chai & cookies

Most Friday nights my flatmate and I combine celebrating our amazing rooftop terrace and our incredibly lazy social inclinations by inviting people around for chai & cookies. We weren’t sure chai & cookies were enough of a draw but the first night brought the most eclectic group of people together and was so very much fun that we just kept doing it.

It began with the suggestion that we invite people round for chai, I added the condition that cookies be involved, and it snowballed from there to the most obscene cornucopia of sugar you could possibly conceive. Every Friday Ladoo, pera, milk cake, mysore pak, soan, a million different types of chaat, savory crackers, chocolate, every brand of cookie our combined efforts could scratch together and, of course, chai are scattered about our roof pushed aside to make room for yogis in various stages of sugar highs and sugar comas. After the first night of bouncing off the ceiling wired on sugar until 4am we did try to change the theme to chai & carrots but – no go. Obviously.

Next Friday is a night for a different kind of celebration; there are several birthdays, the arrival of missed friends, and the departure of others – myself included – which made last night our last chai night. I am so going to miss it.

I will miss talk of ahimsa interjected with talk of porn-eoke (I know! There is such a thing?!). I will miss seeing who shows up to random, open invitations. I will miss watching people connect on our candlelit rooftop, chai in hand, energy glowing. I will miss stepping back with my camera to capture the moments. I will miss sitting quietly among everyone, soaking it all in. I will miss all of it and I’m incredibly grateful that I will be going home carrying such wonderful memories.