Unexpected encounter on a green carpet
Aditha Dissanayake
From a distance the green carpet of tea in front of you may seem to
be speckled with white pieces of cotton. If you take a closer look, you
are in for a surprise. Where are Thanalechchami, Parvathi and Mariamma,
with the pottu on their foreheads, the bright red, yellow and orange
saris, the nimble fingers plucking two leaves and a bud, two leaves and
a bud... Where are the beautiful faces described in the song Udarata
Kandukara Siriya Paradina Rubara Muhuna Obe
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Ponneswaram Great Western mountain range |
They are here, but not on field number 9 of Scalpa Division on Great
Western Estate, Talawakelle. The fingers that move over the tea bushes
here, are rough and careless. If they get the two leaves right they miss
the bud. If they get the bud right they miss the two leaves. 'Tsk, tsk'
,mutters K Manivelu, the field officer, in dismay. He knows at the end
of the day when the leaves are sorted out most of what is plucked here
will be discarded as unsuitable for the day's manufacture.
My friend Chandrasekaran, (with whom I had celebrated Deepavali a few
weeks ago) shakes his head in amazement as I gaze at the pluckers on the
tea field in front of me. Men have plucked tea for ages and ages, he
tells me, contemptuously. So had he; when he was first registered as a
worker on the estate in 1965, at a time when the estate was run by a
British planter called Dyson Brook. "The pombule (woman) used to tease
us" he recalls, travelling down memory lane when he was in his early
twenties and had waded through these very fields with a basket on his
shoulders. What did his wife, Thanalechchami say when he plucked tea on
the fields? "I wasn't married at the time" he grins revealing a set of
blood red teeth, Dracula would have been proud of.
Chewing betel apart, Chandrasekaran who claims he is 59, even though
he looks older, who now works as the Thotakaran (gardener) at the Group
Manager's residence enjoys watching his younger brethren plucking tea on
the fields surrounding the bungalow. "Nalla kollundu edi" (pluck the
good leaves) he shouts imitating the voice of the Kangany, then
chuckles, "We men can't pluck as well as our women folk. They are far
superior when it comes to selecting the two leaves and the bud, rapidly
and accurately". He lowers his voice to make sure this observation is
for my ears only. He would not want the women folk to know how good they
are at plucking the right leaves.
He need not have worried. Thanalechchami, Parvathi Mariamma and the
others already know they do a better job than the men. "We employ men
for plucking only when we have an excess growth of leaves and need all
hands on deck" explains Nishantha Abeysinghe, Group Manager, Talawakelle
Tea Estates Ltd. He observes a dearth in the number of women workers on
the estate in recent years as most women have migrated to Colombo or
found employment in the Middle East. Thus the rapidly increasing trend
of allocating plucking rounds to the male workers.
Ten thirty in the morning. The first batch of leaves plucked since
morning is weighed and sent to the factory. Sellambaram Mylvaganam and
Marimuttu Ponneswaram have already eaten their mid morning snack of
rotti and katta sambol and are gulping down mouthfuls of plain tea from
a glass bottle when I approach them with Chandrasekaran in tow. He has
graciously volunteered to be my translator.
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Nice cup of tea |
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George Orwell
If you look up ‘tea’ in the
first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find
that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of
sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most
important points.
This is curious, not only
because tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this
country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but
because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent
disputes. When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup
of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On
perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but
at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own
eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:
* First of all, one should use
Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to
be despised nowadays it is economical, and one can drink it
without milk but there is not much stimulation in it. One does
not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it.
...Lastly, tea unless one is drinking it in the Russian style
should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a
minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true
tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting
sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or
salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be
bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea,
you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar
drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.
Some people would answer that
they don’t like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order
to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the
taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking
tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely
that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.
These are not the only
controversial points to arise in connecion with tea drinking,
but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole
business has become. There is also the mysterious social
etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to
drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be
written about the subsidiary uses of tea-leaves, such as telling
fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits,
healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is worth paying
attention to such details as warming the pot and using water
that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out
of one’s ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces,
properly handled, ought to represent.
(Taken from
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell,
Volume 3, 1943-45) |
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Sellambaram Mylvaganam and Marimuttu |
Mylvaganam, (simply called "Mile" by his friends) has been working on
the estate since 1975 and has no qualms about stepping into the tea
fields to pluck the leaves. What he finds slightly embarrassing ,
though, is going home in the evenings. He knows his wife will question
him about the number of kilos he had plucked that day. "When I say I
plucked 12kg she says she plucked 25kg. She laughs about this with her
friends".
His partner in the field Marimuttu (who is known as "Current" among
family and friends because he was born premature and was kept in an
incubator leading his parents and relatives to believe he was kept alive
thanks to electricity) confesses he would rather do more strenuous,
backbreaking work like digging ditches, pruning the older tea bushes or
chopping firewood than pluck the leaves on the fields. He feels plucking
is effeminate as it requires little strength and can be done by anybody.
By anybody he means women.
A typical day for Mile, Current and the other male workers on the
estate begins at six in the morning when they gather at the Muster shed;
the place where they are assigned the tasks for the day. At ten thirty
they have a tea break and from 12 to 2, go home for lunch. They return
home at 5 clock to a cup of plain tea and more work, depending on how
soon the evening sunlight fades.
The men leave for the marsh lands to cut grass for the cattle, the
women to the shrubs close by, to gather firewood. Relaxation comes at
night, in front of the TV with a steaming plate of white rice, dhal
curry mixed with beans or brinjals and dried fish. "Suruka wa, wa" (back
to work) shouts the Kangany. Mile and Current raise the plucking bags
onto their shoulders and wade into a sea of green tea. Their fingers
begin to move over the dark green leaves picking one leaf and two buds,
three leaves and no bud.. and finally two leaves and a bud! 'Hmmm' sighs
the Field officer in relief.
Next time you watch the advertisements on TV, read a magazine, gaze
at a billboard or glance at the photo on the packet of tea on your
kitchen shelf...next time you see a picture of a woman standing behind a
bush of tea, dressed in a sari, a basket hanging from her
shoulders,smiling at you, think of Mile and Current, Subramanium and
Veerakuma. Shouldn't they be given a chance to grace the cover of
billboards too? Shouldn't the spotlight fall on them too?
Hard questions. A cup of tea is surely, in order. Drink one. Drink
two. By the sixth cup you would know the answers. If you decide to
continue drinking...then, let the Chinese poet Lu Tung say it for you
"the seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath
of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves.
Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away
thither". Cheers.
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