Tea, or chai, is India’s most popular beverage as the nation consumes 837,000 tonnes of it annually. Along every street, you find chaiwallahs who serve hot tea, adding sugar and milk and a bit of spice sometimes. Many people find it impossible to start their mornings without a hot cup of tea. For them, tea is an integral part of their life.
Researchers Zach Marks and Resham Gellatly collected stories of chaiwallahs from India’s distinct regions, highlighting the variations in chai culture and the role chaiwallahs play in different communities. Over the last couple of years, tea has undergone a sophisticated makeover, moving out of kitchens and dhabas to specialised tea salons and cafes.
Sunday POST spoke to a few experts who explained why India’s favourite drink is called ‘brew of the moment.’
Jiten Sheth, tea connoisseur and co-founder, Tasse De Thé, says, “Tea has been around for many millennia and is produced from the evergreen Camellia Sinensis plant. It has the miraculous property of producing thousands of varieties of teas, depending on the soil, elevation and process. With millions of cups consumed each day, tea is a staple of modern life. This is because studies have proven that a cuppa offers many health benefits.”
Some Benefits
Jiten says that the Chinese and Japanese drink tea for everything ranging from weight control to curing a common cold and for looking and feeling young. Here are a few reasons why you should add a cup of tea to your daily routine:
Weight Loss
Drinking tea can help you lose weight, research suggests. Tea, specifically green tea, combats the absorption of fat in our bodies. Drinking tea helps improve digestion and increases your metabolism. Tea also contains caffeine which has been known to aid in weight loss.
The benefits of green tea shouldn’t be reduced by the addition of milk. Try drinking it with honey and lemon instead.
Beauty
Tea improves your complexion and makes your skin healthy. It helps flush out toxins from the skin, heals blemishes and scars, and reduces inflammation. It even improves the skin’s elasticity and works as a natural toner. Tea helps draw out impurities and gives your skin a nice healthy glow.
Mental health
Feeling sad, unfocused, or just plain grumpy? Tea brewed in the right manner can help you tackle different moods.
With a million items on your to-do list but not enough time, tea can help with multitasking. Caffeine found naturally in the matrix of tea works better at increasing alertness and reaction time. People who drink tea find their mood, concentration and performance levels improving. Tea is also one of the healthier and effective ways for warding off depression. There is plenty of research that underlines the benefits of tea.
Leaves over beans
Tea and coffee can be complementary beverages, but tea tends to outplay coffee where it really counts. Unlike coffee, tea actually hydrates your body. There’s a calming feel that comes with every serving of tea and that’s because it’s rich in antioxidants, multi-vitamins and minerals.
It can be said that tea is for everyone and everything. It can enliven social gatherings or foster contemplative solitude. There is no right or wrong way to serve this wonderful beverage because, for many people, it is a way of life.
The preparation and drinking of tea have been refined over time, and tea masters have determined parameters for brewing, water temperature, steeping times and the quality of water. However, the most important component of the tea drinking experience is that you enjoy the process and, consequently, your cup of tea.
Pallavi Kanoi, founder of OH Cha, talked about the misconceptions that people have about green tea.
“A common misconception that people have is that it is bitter in taste. They also believe that green tea can be had only with honey or sugar. The main reason for these misconceptions is incorrect brewing time and the poor quality of some green teas available in the market. We try to explain to people that not all green tea is bitter, especially not the good quality, whole leaf teas. It depends on the quality of teas used in the blends,” says Pallavi.
Sunday POST asked a few tea addicts how they got into a tea habit.
Pinky Jha, a city-based anchor, doesn’t remember when she tasted tea for the first time. But she remembers taking a few sips from her dad’s cup while growing up.
She says, “I like to brew tea with ginger. I have travelled to different parts of Odisha and India, but my favourite tea is the one made by my mother. For me, tea is just not tea, it’s a feeling and it’s a perfect stress buster. As for all the other beverages in the world, I have never felt the necessity to taste them even once.”
Niranjan Padhi, a retired professor and columnist from Bhubaneswar, got addicted to chai when he was 18. He says, “When I was a child, my mother never allowed me to have tea. When I joined the college hostel, I became addicted to it. Today, though there are lots of varieties of tea, I like the simple tea. I take a maximum of six cups a day.”
Padhi also admits that he is surprised when he finds people around him don’t take tea and thinks their life is incomplete.
History
India is the world’s largest consumer of tea and the second largest producer, including the world’s most popular tea varieties like Assam and Darjeeling tea. However, the growth of tea as an industry has been relatively recent.
Historical records indicate the prevalence of tea drinking in India since 750 BC. In the 16th century, a vegetable dish was prepared using tea leaves with garlic and oil. However, the credit for rediscovering tea and producing it for commercial purposes goes to the British.
The British were known to be consumers of tea in enormous quantities, which they bought from China. By 1750, they were purchasing millions of pounds of tea annually from China. They found their tea consumption was exorbitantly expensive and unsustainable.
In early 1774, Warren Hastings, then Governor-General of Bengal, sent a few select samples of tea seeds from China to George Bogle, the British emissary in Bhutan, for planting.
A couple of years later, in 1776, noted English botanist Sir John Banks, who was asked to make notes on tea, concluded that the British must undertake tea cultivation in India.
Colonel Robert Kyd from the army regiment of the British East India Company also tried to cultivate Chinese tea seeds at the botanical gardens that he founded (now, Indian Botanical Garden, Howrah) in 1780.
In 1823, Scottish explorer Robert Bruce discovered a native tea plant that was growing in the upper Brahmaputra valley and being brewed by local Singhpho tribe. Assamese nobleman Maniram Dutta Barbhandari Baruah (also known as Maniram Dewan) gave this vital information to Robert and his brother. Maniram went on to become the first Indian to undertake private tea cultivation in Assam.
Although Robert died before he could get the plant officially classified, his brother Charles Alexander Bruce dispatched the tea samples to the Botanical Garden at Calcutta on Christmas Eve 1834. On closer analysis, these were officially classified as a variation of the Chinese tea plant (Camellia sinensis var sinensis). The plant was named Camellia sinensis var Assamica (Masters) Kitamura.
Dr A Campbell was the first to plant Chinese seeds that he had brought from Kumaon in Darjeeling. Commercial tea plantations in Darjeeling started in the 1850s, and 113 plantations were set up by 1874, covering 18,888 acres and accounting for a production of 3.9 million pounds.
Shabiha Nur Khatoon, OP