Shona Patel's thoughts on Tea, Writing & Life
Alan Lane, my dear friend and a retired tea veteran of Assam fondly remembers the start-up sound of the Lister diesel tea machinery of bygone days. Here is an amazing and ingenious imitation by two little Indian kids. Please turn up your sound to enjoy. You won’t believe it! Thank you Alan, for sharing this lovely video.
Tea garden bungalows come equipped with a retinue of servants and often a resident spook (no extra charge!). Invariably the spook is a boga-sahib (white master): an old British tea planter who died on the job and who is buried somewhere in the tea garden. The bungalows themselves are creepy: drafty with echoing rooms, weak-wattage bulbs, creaky wooden floors and rattling rafters. Many are located within deep forests and surrounded by bamboobaris (FYI the spooks love bamboo as much as pandas!). Add to that the blackest, deepest nights of Assam, lots of melancholy rain and vapors steaming off the jungle floor and voila! you have a phantom’s paradise.
Folks died easily back in the old days of tea. Tea gardens were far-flung and remote, the roads bad, communication poor and medical help often too little, too late. Malaria, black water fever, typhoid, tetanus, wild animals, accidental drowning, gunshot wounds…all claimed planters lives. As a child I believed the dead turned into backward-footed entities that prowled the bamboobari shrieking their heads off. I always made it a point to check out people’s feet, just in case.
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.
Assam (which grows the finest tea – click the red link if you want to learn more about Assam Tea) is riddled with ghosts. Over 60 different ghosts and evil spirits have been identified in the state of Assam – that’s enough to fill a whole bus (imagine what a jolly ride that would be!) Assamese spooks have their own personality and agenda. Check out some of these heavy-hitters:
Bura Dangoria (the old one) A good spirit dressed in white clothes and a white turban, often seen on a white horse who guards Namghars, the community places of worship where the sacred Bhagavad Gita is kept. Baak A malevolent ugly creature that sometimes kills a person and takes on the corpse’s appearance. Often seen hanging around isolated ponds and lakes. Ghoda Paak Has the hooves of a horse, but is otherwise human looking. Some stories show it as helpful, while others call it so deadly that you can die if it looks at you. Bira (Poltergeist) Like all poltergeist of the world, usually believed to be unleashed on a family by an enemy to eliminate and torture them. Bamboo Ghost This one lurks in the bamboo grove and bends down a bamboo on your path. If you try to step over it, it’ll snap back the bamboo and kill you. Jokhini A female demon like creature that often tries to lure males and kill them. Bordoisila (the storm goddess) She’s the storm in April who throws a tantrum because she has to return to her husband’s house after visiting her mother for the Assamese new year which is around that time. Puwali Bhoot (tiny ghosts) These are mischievous ghosts the size of small children who steal rice and sweets from the kitchen Khoba-khubi A pair of evil spirits who haunt a newly wedded couples and can be scared away by reading the hara-gauri (Shiva-Parvati) mantra on the third day of marriage Khetar A local evil spirit that is said to harm little children Churini Bira A female evil spirit that steals items from the house and kitchen FYI this is a ghostly sampling of just one tiny state in India. India has 28 states so if you do the maths you will realize, we far outweigh the western world in both spirits and spirituality. The western world sure pales (pun intended) in comparison, besides Indian ghosts are more rowdy and fun.
Read my mom’s famous *APPLE PIE GHOST STORY HERE!!
If you like tea, ghosts and stories you may like my upcoming novel Teatime for the Firefly soon to be published by Mira Books in October 2013. Check out the synopsis and first chapter HERE.
In 1973 my sister Mithoo was at Fortnum & Mason (London’s snobbiest grocery store) promoting Indian tea when an American walked up to her and asked, “Do you have a tea that tastes like a peach?”
My sis was stumped. She had never heard of a peach-flavored tea. You may want to remember, dear reader, this was the early 70’s when tea was still tea and a peach was still a peach and nobody ever dreamed they would become kissing cousins.
My sister suggested somewhat inanely, “Why don’t you just eat a peach, instead?” The man looked confused and walked away, leaving her equally confused. She was not trying to be clever or sass the man. You must remember the idea of a tea tasting like anything other than what it was supposed to, was absurd. Assam and Darjeeling, the two famous Indian teas had their own distinct flavors. It just was not proppa for an aristocratic beverage like tea to hobnob with fruity commoners back then.
We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? Not only do we now have a tea that tastes like a peach (besides a hundred other mind-boggling flavors) but for all I know we may even have a peach that tastes like a tea! We live in a blended world of crossovers and amalgamation. Anything goes.
My sister Mithoo was a Tea Board girl. They were glamorous envoys sent out into the world to promote Indian tea. Sis travelled extensively in UK and Scandinavia doing tea promos and sampling at trade shows, summer camps and high-end retail stores. The Tea Board Girls were always in the media, hobnobbing with celebrities. It was a PR job. They created quite a stir where ever they went. A tiny town in Norway declared it a school holiday so that the kinds could come out to see the Indian beauties in their stunning sarees. They had never seen anything quite like them.
India never dreamed she would one day have to market her teas. The best tea in the world was expected to sell itself by virtue of its superiority. But that did not happen
Things started to change in the 1960’s and 70’s when many tea plantations came under Indian ownership. The British left India and took their tea expertise and business acumen with them. Tea exports began a downward slide and India woke up only too late to realize she was losing valuable market share to Ceylon. Ceylon Tea had marketing savvy and branded their teas with a distinctive lion logo. They gained further mileage when Lipton Yellow Label (a popular blended tea) started implementing the lion logo on their packaging. India Tea needed a brand identity and that is how the tea plucker logo came into being. Recently this logo has been criticized as being outdated and sexist. To show a woman with a basket of tea on her head implies backwardness and servility of women, according to some people. Now there are talks about rebranding Indian tea. Some marketing genius in India has suggested the visual of a peacock sipping tea. What a dreadful thought!
Here is a fun link: Lipton Yellow Label Commercial: Theanine– a caffeine like ingredient in tea–is believed to sharpen the mind. This is why some of the world’s greatest creators drink tea when they are working. Do you?
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Teatime for the Firefly is Shona Patel’s debut novel. It is a love story set in a remote tea plantation in Assam, India. You can read the SYNOPSIS and the FIRST CHAPTER by clicking on the red links. Shona Patel is represented by April Eberhardt Literary.
Assam is prime elephant country. It’s a land of big rivers, dense bamboo groves, rain forests with long, drooping moss and startling orchids. In the jungle clearings, elephant grass shoots up to over 10-feet to shelter a teeming wildlife. Assam Tea–the finest tea on earth– chooses to grow in this wild terrain and nowhere else. Not surprisingly “elephant trouble” a frequent complaint in the tea plantations.
Every tea planter has a plethora of elephant stories and I have a few of my own. When I seven, a semi-domesticated elephant grabbed me by the ankle and almost got me but luckily I was yanked back by a nearby adult. I still have bad dreams about that one! Another time a baby elephant came floating down the flooded Koilapani River. For two weeks he lived in the taro patch behind our bungalow and played peek-a-boo with a hen before he was shunted off to Calcutta zoo, much to our heartbreak.
Along with owning their tractors, trucks and trailers, most tea gardens own an elephant or two. Domesticated elephants are invaluable to the tea industry. They are trained by special elephant trainers called mahouts. Elephants render a multitude of services that range from forest logging to rescue missions for tea garden residents stranded in the flood. Assam is the wettest place on earth. The monsoons hit with a fury each year; rivers overflow, bridges collapse and tea plantations are marooned for weeks without power or supplies. Elephants are called to the rescue when river currents get too strong for a boat. 
My favorite story is about my Aunt Baruna who dropped her high-heeled slipper in the floodwaters when she crossing on elephant back to get to the gala at the Planter’s Club. All evening she hobbled on one shoe while standing tiptoe on the other foot and nobody could tell anything was amiss under her long saree!
Tea garden kids are the envy of their friends. Town kids have puppies and kittens but guess what we had as pets? Monkeys, elephants and the occasional leopard cub! On birthdays and special occasions the garden elephant made a grand appearance to give us kiddies fun rides. Old Jumbo also showed up all tinsel-decked at the Club Christmas party with (an often slightly inebriated) Santa perched on top.
Elephants are useful during shikar (hunting) to track down game, mostly man-eating leopards and tigers that prowl the tea plantations to prey on humans.
Elephants in herds are usually harmless but they can create plenty of damage. A herd of elephants often invaded the sugarcane patch behind our bungalow and had to be chased out with lighted torches and the beating of tin cans. I still remember the sound of their wild trumpeting in the night: it is the most eerie, bone-rattling sound on earth!
Encountering a rogue elephant in the wild is very bad news. Rogue elephants can destroy everything in their path with mindless fury. There is the horrific incident of a local postman who was cycling through the jungle road to a tea garden when he came face-to-face with a rogue. The elephant picked him by the feet and smashed him into a tree and (this is really gross) the poor man had to picked off the bark like putty. That is the fury of a rogue.
With increasing deforestation in Assam, elephant problems in the tea gardens continue to be on the rise. Here is a National Geographic article about Elephant problems in Assam. Please share your elephant story, if you have one. Thanks and cheers!
Other related articles: The Story of the Elephant Boy of Tea
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Teatime for the Firefly is Shona Patel’s debut novel. It is a love story set in a remote tea plantation in Assam, India. You can read the SYNOPSIS and the FIRST CHAPTER by clicking on the red links. Shona Patel is represented by April Eberhardt Literary.
Tea Buddy 