Welcome to our (Tea) House.
Hi friend,
For our final chai night of this quarter-century, we return to the origin of Midnight Chai: afternoon tea. Yes, the nomenclature of our humble ritual was indeed borrowed from its more formal and formalised, prim and proper British twin. And in similar fashion to its stately counterpart, ours too was fashioned from a desire to satisfy a sociotemporal void by inaugurating an unfamiliar practice, one we hope results in far more than satisfied stomachs.
Curiously, the British exercise of afternoon tea as we know it began as a cheeky desire to satiate the half-full stomach of one Anna Marie Russell, Duchess of Bedford. What was far too long a wait between luncheon and supper became a clever excuse to supplement daily consumption with a clandestine moment of indulgence, comprising bread, butter and cakes, and escorted by a pot of tea. Fulfilling the inevitable nature of commensality, Anna’s equally peckish companions soon joined her, transforming what began as a(n unfortunately understandable) submission to gluttony into a ceremonial and ceremonious occasion. As such, Midnight Chai is simply a continuation of the Duchess’s tradition of deviation; our shared refusal to allow hunger, temporal, social, or spiritual, to pass unacknowledged.
In truth, certain temporal voids make particular socialities possible, and that’s precisely what this gathering held at midnight affords us as Muslims. While mainstream nightlife tends often to orbit other, more normative acts of deviation (or for those of quieter dispositions, a retreat into domestic solitude), chai night attempts to offer an alternative, importantly non-commodified mode of dwelling together during a time of day that exhilarates the spiritual nightcrawler.
Then, of course, this hour represents a threshold between a conclusion and a beginning, yesterday and today, the present and future, as we reacquaint ourselves with a new day collectively. Marking this temporal margin compels us to reflect on our habitual (albeit usually unconscious) beckoning of the new day, and soon, the new year, accompanied by the optimistic arrival of new eventualities.
So once again, in the spirit of our collective becoming, we invite you to steep in reflection as we look forward to hosting our shared future.
Welcome to our final chai night,
Nas
Hi friend,
For our final chai night of this quarter-century, we return to the origin of Midnight Chai: afternoon tea. Yes, the nomenclature of our humble ritual was indeed borrowed from its more formal and formalised, prim and proper British twin. And in similar fashion to its stately counterpart, ours too was fashioned from a desire to satisfy a sociotemporal void by inaugurating an unfamiliar practice, one we hope results in far more than satisfied stomachs.
Curiously, the British exercise of afternoon tea as we know it began as a cheeky desire to satiate the half-full stomach of one Anna Marie Russell, Duchess of Bedford. What was far too long a wait between luncheon and supper became a clever excuse to supplement daily consumption with a clandestine moment of indulgence, comprising bread, butter and cakes, and escorted by a pot of tea. Fulfilling the inevitable nature of commensality, Anna’s equally peckish companions soon joined her, transforming what began as a(n unfortunately understandable) submission to gluttony into a ceremonial and ceremonious occasion. As such, Midnight Chai is simply a continuation of the Duchess’s tradition of deviation; our shared refusal to allow hunger, temporal, social, or spiritual, to pass unacknowledged.
In truth, certain temporal voids make particular socialities possible, and that’s precisely what this gathering held at midnight affords us as Muslims. While mainstream nightlife tends often to orbit other, more normative acts of deviation (or for those of quieter dispositions, a retreat into domestic solitude), chai night attempts to offer an alternative, importantly non-commodified mode of dwelling together during a time of day that exhilarates the spiritual nightcrawler.
Then, of course, this hour represents a threshold between a conclusion and a beginning, yesterday and today, the present and future, as we reacquaint ourselves with a new day collectively. Marking this temporal margin compels us to reflect on our habitual (albeit usually unconscious) beckoning of the new day, and soon, the new year, accompanied by the optimistic arrival of new eventualities.
So once again, in the spirit of our collective becoming, we invite you to steep in reflection as we look forward to hosting our shared future.
Welcome to our final chai night,
Nas
Hi friend,
For our final chai night of this quarter-century, we return to the origin of Midnight Chai: afternoon tea. Yes, the nomenclature of our humble ritual was indeed borrowed from its more formal and formalised, prim and proper British twin. And in similar fashion to its stately counterpart, ours too was fashioned from a desire to satisfy a sociotemporal void by inaugurating an unfamiliar practice, one we hope results in far more than satisfied stomachs.
Curiously, the British exercise of afternoon tea as we know it began as a cheeky desire to satiate the half-full stomach of one Anna Marie Russell, Duchess of Bedford. What was far too long a wait between luncheon and supper became a clever excuse to supplement daily consumption with a clandestine moment of indulgence, comprising bread, butter and cakes, and escorted by a pot of tea. Fulfilling the inevitable nature of commensality, Anna’s equally peckish companions soon joined her, transforming what began as a(n unfortunately understandable) submission to gluttony into a ceremonial and ceremonious occasion. As such, Midnight Chai is simply a continuation of the Duchess’s tradition of deviation; our shared refusal to allow hunger, temporal, social, or spiritual, to pass unacknowledged.
In truth, certain temporal voids make particular socialities possible, and that’s precisely what this gathering held at midnight affords us as Muslims. While mainstream nightlife tends often to orbit other, more normative acts of deviation (or for those of quieter dispositions, a retreat into domestic solitude), chai night attempts to offer an alternative, importantly non-commodified mode of dwelling together during a time of day that exhilarates the spiritual nightcrawler.
Then, of course, this hour represents a threshold between a conclusion and a beginning, yesterday and today, the present and future, as we reacquaint ourselves with a new day collectively. Marking this temporal margin compels us to reflect on our habitual (albeit usually unconscious) beckoning of the new day, and soon, the new year, accompanied by the optimistic arrival of new eventualities.
So once again, in the spirit of our collective becoming, we invite you to steep in reflection as we look forward to hosting our shared future.
Welcome to our final chai night,
Nas
Through our Midnight Tea series, we invite you to collectively engage with the sensory experiences, historical resonances, and cultural worlds embodied, brought forth, and transformed by tea.