At the Chai Shop

It’s getting late, close to nine in the evening. Many shopkeepers have closed for the night, but there’s still lots of rickshaw traffic on the street and lots of people walking by. I’m sitting on a low stool, leaning against an alley wall, at a tea stall in Varanasi, the ancient holy city on the Ganges in northern India. The tea stall is a restful and welcoming place in the dark night. There’s a bare lightbulb hanging from a wire, and the blue flare of the gas flame that’s bringing the large kettle of water to a boil and heating the brass pot of milk. Small clay cups shaped like little sake cups lie in nested lengths in a basket by the chai maker, a round man in his forties with a calm, good-natured face who never stops working. First he makes the tea, moistening the black loose leaves with hot water, stirring the tea, and bringing it back to a boil; once he has added the hot milk to it, and the sugar, he blends them together by pouring the mixture in a long swooping stream from kettle to pot, from pot to kettle. Then it’s ready.