I really tried coming up with a couple of heart warming lines to begin the introduction of this project, but you’ll see why it’s tough to understand what chai is all about in one line and perceive it as anything else but an emotion. You see, chai is the most fundamental, yet, a significant part of my country.

​

Chai is the National beverage every Indian relishes, and to most, it’s more than just a beverage. It’s that drink that we drink in the morning to wake ourselves up or while we read the morning newspaper. It’s that ice breaker that we used to begin relationships with people we never forget. It’s that magic liquid we drink in winters to keep ourselves warm or that drink we slurp, when it pours, to make us feel cozy. It’s that drink two friends share when they have no money in their pocket and get it logged on to a tab. The drink we have in our offices, in our “Tea Break”, the cup of tea which is

offered to invigilators while students write their examinations. It’s the drink we take with ourselves in a thermos on our road trips. We find that chai is served to us in trains, in aeroplanes, our homes, on the streets, in five-star hotels and pretty much everywhere you go.

Growing up around chai, I’ve realised it may seem normal, but the magnitude of love we hold in our hearts for chai and those who make chai for us, our chaiwallahs, is immense.

To make this project, I’ve been to all nooks and crannies of Delhi and talked to chaiwallahs, asked them different types of questions. I probably had a bucket load of tea in the process (Oooh, the sugar).

I’ve met people who solely depend on chai for their lively hood and have been selling tea for over 20 years. I set out to do a project which I felt captured the essence of this beautiful country I live in, and instead of showing diversity, I wanted to show how we are all the same in a few ways.

 

That despite being such a huge country where our local dialect changes every 2.5 kilometres, our skin tones change every two states, our food speciality changes every state altogether, our love for chai always remains the same.