Chai Tea

I roll out of your still-asleep arms and walk to the kitchenette, rubbing my eyes. Sleep hangs heavy on my lids, but my arms move automatically to grasp the steel casserole I reserve for my morning tea. Its handle is coming loose and its bottom is freckled with leftover tannin from all the cups of tea I’ve made for myself since arriving five years ago. I fill it with water and place it on the induction plate set to high. Five years and I have still not made my peace with this weak substitute for fire, this thing that glows red with heat but sends no flames up to the Gods, that doesn’t turn the outside of my casserole blue when the water boils.

A few steps from me, your eyelids move rapidly as you dream of things I will never know.

I start my daily ritual. I take a gnarled piece of ginger from the fridge and begin to chop it finely, first into juicy slices and then into small strips that gleam yellow in the light of the summer sun. It is one of those Parisian mornings that is already hot, foreboding a day of 30 degree Celsius temperatures that the French will stubbornly call a “heat wave” but only remind me of mild summer days in Bombay. I gather the pieces of cut ginger with my fingers and drop them into the water delicately, then adding some cloves. Five years has taught me patience– it takes a good ten minutes for the water to boil here as opposed to a couple of minutes back home. I sigh.

The noise wakens you. You stir to life and ask me what I’m doing. This is the first time you’ve stayed over.

“I’m making my morning tea”, I say, giving you a quick kiss, “do you want some?”

“Ooh, is it like Chai Tea? I remember having some at Starbucks once.”

I bristle at the term. “Just chai. Masala chai actually, tea boiled with milk and spices. Do you want some?”

You shake your head. “I don’t do caffeine. And it’s so hot! But I’d love to take a sip to see what it tastes like.”

“Not even tea?!” You shrug. You are awake now, but your eyes seem far away still, in distant lands I have only heard of.

I need to return to the familiar. I rush back to the kitchen — the water is boiling, the shreds of ginger and clove heads are now dancing up and down. I add some milk, then sugar and tea powder in 2:1 proportions; the golden ratio of chai-making. Then I bring it to a second boil and take it off the heat.

“Wow, it seems like quite a long process. Do you make tea every morning like this?” you question.

—

I look into those brown eyes that were dreaming just a few minutes ago, now open pools of curiosity. For an instant they seem completely transparent, and I am reassured. I wish I could remember the moment our eyes first met, but I don’t. Five years of trying and failing at cross-cultural romances has jaded me. Ours was no love at first sight, only a steady, growing companionship. Last night marked four months of knowing you. A few drinks into the evening and I invited you back to my place. As you took me into your arms, I trembled. I don’t know if you noticed.

The pungent notes of ginger and clove waft in from the kitchen. I wonder what the boiled milk smells like to you – is it cloying or pleasantly sweet? You are taking a deep whiff now and pronouncing the aroma ‘heavenly’ so I gather up the courage to go to the kitchen and pour you a mug. My hands shake as I try to keep the strainer steady.

Your question hangs in the air between us. What should I say?

Should I tell you that this is not how my mother made our morning chai, not how she taught me to make it? She preferred the English way, boiling the tea and spices separately in hot water, waiting for the mixture to brew off the flame before adding the milk in as a final flourish.

Should I tell you about the thousands of chaiwallahs that dot the street corners of my sprawling city? How they sell it out of little sheds with a metal sheet for a roof and a small stove upon which a cauldron of chai sits all day? How they boil and re-boil the water to kill germs in the unclean water of Bombay? How we call it tapri chai, or cutting chai, when we order only half a glass?

I bring a full mug to you. This is the moment of no-return, when you stand on the precipice of a whole world that is unknown to you and ask me a seemingly innocuous question.

What should I say?

Should I tell you that I had my first cup of chai at age 4, as soon as I stopped drinking milk? That my grandfather used to pour the tea out of his cup into a saucer on especially hot days, blowing on it to cool it down? That my father used to make me giggle when I was a little girl by blowing into his cup and letting the fog steam up his glasses? That my first date with my first boyfriend was at the fashionable Tea Centre not far from the sea in Bombay – a colonial-style establishment where there were hundreds of varieties of tea, heart-shaped waffles and a bell to summon the waiters? That Kashmiri Kahwa, a kind of buttery tea brewed with nutmeg and cinnamon was our go-to order there? That we ordered potfuls of it and poured it out in earthen mugs as it defined and punctuated our conversations?

Should I tell you how it is impolite not to offer chai to a guest who comes home? Should I tell you how it is impolite to refuse? Or should I tell you how my mom and aunts gathered together in a massive assembly line during festivals to make enough tea for the 50-odd members of my family gathered together at my home? How we would be too stuffed from all the rich food eaten off banana leaves to move? How we sat playing ancient and complicated card games around the bed, and how chai poured into shining steel tumblers magically appeared to break the tension at just the right time?

I think back to all the times I have been here before, at this very point between curiosity and discovery. To the time I first watched a Bollywood movie with some of the people I’ve been with. How one was utterly bored, how another thought it was so melodramatic that he rolled his eyes right through, and how a third slowly learned to appreciate them over time. How much effort it took to explain our very specific brand of expressiveness, stripped bare of all nuance…

I want to tell you about the labourer who toils in the sun and can only afford chai to keep going. I want to tell you about the office-goer who pops down to the local chaiwallah across the street to take a break from work. I want to tell you how many cups of chai I have had alone or with friends when staying up for an important exam. I want to tell you how “ek cutting chai” is the phrase that binds and unites my people. How a cup of chai offered can broker peace between Muslims and Hindus and Christians, how we all get together and drink chai during a cricket match, yelling abuses at the opposing team.

But most of all I want to tell you about the relationship that chai has with the monsoon. How a piping hot cup of chai accompanied with spicy pakoras is the perfect antithesis to the rain falling outside in big fat drops. How its strong flavours complement the ferociousness of the clapping skies, the strength of the downpour. How children run outside to float paper boats in the puddles, inhaling their first breaths of petrichor. How the temperature drops by at least ten degrees and even adults feel so relieved they go out to dance in the rain. How the sky gets dark and much-needed shade is finally had. How we got days off school or work because Bombay was flooded and we had to wade home in knee-deep water. How I would go by the sea in the rains as a teenager, as it made giant waves that drenched me to the bone. How making love in a wet sari is the ultimate sexual fantasy in India, and how the epitome of romance is sharing an umbrella with one’s lover in the rain. And how almost every film song that has the word rain also has the word love and chai in it.

—

“So, do you make tea every morning like this?” you repeat, taking a sip.

I look into those eyes again, my heart racing.

“Yes,” I reply, adding nothing else.

Outside, the sky breaks out into a tropical rain-shower. Parisians curse the weather and run for cover. You put down the mug, take my hand, and pull me out into the rain.

As the water runs down my face, I smile at you, at everything I didn’t say.

'Chai Tea' was first published in PLU Magazine 3, an annual literary revue based in Paris.