Why I dreaded making chai

Making tea for your parents might feel like just another mundane process, but as a South Asian first-generation immigrant child, each step was once accompanied by the dreadful reminder that the warmth of chai will never be enough to cure my parents’ generational struggles. While I do not drink chai often, I have always recognized its power to comfort and connect; my parents drink it every night before they sleep (no matter how tired they are). It is what they first suggest to take when I feel sick—saying “gharam chai sey gala saaf huta hay” (meaning, “the warmth of chai cleans your throat”)—and it joins our laughter and conversations at family gatherings. When my parents do experience difficulties—such as those generational pains which connect their past to the present—the thought “let me make them some chai” often approaches my headspace. Those sorrows, which have flowed through bloodlines, disentangle their embodied beings. This pain causes their bodies to exist in nonexistence as much as it introduces itself in new spaces. Chai offers a somatic warmth that holds an intention of love and care, but my mind could not escape the fact that it was just a somatic warmth, it was just something temporary, it was just symbolic of all that I cannot do to help my parents when I wish to. Chai as comfort felt like a limited form of love, representative of my helplessness—which is exactly why I dreaded making it. 

These feelings were connected to the acknowledgement that my parents’ hardships arise from sources that I cannot control, from moments I lack complete presence in, from mapped localities I cannot trace, and from places I cannot see. There is a generational “gap” that prevents immigrant children from completely understanding the experiences that their parents share, either directly through words or indirectly through emotions. Yet, I would not necessarily call this barrier to understanding a “gap”; a gap illustrates more of an emptied, hollowed out space that divides the lifetimes of our parents and our own. Rather, this limitation of understanding is more like a gravitational field in which the connection between our times is indirectly felt through an invisible generational force; it is a connection based on intertwined constraint; it is a tension between unknowingness and acceptance; it is when the unseen is felt; it is the Unseeable. 

The process of making chai for my parents is analogous to this indirect sharing of generational experience I hold with them. The chai bag is first dry, carrying its flavourful contents of herbs and leaves. This bag reminds me of my mother and father; however, the contents in the chai bag carries stories and lessons instead. When dipping this chai bag in warm water, its contents stain its surroundings—introducing flavor, and curating something which can be humanly felt and humanly experienced. Nonetheless, some of its contents are always left stuck in the chai bag itself, never escaping its confines; its work is tasted indirectly. Just like the confines of the chai bag, there are parts of my immigrant parents’ lives which will forever be left incomprehensible, unexplored in their entirety, or even silenced. These parts exist as coloured stains for us children—only partially accessible.  

The generational puzzle pieces of my parents’ stories—those which have catalyzed emotions of regret, worry, and sadness for them—are what I wished to completely access and control, as I hoped to fix my parents’ struggles when attempting to comfort them, to remove their pain. And this does make sense, as we commonly wish to see our loved ones feel well. However, chai clearly did not hold the power to do this, and therefore its mundanity led to its futility in my mind. But I came to realize that my entire perception of comfort was completely wrong: my approach was more about comforting myself—my own hurt from seeing my parents’ hurt—rather than comforting my parents themselves. 

Indeed, chai did not take away the discomfort in my parents’ life when they were experiencing generational hardships, but its warmth, its flavor, and the fact that I placed effort into its creation never failed to bring a smile upon my parents’ face. They always found the act valuable. You see, the purpose of chai is to nourish someone’s humanity, but attempting to fix someone’s pain is rather equivalent to erasing authentic human experience—this is what I did not know. Chai as comfort does not serve to remove the presence of sorrow but rather to increase presence within it. Comfort is not about removing emotions, but understanding them, listening to them, and being with them; removal is rather equivalent to emotional repression. In and of itself, the act of giving chai—with the intent to make one feel somewhat better—validates one’s feelings. 

Every human holds their own Unseeable that leaves stains on others’ existences; they have stories and thoughts which can never completely be understood by an outsider. However, the act of showing love to another despite the unknowns carried within their stains must be cherished, as it symbolizes the mutual acceptance of our complexities. I now choose to remind myself of the power that making chai holds, creating impacts that surpass the confines of the chai bag. Its stains accept feelings, acknowledge humanity, and encourage being, even within the unseen—this is comfort.