The taste of dried leaves boiled in water with milk squirted from a cow.

It is remarkable how very closely Indian life is tied to a single cup of chai. Take for example the happily married Mr. and Mrs. Kapoor. Had Mrs. Kapoor’s (née Iyer) mother not yelled at their cook for adding chilli powder in the morning tea, the cook would never have gossiped maliciously to Mrs. Mehta about “that poor Iyer girl’s ugly wart that almost but not quite obscures her ugly nose.” Mrs. Mehta would never have been paid a surprise visit to the Iyer household, to discover to her delight that there was finally a suitable girl that would agree to marry her good-for-nothing son. Nor would she have survived that nasty bout of mono that was hiding in the finer crevices of her pharynx had she not drunk the chilli-laced tea she was offered at their house. In fact it is widely believed that chai is single-handedly responsible for most or all of the alliances that lead to Indians’ genetic tendency towards early onset diabetes and premature balding.

Chai compounds our burgeoning population and stops Darwinian natural selection in its tracks. It also literally holds the global economy together. This was particularly well illustrated one rainy Monsoon day when Rajkumar, a semi-successful salesperson at a midsized paper company, missed his afternoon cup of chai. Ram the chai-walla, who conducted business at the margin, was forced to close shop and subsequently became a callcenter employee for Verizon Wireless named Mark. Rajkumar, short on insulin and caffeine, fell asleep at his desk and missed an important international shipment to Fanny May. The next day the bottom fell out of the stock market.

Being so important to civilization and such, it’s no small wonder that we choose to celebrate all that is good about culture, art, unity and peace in both the east and the west with spicy Indian snacks and a good hot cuppa. As you slowly sip this modest drink of epic significance, take a moment to reflect on the Iyers, the Kapoors, the Rajkumars, and the Rams of the world and you will realize how truly gifted we are to have chai.