Issue #10 of the Chai Bhai newsletter. A milestone cup — our tenth issue.
Ten Chai Wallahs, Ten Cups, One India
Reaching Issue #10 feels like an occasion to step back from the science, the spice ratios, and the travel guides and think about the person who makes the chai.
India has an estimated 10 to 15 million chai wallahs — the men and women who operate tea stalls ranging from a single gas burner and a handful of glasses to substantial roadside establishments serving hundreds of cups an hour. As a profession, it is older than independent India, and it has produced one of the country's most famous citizens: Narendra Modi, India's Prime Minister, who worked as a chai wallah with his father at Vadnagar railway station in Gujarat as a child.
The chai wallah is democracy in its most literal form. The stall serves the factory worker and the factory owner from the same pot. The student and the professor stand at the same counter. There is no reservation system, no menu complexity, no minimum order. There is the bhagona, the glasses, and the question: ek ya do? (one or two?)
The Economics of a Chai Stall
A chai wallah in a mid-tier Indian city operates on margins that require precision:
- Tea costs approximately ₹300–400 per kg
- Milk costs ₹55–65 per litre
- Gas, sugar, spices, glasses, labour (often family): variable
A glass of chai sold for ₹10 contains roughly ₹3–4 of raw ingredients. The profit is ₹6–7 per cup. A busy stall serving 200 cups a day clears around ₹1,200 in margin — approximately £12 per day. A very busy stall (500 cups) might clear £30. This is not wealth, but it is consistent, independent income that requires no qualifications and minimal capital.
The barrier to entry is a gas burner, a bhagona, a supply of milk, and the ability to make a decent cup. The barrier to success is location, taste, and the trust of regulars.
What Makes a Great Chai Wallah
The difference between an ordinary chai wallah and a great one is rarely the recipe — it is the intangibles:
Consistency: Regulars know exactly what they are getting. The fifth Wednesday chai tastes the same as the first. This predictability is itself a form of comfort.
Memory: The great chai wallahs remember. They know that the man from the bank takes no sugar, that the college students want cutting chai before exams, that the old woman who comes at 7am has a daughter studying in Delhi.
Presence: The stall is open when it is supposed to be open. Rain, festival, cold — the bhagona is on the flame. This reliability is why the chai wallah, in many neighbourhoods, is as important as the neighbourhood doctor.
A Wallah's Story: Mohan of Varanasi
At the foot of Assi Ghat in Varanasi, Mohan Prasad has operated the same chai stall for 31 years. He opens at 4:30am — before the first boats go out, before the first bathers arrive. His chai is ginger-forward, lightly sweet, served in kulhads that he sources from a potter in the lanes behind Assi.
He serves approximately 400 cups a day. He has no employees. He has no phone. He does not need to advertise. Every regular knows where to find him, and they have been finding him for decades.
"The ghat changes," he said, when asked once about tourism transforming Varanasi. "The chai doesn't."
“The chai wallah is not incidental to India. He is load-bearing. Remove the chai stalls from an Indian city and the social architecture collapses. He is holding the whole thing up, one cup at a time.
Next month: regional chai styles across India — a journey from Kashmir to Kerala in a single issue.
Chai piyo, zindagi jiyo.
— Chai Bhai