The Last Cup of Chai

He wasn’t cold, or cruel, or absent. He was just...quiet. The kind of man who believed love didn’t need to be spoken if it was shown. He built our home brick by brick. He brought groceries every Sunday like clockwork. He always filled up the gas tank in my mom’s car before she asked. But he never said “I love you.” Not once.

When I was younger, I didn’t mind it. I thought that was just how fathers were. He worked long hours, came home, read the newspaper, and watched the 9 PM news while sipping chai. His eyes would soften sometimes when he looked at me, especially if he thought I wasn’t paying attention. But the words never came.

As I got older, I began to resent the silence.

Especially during those chaotic teenage years—when everything feels too loud, too confusing, too much. I’d slam doors. I’d stay out late. I’d test boundaries, hoping for a reaction. Something. Anything. But he stayed calm. Always.

One day, when I was 17, we had our first real argument. It wasn’t even about anything serious. I had failed a math test and instead of yelling, he simply looked at me and said, “I expected better.” Four words. That’s all. But they hit me harder than any shouting could have. I snapped back, told him he didn’t know anything about me, that he never talked, never asked how I was, never said anything that made me feel like I mattered.

He didn’t respond.

He just sipped his chai and looked out the window.

I stormed off, furious. But that night, for the first time, I watched him from the hallway. He sat in the kitchen long after the rest of the family had gone to bed. His shoulders were slumped. His eyes looked tired. There was something in his stillness that felt like heartbreak.

I never said sorry.

Life moved on. I went to college. Got busy. Called home when I could, but not often enough. And when I did, it was always Mom who picked up. She’d chat for 10 minutes, and then say, “Your father’s here too,” and hand him the phone. He’d just say, “How’s the weather?” or “Are you eating properly?” Then silence. Awkward silence.

Still, every time I came home, there was a fresh cup of chai waiting for me. He never missed.

Years passed. I got a job, moved to a new city, and slowly drifted into adulthood. One day, I got the call I’d been dreading.

Dad had a stroke.

It wasn’t fatal, thank God, but it changed him. Slowed him down. Took away some of his balance, some of his speech. I rushed home. I hadn’t seen him in nearly eight months.

He was sitting in the garden when I arrived—wrapped in a shawl, holding a cup of chai that trembled in his hands. He looked up at me, and for the first time, tears welled up in his eyes.

I sat beside him. Neither of us said anything for a long while.

Then he said, in a voice weaker than I remembered, “You know... I always listened. Even when you thought I wasn’t.”

I don’t know what broke me more—hearing his voice like that, or realizing how long he had waited to say those words.

We didn’t fix everything in that one conversation. Life doesn’t work like that. But something shifted. That day, we started having chai together every evening. No big talks, no dramatic reconciliations. Just quiet moments. Sips of warmth. And slowly, that silence—the one I used to hate—started feeling like peace.

Years later, when he passed, the thing I missed most wasn’t the advice he never gave, or the hugs he never offered. It was the chai.

The smell of cardamom in the air. The way he stirred it slowly. The silence that wasn’t empty anymore, but full of things we never had to say.

Now, whenever I feel lost, I make myself a cup. I sit in my small kitchen, hold the cup with both hands, and remember the quiet man who loved me more than words ever could.