There’s something about chai that no other beverage offers by way of sukoon—just as there’s no word, other than sukoon, that describes the supreme feeling of contentment it induces in those who take a deep, soulful sip.
Chai (called tea in English with not exactly the same flavor) is like a divine gift for its hundreds of millions of lovers around the world.
Global it may be, but chai has a special connection with four countries: India, China, Japan, and England.
Legend has it that Bodhidharma, the renowned 5th century monk who taught at the Shaolin monastery in China, once took it upon himself to meditate for a long time. But he fell asleep before his avowed period of meditation could end. When he woke up, he was so enraged that he cut off his eyelids in repentance and threw them to the ground.
Tea leaves grew for the first time at the very spot where the monk’s eyelids fell.
And from then on, tea is said to have become the favorite drink of monks who wanted to stay awake in their meditation practice.
Another Chinese legend attributes the origin of tea drinking to the mythical emperor Shen-Nung (also called Shennong or the Divine Farmer)—several centuries before the Christian era. It says that he discovered the medicinal properties of tea when some leaves from a wild plant accidentally fell into his pot of boiling water.
It was not until the Tang dynasty (618-907), however, that tea consumption became widespread in China. It was also during the Tang dynasty that Lu Yu wrote one of the first authoritative books on this subject, The Classic of Tea.
Japan, too, saw the introduction and spread of tea drinking through monks. In the Heian period (794-1185), Saicho and Kukai were among the first to bring tea seeds to be planted in Nippon—though it is the Zen monk Eisai who is credited with popularizing the drink in the late 12th century. Eisai also wrote a book, Record of Drinking Tea on Health, whose Japanese title, if you ask me, has a cute Hindi ring to it: Kissa Yojoki.
By the 15th century, the tea ceremony in Japan had evolved into a highly refined art form, reaching its pinnacle under tea master Rikyu a little later. Chanyou, the Japanese “Way of Tea”, has four key principles to the whole regimen of serving and drinking tea: Wa (harmony), Kei (respect), Sei (purity), and Jaku (tranquility). Applied together, they guide you to a more balanced and mindful way of celebrating tea.
The term “Teaism” was coined by the Japanese scholar and art critic Okakura Kakuzo to describe the unique worldview associated with the Japanese way of tea, going beyond the presentation aspects that Westerners usually focus on.
In his celebrated classic, The Book of Tea, first published in 1906, Kakuzo writes:
“The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Lao-tse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.”
Beautiful words that evoke the serene, profound imagery that nothing but tea can encompass in its majestic sweep of history.
There are not-so-elegant aspects of history associated with tea as well, to put it mildly. In Europe, tea consumption remained confined to the elite after Dutch and Portuguese traders first brought it to the continent in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Soon after, the British East India Company established a monopoly on the tea trade from China. When taxes were reduced to make tea more accessible, its popularity exploded, requiring huge imports from China to satisfy demand.
But massive imports of tea [besides porcelain and silk] from China caused a silver deficit, prompting Britain to smuggle opium from India to China (When the Chinese tried to stop it, this led to the Opium Wars.)
To reduce over-reliance on China for their tea, the British went about setting up tea plantations in the Indian states of Assam and Darjeeling (the first one was set up in 1837 at Chabua in Upper Assam). The first few chests of Assam tea arrived in London from India in 1839; by 1888, the British imported more tea from India than from China. By the turn of the century, Chinese tea imports were just a pale shadow.
As for its consumption in India, tea was initially shunned by the people. This was partly because of the crushing, sub-human conditions under which the indentured laborers used by the British colonists worked, and partly because of tea’s high price. Besides, the majority of Indians had never tasted the beverage. After the Great Depression brought down the prices and created a surplus of tea waiting to be exported from India, however, the British rulers turned their attention to the market within India. They undertook what’s arguably the largest marketing campaign in Indian history, using hundreds of “tea propagandists” and “tea vans” that dispensed millions of free cups of tea to anyone who was interested in tasting it.
The marketing tactics used in the campaign were later duplicated and built upon by private companies, including Brooke Bond and Lipton. But it would take several decades of concerted, persistent effort to make the foreign tea into local chai, the unofficial national drink of India.
As of today, the sound of “chai-chai-chai” forms the ubiquitous buzz at thousands of bus and train stations across India. The banter and gossip of the milling workers, laborers, and good-for-nothings over chai at countless tapris and tea joints mingles effortlessly with the silent march of a nation perpetually suspended in motion.
I think that’s more history than our brains can handle at a given time!
So let’s get back to chai and sukoon.
The Japanese ceremony is marked by elaborate rituals, the art of arranging flowers, attention to details regarding the utensils, and the performative steps for serving, drinking, and washing up.
But for me and, I suspect, millions of Indian chai-lovers like me, it’s fairly simple and straightforward.
Boil some tea leaves in water. Add milk and sugar to taste. (A hint of ginger for ginger tea aficionados would be great!) Serve with an ear-to-ear grin and unmistakable warmth.
Within minutes, the server and the served are co-travelers to a land where worries dissolve in the vapor-mist wafting from the cups. Where stories are shared with loving memories or unrestrained laughter. Where you can nod your head with understanding or shake it in disbelief with equal ease.
Be it the scorching summer of mid-year, the freezing cold of December-January, or the redeeming drizzle in between, if you have chai at hand and someone to share it with, there’s nothing much else to ask for.
Bun-maska or biscuits, perhaps. But that’s about it.
To borrow a line from Chaayos, “Wo sukoon se jeete hain jo chai peete hain.”
Yes, there's nothing quite like chai.
