Uppma's Quick Take: Insights from Her 'Cutting Chai' Interview

Featured in: https://issuu.com/indianlink/docs/october_2025_sydney/30

Uppma was featured in Cutting Chai with Lakshmi Ganapathy, a monthly series of bite-sized interviews with prominent South Asians showcasing their career and personality and celebrating their South Asian Australian identity.

Here’s a sneak peak of a few of our favourite questions:

What makes a good chai blend? 

Uppma Virdi: For me, it’s about the sensory experience of it. When I make masala chai blends, it’s not as simple as putting spices together. It’s about how it makes me feel, the smell of it, how it looks. I always go into making a blend with a purpose…It’s like a dance with the spices, and you’re putting them together, and you’re smelling them along the way. I don’t taste any blends until I finish them and I’m happy with the sensory nature.   

There’s a lot of science that goes into it – or else the spices will counteract and destroy the balance and the rhythm of the blend that I’m trying to achieve. Some things don’t work together, some things do, especially when you add the patti, the tea, that’s a whole different story. 

You often talk about ‘decolonising chai’. What’s the difference between appropriating and appreciating?   

Uppma Virdi: Appropriation is when things are taken from a culture, not without permission, but without informed knowledge of where it comes from and the DNA in which it’s passed down the generations. When things are appreciated, exoticism is not a part of it – it’s more informed and pays homage to where it comes from. It’s more, ‘I want to learn about this and can use or do or speak about these things in a more culturally informed way’.   

I think that’s where I see the difference; [where it’s] taken and monopolised [upon] and then the other culture which it doesn’t come from makes money from it. 

What’s a word that you like in a South Asian language, and what does it mean? 

Uppma Virdi: I have these Punjabi flashcards for my baby, and I don’t know why, I just love the word kargosh – it means rabbit. There’s something beautiful about how it flows… there’s no depth to it. It’s just a beautiful word. 

Read the full article here: https://www.indianlink.com.au/cutting-chai-with-uppma-virdi/

Thank you Lakshmi Ganapathy for the feature, it was lovely to be able to collaborate with Indian Link in sharing Uppma’s journey and  the wonderful world of chai.