The Chai Queens - A Tale of Love & Longing

Taranjit Kaur (India)

About

A tale of love, longing, lust, and the quiet, impossible choices lovers make in the name of family, culture, and survival. Amidst the music and rituals of an opulent Indian wedding, childhood best friends and lovers, Babli and Tejal reunite after 15 years. As the wedding celebrations unfold over three days and nights, Babli and Tejal steal moments over chai—hands brushing over shared cups, warmth seeping into cold fingers, words dissolving into steam - past, present and future collide. Desire wars with duty, longing with loss. In a world that never made space for them, can they carve out their own? Or will they walk away—

After a successful run last year, of performing in Stories from India with Unerase Poetry, Taranjit Kaur is back with The Chai Queens.

The Chai Queens is a moving depiction of a queer love story,paused by repression and symbolic fulfillment years later, suggesting the fairytale that could be.

- The Telegraph

Taranjit's face is a moveable feast. Her eyes well up, a little tilt of her face is all that's required to convey despair, and her eyes - hopeful, lustful, joyful - are projectiles simply unable to hold back what she's feeling. There is a stillness in Taranjit which seems to wait for destiny's inevitabilities. There is no artifice here, no mere acting - this was an absolute immersion.

When both actors came back on the stage to acknowledge the audience's cheers, they were still drowned, still heartbroken, still steeped, it seemed, in the reality of a fictional reconciliation. True artists break hearts during an evening's performance, and go back home still nursing the hurt.

- Sunil Bhandari, theatre critic and novelist

What struck me was not just the story, but the stillness.
No screaming, no spectacle—just two women, two lives, meeting at the edge of time.Taranjit Kaur as Babli left me still. Her silences were louder than words. The way her face shifted with the slightest twitch—it was like watching a photograph develop in a darkroom. One frame at a time, her story emerged.

Archana Patel as Tejal—gentle yet firm—held that mirror with grace.
She carried weight without words, and her restraint had its own echo.
The chemistry between the two—understated and untold.

- Rajesh Gupta, Poet, photographer