Chai: Many stories between the cup and the lip

Nothing like a cuppa chai on a cold winter morning. It is a lovely sight to see people huddled together, covered in blankets, sipping hot chai in small glasses.

Chai is a now a universally understood term described as a wonderful spice milk tea from India.  Chai is being discovered by beverage drinkers around the world and is finding place in the menu cards of most road-side joints and pubs. The popular Indian chai masala spice is often derived from ayurveda herbs with medicinal properties.

Despite the fact that tea is consumed all over the world, with Japanese and Chinese tea gaining much acclaim, the Indian Darjeeling, Kashmir and Assam teas dominate the lives of a large number of tea lovers.

The simplest traditional method of preparing Indian masala chai is to actively simmer or boil a mixture of milk and water with loose leaf tea, sweeteners, and whole spices. This is quite a contrast to the Japanese tea ceremony which is a traditional ritual influenced by Zen Buddhism in which powdered green tea is ceremonially prepared by a skilled practitioner and served to a small group of guests in a tranquil setting.

The Chinese green tea on the other hand is widely recognised since the major goodness of green tea happens to be that, it acts as a major antioxidant, which in turn provides the body protection from free radicals; thereby fighting against the ageing process and preventing rise of various illnesses.

 Besides this, it is contended to have a host of other attributes such as being a healthy drink, a toning agent, armed with antiseptic properties, used as a mouth freshener and even a skin exfoliating agent.

Many flavours of exotic teas are now available, lime tea, peach tea, jasmine tea and ginger tea to name a few.

Iced teas are quite a favourite since they prove to be quite refreshing and thirst quenching in hot, humid climates as in India. Many eastern homes have replaced drinking plain water with iced tea; often a tea bag is left soaking in the jar that serves drinking water.

There seems to be a raging war of words between the preferences of tea vs coffee. While the coffee bars have made the espressos, cappuccinos and the lattes very popular, the chai centres are serving 50-60 different types of teas to spice up the taste buds of tea lovers.

The caffine in the coffee makes it quite questionable for good health, though few drinks can compare to the taste and smell of a freshly brewed coffee.

As youngsters, one was always chided over putting coffee in milk. "Coffee is not good for you, stick to Complan." Sometimes however biscuit dipped in hot chai was permissible. Some grandmothers also advised that pregnant women should avoid drinking coffee if they wanted fair babies.

It is no mean statement to say that tea is the most popular drink in the world, second only to water. For the health conscious the Flavonoid (the antioxidant present in the tea) makes it a cuppa of goodness. When it comes to a choice of health drink, the chai wins hands down.