Chai
© Nandita Godbole
I have been a tea drinker for decades now, from the time I had permission to drink caffeinated beverages like tea or coffee as a teenager. Most of us would think that chai is inherently Indian, I did too. Until I started working on my book, ‘Seven Pots of Tea’.
Just about a century ago, locals in India did not even like tea, the black steeped version that was so heavily favored by the British, coveted by the Anglophiles in India! It was considered elitist and capitalist by those who supported an independent India.
I was also surprised to learn that what 21st century Indians (and the rest of the world) think of as chai, the one consumed with dairy and sugar, only became popular in the mid-20th century, a phenomenon that likely owes its success to three things: tea-cabins and Irani cafes’ that offered social spaces for tea drinking, and extensive marketing.
The Rise Of Social Chai
The word Chai shares its roots with the Russian and Arabic words for tea, Chay, an older word from Persia, called Tzai, and the Chinese word for tea, Cha. In each of these cultures, tea was enjoyed because it was considered medicinal.
Although tea was known in India before colonization though not prevalent. It was often consumed black, without the addition of dairy. Tribal populations in northern…
