Chai for many is the official drink of winters. After all, what is a cold day without a hot drink?

The last month was spent near drowned in a caffeine rush. I wrote faster, my fingers barely kept up with my thoughts, and by the end of week three, I came very close to posting something online about not being disturbed till I had had my first drip of the day. I have, since then, weaned myself off, but I haven’t given up a taste for the stuff and a good frothy espresso always has my heart.

But, in the meantime, even though it’s hard to see through all this capital smog, winter approaches, and I find myself putting the kettle on. The Raj has clearly not left the building! So, as the story goes, the British were late to the quinine trade market and tried catching up by planting sub-par species of the tree in cool Indian climes—Darjeeling, Nilgiris, even Sri Lanka. Ultimately, they bowed to the Dutch supremacy and had to import their quinine and, consequently, uprooted all that quinine and replaced it with tea! Now, some estates surely existed before this happened, but in large swathes, tea came to cover for the quinine bungle