AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
People in South Asia, like India and Pakistan, power through their morning with chai - tea boiled in milk with sugar - masala chai if it's spiced, like with ginger and cardamom. It's so tightly woven into the culture that the internet is replete with people, like the Indian-born celebrity chef Padma Lakshmi, losing it over folks ordering chai lattes or chai tea.
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PADMA LAKSHMI: It's not chai tea. Chai tea is like saying tea tea.
RASCOE: So for our summer series on breakfasts around the world, NPR's Diaa Hadid investigates chai and its rather surprising history.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Qudratallah's got another order for chai in the Karachi alleyway where he runs a tea hotel, Pakistani slang for a tea cafe.
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HADID: He jiggles a gallon-sized pot of milk on the boil, throws in a spoon of tea leaves, sugar, pours some of the brew in his hand, licks it, adds more sugar.
A cup lands before Nimatallah (ph). He's only got one name.
NIMATALLAH: (Speaking Urdu).
HADID: He says, without tea, our brains don't work.
NIMATALLAH: (Speaking Urdu).
HADID: He says he knows about chai because he's from a town famous for it. It's called Quetta. It's 400 miles away.
NIMATALLAH: (Non-English language spoken).
HADID: Nimatallah says he's traveled to Karachi with his 10-year-old son, Khaled.
NIMATALLAH: (Non-English language spoken).
HADID: They're here to get medical tests. Nimatallah says doctors are worried his son has cancer.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Inshallah, inshallah.
HADID: He asks us to pray for his son and sips the last of his chai. Chai has long been a comforting drink here, but its rise across South Asia has a lot to do with a yearslong and expensive marketing campaign.
NILOFER AFRIDI: Five generations ago, my relatives probably had no access to tea.
HADID: Nilofer Afridi is a Pakistani food anthropologist.
AFRIDI: The British introduced tea - as you and I call it, tea, chai - to South Asians.
HADID: The British, who ruled these lands, loved tea, but China kept a near monopoly on the global tea trade. The huge trade imbalance sent British silver flowing into China. By the late 1700s, the British were selling opium to offset that trade deficit with China. Still, the British wanted their own tea, and years later, a Scottish botanist snuck into China.
LIZZIE COLLINGHAM: And then he basically stole tea seedlings.
HADID: Lizzie Collingam writes on food and the British Empire. She says, soon, the British were growing their own tea in India, and...
COLLINGHAM: The British realized they could be selling all this tea they're growing to Indians, but they've got to persuade the Indians then to drink tea. So they start the most incredible campaign.
HADID: This really takes off during the 1930s.
COLLINGHAM: They employ a lot of people to distribute tea around, salesmen to go to grocers and persuade them to take some tea.
HADID: Tea vendors are sent to factories, to railway stations, to hawk this new drink.
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HADID: Then with the outbreak of the Second World War, some 2 million Indian men fought alongside the British.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: From every corner and province of India have come these gallant, sturdy warriors.
HADID: Tea trucks follow Indian forces, and they have...
COLLINGHAM: And a letter writer for the Indian soldiers, so that they can get somebody to write a letter home, and they get given a cup of tea. After the war, they bring it - a liking for tea - back with them to India.
HADID: Marketers chipped away at middle-class Indians by dispatching women to sell tea to housewives.
COLLINGHAM: They quite literally go from door to door. They make a cup of tea, distribute it to everybody, and then leave little packets of tea, hoping that they'll make their own tea.
HADID: And...
COLLINGHAM: They actually managed to get Indians to drink tea.
HADID: Except it wasn't quite how the British hoped, because Indians made very milky tea. It didn't use a lot of tea leaves. Early on, Collingham says there's even an account by a tea inspector who...
COLLINGHAM: Comes across a tea merchant who is making what we think of as chai - tea leaves mixed with water, milk, sugar, spices, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, and simmering it until it's thick and gloopy and sweet and spicy.
HADID: Food writer Afridi says its milk-forward flavor - that emerged because, for the working classes...
AFRIDI: It might be the only fortifying meal, so to speak, that you can look forward to.
HADID: Back in Karachi, a man calls for donations over a loudspeaker.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
HADID: And in a tea hotel, Bano is perched on a wooden day bed. She's around 60.
BANO: (Non-English language spoken).
HADID: She says she asked a stranger to buy her breakfast, and he got her chai.
BANO: (Non-English language spoken).
HADID: She's been begging on the street since she injured her leg a few months ago and had to leave her cleaning job.
BANO: (Non-English language spoken).
HADID: She says, she's grateful for this chai. She says it's tasty, very sweet.
BANO: (Non-English language spoken).
HADID: Bano says she won't eat again today. That's OK. This chai will last her all day.
Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Karachi.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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