at all my favourite theatres and performance spaces in Bangalore; places I’ve performed in, rehearsed in, places run around backstage in, in a frenzy during intermission. Every time I meet a director to talk about a script, it’s over chai. Every time I’m submerged in the work that I love the most, I’m drinking chai.
I slowly switched from my morning coffee to a morning chai. I spent my fifteen minutes labouring over it watching it boil, on cold mornings, on hot afternoons, even late at night. Chai to me became the mascot of my new life as an actor. The new life that replaced brunch mimosas with footpath chai. The new life that replaced boardrooms with greenrooms and whiteboards with scripts. The new life that replaced drip coffee with chai.
As I grew from newly returned engineer to actor, my morning chai evolved with me. From water, milk, and tea powder, it grew into an elaborate potion involving cardamom, saffron, a light sprinkle of sugar. Sometimes ginger chai, or ginger lemon chai without milk but with honey. On cold nights it would be just piping hot lemon tea. I sometimes added a herbal supplement that an actor had told me about, called Samahan, that soothed an aching throat or calming a rising itch. It was a pre-show magic potion for overworked voices to maintain their timbre and stave off any discomfort. I was living my dream. I couldn’t believe it.
Now every morning when I make my chai, it’s become a chance for me to practice gratitude, to take those fifteen minutes and do nothing but smile at my new life, the life I always wanted.
So flatmate, to answer your question, I love chai because chai isn’t about the beverage itself. Every cup I make in the morning is a sum total of every experience I’ve had that involved a steaming hot glass of chai in my hand.
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