Ek Cup Chai ke Sath (With One Cup of Tea)

One bag of chai {but Dad uses two bags for an adequate caffeine dosage}, a tablespoon of milk {though Mia drinks herbal tea, and doesn’t use milk}, and just a pinch of sugar {remember Alex prefers honey!}. Warm up the chai for just about three minutes, pour in the milk and sugar, and you’ve got the perfect medium to fuel a soulful conversation. 

For as long as I can remember, chai has been the quietly powerful force that unites my family on a daily basis. Some hectic days, we can only stop for ten minutes to scarf down some breakfast, chase it down with chai, and run through the agenda of things-to-do, places-to-be, and things-I-should’ve-done-yesterday-but-didn’t {sorry about the laundry, mom}. Other afternoons lazily fold out with one, two, three rounds of chai – parked on the living room couches, we wind through discussions of current politics, yearn for the days gone by, toss around ideas for future plans, and simply laugh at the silly shenanigans we’ve pulled recently.

I began fully joining in this tradition in high school, when my mom decided I was old enough to let caffeine into my system. I couldn’t stand the taste of tea at first, as it seemed entirely too bitter and adult for me. Children are offered milk or juice, and ‘young adults’ are offered chai; perhaps the first sips of tea were a sour acknowledgement of childhood’s door closing. I’m often asked what ceremonious events mark the beginning of adulthood in Desi culture: at least in my family, there are none. Adulthood slowly seeps into your teenage years, just as milk poured into a freshly brewed cup of tea will crawl its way across the cup – until you stir it, momentarily disturbing the sense of peace to create the perfect final product.

And perhaps the most significant way to ‘stir’ up your life is to move one thousand miles away for college, to a place where time seems to move many times faster for everyone around you. In constantly racing to catch up with my friends, with the world, I’d often find myself running on energy I didn’t have and a personality that was barely mine. After all, I had been forcing myself to fit in the little glass mold it seemed that Yale had constructed for me when I was accepted. Meanwhile, I was like that cup of chai: constantly ebbing and flowing, changing color, temperature, sweetness – I could not be held to one identity. Eventually, I came to realize that transplanting yourself doesn’t mean you need to chop off just the above-ground flower everyone else sees. You bring your roots with you to help you firmly stand your ground and say, “This is who I am and where I came from, this is who I am and who I have been, this is who I am and I am not changing to fit who you thinkI am.” 

As I’ve brought my beloved tradition with me to Yale, I’ve noticed that though everyone is more than happy to share a cup of tea, each visitor takes it a slightly different way. Each visitor has their own concoctions that bring them joy, and each arrives with a completely unique set of stories to share – a small portion of their soul to unfold. When differences become extremely obvious, it becomes increasingly critical to seek and celebrate our similarities and shared experiences or emotions. After all – no matter how much sugar, honey, creamer, or milk we’re adding, we’re still all drinking tea {unless you’re a coffee drinker, which I certainly am before early morning classes}.

Now, not every cup of tea you make is going to be perfect. In fact, sometimes, you find out the milk was spoiled only after you’ve poured it into your tea. Other times, you may be too hopeful about a particularly awful new brand of tea. If you’re like me, you may end up spilling the tea all over yourself while flailing your arms about in a particularly heated debate. But even failure isn’t something to be ashamed of or to fear – it’s something to celebrate {preferably with a good cup of chai}. In fact, sometimes I simply don’t learn from my failures – and that’s okay! One of the biggest, most hurtful failures of all would be to forget that I, too, am only human. In the blurred transition between childhood and adulthood, we often forget that we are still a work in progress – we’ve only just heated up the water for the tea leaves, only just taken out the porcelain cups. We can’t expect ourselves to be constantly working, constantly connecting, constantly moving – or to be constant at all. We have to be patient with this messy process, and ready to embrace whatever final product comes our way.

Let’s be more gentle with ourselves - one cup of chai at a time.

Sarah Pitafi is a columnist on the Changing Womxn Collective Masthead. She is a sophomore at Yale studying the political, ethical, and economic basis of healthcare justice. A proud Midwest girl (deep dish pizza is the ONLY pizza she accepts!), she grew up in Honolulu and comes from a South Asian Muslim family.