RSS

Contact us

Thursday 4 December 2008

Fading memories of the Raj in the tea gardens of Assam

Richard Orange says the Indian tea industry is enjoying a revival — but that the traditional tea-planters’ way of life, established by the British, is passing into history

There is not much to distinguish Dhanesheva Kurmi from the rest of the crowd at the Hautely Tea Estate, a remote garden an hour and a half’s bumpy drive from the Assamese town of Jorhat.

Kurmi could not afford to provide his co-workers with free medical treatment, he says, which meant several of them died. Last year, when a plague of insects devastated the crop, forcing him to mortgage part of this year’s harvest to the next-door estate, the bank began to look for a new owner. But Sarder — a member of India’s hard-headed Marwari business community — is not here for humanitarian reasons. ‘If I have captive production, I can get tea at a minimum price, and I can sell it at a maximum price,’ he explains. ‘We are not affected by the ups and downs in the market because we are traders.’

Half an hour’s drive from Hautely at the Bukhial estate, the old-world charm of the tea-planter’s life is very much in evidence. A red setter puppy bounds across a neatly trimmed lawn to meet us at Sandeep and Shalini Nagalia’s sprawling 1930s bungalow. Nagalia, educated at the Doon School — known as the Eton of the East — exemplifies the old-style gentleman tea-planter. Impeccably maintained, Bukhial is regarded as one of Assam’s finest estates.

Once or twice a week, Nagalia jumps in his four-wheel-drive Tata Sumo and drives the 45 minutes to the Ganshree Club, which serves 16 surrounding estates. ‘In the olden times, it was a very different world,’ he says. ‘In those days they only had the club, now we’ve got DVDs and the internet. But more or less the same traditions continue today, although people aren’t as keen on the club as they were earlier.’

The British didn’t bring tea to Assam. The Singpho tribe were drinking it for centuries before we showed up (their tea, smoked inside bamboo tubes, is now sold around the world as a gourmet brew). But we did build the industry. Within a decade of the first London sale of Assam tea in 1839, the riverboats on Assam’s Brahmaputra river had filled up with young Brits looking to make their fortune. With them, they brought the planters’ lifestyle of clubs, golf courses and pedigree dogs.

More articles from: Richard Orange | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved