Today, on the eve of the biggest religious festival in the Indian state of West Bengal, workers at this plantation in the Dooars are on strike. They are demanding an increase in their annual bonus, which they use to buy gifts for their family and friends. The bonus is a significant part of their annual salary. Meanwhile, the tea bushes proudly support the bags and umbrellas. A few hours later, having achieved what they wanted, everyone returns to their belongings and the picking resumes.
Yesterday, I had a long chat with Jeewan Prakash Gurung, one of Darjeeling’s oldest planters. He has been in the tea business for a record 48 years! He welcomed me to his plantation in Seeyok and together we tasted teas and talked until it grew dark. I was impressed and moved by his words: “Tea is not a product, it’s a culture!” His pride shone through when he talked about himself and his fellow tea growers: “I’m proud of Darjeeling teas, they’ve made us what we are today.” On the winding road back to Mirik, as I looked out of the wide open window of the Jeep at the mountains in the misty night sky, I thought about his words and realised something important. For some people, it is enough to make tea and to shape the tea leaves, while for others it is the tea itself that has shaped them and made them who they are. This reminded me of Nicolas Bouvier’s quote: “You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you.
Everyone finds happiness where they want it. I find it when I’m surrounded by nature, in places that are alive with silence. I enjoy crowds for a while, but in Japan, after experiencing once again the crush of people jostling to cross the streets in all directions at the famous Shibuya intersection, nothing pleases me more than to find myself far from the city, in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. There, in the middle of nowhere, where I am attuned to the slightest sound and the materials that surround me – wood, rice straw, stone – I dissolve into the landscape and find my place among the trees, the breeze and the murmuring stream. With a bowl of tea in my hand, I close my eyes and slowly savour the powerful, vegetal infusion. I stay focused on the present moment. “We drink tea to forget the noise of the world,” wrote Lu Yu, the “Sage of Tea” as he is still known, and the author of The Classic of Tea.
In Japan there are wholesale markets where farmers sell their tea leaves. In Shizuoka, you have to get up early and be invited in if you want to see the farmers selling their aracha, or raw tea. The buyers are traders, sometimes farmers themselves, who carry out a series of tests on the leaves before selling them according to a grading system, to meet the demands of their customers. Trading is done quietly. They taste, then negotiate as discreetly as possible, using abacuses.
