He’d feared his intrusion would provoke hostility, and was surprised to find the gnomelike natives were a cheerful and friendly lot. They were the Burmese Singpo tribe, undoubtedly the sweetest, most benign people on earth! The Singpos welcomed him and escorted him with the beating of tom-toms to their moonfaced, lotus-eyed chief, who went by the grand name of Bessagaum Ningrual.
Bruce was seated on an elevated platform, fanned by palm fronds and offered a swig of steaming brew from a bamboo cup. Not wanting to offend his host, he took a few hesitant sips of this strange concoction. To his amazement, he felt immediately relaxed and all his cares and woes floated away. After downing the last drop, Bruce was so invigorated that he wanted to scale a tree and shout at the sky. What was this strange drink? He was told it was Cha, a beverage made by steeping the tender leaves of an unknown plant in boiling water. The plant grew wild in the forest, and when he was taken to see it, he found it was the size of a poplar tree and had deep green serrated leaves and pale waxy flowers.
Robert Bruce could not get over the remarkable rejuvenating properties of Cha. As he bade farewell to his friendly hosts, he carried the seeds of the plant in his pocket and turned them over to the Botanical Society in Calcutta for research and development. The plant was subsequently named the Camellia assamica. Research showed that when this plant was pruned tight like a privet hedge it flushed with a profusion of tender leaf tips. These tips, handpicked and processed, yielded the finest tea in the world.
I was familiar with the camellia bush. It was a common flowering plant in Assam. Till then I had no idea it was the same plant that yielded Assam tea. In fact, we had a camellia bush growing right by the garden wall. I wondered if the leaves smelled anything like tea.
Outside in the garden, the air was fresh and moist after the rains. The cat had nabbed the bird. It licked its paws and rubbed its whiskers and looked at me with baleful yellow eyes. All that remained of the poor sparrow were a few feathers and a bit of bloodied wing.
The camellia bush in our garden was heavy with pink blossoms. The flower was larger than a primrose and similar in shape, and just as delicate and pretty. I picked a leaf and crushed it between my fingers. Strange, it hardly had any tea smell at all.
A beautiful mottled green-and-gold snail inched up the mossy garden wall. It moved ponderously, pausing to sense its way with large striped feelers. Not like our impetuous friend, Manik Deb, I thought, who plunges into the unknown and goes crashing off into the jungles. A little snail-like caution might have done him good. I was beginning to agree with the townsfolk: he did sound like a lunatic.
I returned to the veranda and picked up the book again.
It seemed the discovery of Assam tea in India could not have come at a more crucial time. Tea drinking was the rage in Victorian England, and the demand for fine teas had spread like fire all across Europe. The fad was started by the fashionable Duchess of Bedford in England, who experienced what she described as a “sinking feeling” in the late afternoons. It was she who popularized the tradition of high tea as an afternoon pick-me-up, and tea parties developed into a dainty ritual and became a fashionable pastime among the ladies of the court.
The only tea available in England back then was imported from China. As demands for the beverage skyrocketed all over Europe, the Chinese raised their prices and arm-twisted the British, holding them hostage. To counter this, the British resorted to subterfuge. They stole Chinese tea seedlings and smuggled them across the border through Burma into India and tried to secretly grow Chinese tea in Assam. Although the climate and topography in Assam was almost identical to China, the plant did poorly and the experiment failed.
It was about this very time when Robert Bruce stumbled upon the Camellia assamica after being befriended by the Singpo Chief, Bessagaum Ningrual. One can only surmise how elated the British must have been with this momentous discovery. To find the best tea growing wild and free in their own colonial backyard! Better still, the indigenous Camellia assamica was far superior to the Chinese variety. Growing tea in India opened up immense lucrative possibilities for the colonial empire and promised to augment the royal coffers significantly.
But sobriety soon set in. Discovering the plant was one thing; setting up an organized tea industry in Assam was another.
Assam could be brutal and unforgiving. The climate was a curse, the food unpalatable and the natives baffling. Assam received an astounding one hundred inches of rain per annum. Roads got washed away and bridges rotted to their demise. The most grueling part of tea-plantation life was the isolation and loneliness. The only way to keep the young men there was to make them sign a company contract. Planters were not allowed to marry for three years so that they could concentrate on their job without distraction and, more specifically, female whining. It was believed that women were the root cause of men quitting their jobs.
Many young Europeans fell victim to accident and disease, never to see the shores of their homeland again. Some took their own lives in desperation. There are hundreds of moss-covered graves scattered across tea plantations in Assam, mostly in wooded areas, tangled in vegetation and overrun by creepers. Many are unmarked but some have carved inscriptions that speak of the short, precarious lives of these young men in Assam.
For mysterious reasons, Manik Deb had disappeared into this uncertain and little-known world. I was suddenly filled with despair. Would I ever see him again? He seemed to have faded into the ether, beyond reach. What if something happened to him?
I closed the book. All I wanted to know was—why? Why had he just upped and gone?
Little did I know, I would soon find out. And I would hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
* * *
The letter was addressed to me in a familiar slanted hand. Just the sight of it made my heart flutter. I went to my room and shut the door. I turned the letter over. No return address. The smudged stamp of the post office read MARIANI. It was from Manik.
Aynakhal T.E.
17th September 1943
Dear Layla,
I take the liberty of writing directly to you. I hope you forgive my audacity. You are the only person I feel will not judge me too harshly. Maybe you will take pity on a lonely tea planter and write back. I only dare to hope.
I have not written a single letter since I have been in Aynakhal, which is almost three months. I feel a strange sense of disconnect with the outside world.
Before this job, I had little idea of life in the tea plantations. I was aware tea gardens in Assam are located in remote areas, but Aynakhal Tea Estate seems to be in the godforsaken nowhere.
All hints of civilization disappear by the time we cross the Dargakona Bridge, which is sixty miles east of Silchar. We enter the forestland and it takes another two-hour drive over dirt roads (if they can be called such) to get to the outreaches of Aynakhal. The last stretch is little more than an overgrown jungle track. It is common to see elephants cross the road. Plenty of sambar, barking deer and wild pigs, too. Once, late at night on our way back from the Planters Club, we saw a leopard.
We have had a spate of heavy rain, rather untimely for this time of the year. Puddles all over the jungle roads. Mud butterflies congregate by the hundreds. You don’t notice them until you come right up to them. Their wings are the most brilliant cerulean-blue you can imagine. The flock takes off like a shimmering silk scarf when we drive past. I have never seen anything quite so magical.
Jardine Henley (the British company that owns Aynakhal plus six other tea estates in the Mariani district) provides us with company jeeps to get around. They are used army vehicles, four-wheel drive. Without them we could get nowhere. Actually, there is no place to go except to the Planters Club on Monday nights and visits to other gardens. I am still trying to get used to the isolation here but I can’t say I am unhappy.
Most evenings I go hunting with Alasdair Carruthers.