Chai wallahs take pride in their chai. After all, each and every day, it is their responsibility to sustain and nurture the masses by providing the beverage that keeps India running.

To stand out from the rest, many chai wallahs develop a stylized preparation and presentation for their chai.

Some chai wallahs put a little something special in their chai, a smashed up nub of ginger, a pinch of garam masala powder, or a strand of saffron on top, to make it unique and keep their customers coming back. Often it is the performance that sells the chai. Many chai wallahs let the chai boil up until an instant before it is going to spill over the side, then with great agility, swirl the pot an inch over the flame, suspending it in an almost-boiling-over state before removing it from the heat, then doing the trick again. In Kolkatta we witnessed the “metre-pour”, where the chai wallah blends the chai by pouring it back and forth between the pots at two arm-lengths apart.  Frothy chai latte to go?

Most chai wallahs prepare their chai in small batches on a per order basis. In large cities, however, the chai business is often divided into one central chai wallah who makes enormous batches of chai, and the sellers who fill orders and deliver to local shops. For the chai courier, the faster you can run through the congested city, the more chai you can sell.

It is often the same at train stations, where many chai wallahs are selling from the same huge vat. When pulling into a train station in India, the first sound you hear is the chorus of chai wallahs singing their sales pitch. Breaking chai into two syllables and accentuating the second, ‘chai-eeeeeee, chai-eeeeeee’, the chai vendors signal their location to the passengers. You can just hang out the window and get a chai to go. If a loud voice doesn’t draw attention, a creative performance on the train can make a sale. Walking down the aisles, some wallahs display their skills by pouring the chai in a long thin stream, as far from the cup as possible, without spilling a drop.

I generally like to purchase my chai from the wallah with the best vibes — one who is wearing a smile and keeps a clean chai stall. In Benares, at Raju chai stand, under a tree on the orange and white steps of Assi Ghat, I watched a young chai wallah as he made his first pot of chai of the day. I was surprised to see several people waiting on the steps for their morning chai when there were several other chai wallahs in view already serving. I sat down to wait with them. After brewing his chai, the young man strained the boiled pot into a stainless steel teakettle. He then closed his eyes and appeared to make a silent invocation as he poured a small offering of chai next to the orange cooking burner flame. (In India, fire is revered as the ancient Vedic God, Agni, and it is auspicious to first offer the fruits of your labor to the Divine.)  He then poured the first chai into a clay cup and handed it to me. I felt honored. Even though I prefer a little ginger and cardamom in my chai, instead of the Nescafe instant coffee he sprinkled on top, he became my new favorite chai wallah.

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 this post.  So, after reading this, please check out what is a slumdog chai wallah?

As we ascended the steep stone path to the hilltop Tashiding monastery, each step took us deeper into a palpable prayer. Thousands of colorful prayer flags stamped with Tibetan mantras released their blessings into the clear sky above our heads. The breeze playfully spun windmill-like prayer wheels, spiraling out loving kindness towards the blue mountain horizon. A field of stupas rose out of the earth like white and golden Buddhas popping up in Heaven’s flower garden. The silent blessings permeated our being and carried us barefoot around the monastery grounds.

A wall of mani stones, slabs of granite painted in bright colors with the great Tibetan Buddhist mantra om mani padme hum etched into them, encircled the entire stupa compound in an energetic ring invoking compassion. As we came around a corner, we spotted a figure inside a corrugated tin and stone shack built into the prayer wall. A man peered out from behind stacked slabs of gray stone. As we approached him with obvious interest on our faces he signaled us to come in and sit.

He sat surrounded by engraved tablets, chiseling the next prayer. His long fingers held a chisel in one hand braced against the carving easel, while his other hand gently tapped with a small hammer. His graying dark hair was tied in a knot like a small stupa on top of his head. His face had sculpted asian features and long, thin strands of hair hung from his chin and moustache. He worked diligently as he peered through thick brown glasses tied with a string around his head. Occasionally he stopped and looked at us for a few minutes, the three of us speaking no words.

I somehow asked him if he had carved the thousands of prayers surrounding the shrine. It is like a game of silent charades. You can have an entire conversation this way and not even realize you haven’t spoken a word. He signaled his hand in a circle then pointed to himself to indicate that, yes, he indeed was the artist of this massive body of prayerful work. It seemed irrelevant to try to ask him how long he has been living here as a sculptor. If he told us 300 years, when this monastery was first built, we would have believed him. It is that way in India — no unbelievable truth is beyond doubt. We sat in wonder and witnessed this timeless being living in the heavenly realm dedicating his life to extracting prayers out of stone.

He laid his tools down, and with a flick of his head, flung his glasses to his forehead. Aromatic smoke rose from under his blackened teakettle. He took the kettle and poured another cup, took a bite of a biscuit and a sip of tea. He then sat in silence and closes his eyes. I think he was napping. After a few minutes, his head nodded foreword and his glasses fell back onto his nose. He opened his eyes, took a long sigh and continued his work.

We later learned his name, Yanchong Lodil.

Our favorite way to drink chai in India is in tiny, one-use clay cups. If there are 3 chai wallahs next to each other, we always choose the one with clay cups. It’s authentic, tactile and fun. And the cups themselves are beautiful, in the most simple way. Many travelers attempt to carry one home to remember India by, taking the utmost care to preserve the delicate vessel by swaddling it with meters of fabric. I know—I’ve tried.

In Benares, we followed every man carrying a basket of clay cups on his head in search of “the potter behind the wheel”. Eventually, we found him. We met Mata Prasad, a clay pot wallah, in the courtyard of his family’s compound near Assi Ghat. It was the morning of Shivaratri, and although he was not working, he welcomed us to sit with him. Hundreds of clay pots laid out to dry on the roof covering his workspace—a simple open-air room with a dirt floor, a wooden bed, hooks for his clothes and a potter’s wheel.

Mata Prasad’s six grandchildren swarmed around him, and as their shyness wore off, they revealed a common twinkle in their eyes, a trait they obviously inherited from their grandfather. His name means “Gift of the Divine Mother.” His voice is aged and raspy but high-pitched and playful. He speaks Hindi with long, drawn-out syllables, and if you could only hear him and not see him, you would hear his smile.

We share a mutual friend, Hement Ji, who translated for us. “This is my small factory,” he told us. “Making these pots has been a tradition in my family for many generations.” We asked when he first learned his craft, and he exhaled a heavy chuckle. His eyes opened wide as he looked back in time. One of his first memories was playing with the water buffalo and cows when he was 13 or 14 years old—back when the British were still here. “Maybe, I was 15 or 16 when I started working,” he said. “This time I am not remembering, but I am guessing I am 60 or 70 years old.” If you do the math, he’s been spinning pots for a long time.

We returned the following day to observe Mata Prasad in action. He was wearing the same faded red t-shirt, white lungi, and kid-like smile. He squatted in front of his wheel, nearly an inch from the earth, picked up a large wooden pole and pushed the stone wheel in a counter-clockwise direction until it twirled out of its awkward wobble into a mesmerizing whirl. He had an economy of movement, gently touching the mound of clay and patiently waiting for it to form him a pot. Each one appeared like magic from behind his hands, and he effortlessly freed it at the base with a string he wore around his left wrist. After the pots sit in the sun to dry for one day, he makes a fire in a small mud room and bakes the pots for 12 hours until morning.

Mata Prasad spins about 500 pots in a day. The three shapes and sizes are used for yogurt, milk sweets and chai. When Patrick asks if he drinks chai, he laughs. “Huh, Huh,” (yes, yes) as he moves his head from side to side in the affirmative ‘Indian head waggle.’ “Two times in house, and wherever I will go, my customers, who purchase my pots, they offer me chai, chai, chai.” These half-baked, biodegradable cups, called puruas in Benares, are used once and then returned to the earth.

Nothing quite compares to drinking chai from one of these clay cups. Its primitive shape cradled in your hand and its warm dry rim on your lips accompanied by an earthy smell and taste strikes a tribal cord deep in your bones. When I tell Mata Prasad I prefer drinking chai in puruas, he quickly agrees, “Huh, Huh, because this is holy Ganga Ma’s clay. ” He uses clay that forms on the holy river’s banks after the monsoons, so like his name, Mata Prasad’s clay pots are also gifts of the Divine Mother.

As we say Namaste and thank him, he replies, “You are most welcome to come back again.”

And just so you can be amazed too, we have it all on video below!

Click image to read text.