Screw worms, the early bird gets a cup of chai.

You could say I’m not a morning person.  The day my summer vacation finally started, I slept through the night until 4pm the next day. That wasn’t the first time I’ve done that. Apparently, my body’s clock and the clock of the working, waking world are not always in sync.

But once, when I was around 8 years old, I happened to roll out of bed before my mom and brother, right after my dad went to work. I essentially had the house to myself, but it was weird. Weak, morning light and chilly, still air are sensations that have always made me feel a little out of place, kind of like the world is not yet ready for little children like me (in my head, I’m still 8 I guess). It was an adult time of day, so I decided to do something the adults I knew did. I made my first cup of chai.

I used to watch my dad make it every night. I don’t know why, but I methodically committed every detail of the process to memory. Children sense things that are never explicitly said and I think I knew how integral chai was to sustaining my community. It’s how you woke up in the morning and how you unwound at the end of the day. It’s how you got visitors to stay an extra half hour and it’s how you filled the awkward silences when you ran out of things to say. It was language you consumed, so if you could make chai you could communicate in a way that literally warmed people up inside. I felt the calling to be one of those people, so that morning was the moment that pajama-clad, Dora-the-Explorer-hair-repping, eyes-level-with-the-stove Banicia inducted herself into the privileged ranks of the chai-makers. The torch I endeavored to carry was this knowledge: Without us, family functions would cease to exist. While the responsibility is great, the honor is greater.

14 years later and I still make chai regularly. It’s become a sort of meditative experience, an exercise of intuition, because I do it without thinking. But I don’t really let my mind wander either. I just watch the cardamom float in the water, stir the sugar until it dissolves, pour milk until it feels right and then watch it all foam and boil up precariously close to the edge of the pot before I turn the gas flame down and let the concoction calm into stillness again. I don’t know how many times I repeat that process, but at some point the color speaks up and the chai demands to be poured through a half-melted, plastic chalni. Half a cup for Mom and Nani, 3/4 of a cup for Bob. Leftovers for Shari if he’s in the mood. Sometimes cookies, sometimes not. Then I clean up the drops I almost always spill and my family takes their first sips. The final part of the ritual is their verdict. Always gentle but always honest, I’ll know how they like it. Whether I’m 8 or 22, there is nothing quite like hearing a sigh of satisfaction and “chai bahut swaad hai, beta.”

Maybe early mornings aren't so bad.