For this edition of Chai With…, we asked a simple question: when you live far from where you began, what keeps home close?
The answers were rarely grand. One person mentioned the sound of mustard seeds hitting hot oil. Another keeps an old steel dabba in a modern London kitchen, even though the lid no longer closes properly. Someone else calls their mother while making chai so they can compare the colour through a video screen.
Home as a collection of small things
Migration often turns ordinary details into anchors. A particular brand of biscuit, a song played while cleaning, the way coriander is chopped or the exact strength of tea can hold more emotion than expected.
Chai appears repeatedly because it is easy to repeat. Ingredients change, kitchens change and time becomes scarce, but the act remains recognisable: heat, spice, tea, milk, a pause.
The cup between two places
Several people told us their chai has changed since moving. It may be less sweet, made with oat milk or prepared quickly before a commute. That does not make it less authentic. It makes the cup a record of where they came from and where they are now.
Perhaps home is not something preserved perfectly. Perhaps it is something adapted with affection.
So we raise this cup to the people building new lives without losing the rituals that shaped them - and to every slightly different version of chai that helps two places belong in the same kitchen.
