Chai is an emotion for most Indians, whether in India or America. And each time someone has tried to mess with that emotion, desi chai lovers have definitely given it back. Remember chai latte? Or Chocolate Chai? Netizens definitely roasted that one. After all a cup of piping hot tea is what makes the day better for so many of us. And is it too much to just enjoy a simple cup of chai? Well, for some it is. Now in the latest version of tryst with Indian tea from around the world, American neurosurgeon Dr Sanjay Gupta, who is a popular face on CNN as their chief medical correspondent, decided to make chai. And it has left many people on the internet unhappy. Here’s why.
The medical expert, who keeps appearing on many segments of the American news channel, recently tried to teach his daughters how to make the popular desi beverage. In a now-viral video shared by the news outlet, the neurosurgeon revealed that he learned the recipe of this chai from his mother and is passing it down to his children.
In the over three-minute-long video on Twitter, he starts by telling his daughters how he used to make chai for his parents “all the time” and now he is teaching them the recipe so they can do the same for him. The footage has the doctor talking about how making tea is a sort of a tradition and how it is a meaningful activity for the family. He also revealed that the cups they used to drink the tea in, also belongs to his mother. The making of tea then starts with the ingredients wherein they have brown sugar, finely diced ginger and cardamom and bags of black tea.
While it started off okay with the girls boiling water with crushed cardamom and ginger, netizens just couldn’t take the use of tea bags in the pot, despite the fact that they had loose tea leaves with them. Dr. Gupta explains that loose tea leaves are usually added but that they could be tricky. Hence, he justifies using the bags to teach his daughters the recipe. Take a look:
Later, he asks them to add a cup of milk to the pot. After allowing it to simmer for a while, the family enjoys chai in the same cups, handed to him by his mother. The nostalgia attached to chai was well understood by the netizens, but a lot of them thought that the recipe was ruined with the addition of tea bags. Right from the flavour, the aroma and the colour depends a lot on tea leaves and here, as per many comments, none of it was achieved by the looks of it. The video has garnered more than 250k views.
“Why is he destroying his mother’s reputation” questioned one of the users on Twitter, while another wrote “That's more like doodh-patti. That's not chai bro”. Look at some of the hilarious reactions from the users:
Now if you too are triggered by this chai recipe, don’t be. We’ve got you covered with the perfect Masala Chai recipe right here.
