Living La Dolce Vita in a tea garden

I married a tea planter and moved to the Lamabari tea estate in 1979. It was 22 kilometres off the main highway and reached by a dirt road. Beyond the manager’s compound loomed the Bhutan hills, mostly shrouded in mist. At one end of the estate was the snow-fed Dhansiri river and on the other, lay the Orang reserve forest, home of the Royal Bengal tiger and the Indian one-horned rhinoceros. Bengal florican and other birds kept up an incessant chatter.

When night fell, the isolation was complete. You told time by the raucous honk of the Great Hornbills’ as they flew over the bungalow towards their nests in the tall trees of the nearby forests. If your potted plants were smashed at night, it was the work of wild elephants playing on your lawn, en route to raiding the farmers’ paddy fields. You would expect nothing to happen in a place such as this. But I soon realised that, punctuated by the wail of the siren, the estate had a rhythm quite its own.

Like clockwork
At the first siren the labourers would swing their large cane baskets on to their backs and assemble for a day of plucking. The managers would be there, supervising and calling encouragement till the lunchtime siren went off at 1 pm. The last siren announced the end of the workday. Time now, to weight up the day’s collection of green leaf.

The factory machines were waiting to swallow as much leaf as was fed into them. It was here that the tea leaves would be withered, dried, fermented and cut or rolled to make the celebrated Assam tea that was exported all over the world. The factories ran all night; all through the tea season, the factory assistant would wander around bleary-eyed for lack of sleep.

The bungalows ran like well-oiled machines. I found myself surrounded by a string of house elves who always knew exactly what to do. And the malis, or gardeners, knew exactly when they had to put out the strawberry runners, or if the African violets needed manure.

My cook was an ancient Barua from Chittagong. They were a community of professional cooks, belonging to the Mug tribe. A few days after I arrived, he proudly waved a sheaf of dog-eared letters under my nose. These were his prized certificates. To my horror, one of them read, “Barua was a Mug. He thought I was!” I let it slide, however, having already tasted his feather-light soufflé and brandy snaps.

Thakurbari club
Tea was full of fun-loving outdoor people who had come to the gardens from public schools, because it seemed like a good thing to do in an unspecialised age. Though they were lonely and a long way from home, they managed to have a very good time. Three times a week, everyone went to the club to play games.
Thakurbari club, which was close enough for us to visit on weekends, not only had its own golf course and collapsed swimming pool, but also a squash court, six tennis courts, and billiards and bridge rooms.

Perched on a hill with a good view of the surrounding gardens, it was a brilliant place. And in pre-TV, pre-Internet India, the club was the centre of entertainment and all social interaction.
After games and a grand high tea, everyone showered and dressed for the evening. Sometimes we watched a movie, though the man who went from club to club with his 16-mm projector invariably got his reels mixed up. You were likely to see Bonnie and Clyde shot to bits in the first half hour and immediately after, come to life to start robbing banks. No one really cared.

The alcohol was flowing and people were here to have a good time. Some evenings, the record player was switched on and we danced to Frank Sinatra in the old ballroom, on floorboards that were a little loose and creaky. The dusty piano was definitely out of tune, but it was good enough for a raucous singsong.

But it was the bar that was the true heart of the club. The old bearer knew just how to mix the perfect gimlet, and brandy was served in proper goblets. In winter, the fireplace would be stoked up and stories of larger-than-life planters were told and re-told. No one wanted to go home to his or her silent bungalow just yet.

Now the insurgency
In those days we thought nothing of driving 60 or 70 miles to attend a party or a club evening. If there was any danger at all, it was from speeding trucks or herds of wild elephants blocking the roads.

Things are different now. It is no longer as safe as it used to be and movement is now restricted because of the insurgency in the northeast. With satellite TV and computers, planters also tend to stay home more. Work pressures are greater so there is less time to play games. Despite this, however, people manage to have a great and out-of-the-ordinary life in the tea gardens. The gardens of Assam still remain islands of serenity in a world gone mostly insane.

Neena De lived in a tea garden for several years. She now lives in Guwahati and works with underprivileged women in the handicrafts sector