There are some things you keep close to your heart for a long time before you find the words for them. Or maybe the words were always there – you just were not quite ready to let them out yet.
I have been sharing tea with you for a while now. The regions, the recipes, the reels, the stories behind every cup. And somewhere along the way, between a blog post about Darjeeling flushes and an Instagram reel on my latest tea discovery, many of you started asking – but who are you? What is your story? How did all of this begin?
I kept that question close. Turned it over quietly. And recently, I just felt ready. Ready to sit down, make myself a cup – obviously – and tell you the story that lives behind everything I create. Not the tea expert version. Not the curated, polished version. Just me. Ashita Agrawal. A girl who used to sneak sips from her father’s chai and never quite recovered from how good it tasted.
If you have been following me on Instagram at @miniaturefoodiee, you have seen the teas, the travels, the reels, and the occasional reel of my husband doing something funny with my tea collection. But you have not heard the whole story yet. Today you will.
So put the kettle on. This one is personal.
My Earliest Memory of Tea Does Not Involve a Cup
It involves a kitchen platform.
Our kitchen at home is L-shaped. The gas stove sits on one side, and I, as a child who had absolutely no business being up there, used to climb onto the other side of that platform and just sit. Watch. Observe. My father would be making chai, and in our house, chai was never just tea leaves and milk. My father believed tea was a canvas. He would add things with the confidence of someone who had been doing this for decades, blue tea, kadha, kesar rajwadi chai, hibiscus, rose petals in the regular chai sometimes, whatever called to him that day. There was no YouTube in the early 2000s. No reels, no influencers, no guides. Just a man who loved tea deeply and followed his instincts completely. My mother made chai too, and I loved watching her as much as I loved watching him. But it was my father’s fearless, throw-anything-in approach that first planted something in me, this quiet sense of wonder that tea is endlessly versatile. That there is always more to explore.
I was not supposed to be drinking tea as a child. Which is perhaps exactly why I loved it so much. Those stolen sips from my father’s cup, sitting up on that kitchen platform with my legs dangling, watching the steam rise, that is where my relationship with tea truly began. Not in a tea garden. Not at a tasting. Not from a book. From a kitchen in Thane, and a father who treated chai like it deserved real attention and real love.
Thane, Mumbai, and the Irani Chai Revelation
I am a Thane girl, born and brought up there, and anyone who has grown up around Mumbai knows that the city has its own tea culture running quietly through its veins. It was my brother who first took me to the Irani cafes of Mumbai during my college years — and if you have never been to Kyani and Co., I genuinely feel you are missing one of the most honest, most comforting tea experiences this city has to offer. There is something about Irani chai — that slightly stewed, perfectly strong, deeply familiar cup — that feels like Mumbai itself decided to sit down and have a conversation with you.
But the moment that truly blew my mind came from an even smaller, quieter place. Near my grandmother’s house, there was a tiny local tea shop that served pineapple chai. Hot. No milk. Mint leaf. Lemon wedge. Sabja seeds. I do not know who decided to make that combination. I do not know if they even knew how extraordinary it was. But that cup cracked something open in me. It proved, in the most unpretentious way possible, that tea could be anything. That it could surprise you completely and still feel entirely right.
The Gap I Could Not Ignore
As I grew older and my curiosity about tea deepened, I started looking for information. I wanted to read about Indian teas — the ayurvedic traditions behind certain blends, the regions where different teas come from, the stories behind the cups I was falling in love with. And what I found frustrated me deeply.
Almost everything I came across was either a tea brand talking about their own products in ways that felt like marketing rather than truth, or content that was Western in its framing — focused on Japanese matcha ceremonies or British afternoon teas — as if Indian tea culture was a footnote rather than one of the richest tea stories in the world. There was almost nothing that spoke to someone like me. Someone who grew up watching their father throw rose petals into chai. Someone who fell in love with tea at a hole-in-the-wall shop in Mumbai. Someone who is not a nutritionist, not a dietician, not a trained expert of any kind — just a person who loves tea with everything they have and wants to understand it more deeply every single day.
That gap is why I started writing. Not to be an authority. Not to sell anything. Just to be the voice I could never find when I was searching.
The Workshop I attended
Tea kept surprising me, the way it always has. A while ago I had the chance to meet Radhika Batra — a tea connoisseur and tea brand owner who hosted a tea tasting workshop that I will honestly never forget. It was there that I first had cold brew hibiscus tea mixed with honey. I did not expect to be moved by a cold cup of hibiscus tea. But I was. Completely and instantly. It was floral, it was bright, it was a little tart and a little sweet, and it tasted like someone had taken everything beautiful about a summer afternoon and figured out how to pour it into a glass. I fell in love right there.
That workshop reminded me of something I first felt as a child sitting on that kitchen platform — that tea always has one more thing to show you. One more flavour, one more form, one more reason to stay curious.
Chamomile Tea and rose hibiscus have become teas I return to again and again now. They represent something in my journey — the distance between those sneaky childhood sips of my father’s chai and the person I am today, still exploring, still discovering, still completely enchanted by what a handful of leaves, petals, and hot water can do.
And Then There Is My Husband
Life has a wonderful sense of humour. I married a coffee lover.
He does not drink regular chai — except, of course, when there is a biscuit or a rusk involved and dunking becomes absolutely non-negotiable. You know the type. But here is the beautiful thing — he has found his own relationship with my teas. He raids my tea collection to make iced teas, and some of his combinations are genuinely funny to me in the best possible way. He also has a standing request that I make him the best lemon iced tea, which I do, and which he accepts as though it is entirely his idea every single time.
But beyond the kitchen experiments and the biscuit dunking, what we do share completely is the love of exploring. Wherever we travel, if there is a tea estate nearby, we find it. We visited the tea gardens in Da Lat, Vietnam — and if you have never seen tea growing against that landscape, it is something else entirely. We went to Palampur near Dharamshala, which for me as someone who writes about Indian tea was not just a trip but a deeply personal moment — standing in the very valley I had written about, with the Dhauladhar range behind the gardens and that cool Himalayan air around everything. Some places you write about before you visit them, and then visiting them feels like finally meeting someone you already knew.
And then there was Udaipur. We were staying in a hostel, yes, a hostel, because we both are backpackers. And right below it was a chai shop run by a man, his shop named “the Pagal Chai Wala”. Seven in the morning, which in Udaipur is genuinely too early as far as the city is concerned because nothing opens early there, and this man was already at it. He made pudina chai, normal dudh ki chai with loads of pudina, adrak. And what struck me was not just the tea but watching the guy completely lose himself in the experience. He was more excited to make the tea than I was to drink it. He was watching the steam rise from the teapot, taking in the warmth from it because the morning was cold. That tea was not really about the cup. It was about the moment around it.
This Is What Tea Has Built
Today, that journey continues in every direction at once. I create tea recipes and share them through reels on Instagram. I write on my blog. And somewhere along the way, my tea stories and photographs found their way into IKEA stores across the US, UK, Canada, UAE, and India — which still feels surreal to me every time I think about it. A little girl, sneaking sips from her father’s chai, now featured in the stores of one of the world’s most beloved brands.
Tea did that. Not a degree. Not formal training. Just love, curiosity, and the unshakeable belief that every cup has a story worth telling.
Every Cup Since
I have no certifications on my wall. No formal education in tea. No title that officially makes me an expert. What I have is a lifetime of genuinely, deeply, completely loving it. From that kitchen at mummy’s home to a cold brew hibiscus moment at a tea workshop. From Irani chai at Kyani and Co. to a pineapple chai with sabja seeds at a tiny shop near my grandmother’s house that I still think about years later. From Da Lat’s tea gardens to a 7am pudina chai in Udaipur with a man who loved the process even more than I did.
I write about tea the way my father used to make it, without pretension, without a formula, just with real curiosity and real love. Because I believe that is exactly what Indian tea deserves. Not marketing. Not expertise performed from a distance. Just honest, passionate, deeply personal stories from someone who cannot imagine a single day without a cup.
That is my story. That is where all of this comes from.
And if you have read this far — thank you. Truly. Now go make yourself a cup of something you love. You have earned it.
With warmth, Ashita 🍵 @miniaturefoodiee