Dylan Senthilan: the Chai Villain
Words by Vishad Sharma
The word "chai" can evoke many different images in many different people. For about a billion or so residents in India, it is one of the more common words for tea. Most tea consumed in India is made using a mixture of milk and water tea, sweetened with sugar.
What many in Australia and other countries think of as chai or sticky chai is actually referred to as masala chai in India - a spiced mix of tea leaves boiled in milk and water, often but not always with ginger. It is a warming drink that is consumed fairly heavily. For many who live in India, it is more common to have a cup of spicy masala chai at a chaiwallah’s stall than make one at home as the process can be labour intensive and exhaust precious spices.
This is perhaps one of the reasons why the Chai Villain, a Melbourne-based chai blend company is notable. The Chai Villain is bold and says things many will not - such as declaring on their website that their chai blend is built on scientific principles that govern flavour, not ephemeral, unqualified ingredients like - love or spirituality. Having had countless cups of atrocious tea thrust upon them, it is almost entirely possible that most Indian people, especially those that live in non-Indian nations, are likely to agree with this point of view. Love does not necessarily make food taste better; it only makes you better at describing the best parts of what it tastes like.
But it seems likely that love and memory drove founder of the Chai Villain, Dylan Senthilan's desire to replicate the delicious chai he was used to drinking when growing up in Singapore. The Chai Villain's seeds were perhaps planted in his mind when he first tasted good chai made by his father, though Singapore's own culture of tea and milk tea consumption is also likely to have played a part. An art student with no background or formal training in the food and beverage industry, for Dylan the journey has been a unique one.
"The whole conversation around chai began for me about five years ago. I grew up drinking chai and I missed drinking it. I wanted to do something that I cared about and the café culture in Melbourne was almost entirely geared towards coffee, and the chai you got was this powdery, milky, sweet thing that tasted a little like cinnamon mixed with some sweet tea," he says.
The café culture in Melbourne was almost entirely geared towards coffee, and the chai you got was this powdery, milky, sweet thing that tasted a little like cinnamon mixed with some sweet tea," he says.
At this point, after having worked as an artist in the fashion industry for about 11 years, Dylan had built a career in sales. And better varieties of spiced tea had also entered the market - ‘better’ being a relative term. "There were other loose leaf tea spice blends that were now available as sticky chai. These had dialled down the sugar and amped up the spice creating a more flavourful variety of spiced chai. But to me it still felt like a milky beverage with a spicy aftertaste."
"The thing is, as Indian people, we know better," he says.
Initially planned to be a tribute to his mother, the Chai Villain was going to be called Meera's Chai Shop. A far cry from the eye-catching red and black, almost punk rock colours used for the Chai Villain, Dylan's initial plan would have been diametrically different.
So why Chai Villain? “It rhymes with Dylan! Dylan Senthilan,” he jokes. “But no, I picked the name one evening and I texted it to my friends and said ‘What do you think of this name?’ and they just went ‘That’s it. That’s the one.’
“More seriously though, what proliferates in the market right is chai in this brown, sort of beige form and what the Villain is doing is disrupting that space. Most of the companies in charge right now, are these white-owned companies making chai and as the villainous brown guy, I want to disrupt the status quo and take up those reigns,” he adds.
"It was around this time that I thought that chai had been whitewashed," he laughs. "I wanted to do something after that because these beverages were not something that I would want to drink or even want anyone else to drink. And finally, in March this year, right before the lockdown, I ended up taking the plunge," he says.
The recipe for the Chai Villain's current blend was perfected over three years. Blends would be experimented with on weekends and after work. Gatherings were held to hold blind tasting focus groups. A methodical approach was developed to understand and build flavour. This is not something that Dylan takes for granted either.
To set himself apart and disrupt an industry that he refers to as "beige and whitewashed", Dylan decided to go with a brand identity that was evil and a little out there.
"I worked off the fact that flavour is a chemical reaction, so I sort of fell into creating this balanced mix of three components to give you a full aroma sensation," says Dylan. He experimented with ways of extracting flavour - crushing and roasting spices - a task that elevates an average spice blend to one that is complex.
"These are techniques our parents have taught us and there are scientific, chemical principles behind them. I loved chemistry growing up, so I really enjoyed the process of coming up with the blend and understanding various components in flavour like terpenes and what temperature they are activated at.
"You can also attribute it to my Singaporean upbringing - you just have to work to make whatever you are doing better," he laughs.
To set himself apart and disrupt an industry that he refers to as "beige and whitewashed", Dylan decided to go with a brand identity that was evil and a little out there. "I wanted to stand out from all the other tea brands out there," he says. Standing out is also important in an industry where most brands are owned by a few global conglomerations - making it a necessity for someone who wants to stay small batch and independent to be seen as different constantly.
This disruption and desire to stand away from the current crowd of people selling chai blends was also important in defining the ethos of the Chai Villain. "There are people who are selling these products who guard what they use and for me it is a matter of saying to a consumer that I am using specific ingredients like Sri Lankan (Ceylon) cinnamon which is different from the cassia variety more commonly found and used. They can then make a decision about which product they want to spend their money on," he says.
The differentiation also came as a counterpoint to how chai blends are marketed in Australia. "There are companies that are selling chai who use and adopt yoga or aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism to build and develop their brand. It is not like the founders are from those cultures and in those cases, I want them to understand that this is cultural appropriation," he says.
There are companies that are selling chai who use and adopt yoga or aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism to build and develop their brand. It is not like the founders are from those cultures and in those cases, I want them to understand that this is cultural appropriation
Maintaining that while chai is an essentially Indian product, it has no special significance to bring you closer to spiritual awakenings matters as a concept when lives are at stake. Tea pickers across most of the tea cultivating world, barring perhaps China, can have an extremely different life. With about 40% of the world's tea grown in China, the other 60% comes from tea growers across India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Kenya and the rest of the world.
A large majority of these tea workers are still fighting low pay, awful living conditions, safety issues and more recently the impacts of COVID-19. Research and audits routinely highlight how rife tea production is with issues pertaining to bonded labour and slavery and even the involvement of big players or governments produces very few results.
While the Indian government plays about at promoting yoga and the idea of a spiritually advanced nation on the verge of developing into an economic superpower, real lives continue to remain at stake.
For Dylan, highlighting these inequities is important. "I wanted a sustainable product and also to make people understand why it has to be ethical," he says. Underscoring the importance of consumers being able to drive to some extent corporate behaviour, he suggests that it is possible to change things by becoming a more active part of the conversation. "I wanted to highlight the stories of the farmers we source our tea from, and let their voices be heard so we don't avoid the difficult conversations around tea harvesting but COVID-19 has stopped that from happening as planned," he says.
This is also why Dylan highlights the fact that the Chai Villain is owned and run entirely by a person of colour. "The problem is that if you start looking into it, you can count the numbers of brown chai blend producers on one hand while there are many more who do not have that background. And while anyone can make chai and should make chai, they need to understand that they are appropriating another person's culture," he says.
As Dylan puts it, there is enough room for hope. And he rightly points out that there are many allies who are capable of sensitivity, and many people who consistently want to learn and understand what the right way is to spend their money.
But this is not all there is to it. While the power of people buying things is important, the power of producers cannot be underrated. It is key to explain and understand why your product costs more - is it because you decided to use truffle (an awful example, please forgive this writer) in your blend? Or is it because the lives of workers on an organic tea farm and spice grower are being supported? While the pursuit of flavour is important in cooking and food, there is an economic and political aspect to its development and consumption.
In a space like that, the Chai Villain, stands out as someone reclaiming a space for a brown voice that relies on the fact that chai and masala chai are great and wondrous products by themselves - they do not need to apologise to exist, nor do they need to have mystical or magical properties that go beyond being flavourful to be a good product.
You can learn more about Chai Villain and order their products here: The Chai Villain