you are right in that authentic can be south and north indian both...but there is such differences between the cultures, languages, and food between the north and south that mostly up north we dont know anything about the south besides the basic popular south indian dishes. it really is a different culture in the south. It is different in the south as most people in the south know hindi and eat lots of north indian dishes and cook them a lot. My family has always had many south indian friends but even they never made tea that way - perhaps if they normally do, they made it the north indian way for us!
Your experiment proved my point that maybe in southern parts of India they drink tea differently.
But it is not possible to generalize about indians if you are only talking of south indian customs. yes, I know pulled tea is the transation of teh tarik, thats why i said that!
authentic or not, i dont like generalizations because statements made by some people are misleading and thats why there are issues between the british and indians in the UK. But i am NOT going into that topic. I am going to bother "defending" indians anymore as I think in the UK, indians means pakistanis, bangladeshis, nepalis and whoever else. The misconceptions are too many and anyways, I am not from the UK so I dont understand the british way of thinking!!! sorry to have bothered to try to explain the British misconceptions about indians.