Chai Pilgrimage

In the West, yoga is sometimes perceived as a type of physical workout that involves getting into tights and molding the body into contorted positions while keeping one’s hands in a prayer position.  The word yoga, however, literally means “union,” and is an ancient Indian spiritual science designed to bring about the union with, or realization of, our own Divinity.  Just as all religions can lead one to God, each created to suit the many different types of people and cultures, so there are various paths of yoga.  These yogic paths do not just involve standing on one’s head, but utilize the mind and heart as tools to help us become fully conscious of the One.  The four predominant yogic practices are Raja Yoga, which uses various methods to control the mind and enter into meditation; Jnana Yoga, or using knowledge to realize the Divine Truth; Bhakti Yoga, or the yoga of love and devotion to the Divine; and Karma Yoga, the yoga of doing selfless service for other living beings.

Chai Yoga, or the conscious preparation of chai, can also be taken as a path to enlightenment by incorporating the practice of one or more of these four yogas.  First, we compose a mindful awareness of our being on every level: our attitude, body, breath and senses.  In other words, clear the mind, be comfortable in the body, breath, and be aware of, but not overtaken by, sensory perceptions while preparing chai.  Only then can we access the depth of meditation that will allow union.  This is Raja Yoga.  This state of meditation is the door into the innermost mind, beyond thought, that is not separate from the cosmic mind, one with the simmering masala universe, wherein lies knowledge of Absolute Truth.  This deep wisdom is found through the practice of Jnana Yoga.

Love is always present.  It is the energy that binds the universe together as One.  If the first two yogas sound a little bit too out there, then we can embrace Bhakti Yoga, our innate love for the creator, as our path towards union.  We set the intention to prepare the best cup of chai we are capable of as an offering to our Divine Beloved.  With love in our hearts, a vision of the Divine Form in our mind’s eyes and praise on our lips, every movement we make as we prepare the chai is transformed into an expression of devotion.  Without attachment to the fruits of our labor, and expecting nothing in return for our kindness, our actions then become the practice of Karma Yoga.  Serving good-tasting, healthy chai is a great service to mankind.  And as we realize it is the Divine who is stirring the pot through our hands, the chai becomes a pure offering.

When one is fully engaged with a yogic practice, anything, even the simple act of making chai, can be an opportunity to consciously merge with the Divine Source. The secret is, to prepare the chai with utter sincerity, as if it will be the last time.

One unforgettable soul we were determined to reunite with on our chai pilgrimage was a young chai wallah named Shivam.  We met him on our previous visit to India and it was his loving memory that inspired us to return and document a tea-sipping journey.  At that time, Jenny and I were in Rishikesh and looking for a leisurely way to spend one of our final days in India together.  We decided it would be fun to just wander around and find places to drink chai.

The first chai shop we encountered was inside an unobtrusive, white cement building. The words Aman’s Tip Top Service Center on the sign were barely discernable beneath layers of dirt and smoke stains, but nonetheless, attracted us in for a peek. It was poorly lit on the inside and appeared unoccupied.  A low, pink, iron grate separated the ‘kitchen’ from two tables. On the shelves were toilet paper and cases of bottled water for sale, little else. Then we saw a small boy standing on a crate, still barely taller than the countertop, who seemed to appear from the ethers.  I pointed at him and asked, “chai wallah?” He looked up at us with bright, wide eyes and waggled his head. “Chai?” he asked.  “Do masala chai,” we responded together.

This was Shivam, the youngest chai wallah we had ever met.  He lit up his gas burner and quickly began working.  With scrunched forehead and eyebrows, he smashed a cardamom pod and a tiny nub of ginger and tossed them into the warming pot of water. He added loose black tea and milk and stirred the mixture with a metal spoon.  After coming to a boil he added a couple heaping spoonfuls of sugar and swirled the pot until it almost boiled over.  The pot looked twice the size of his head, but he handled it with the ease of someone who had made thousands of cups of chai.  He was focused.  His tongue stuck out in concentration as he poured the brew through a pink plastic strainer into another pot, then into two glasses.  He delivered our chai with a big, crooked grin.

The taste of that chai and Shivam’s adorable countenance remained etched onto our chai-loving hearts, until four years later, we went back to India seeking more simple, yet memorable, chai moments.  We returned to Aman’s Tip Top Service Center, same name, now serving biscuits and sodas, more tables, inside and out, and bustling with Western travelers who are likewise charmed by Shivam.  He has learned some pretty good English, probably more from his exposure to tourists, than from school.  When he is not in school, he works at his father’s shop making chai, now training his little brother.  We showed him some pictures we took of him on our last trip.  He looked at them and showed us his same endearing smile.

Holi is the Indian festival of colors celebrating the return of spring with boisterous behavior, bright colors, music and joyful dance. It is a time when the established segregation between caste and gender, and the strictly modest Indian social norms, are temporarily put on hold, and everyone can cut loose, release their pent up winter frustrations and have fun.

The tradition is attributed to several different legends, one of which is associated with the young prankster Krishna and his sweet love, Radha.  Krishna, who was upset that he had very dark skin compared to Radha’s fair complexion, put colors on her face to make her any color he desired.  This act was immortalized into a tradition commemorated across India, Nepal and anywhere in the world with a Hindu population.

At the time of our chai pilgrimage, we were staying at the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram in Vrindavan.  In the ashram, devotees celebrated Holi, by lovingly smearing colored powders of red, pink, yellow and green across each other’s cheeks and singing traditional Holi songs about the enduring love of Krishna and Radha.  On the streets outside the ashram gates, Holi was a pigment pandemonium, with mobs of hoodlums from outlying villages dumping buckets of dyed water and throwing handfuls of colored powder into the faces of barefoot pilgrims circumambulating the holy city.

We were able to avoid some potentially soggy situations when confronted by gangs of mischievous children set on dousing us with colored water.  We would say, “Wait! One photo, please!” and the kids would lower their water cannons and pose for us.  While they were temporarily frozen, we would snap a picture and run.

There is a long, complicated list of abbreviated jargon to describe the grades of orthodox teas.  The grade describes the size of the dried tealeaf and whether it is primarily broken leaf, whole leaf, bud or very young bud.  Although the grade does not designate the quality or flavor of the tea, it is assumed that the larger the leaf, the better the tea.  When orthodox tea is harvested, generally two leaves and a bud are handpicked from the end of the shoot.  A sizable ratio of buds to leaf is also considered desirable.

The first thing to know is that Orange Pekoe (OP) has nothing to do with oranges.  It is not a kind of tea, but again, simply describes size.  OP refers to long, pointed leaves that have been harvested after the bud is fully open, thus contain no buds, or tips.  Pekoe (P), without the orange, refers to shorter leaves than OP.  Flowery Orange Pekoe (FOP) is young, tender leaf with some buds.  Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (GFOP) is FOP with golden tips, the yellow ends that characterize the favorable immature young buds harvested early in the growing season.  Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (TGFOP) means it is abundant with golden tips. This is considered some pretty good tea.  The joke we heard is that it stands for Too Good For Ordinary People.  But it gets better.  There’s Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Onange Pekoe (FTGFOP) that is considered by the estate to be of exceptional quality.   Super Finest Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (SFTGFOP) is regarded as the best of the best.  But wait, if they put the number 1 after it (SFTGFOP1), they are putting their reputation on the line to by saying this is the absolute best of the best of the best.

We then get into Broken grade tea. These are smaller pieces than the full leaf descriptions above. There is nothing wrong with the flavor of a broken leaf, it’s just broken.  It therefore, produces a stronger, darker cup of tea.  Many broken leaves will end up in teabags.  If the leaves are broken, they add a B.  This scale goes from Broken Pekoe (BP) to Tippy Golden Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe (TGFBOP).  The terminology goes on to describe Fannings (F) and Dust (D), which is also referred to as “sweepings,” a term that accurately describes its low stature.  These are the tiniest bits of tea that are destined for teabags.

If you have only drunk tea from a tea bag, you don’t know what you’re missing.   You can bring your taste experience to the next level with a loose orthodox, leaf grade, tea.  For the pure, connoisseur’s experience, try it without the milk, sugar and spices so your tongue can capture the divine subtle flavors. For a superior masala chai without a budget, an organic Assam second flush STGFOP1 tea would be an excellent choice. If you want a taste reminiscent of an authentic Indian street chai, CTC tea or a broken grade orthodox tea will work just fine.

The journey of a tealeaf from the bush to your chai pot requires both human and technical precision.  In Darjeeling and Sikkim, we traversed the steep slopes of several tea estates, mingling with the tealeaf pluckers as they worked.  Their careful eyes determine the maturity of each leaf while they quickly and nimbly pluck the first two leaves and a bud from each tea bush stem.  They toss the leaves over their shoulders into a doko, a woven bamboo basket supported by a forehead strap called a namlo.  It bewilders the mind to consider each of the many leaves of tea that we consume daily has been touched by human hands.  In the hill regions we visited, handpicking is the only viable method of harvesting.

At huge tea estates in the plains of Assam and other flatter tea growing regions in India, sometimes machines are used to harvest.  Unlike the handpicking method, harvesting machines cannot determine the quality and ripeness of each leaf and the leaves are usually damaged in the process.  This is fine for lesser quality teas, but does not meet the standards of an Orthodox tea, where an in tact, whole leaf is perfection.

After harvest, the leaves are taken to the factory where they undergo one of two methods of processing, Orthodox or CTC.  First we look at the orthodox method and the 4-step process of withering, rolling, oxidizing and firing.

Withering – After being harvested and weighed, the tealeaves are spread out on long metal troughs in a shaded area to wither. As the moisture evaporates, the leaves become limp and pliable so they can be rolled with the least amount of damage. This can take about 14-20 hours depending on humidity and other conditions. The trained senses of the tea producer know precisely when the leaves are ready for rolling.

Rolling -Traditionally this was done by hand, but the process has been mechanized for large-scale tea production. Some of the rolling machines we saw at the Makaibari factory are still being used after 100 years. The rolling machine applies pressure to the wilted leaves while rotating them around each other in order to release the chemicals stored in the cells of the leaf. This initiates the oxidizing process that gives the tea its characteristic color and flavor.

Oxidation –The leaves are then laid out so the natural chemicals in the tealeaf can react with the air. Again, timing is essential. The leaves must oxidize long enough to bring out the complexity of flavors, but if oxidized too long, the tea becomes too strong and loses the more subtle tastes. This step takes about 2-4 hours. The oxidation process is the main distinction between black tea and green tea, which is not oxidized.

Firing – To halt the oxidizing process and dry the tea completely, the leaves are then put through a drying machine. They pass by conveyor belt through a charcoal fired heater at a temperature of 220-250 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20-40 minutes.

After the tea is thoroughly dried it is ready to be sorted by leaf grade. This is done with a machine that shakes the dried leaves over varying gauges of mesh to sift out the tea according to size. The largest, superior leaves may also be hand-sorted again.  It is critical to keep the same size leaves together because when it is time to steep the tea, the smaller pieces will steep quickly and the larger, full-sized leaves will infuse more slowly. If they are mixed, the smaller leaves will over-steep and throw off the refined flavor of a fine tea. Leaf grade does not necessarily indicate quality, but a young, whole leaf generally demands a higher price than broken leaf grade.

The Orthodox method of tea processing creates a more sophisticated tea with the multi-layered taste preferred by tea connoisseurs.  A good quality orthodox tea will go a long way to improve the flavor of your masala chai. However, because the character of a full leaf tea is more delicate, you may want to use less milk, sugar and spices so you can appreciate the tea flavor.

The CTC (crush, tear, curl or cut, tear, curl) method is a little different.  It is a quicker, more brutal process, as the name implies, and is generally used for less expensive production of inferior quality leaves. Tealeaves destined for CTC processing may be picked by machine or hand-harvested. After the leaves wither, they are put into a machine that compresses the leaves, tears them apart, and curls them into little balls. They then go through the oxidizing and firing process.

CTC tea possesses a robust flavor because the greater surface area of the grain allows it to steep quickly. For brewing masala chai, CTC tea works well because its intense character can push its way through the spices and milk. Throughout India, most households and street-side chai wallahs use cheap CTC tea, boiling it thoroughly and reusing the tea.

With the success of the movie Slumdog Millionaire, we have received many visitors to our what is a chai wallah? post, from those unfamiliar with the term.  To clarify the term chai wallah as it is used in the movie, and to offer a poignant example of this site’s intent, we thought it appropriate to offer an addendum to that post.

From the opening torture scene, to young Jamal jumping into a pit of feces porridge, we realize that we are embarking on a visual journey through the raw reality of India and the dark underbelly of human existence. Although it comes across more subtly than Jamal’s shit bath, when the game show host refers to Jamal as chai wallah, it portrays a deeply-rooted issue that smells even worse: the discrimination perpetuated by the Indian caste system.

In the movie, when call center employee, Jamal, says that one of his assistant duties is serving tea, the game show host cuts him off mid-sentence and mockingly refers to him as chai wallah.  This is not because Jamal is a chai wallah in the traditional sense, but because being a chai wallah is an occupation generally held by members of a lower societal status, and by doing this, he designates the “low” stature of his guest to the audience.  The fact that the host can repeatedly condescend his guest on national television with a smile on his face, and have the audience laughing along with him, is indicative of the limited mindset of those who adhere to the hierarchal Indian caste system, equivalents of which are present in every nation on the planet, where the elite cast judgment and degrade a person because of their “placement” in society. (Of course, not all those who are karmically blessed with affluence hold ethnic prejudice in their hearts and display it through their actions.)

This is not only an Indian dilemma, but a human predicament that chains us to the gross realm of egoic illusion and prevents us from recognizing our own True Divine Nature. To put down the chai wallah, or any other human for that matter, debases the entire human race.

As you can see by our illustration of chai wallahs, we hope to elicit the exact opposite sentiment.  To us, the chai wallah is the welcoming face of India who embodies the Vedic tradition of Atitihi Devo Bhava, or treating the guest as God, no matter who they are. Our vision is to portray the chai wallah, the clay cup potter, the tealeaf plucker and any other “lower caste” humans as unique expressions of the divine who are worthy of being glorified.  We are all the same.  This experiential realization was the greatest boon of our pilgrimage.

What is a chai wallah?  A manifestation of the Divine Presence who is blessed with the humble duty of serving up a sweet break in a sometimes bitter world.

Thanks for visiting our site.  Click on home and check out the rest of it.  Namasté

Here’s a lively sermon from Pastor Eddie D. Smith to sip your morning chai to.  For a more extensive explanation of Namaste, check out this earlier post.  And again, Namaste!