Assam Tea Gardens

It was only after I had been to Assam that I actually walked into a tea gardens of the North East, although I had seen and admired many from outside. It was an enchanting day. The air smelled fresh and I breathed in a deep lungful. I could immediately make out the difference in the air from the polluted air of Guwahati. There exuded an all-pervading peace with light calls of birds floating from the trees.

The tea bushes are about 3 feet in height with an even surface from the top of which the pluckers pluck the tea leaves. This is known as the plucking table which I learnt from the Assamesse. Only the light-green shoots that appear on top of the branches of the tea bush are plucked and not the older dark-green leaves which are there to nourish the bush. The shoots comprising of two leaves and a bud are tender and soft to the touch. I picked one and looked closely and found to my surprise that the bud is actually a very tender rolled-up leaf, the newest one, which too would open up if left to itself.

Tall slender trees grew here and there between the tea bushes at regular intervals, spreading their slender leaf-laden branches over the bushes. These are the shade trees which provide shade to the tea bushes as can be seen by the play of sunlight and shadow over the bushes. The foliage of a shade tree is never thick but very light so that sunlight can easily reach the bushes. Shade trees not only provide shade but also provide essential nutrients to the soil and there are specific varieties of trees from which the shade trees are chosen.

The lay of the land in a tea garden is undulating (hilly in some regions) so that excess rainwater or irrigation water does not remain standing at the roots but flows away after watering the soil since the soil should be well-drained. There are roadways through the gardens, the main arterial roads are wide enough for a motorcar and the rest can be traversed on foot or on a motorcycle which the Managers and Assistant Managers use for their daily work.

The round of plucking in a garden is done in such a way that the pluckers pluck through the garden and come round to the same table after a gap of 7 days (gap may vary due to various factors) by which time tender shoots spring up again and are ready to be plucked. The pluckers are all women while men do other jobs like spraying disinfectant, weedicide, preparing the ground for new plantation, supervisory jobs etc. I watched a while as the women plucked, their expert fingers flying over the bush and filling the baskets slung on their backs by a strap across their foreheads. It seems this is hard work and needs tough hands as the branches can often cut the hands and hence older women can pluck a greater load as their hands have been toughened with long years of work. I moved away and after some time noticed that the women had stopped work and were standing together and looking at me.

The security man pointed out a small white flower that nestled among the bushes and he told me that tea bushes also bear flowers but the flowers are very few and far-between. He said that tea bushes are commonly grown from cuttings (seedlings) which produces bushes much faster but they can also be grown from seeds which would take several years. Left to itself, a tea bush will grow into a big sturdy tree and produce seeds but for tea production, they must be pruned and trained to form many-branched low bushes. A tea bush loses its economic productivity after 40 or 50 years and then that part of the garden is uprooted and re-planted. The uprooted tea bushes are often made into lovely low tables by local artisans that fetch a good price in the market. The uprooted tea bush is turned over so that the branches form the many legs of the table and a tabletop is placed on the upturned thick root. The table is highly polished and given finishing touches until it shines.

Each pluckers load of tea leaves are measured and written down on a register and they are paid accordingly every fortnight. The load of tea leaves are taken to the factory and there the green leaves are turned into the tea we brew.

This factory produces CTC tea (Crush-Tear-Curl), which is the most common form of tea worldwide. I wandered through the factory where I learnt the various stages of tea processing. In a nutshell, the process goes something like this. The leaves are first withered (dried) in a large closed room like a compartment which has big fans blowing hot air over the leaves. After withering, in another large room the leaves are put through a giant machine having cylindrical drums with teeth that crush, tear and curl the leaves. The crushed leaves smell like any other crushed green leaves from other trees and certainly nothing like tea. This crushed powder is then spread out in a thin layer in big patches on the floor of another large room where the grainy powder slowly dries and turns brown. At given intervals labourers brush the patches and turn over the powder to aid better drying.

This room exudes the heady aroma of freshly made tea. This brown grainy powder is dried some more in a large machine, graded into different sized grains and is then packed in big wooden crates. The tea is now ready to be brewed.

The Chinese are the earliest tea-drinkers. Legend has it that in 2737 B.C., the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was on a journey and he was boiling water to drink over an open fire as he believed that drinking water should always be boiled for good health. Some leaves from a nearby Camellia Sinensis plant (botanical name of tea plant) floated into the pot. The Emperor drank the brew and was very impressed. He declared that it gave one "vigor of body, contentment of mind, and determination of purpose". The brew that the Emperor unwittingly made that day is second only to water in worldwide consumption today. Tea was introduced to India by the British, who set up productive plantations in colonial India where the climate and soil were suitable.