, In A Single Cup Of Masala Chai, A Meeting Of Many Histories

In 1929, the Great Depression occurred, which affected the economies of empires like Britain and the United States. The year coincided with a large production of tea, as a result of which prices fell and surpluses loomed. The British government and East India Company panicked, and decided that the best way to sell stocks would be to popularise the beverage in India itself. The year also saw the invention of the CTC or “Crash Tear Curl” machine, which perfected a technique to process the full bodied leaf into smaller, dust-like particles. This increased the quantities further, and also created what the British considered a lower quality of tea, but one able to make a denser, more robust brew. It was CTC tea that Indians took a liking to — the dark colour and the elevated, bitter kick that chai would soon come to be associated with, began with the machine.

Meanwhile, a marketing campaign to sell tea to Indians began. A body known as the Tea Cess Committee or TCC was set up by British officers. Members of the TCC were dispatched to railway stations to set up tea stalls, and instruction manuals were made in different languages. In Mumbai, Calcutta and Delhi, campaigns were started to spread the habit of tea in several languages, with marketeers even setting up stalls in women-only spaces, and canvassing from door to door. “The conversion of the subcontinental population to tea-drinking was a result of what must have been the first major marketing campaign in the time of 20th century India,” historian Lizzie Collingham writes in her book Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors about the initiatives, which were also among the largest sale campaigns the subcontinent would ever witness.