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Published: October 1st 2007
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Contrary to popular belief, Assam is actually not only teeming with insurgents and tribals. There are a group of people who have a different association with Assam and swear by it - the lovers of tea. The life long tea drinkers who can smell the difference between a darjeeling, assam or south indian brew. In their hearts, Assam holds a fond place for its tea is considered to produce one of the world’s finest liquor. Assam’s landscape would be incomplete without miles of tea bushes - its own green gold.
The Tea Industry in Assam is symbolic of a different era, a different set of people and a completely unique culture and lifestyle. As soon as you enter through the gates of a tea estate,one has literally left present day and is transported to the colonial times where everything modern (barring the ubiquitous cell phone) ceases to exist.
For me, the tea estates are also capsules of my childhood. Journeying through them after 17 years was like time travel through my own life, through history - to a place where time seems to have stopped. This is an attempt to capture the stories from my past, which still hold true in
the present day.
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The Wild
“Memsahib, the cows are giving less milk these days.”
These were some of the concerns of the tea planter’s wife in the early days. In this particular instance, this problem was dealt with using the most ingenious and fascinating method. Having explored all possible causes for the inability of the cows to produce more milk, the “kancha” (the man assigned to the care and well-being of the cows) deduced, “Memsahib, there must be snakes here who come and drink the milk from the cows’ udder at night.” By this time, Memsahib had no other choice but to believe this theory. Promptly a man who could talk to and control snakes (J.K. Rowling might have heard of such people existing in India when she was writing Lord Voldemort’s character) was summoned. The man circled the bungalow a couple of times, chanting unintelligible gibberish (parseltongue?!!) and emerged in front of the Memsahib with ten snakes wrapped around his forearms. Whether this resulted in more milk is not certain but Memsahib felt much more at ease letting the children wander around the bungalow knowing it is snake-free.
Memsahib, incidentally was my mother so I hesitate to say
that this story is a folk tale, especially since this was after my birth, which was not that long ago! However, records of pre-independence life in the tea estates do reveal that such people existed and often conducted a ritual monthly snake cleaning exercise in the bungalows.
Among other stories that I grew up on, as bed time stories were how rhinos strolled into the lawn of my father’s bungalow one evening as he cycled in after work. It spent some quality time strolling around the lush green lawn before making a quiet exit. There was another one about a herd of elephants that came into the bungalow and trumpeted on a day that happened to be my father’s birthday.
These occurrences are rare now but not that far fetched. In the elephant corridor of central Assam, elephants and other wild animals do stray into human inhabited areas but sadly they are not the mild, harmless creatures of the past. Constant and consistent encroachment into their living space has made them hungry, aggressive and dangerous.
Lifestyle
I was lucky to catch a glimpse of the era of adventure in the estates. An era where a normal day at work entailed encounters with an elephant herd or a deadly cobra and weekends entailed fishing in a nearby lake or a wildlife safari in search of deer, leopards and tigers before going to the club for a round of tennis and a swim followed by “supper” - a concept left over by the British and adapted by the Indians such that supper is not served before midnight. A standard tea club has tennis courts, a golf course, a swimming pool, a billiards room and a cards room, a bar and a dance hall and a nursery for children. The club is meant to be the hub of social activity for the staff of ten to fifteen estates around one area. It is where the men let their hair down after a hard day’s work in the garden, where the wives get the opportunity to discuss their “malibari” (kitchen gardens), problems with the “bawarchi” (cook) and the children played games with other children instead of adult bungalow servants - it is a place where everyone escaped, momentarily, the loneliness of being in a garden and communicated with their peers. Tea clubs were once rocking places to be, way before lounges and pubs became popular in the cities. Saturday nights are party nights with live bands, lots of alcohol, dancing and fun. My recollection of such nights is that they ended early Sunday morning and we often found ourselves stuck in a muddy, potholed road on the way back or accosted by elephant herds at wee hours of the morning. The Saturday night club parties set a high benchmark for great parties for me.
The remoteness of an estate, although a negative because of the problems of access, is also a point of adventure, depending on how you look at it. For example, going to school used to be like a road trip. The dullness of school for me used to be amply compensated by the journey itself - an hour long drive through forests, broken bridges, rivers in full spate sometimes in an ambassador or if I got lucky and the roads were impassable by car, an Enfield (sounds perfect doesn’t it?!)!!! My city-living classmates scarcely understood why I had dirty shoes and a haggard backpacker look at the onset of the day.
Tea bungalows were built by the British and it is evident from the architecture that they wanted to recreate their own English country homes in this part of the world. The bungalows have immaculate placement in line with the position of the sun during the day, making them cool and ventilated, to suit a time when electricity was not discovered. Space is not a constraint and so the bungalows cover huge areas with large rooms and larger verandahs and porches - the kind of thing that are afforded by millionaires in the city, that too in an enclosed space called a “farmhouse”. Swimming pools, a tennis court, a badminton court and a cricket pitch for batting practice are part of a typical bungalow compound just as sports is part of a tea kid’s childhood. I remember many a summer afternoon spent by the pool side and winter evenings on badminton competitions.
The huge verandahs of a tea bungalow are by far the best places to catch sight of rare species of birds, butterflies, rhinos and elephants if one was lucky and exquisite views that tourists pay thousands of rupees to see. Tourists would also pay large sums to see the manicured gardens of flowers, fruits and vegetables that are maintained and are the pride of some of the planter’s wives.
Tea
Understanding the process of converting a green leaf into particles that produces an aromatic beverage is worth one’s time when visiting Assam. The estate Factories are where it all happens - the leaf arrives freshly plucked, it is then dried and processed in giant machines before being packed to be sent out for sale. Factories are run 6 days a week, 24 hours a day during which time the assistant factory manager is on duty to ensure things are on target and up to standard. Managing a tea estate is no longer the luxurious, elite profession of the past. It comes with increased pressure of competing in a global market, of balancing labour rights with productivity and occasional threats from insurgents and outlaws.
Having said all that, the tea industry is a treasure not just because of the money in brings it but also because of the culture that it represents. Like everything old, it is slowly breathing its last breath before becoming a completely commercial venture. However, for explorers and travelers, a trip to Assam would not be complete without experiencing the Estate life. Estate bungalows have been revamped as tourist resorts for visitors to catch a glimpse of what it is like in an Estate. It is not surprising that what we take for granted as a way of life in the Tea estate is stuff dreams are made of, for so many others....
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jimguru
Jim R
A good promo!
Sujata...I must confess my original plan when in the NorthEast, in early 2008, was to spend most time in states other than Assam...reading this post encourages me to spend some time exploring the tea plantations - though I grow and drink coffee. Interesting blog!