Dear chai lovers,
May is here, and with it the hard heat before the monsoon — the weeks when the fans go on full, the mangoes arrive at the market, and every chai is drunk in the shade. In North India, 42°C in the shade. In Mumbai, the humidity before the first cloud. In Bengaluru, where it is always 5 degrees cooler than everywhere else, comparative smugness.
This month, we have been thinking about India in the world — and about what the cup in our hands says about where we are right now.
The Tea That Is Disappearing
We published a piece this month that is, honestly, a little difficult to read: Climate Change Is Threatening India's Tea.
Darjeeling is producing 40% less tea than it did in the early 1990s. Assam's floods in 2022 and 2023 were among the most destructive in recorded history. The First Flush — that irreplaceable March harvest whose muscatel character cannot be replicated anywhere else on Earth — is shrinking.
We are not alarmists at Chai Bhai. But this is documented, happening, and accelerating. If you drink Darjeeling tea, now is the time to seek out traceable, direct-trade estates. Your purchase helps.
The T20 World Cup Moment
On 29 June 2024, at 3 AM IST, Rohit Sharma's India beat South Africa by 7 runs in the T20 World Cup final in Barbados. Seventeen years since the last ICC title. Across India, people were awake for it — and most of them were drinking chai.
We wrote about what cricket and chai share, and why the pairing is not coincidental: Chai and Cricket — India's Most Natural Partnership.
Both require patience. Both reward presence. Both are better shared.
Chandrayaan and the Chai We Drank
On 23 August 2023, ISRO's Vikram lander touched down near the Moon's south pole, making India the first country in history to achieve a soft landing there, and only the fourth country ever to land on the Moon. The images from Pragyan, the rover, arrived in real time on every screen in India.
At the ISRO control room in Bengaluru, staff were photographed with chai cups. At homes and offices across the country, people watched the landing live and held their cups a little tighter through the twelve minutes of powered descent.
There is something appropriate about this — that India's greatest technological achievement in a generation was watched, by hundreds of millions of people, over chai. The ordinary cup in the hand of the engineer, the student, the farmer watching on a phone screen in a field. The extraordinary and the everyday, together.
What Else We Published
- Green Tea vs Chai — Which Is Healthier? — A full science-backed comparison. Short answer: they're healthier in different ways. Longer answer: read the article.
- Best Dairy-Free Milk for Chai — Oat, almond, coconut, soy, cashew — ranked and tested. Oat wins.
- Masala Chai Cake — A spiced loaf cake made with brewed chai in the batter. Genuinely one of the best things we've put in the recipe section.
- Chai-Spiced Granola — Your new weekday breakfast. With jaggery and cardamom. Make a batch on Sunday.
Closing Thought
India's story right now is extraordinary — the largest democracy in the world, the fifth-largest economy, a country that can land a rover on the Moon and also produce the world's most complex and fragrant tea. A country under pressure from the climate it helped to warm, and grappling with what it owes the land that grows its most beloved crop.
The cup of chai connects all of this — the soil, the harvest, the history, the future. Drink it with awareness. That is all we ask.
Until June, Chai Bhai
Issue #22 of the Chai Bhai newsletter. Browse all issues in the newsletter archive.