This is the cultural heartbeat of India: the radical democratization of a beverage. It breaks the caste system temporarily. It stops time. Every chai stall has a thousand stories of heartbreak and hope.
In Western literature, the protagonist is often the individual conquering the frontier. In the Indian story, the protagonist is the family .
On the night of Diwali, a tech startup founder in Bangalore will light a diyas (clay lamp) just as his grandmother did in 1942. He will draw a rangoli (colored powder art) on the floor, then five minutes later, return to coding an AI algorithm. The story here is —the ability to hold the ancient and the modern in the same hand.