In my room, I set up my comfy, floral armchair in the empty corner next to the window. The sunlight seeps through the tree leaves and hits the chair at a perfect angle, making me feel like I’m in a teen coming-of-age movie. I enjoy the view of the quiet, empty street in my newly placed armchair, perfect for anime watching, surfing the web on my computer, and watching people while listening to the ten-hour loop of Avatar’s Love on YouTube through my Google Home speakers. 

Life is good.

On weekend mornings – you know, before I suffer through the endless amount of homework I seem to always have – I have come to love waking up early in the morning and taking the time to take care of myself. I thoroughly believe that is the reason for any sanity to clear out the workload. Whenever my family visited Kolkata, my grandmother would make us Masala Chai to wake us up in the morning. Needless to say, it got all of our systems running. I miss it sometimes, and due to the pandemic I will not be visiting anytime soon. I turned to my sister to see how she made her version of Masala Chai (my parents do not typically drink it), and refined it to suit my own tastes while still maintaining its foundation. 

For this, I have a recipe. I make it so often, I felt the need to write it down to get it perfect. This makes one serving of the drink.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of water
• A mortar and pestle
• ⅓ cup of milk of your choice
• 1 tablespoon of loose black tea leaves
• ¼ inch of ginger, grated
• 2-3 green cardamom
• Optional: sugar to taste (I typically do not add any)

Directions

• Peel the cardamoms and crush the seeds in the mortar and pestle until there aren’t any big chunks remaining (I normally crush them into sugar-like grains).
• Grate the ginger to your liking; these will be strained out later. Set, the ginger aside.
• Add water to a saucepan on medium heat. After two minutes, add in the cardamoms and the grated ginger and stir. When the water gets hot, pour in the milk and keep stirring.
• Add sugar (optional)
• When the liquid comes to a boil, add in the black tea leaves and continue to stir; it should have a rich brown color. Sometimes, putting a lid on the saucepan and keeping the flame on low to let the mixture steep some more works very well.
• Once the liquid simmers for 2-3 minutes, the chai is ready.

You can pour it and enjoy the morning. This would go amazingly with bread or some biscuits.