Category: Non-fiction
Rights: All rights available
This book is not about chai, neither is it an exhaustive list of “best chai places in the city”. Chai and the City is an ethnographic deep-dive into the country’s third spaces – its chai shops.
In this book, food writer and anthropologist Shirin Mehrotra loiters at the chai shops of ten Indian cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Varanasi, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Srinagar and Shillong – chatting with the fellow loiterers and often just observing how a city and its people interact with its chai shops. From the distinct ways the chai is prepared to the conversations that brew over multiple cups of chai at the shops; from the food culture that has developed in and around these tea shops to the distinct material culture in every city; from the design of chai shops to the people who occupy these public spaces; from chai wallahs to the chai drinkers, this book is an attempt to document the street-side chai shops of India while also examining them as spaces for social and cultural
exchange.
The book is part socio-cultural and socio-political commentary, part conversations, part historic deep-dive and part nostalgia drawn from years of research and the writer’s penchant for finding a chai shop for herself wherever she travels.
The author: Shirin Mehrotra