Chai!

Tea continues to fascinate me with every cup I drink. I am a heavy drinker, at one time consuming a maximum of seven cups a day. I have been privileged to have tasted different flavours of tea.

A part of my childhood was spent in Iran where I got to taste the tea Iranians drink. The Iranians drink decoction with sugar cubes, no milk. As a child, I was not fond of this type of tea and was interested only in the sugar cubes.

Tea in Chennai (Madras, India), is largely made by people from Kerala (a south Indian state) called Nairs. The tea is strong, made with milk and water, which boil in utensils throughout the day. The tea stalls, as they are locally known, are always full, no matter what the time of the day. In the evenings, the crowd overflows to the road just outside the stall. The Nairs are hard working people and this is reflected in the tea stalls that are run by them. The stall opens at around 5 AM and closes around midnight. Some of the stalls serve tea 24 hours of the day! The shutter (vertical rolling blind made of metal) of the stall is downed but if one goes and yells "Master" (the name by which the person who makes the tea is known) near it, the person will wake up and give you a cup of tea!

Of course there are restaurants that serve tea more formally but they simply cannot match these tea stalls.

While I was in Hyderabad (a south Indian city), during my first job, I tasted for the first time, tea made out of tea bags. And I did not like the taste, for we had to dip the bags and add milk ourselves. Either the tea would be too light due to the increased addition of milk or too strong due to the prolonged dipping of tea bags. Then my colleagues introduced me to Hyderabadi Irani Chai. And it was the best flavour of tea I ever had. This flavour had plenty of milk and it was sweeter than the Chennai version. As was the case in Chennai, here too people used to flock the tea stalls at all times of the day. The tea stalls in Hyderabad, in contrast to the ones in Chennai were large, almost the size of a regular hotel. But they only served tea, biscuits and Samosas or Chilli Bajjis (savories fried in oil). This flavour of tea was the one I consumed 7 times a day for nearly 3 months. A flavour which I hold close to my heart.

I have also had Japanese/Chinese herbal tea which tastes okay and is similar to the Iranian flavour I mentioned earlier. Presently in the U S of A, the tea that I drink during the day is herbal tea, made using tea bags. Because, at work, I do not have sufficient time to make "proper tea" (made by boiling water, adding leaves, waiting for a few minutes and adding milk). This herbal flavour tastes nowhere near the aforementioned ones but it is still tea. When I get back home, I take time to make "proper tea", for this is one of the main constituents that helps me run my life smoothly.