don’t know how familiar with india you are, i’m from here. i live in bangalore. and like all indians, i have a penchant for bending the rules a little bit. so i’ll forge right ahead.

a. i don’t know the first think about making anything but a mess in the kitchen. and tea requires a lot of love and patience – which i possess in limited quantities.

b. i will write a little bit not about my favourite tea recipe but about 2 of my favourite tea experiences.
1. i was in auroville, pondicherry drenched in the downpour and freezing to death. landed up at the tea stall there run by a british lady who served tea and peanuts. the tea was made by her assistant, lakshmi. she made me wait almost half an hour for it because she was making a huge pot for 20 people and that takes time, but when i first sipped it, ah, i started believing in angels. it guess it was a regular packed brew which she enhanced with her own ingredient x. and yeah, it had cardamoms.
2.i was in ooty (the hill station), and freezing again, will you believe it! had trudged to the top of it’s highest peak and wanted tea to save my life. and sure enough! there was a little chai stall. the guy gave me the hottest and sweetest tea i’d ever had. and i don’t normally like the sweet stuff, but this: tasted like the nectar of immortality.

c. one of my favourite non-masala tea is the gentle deorali.

ok, my friends have told me i tend to talk too much.

I worked at an office downtown for about 3 months during a turbulent should-I-peruse-art-as-my-primary-job period when I first moved to Portland. I was an administrative assistant for a very difficult law office, one of the most uptight in the city I’m told. Down the street from the office was the library and I used to sit out there and sketch on my lunch hour to sort of decompress from the morning insanity, and on the way there’s a wonderful Indian food cart. Not absolutely every day, but during particularly tough times I loved to go up there, stand on my tiptoes and ask the great beaming gent to pour me some spicy milky goodness.

I don’t think I would have stopped to partake in this sort of thing unless I had read this blog, so I have you to thank for that! Whenever I’m down there now I try and make sure to go and get some chai from them.

Any chai that I share with loved ones is wonderful.

My favorite chai recipe is spicy, and not too sweet. I let the cinnamon act as the sweetener. I like a good black tea, cinnamon, cardamom (when I can afford it) cloves a hint of black peppercorn, ginger and vanilla soy milk. The aroma is therapeutic and is my brain’s signal to unwind.

Thank you for your lovely work.