Seat of Our Pants

“I’ll have a venti, one splenda, non-fat, no foam chai latte, please.”

Yes, this used to be something I said out load – to people, no less. Starbucks may have been my introduction to chai, but India and Nepal have been my education in it. Here whole milk is combined with tea and spices. A few heaping scoops of sugar are added to the mix and the whole thing is boiled for five minutes. The result is a creamy, sugary wonderful afternoon pick-me-up.

Kolkata offers an especially fun element to drinking chai: the ceramic to-go cup. No joke, this is how street-vendor chai is served in this city. The servings are small, which suits me just fine since it’s so bloody sweet that you don’t want too much of it. Once you’re finished, you either toss it into a bucket that sits by the stall or, well, anywhere else on the street. Piles of these little terracotta cups are all over this city. Some are reused while others get smashed and ground back into the earth.

Kolkata Chai

While trash dumps all over the world are filling with paper Starbucks cups, Kolkata has maintained a chai drinking tradition that is not only fun but makes a whole bunch of environmental sense – and I’m OK with that.

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