“Coi, Coi, Coi, Coi, Coiiiii!” It seemed every bus was headed to Coimbatore, not one to Kotagiri. Looking for help and a little caffeine, we turned to one of the station’s chai wallahs, Selu Kumar, who operates a modest stall from which he sells tea, coffee, and an assortment of deep fried vadas.

Having memorized the locations and timings of each bus departure, Selu Kumar pointed us in the right direction and sent us off on the next leg of our journey. But not before he poured us a glass of chai brewed with the trademark technique found throughout Tamil Nadu’s tea kaddais: straining a stream of black tea into the glass, adding frothy milk pulled with sugar, and topping it off with one more touch of tea.

With another hour to go before our bus to Kotagiri and thirsty for more chai, we decided to visit a few more of the station’s chai wallahs.

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It was in Buddhist monasteries in China that tea first became a popular drink. For centuries, monks have consumed tea to help them concentrate on their meditation and stave off sleep. So it is no surprise that today monks throughout India flock to chai stands.

“We’re only supposed to eat two times a day, so tea really helps sustain me,” said Kunga Thukjay, a Tibetan monk raised in India. “I love the Indian tea with all the ginger and cardamom,” he said as he sipped Manesh’s milky brew – much better in his opinion than the traditional Tibetan tea served with salted yak butter.

Buddhists come from around the world to make the pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya, so Manesh’s stand at times takes on the appearance of an international convention with monks from Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and China – each easily identifiable by the color of their robes. “The Sri Lankans wear white, the Burmese red,” Manesh explained.

Bodh Gaya is also a destination for foreign backpackers and Indian tourists, but fewer have come since July when a series of bomb blasts occurred in the Mahabodhi temple complex built around the Bodhi tree. The blasts totally shook up Manesh’s business. He used to have a permanent tea stall in the pedestrian walkway outside the temple with chairs and benches for customers. After the blasts, police banned stalls from the walkway and Manesh had to move to his spot under the tree, where he sets up his two-burner stove every morning. “Now there are many fewer customers,” he said. “There’s nowhere for them to sit.”

Chairs or no chairs, Manesh is the chai wallah closest to the temple and he appears to do a brisk business selling to monks who wax philosophical over multiple glasses of tea – each nearly double the size of those found in Delhi.

Over a cup, Pankaj Shankar, a filmmaker working on a documentary about Bodh Gaya, told an anecdote illustrating how chai was linked to Buddhism:

“These guys were traveling on a train and met some Buddhists. A chai wallah came down the train selling tea and the travelers perked up. The Buddhists asked, ‘Do you drink tea?’

‘Yes, of course we do,’ they responded. ‘Morning and night.

‘Well, what is in your tea?’ the monks asked.

‘Tea, milk, water and, obviously, sugar.’

‘We drink tea also,’ said the monks. ‘But our ingredients are different. As tea we use compassion. As milk we use tolerance. As water we use forgiveness, and for sugar self-discipline. That is the recipe for Buddhism.’”

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My inspiration for writing about chai wallahs is a 5-foot tall Nepali woman who brightened every day for me during the year I taught English at Nav Yug School Peshwa Road on a Fulbright Fellowship.

The students made me laugh. The teachers made me fat. But it was Jhumka Auntie who made me feel at home and kept me going each day with her warm smile and warm adrak chai.

I returned to Nav Yug School to relearn the words to Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram, and to brush up on my Nepali while Jhumka prepared chai.

As she boiled water, she recounted her personal story. Jhumka was born in a village near Pokhara, a peaceful town on a lake at the base of three of the world’s ten highest mountains. Twenty-nine years ago she came to Delhi with her husband who had found a job at the Parliament House. She worked as a domestic in the home of S.B. Chavan, who served as Home Minister in the governments of Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao. When Chavan died, his son Ashok, who was Maharashtra’s Chief Minister until removed amid a corruption scam, found Jhumka a job at Nav Yug.

Hired as an aide to help supervise small children, her responsibilities quickly expanded to include making and delivering chai to teachers. They pool money for Jhumka to buy ingredients and give her tips to supplement her salary. “Teachers are addicted to tea,” she explained.

She splits duties as school chai walli with Anandi, who came to this school with the principal when she transferred from another Nav Yug branch. “We use different recipes for different people. Madam ko chini kam pasand hai.” The principal takes less sugar.

As Jhumka tosses tea into her pot, students pile at her door to place orders for their teachers, listing the classrooms where Jhumka’s services are needed.

Some teachers can’t wait for her to make her rounds. Lured by the sounds and smells of smashed ginger, Negi Ma’am, who teaches high school English, enters Jhumka’s kitchen. “This is my break period and I have a lot to do, but I can’t do any of it until I have tea,” Negi says. “If I’m tired I have tea. If I’m hungry I have tea. For every problem, our solution is tea. And for this solution we need Jhumka. We handle the students’ problems. Jhumka handles our problems.”

Jhumka pours a cup and hands it to Negi. She takes a sip. “Jhumka is the lifeline of our school.”

Jhumka Auntie’s Adrak ki Chai (Ginger Tea)

Serves ~8 small cups from Jhumka’s thermos

Ingredients:

3 cups water

1.5 cups milk

4 teaspoons black tea

6 teaspoons sugar

1 inch piece of ginger

Instructions:

Bring water to rolling boil. Add tea and ginger. Cover and steep for 10 minutes. Add sugar and milk. Put mixture on highest heat. Just as it is about to boil over, stir. Repeat three times. Reduce heat and let sit for a minute. Pour through strainer and serve in cups to teachers in kitchen or bring thermos around to classrooms and provide a welcome interruption to lessons.

The post Back to School: Returning to My Favorite Chai Walli appeared first on Chai Wallahs of India.

It’s a pretty common sight at Connaught Place in the heart of New Delhi – western tourists warily walking, bags clutched tightly to their chest, trying to speed past beggars and touts. Shouts of “Which country? Which country?” and “Come look my shop” fill the halls of C.P., as the complex is known, a magnificent circle of commerce built in 1933 to replicate the Royal Crescent of Bath, England.

When a young man offered us some unsolicited advice about a closed bank then began asking where we were from, we nearly ended the conversation there as we had with so many strangers who had approached us. But we had a question for him. Where could we find a chai wallah in Connaught Place?

“Chai wallahs?” the young man Rakesh asked. “Chai wallahs are not allowed here anymore. Only branded stores.” He suggested we visit one of the many Café Coffee Days – we had passed three in our short stroll from the metro already – or the recently opened Starbucks. But we wanted chai. He professed to be a tea lover himself and suggested we buy some loose tea to make if we were going to be staying in India for a while.

When we explained we were researching chai wallahs, he realized he had just the place in mind. He led us through back alleys into the innards of C.P., past stray dogs and open electrical boxes with wires hanging. The British had designed Connaught Place in the regal Georgian style as a modern marketplace, its shops neatly organized for customers to stroll by. But their architecture could not suppress the Indian entrepreneurial spirit from turning the shaded back alleys of C.P. into places of commerce themselves, as merchants set up little aluminum stalls from which to sell beedi cigarettes, tobacco packets and paan. Turning past corner after corner, we came upon a beautiful open space with a large banyan tree under which sat a bustling chai stand.

The stand was covered by a tin roof jutting out of the adjacent building. Customers chatted at a table in front of a man boiling chai and another frying samosas. Clotheslines had been strung from the balconies above to the banyan tree. Kurtas and churidars hung from the line, blowing in the wind above our heads.

“Teen chai bana do.” Rakesh ordered three cups and pulled up stools for us to sit. He was still a bit perplexed by our project and asked why we found chai a topic worth researching. Before we could respond, he answered the question for us. “In India, there are too many varieties of tea. You must go Rajasthan – there you will find chai made with camel milk. In Punjab you get rich buffalo milk chai. There is also the Kashmiri kahwa, which is really very nice.”

Our tea arrived – three little glasses, each the height of a finger, containing a double espresso shot’s worth of sugary chai. We continued talking, now less about tea and more about life. Rakesh had come to Delhi from Khajuraho, a town famous for its temples with erotic carvings depicting detailed scenes from the Kama Sutra. He was from a farming family, but did not want to be a farmer. “This new generation – we don’t want to work hard like our elders.” He said this while pointing to an old man nearby hammering away at piece of drywall.

He has struggled to find work in Delhi.  ”There are no good jobs. All the easy jobs don’t pay and all the jobs that pay are too hard. So now, what am I to do?” He drives an auto rickshaw at night, which provides some pocket money and lets him meet lots of interesting people. “Old, young, drunks. It’s interesting but it’s not great work.”

“In life you have to work but you also have to enjoy,” he said. “On Sundays we play cricket and watch films.” He invited us to join him and we exchanged numbers. Rakesh may not have seen what was so special about chai at first, but over just a cup of tea a new friend had been made.

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