Two leaves and a bud, a tale of certain exotics

At a time when the Assam government declared its plans to develop 22 golf courses nestled in its tea estates, a gruesome incident brought forth the misplaced priorities. On the evening of December 26, an angry mob of workers set on fire the bungalow of a tea estate owner in Tinsukia district. The owner, Mridul Bhattacharya, died along with his wife. The dispute started with unpaid wages and lack of housing facilities for the workers. Tea estate workers are typically paid a portion of their wage in cash and the remaining in fringe benefits like housing, subsidised ration and medical facilities guided by the Plantation Labour Act of 1951. But in most cases, the in-kind benefits seldom reach workers—be it in the largest tea producing state of Assam or the prized gardens of Darjeeling. There is simmering discontent in the picturesque tea gardens, as Down To Earth reported last year when the demand for better wages and facilities in the Darjeeling gardens merged with the demand for a separate statehood of Gorkhaland.

When a young film-maker sets to uncover the secrets behind the famed Darjeeling tea, he chooses two abstractions to tell the story: a fictional narrative and the language of gibberish. The scriptwriter and director of ‘Six Strands’, Chaitanya Tamhane, extracts a promise from the viewer at the very beginning of his 15 minutes short film. ‘I will tell you what I know about her. But promise me you’ll keep a secret. Or else I will get in trouble.’

Speaking from Mumbai, just as I was about to finish writing this piece, Chaitanya told me, ‘the realities of Darjeeling tea industry are far removed from the exotic image that is sold to the West. There is something absolutely wrong beneath the surface.’ The film was made in late 2010 and is presently being screened at international film festivals. But this is no place for a film review. Let’s go back to where I started writing this piece.

At 8’o clock in the morning I was slouching on the open terrace of Keventers café as Darjeeling woke up from a cold night’s slumber. Take it lazy today, I told myself. The last few days had been an ordeal of climbing up and tripping down the steep slopes of tea estates. I was to meet a union leader one last time before leaving for Siliguri. With an hour to go for the meeting, I cud chewed like the proverbial cow.

The hill station of Darjeeling, perched north of West Bengal, resembles little, the state it is supposedly a part of. The ethnic Gorkhas came here from Nepal more than 150 years ago. Along with the tea seeds which came from China during the same time. Both are exotic to this land: while the Gorkhas have made themselves heard in ways political, Darjeeling tea is renowned for its distinct flavour. It is said, the flavour of the tea, attributable to the weather, high altitude and soil conditions of Darjeeling, cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world. The organic fair-trade Darjeeling tea, therefore, sells for a bomb in the international market; a kilogramme costs anywhere between Rs 2,000 and Rs 18,000, or even more.

An agitated Gautam Tamang told me the day before, “years ago, the British got us here to work in the tea gardens. Now, wherever we go in India we are called Nepalis. We want a state—a piece of land—to call our own.” At the Kanchanview Tea Estate in Darjeeling, 41-year-old Gautam Tamang works as a photographer. A plucker during his student days, Tamang now shoots tourists who visit the garden, pleads women to wear the ethnic gorkha costume, places the plucking basket behind and prompts a smile for the camera, all for Rs 20.