Tea - A Daily Affair

 

A typical Indian day won’t start without a strong cup of tea. According to statistics tea is the second most consumed beverage after water in the world.  But interesting thing is that trend of drinking tea in India is not even 100 years old. So how this beverage that was once considered as a luxury has now become a household affair?

Let us know about it

 

Origin of Tea

Tea was first originated in China, according to a story once an emperor was boiling water and a tea leaf fell in it, after consuming that water and he found it to be amazing.

 

Tea spread its wings

The credit of spreading tea to all over the world, goes to Dutch. They were the first to travel to Far East and took it back to Dutch from where it got to neighboring countries, then British came to India and set up their port in India in order to export tea.

 

Tea in India

The credit of bringing tea to India formally goes to Britishers, because they wanted to break the monopoly of china in tea sector. There was also a variety of wild tea that was grown in Assam   for years used but SINGHPO people who were using that tea in their food. They used it by drying it in sun and allowing dew to fall at night and then they used to smoke it in bamboo and consume it as a beverage.

 

Exchange of addiction

Breaking china’s monopoly over tea was not at all easy. When china saw that the demand of tea is constantly increasing in west, they started to charge more silver in return of tea and eventually Britishers were almost out of sliver. So they came with a plan “exchange of addiction in return of addiction” they flooded the Chinese market with opium grown in Bengal, which also lead to opium war. This attempt was not that successful.

 

The Great Theft

After that a Scottish botanist came to India and he went to china in a disguise as a Chinese trader, he there collected the knowledge of growing tea, making green and black tea, collected tea saplings and tea seeds and came back to India with some tea specialist. Then they planted the tea in Darjeeling and Assam. But bush bought from china failed to grow in Assam because of geographic conditions. After that the Assam bush was studied and started growing it in a commercial way. Eventually Assam tea became superior to the Chinese tea. Today Assam tea is awarded with GI tag (geographic indication)

 

Journey to become a daily affair

During all this time tea was only consumed by British officers in India and elite Indian class, then Britishers thought of introducing it to India and make India a potential market. But the problem was common men didn’t know how to consume it so tea stalls were set up at the railway station with large hoardings stating how to make tea. They even did Campaigns Street plays on how to make tea.

Later on Indians added more milk and sugar in it and made it according to their liking slowly and steadily as tea moved to houses of Indian and then they started adding spices to it such as ginger, cardamom, black pepper etc. today India consumes 70% of tea produced in India.

Slowly and steadily tea became a daily affair from household matters to politics everything was discussed over a cup of tea. Tea became a thing which brings everyone together no matter from where they belong, their thought process.

So next time when you have tea, show some respect because it has seen a war, provides employment to millions of people (chaiwalas, tea farmers and production house) and most important it brings people together. 

 

“Tea time is a chance to slow down, pull back and appreciate our surroundings”

                                        -Letitia Baldrige

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