Agricultural life in Rettanai.

If the animals don’t wake you, the temples surely will. By 4:30 the main temples in and around the village are competing to see which can blare prayer music the loudest. The old speakers can hardly take it and emit a mix of crackles and garbled chants.

But a quieter awakening takes place at Mohan’s tea stall. Farmers, eager to get into the fields early and finish their work before the oppressive late morning heat sets in, gather around one of Rettanai’s oldest tea shops at dawn and wake up with Mohan’s milky chai. For forty years, men (and the occasional woman) have gathered at the stall to discuss village matters, read the newspaper and prepare for the day ahead over a cup of hot tea.

Mohan and his early morning customers.

Mohan’s daily routine begins at 3 am when he milks his cows – “it is the first thing I do before I even brush my teeth,” he says. Mohan will go through about ten liters over the course of the day to serve his regular customers.

We visited Mohan on Pongal, the Tamil harvest festival. We wondered if the village tea shops might shut for the holiday, but Mohan opened his stand even earlier than usual, explaining the importance of starting the year on the right foot. “We wake up especially early on this day. Some people might open their shops early and then close them to handle their Pongal festivities, but we stay open all day to start the year right. If we were to close, it could mean that business will be bad the rest of the year.”

As the sky lightened from black to deep blue above the coconut trees, Mohan’s customers began to arrive. Wrapped in shawls to ward off the nippy morning air, they only had to walk up to the stand with a head nod for Mohan to begin preparing their orders.

In the tradition of many south Indian tea kaddais (as chai stands are called in Tamil), Mohan’s setup includes a large copper boiler filed with hot water, a pot of steaming milk and a smaller tumbler of brewed black tea both perched atop rusted tin stoves filled with burning coals. With each order, Mohan ladled milk and sugar into a glass, then strained the tea decoction through a worn piece of cloth before pouring the contents back and forth to achieve the perfect frothy cup of chai.

Mohan pours the perfect cup.

Unlike the dum method of preparation commonly found in north India, in which all ingredients are thrown together in a pot with the resulting cups of chai more or less the same, Mohan’s preparation allows him to make each cup to order. More sugar for the chubby pre-adolescent boy who sat bleary eyed with his wiry grandfather. An extra ladle of milk for the elderly man with a cap of white hair and a stooped back beneath his simple woolen shawl. Cup after cup of instant coffee for the city boy settled in Chennai returning to his ancestral village for Pongal. As he poured, ladled, scooped, stirred and rinsed, Mohan told us his story.

In the 1970s, Mohan’s father, who had been a “very poor farmer” according to Mohan, started the stall in front of his small home on the village’s main road. In doing so, he unleashed a wave of entrepreneurialism that would change the family’s economic fortunes. Mohan’s father used savings from the tea stall to purchase several adjacent properties on what has now become Rettanai’s major commercial strip, which features a string of kirana general stores and small businesses.

The rental income from those properties allowed Mohan to diversify into commercial agriculture. For the past ten years, he has bought a contract to harvest a nearby 30-acre mango plantation. He pays 300,000 rupees (about $5,000) for the contract and makes about 200,000 rupees profit per year by hiring farmworkers and selling the produce.

With these additional sources of income, Mohan does not need to run the tea stall to feed his family. But he says he will not leave it because of the important role it plays in the community. “People come here everyday. They find out if someone needs work on their farm. If someone is going to Tindivanam [a nearby city], they come here and see if anyone needs them to buy something. Where would they go if I closed?” Mohan asks.

The tea shop has given Mohan’s wife Rajeshwari a chance to try her hand at business as well. She has converted the front room of their house, which opens up to Mohan’s tea stall, into a restaurant serving her homecooked food – tiffins of idli, dosai, and vadai in the morning and lunch meals of rice, lentils and vegetable curries in the afternoon.

Rajeshwari, Mohan’s wife, outside of the front room of their home, where she sells hot meals.

The couple is disciplined with their money. Income from the tea stall and restaurant is used for daily needs, money earned from the adjacent storefront rentals goes toward monthly expenses, and profits from their mango harvest business are saved for big expenditures like their children’s tuition fees.

Education will help ensure even greater opportunities for Mohan and Rajeshwari’s children, but will also likely mean the end of the tea stall. Their children are working in Chennai, which Mohan still calls Madras. Their son, 21, completed a mechanic course; their daughter, 22, has received a bachelor’s degree in computer applications.

Mohan says there is no chance his son will take over the shop. “Never. He’s over qualified. This looks simple but it’s a backbreaking job. You need to stand all day and get up early. I want something better and easier for my children.”

But despite the challenges of running a tea stall, Mohan says he will keep serving chai as long as he is able to work. “I am very attached to this shop. I will never leave this place even if I make more money. This is in my blood and it is where I came from. I am very proud of this place. Without tea, I would not have been able to grow my business. I will not just leave it behind.”

Mohan is determined that his children find different work.

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Barjinder “Bonnie” Mann campaigns at a Jat Sikh village in Karnal District, Haryana

The Bible mentions breaking bread with others as the ultimate culinary conveyance of fellowship. In India, it’s taking tea. Nowhere is this more evident than on the campaign trail where a quick cup with voters can make or break an election.

We tagged along with Barjinder “Bonnie” Mann, a candidate for Haryana state legislature, as he visited villages in Karnal district, about 100 miles north and a world away from the hustle and bustle of Delhi.

Politics are in Bonnie’s blood. They have been since his great-uncle represented Karnal in the pre-partition Punjab Assembly in the 1920s. Bonnie’s father, Tajender, known fondly as Teji, sat in the Haryana state assembly for decades before passing away this summer. Posters with his face proclaiming “Teji Mann amar rahe! (Teji Mann lives forever!)” are never far away. Bonnie’s brother is running to replace Teji in the rural constituency adjacent to the one where Bonnie is campaigning.

“My father was so beloved by these people, we really have no choice but to run,” Bonnie explained. “We can’t just walk away from them.” Their cousin Sumita Singh represents Karnal town, so the brothers’ election would make a Mann family trifecta.

The seat Bonnie is running for has been reserved for members of scheduled castes but that reservation is expiring, opening the way for another Mann to take a seat in the Haryana Vidhan Sabha. The previous representative was removed from office for taking money in exchange for government jobs and abetting the suicide of a local village head. Needless to say, most voters are not lamenting a changing of the guard.

Zach meets the president, sarpanch, of Hathlana village, Karnal District

We walked from house to house in the village of Hathlana, about an hour outside Karnal town, the streets dotted with buffalo dung and the air rich with the smell of it. Many visits began with the serving of tea. But cold soda was an even more common offering. Was it due to the heat? Could it be the local buffaloes weren’t producing enough milk? Or had fizzy Coca-Cola overtaken humble chai as the preferred drink in rural Haryana?

If so, we cannot understand why. Village chai is delicious. At one campaign stop, we were led away by the household women to see how chai is made when there is no Starbucks nearby. Gyano Devi, dressed in a bright purple sari, squeezed milk from a buffalo behind her house. Preparing a fire of dried dung and sticks, she heated the milk and sprinkled in some tulsi leaves freshly picked from her garden, as well as black tea and sugar. What resulted was a rich elixir providing a perfect moment of relaxation before we rejoined Bonnie on the campaign trail.

“In India, caste is everything,” Bonnie explained to us. Nowhere is this truer than the realm of politics. Hathlana is a Ror village. Mann is a Jat. He would have to bring out some profound rhetoric to convince locals to cross caste lines and cast their vote for him.

“If America can elect a black man from Africa, and even two American states can elect Indian chief ministers [governors] – Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal – then surely you can vote for the most honest man.”

One villager was moved. “Teji Mann!” He shouted. “Amar rahe!” The crowd shouted in response.

But these stump speeches were surprisingly rare. More often the visits were filled with small talk, and hosts insisting members of Bonnie’s entourage take another sweet. Sometimes, in fact there was no talking at all, just Bonnie and the village elders sipping chai or Limca or whatever has been proffered.

“You see, he doesn’t have to say anything,” a travel companion says about Bonnie. “It is the simple act of showing up and drinking tea. Seven groups called us for tea in this one village. We knew we didn’t go to drink tea. But tea is the important formality. It’s the way you announce to the village that we are with you. It says we are a gang and we are together and we will look after each other. You can be with me and I will look after you. Or you can go with somebody else. It’s all very tribal.”

So the lesson to villagers during election season is keep milking those buffaloes and brewing gaon ki chai. And to candidates: Drink up.

Gyano Devi’s Gaon ki Tulsi Chai (Village Tea with Holy Basil)

Makes 4 cups.

Ingredients:

1 cup buffalo milk

1 cup water

2 teaspoons CTC black tea

8 fresh tulsi leaves

4 heaping teaspoons sugar

Instructions:

1. Milk your favorite water buffalo.

2. Gather dried buffalo dung and kindling sticks. Build a fire.

3. Put milk and water in a pot over the fire.

4. Add tea and tulsi leaves. Cover.

5. Bring mixture to boil until it nearly bubbles over. Stir.

6. Add sugar. Repeat Step 5 twice. Serve.

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