"Tea awakens my curiosity, serves as a medium for connection, and offers refuge in times of rest."
Can you share your earliest memory of drinking tea and how it made you feel?
I remember being 10 years old, peering over my Ammachi's chaaya pot, watching as a rolling tide of black leaves swirled through a cauldron of milk.
My Ammachi would call the guests — “Chaaya vennou? Do you want chaaya?ˮ
It served as both an invitation and a message of welcome.
For my cousins and me, chaaya served as the perfect sugary fuel for running around the house and causing mischief. Over time, my curiosity transformed into a familial responsibility.
Preparing, tasting, and sharing tea allows me to honor and renew this ritualistic act of love that my Ammachi first showed me.
What role does tea play in your daily life or routines?
I start most mornings with an hour-long tea practice.
Sometimes I'm mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, while other times I approach it with deep intention.
Tea is cathartic — it makes meditation more tangible.
It grounds me in my physical space, connects me to my community, and strengthens my sense of self.
Tea awakens my curiosity, serves as a medium for connection, and offers refuge in times of rest.
Is there a particular tea or tea moment that holds special meaning for you? Why?
During my first visit to Kerala in 2022, my extended family was fascinated that I crafted my own tea brand, Arka Masala Chai.
Traditional Kerala chaaya typically contains little to no spices—at most, a bit of cardamom. Using Amul milk, Idukki cardamom, and fresh cinnamon, ginger, and pepper harvested from our land, I prepared their first-ever taste of masala chaaya.
I'll never forget their seal of approval:
“Timothymon, Nalla chaaya.ˮ Good chaaya, Timo.
How has your relationship with tea evolved over the years?
Over the past eight years, working with tea has built a sacred relationship between the plant and me.
Brewing my tea gongfu, a Chinese methodolgy, has taught me to extract the most from just a few dried leaves, infusing the leaves countless times. I touch, smell, taste, feel, and listen to the tea, adjusting my brewing based on what the last infusion told me.
This practice allows me to honor the artisans who craft these leaves, connecting my brew to a lineage of tea practitioners thousands of miles away.
If you could share a cup of tea with anyone—past, present, or fictional—who would it be, and why?
My ancestors in Kerala at the turn of the 20th century.
During that time, the Kerala Syrian Christian community was adapting to a Pre- Independence modernizing India. At that point, they might not have even tried tea! As Western ideologies entered this ancient community, many of them transformed and shed their culture to survive: traditions, heirlooms, customs, and orthodox faith.
I would love to serve them chaaya and understand who we truly were, so that I might be able to rebuild what was lost.
