“Can you please switch off the machine?”
“Oh, okay, okay.” He flipped the switch, but we still couldn’t understand him because his Pidgin English was absolutely rubbish. He insisted on ploughing ahead even though I kept telling him that I understand Hindi.
“Achcha aapko Hindi aati hai? You know Hindi? Good, good. So tea plant here, trough here, humidify there, roll there.”
We followed him around the factory, trying to guess what he was pointing at. The only thing I could glean from his language-less rant was the classification of tea leaves. He picked one up by its stem and proclaimed most solemnly, “now this leaf you see – super tea”. He emphasized this with a downward curl of his mouth and by joining his thumb and index finger as though he was some Italian about to go “mamma mia”. And when it was time to show the not-so-super tea, he just tossed the leaf back into the trough like it was trash. By the end of the useless tour, I had to expunge from my brain whatever little I did know about tea.
“Okay, now give money,” the mis-guide demanded boldly after depositing us outside the factory.
The tour lasted a mere 15 minutes, but we had put aside the entire day for it, assuming that tea-making must be a really complex process. However, instead of leaving immediately, we decided to sit down amid the shrubs for a while and cut into the field. We kept inching further till we were right at the edge of the cliff and the whole estate was spread out behind us like a Chinese fan. Here came the second disappointment of my day – there was no one in the plantation. The women with bamboo baskets attached to their backs were missing. In their absence, we had to make do with talking, sketching the incredible landscape and drinking the nectar-like Honey Bee rum.
It was a formidable spot; a single step forward and we could very well plummet into the valley below. The sun was directly in our eyes, but it was still possible to see all the way across to the other side of the city, where stacks of tiny houses lined the edge of the hillside. It was petrifying to even imagine how the construction workers must stand atop rickety scaffoldings for months to build these houses.
“I’m gonna lie down for a bit.” River stretched out his legs, pulled his straw hat over his face and went to sleep. I did the same but instead of closing my eyes I stared at the blue sky above, trying to remember the last time I had ever taken a nap like this, out in the open.
By five, the sun had lost most of its heat and was simply hovering in the sky, waiting for the world to turn. As we made our way back, I had the sudden urge to carve my name onto this big boulder that was slouching sullenly under a tree. Since I was a little tipsy, the task became slightly harder than usual. River laughed at me, but I soldiered on; it was a resilient boulder.
When I was almost done, we heard a woman’s voice coming at us from somewhere above our heads. She was standing outside a rustic wooden teashop nestled between the hedges. The woman was also laughing and she made a ‘come hither’ gesture with her hands. The teashop was actually her home, where it was possible to sample some of the different varieties of tea grown in the estate.
“Oh hai, you look like you could use some tea, haha. Come inside, come, come.” She spoke with a thick Nepali accent and then threw her entire torso backwards to laugh loudly. Honestly, she looked a little bit drunk herself. We guffawed at each other before following the lady into her sitting room.
“Where are you from?” she enquired after installing us on the comfy sofa, in front of which, stood a round glass table that had several little bowls of tea.
“He is from England and I’m from India. We will be travelling around North India together for the next couple of weeks.”
“Oh see, you so lucky to have such friend!” she said to River. “If not, India very risky. See foreigner mean everybody cheating and cheating. Not like Nepal. We Nepalis, very simple people.”
“You’re from Nepal? When did you come to India?” River asked her eagerly.
“Oh hai, that is long story. My grandfather comes to Darjeeling very many years ago. My whole family has work in this estate; me also, when younger. Now I only look after other tea pickers. Today, most women here, all Nepali, they work very hardly. You will not see any beggars in Darjeeling.”
I thought about that for a second. It was true; we hadn’t come across a single bum since New Jalpaiguri.
“Is that why this place is called the Happy Valley?”
“Haha, yes, everybody here is happy. We have Bhole Baba’s blessings, hai!"
“Well, that’s good.” River looked at me uncertainly.
“Bhole Baba is another name for Lord Shiva.” The patron saint of stoners, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud.
“So you’re a Hindu? I thought all Nepalis were Buddhists?”
“Buddhists? No, no. We all Hindu. We even have caste just like Indian. I am Rai. Most women working here are Kami. Kami people working very hardly, making lot of money but they are very simple also, you know? They don’t like no hanky-panky. If you are angry, they will tell you ‘hai na!' and all your anger will go away. Then there are the Damai people, very lucky seeing them in the morning. And the Sarki, they are the untouchables you know, doing all dirty work. Nepali also don’t like girl child, just like India. If a boy born in the family, the father cooks meat, khashi. If a girl born, the father cooks pumpkin, phashi, hai? Haha.”
“So you don’t have any daughters then?” I teased her.
“Hai? No! I have two daughters. I don’t like all that old hanky- panky. My big daughter is studying in Sydney, you know, in Australia?”
“Really? That’s great.”
“Yes, it’s good. She very smart, always studying, studying. But na, I don’t like Australia and I don’t like no eating the kangaaru. But what to do? To study you have to eat anything, also kangaaru. My husband don’t want to send her there but I told him, look, you are my mountain and I worshipping you every day, but if you stop our daughter from going then no more worship.”
“And then he agreed?”
“Of course, what can he do? Hai na! Haha.”
“But what about Gurkhas? What caste is that?”
“Gurkha no caste, Gurkha meaning fighter. You know Gurkha Regiment, no? Very famous, very dangerous. But all Nepali in Darjeeling feel like Gurkha, we are fighting the government for years.”
“For what? The Gorkhaland? You want to establish a new state, right?” I might have sounded a little accusatory, but she replied calmly.
“Now, now, don’t think we terrorist! Nepali very peace people. But see, Darjeeling has long history. Now people forgot, but 100 years ago this whole place was run by Nepali. We come down like slaves to work for the British. Then when they leaving, because still wanting fighting to continue, they sign and gave it to the Bengalis. But that is all past, we don’t want to leave this country; we only want our rights, you know? All the money from the tea, from our hardly work, we want to use it here, not Kolkata. Water problem, no nalis (sewage system), no nice roads; there is so much to do.”
“But Mamta Banerjee has promised to turn Darjeeling into India’s Switzerland, hasn’t she?”
“Hai, that woman! She is chief minister but she doesn’t know what is coming out of her mouth. And Switzerland? What will I do with Switzerland? I only want my Gorkhaland, that is all.”
“But –”
“Now, what about some tea? Hai, we are forgetting the real thing! I tell you something, my name is Komal Rai, but I am called the Five-Second-Tea Lady by all people who lives here. You want to know why?”
“Yes.”
“Come, I will show you.”
She took us into her little kitchen and boiled some water in a pan.
“See now, the water is done. I taking the tea leaves, putting it in the water, counting one, two, three, four, five aaaannnd done.”
It was fascinating. She literally brewed the tea for five seconds and then strained it. She handed us two clear glass cups and then taught us how to judge the quality of the tea by noting the colou
r of the decoction.
“Say after me, this tea is called super-fast-orange-peaking- tippy-toppy-tea. Get it? Let’s say again, super-fast-orange- peaking-tippy-toppy-tea. Good!”
Of course, this is all wrong, but that’s just how I remember it.
The real connoisseurs out there will know that the tea is actually called super fine tippy golden flowery orange pekoe, whatever that means.
“You can use these leaves again you see, three times at least! It is so strong. Okay, now come, we will play a game.”
Returning to the sitting room, we sat down on the floor next to the round table with the bowls of tea. This time she asked us to pick out what we considered the best and the worst type of tea based on the aroma, size and texture of the leaves. River did pretty well; I, on the other hand, was clearly never meant to be tea-drinking royalty. My selection of the finest tea turned out to be the worst, eliciting a “tsk tsk” from the lady.
“Girl, why you have no taste?”
“Uh, so why aren’t the women working in the fields now?” I tried to divert the topic tactlessly.
“Oh that, now no picking season. First flush over, have to wait for the second flush.”
“I see, but what about men? Why do we always see women with those baskets? Aren’t men allowed to work in tea plantations?”
“No, men not picking leaves because they have fat fingers. Women have soft, pointed fingers, so no using nails to break the tips. See, tea leaves, very delicate. From the tips, we make green and white tea; then bigger leaf, we make black tea. Everything handpicked, we totally organic since 1854. No hanky-panky like mixing other leaves boiled in sheep dung. Eight-four other tea estates around Darjeeling, but Harrods buy tea only from us. We are not allowed to sell to anyone else.”
“Not even in India?”
“Specially not in India!”
“How nice.”
“What to do? Indian drink so much tea and this orange pekoe is very much price, not possible to buy every time. And those bangalis don’t come to Darjeeling for tea, they only come for the toy train… O mere sapno ki rani kab aayegi tu… hai na? Haha.”
The song Mere sapno ki rani (Oh, the queen of my dreams) is from the 1969 Hindi movie Aradhana. In the video, the hero, Mr Rajesh Khanna, in his spiffy Gurkha cap, serenades the heroine, who is speeding away in the toy train. But the difficulties of shooting a close-up scene on a moving train, that too with a plume of steam fogging up the sides of the frame, forced the director to stick to the scenery outside. This resulted in the hero wooing the train instead of the girl and now this song is sung to celebrate the toy train’s glory rather than the bodacious Sharmila Tagore, who was supposed to be the real queen of Rajesh Khanna’s dreams.
I was truly sad when it was time to say goodbye to Komal. We’d had such an amazing evening with her. Usually, people have to pay 50 to taste a cup of tea, but she didn’t take any money from us because she liked us. She even sold me an extra half-kilo of super-fine-tippy-toppy-tea on the sly. Take that, Harrods!
Ala Re Tiger Hill
There is this urban legend in Bengal, which suggests that if you want to see the sun rising over the Himalayas like never before, then you must visit Tiger Hill. The two of us, being such naive little kids, agreed that it would be a travesty to miss this miracle of nature. Since it takes about an hour on a good day to get to Tiger Hill from Darjeeling, we woke up at three in the middle of the night and walked down to the jeep stand to hitch a ride.
The term ‘mass exodus’ would be an understatement to describe the mob that had congregated at the crossroad near the clock tower. Judging by the way some of them were dressed, I was sure that we were about to enter the subarctic region. River and I stood out like freaks in our sweatshirts next to men swathed in no less than three layers of woollen clothing and silly balaclavas. Some women were even wearing gloves! I tried to ignore their stares as best I could while the drivers stuffed us into the jeeps like vegetables.
It was a pleasant ride – leisurely, with minimal tossing, and it helped that most of us were half-asleep anyway given that we’d skipped our daily dose of coffee or tea. I always prefer travelling early in the day when the wind is nippy and the ash-blue sky is wrapped tight around the world. Peace reigns supreme – no music, no street noises, no dirt and no need for pointless conversation. The mind is free to wonder about all kinds of things – world peace, corporate bailouts, benefits of marijuana use, alien invasion, sex…
On this particular day though, my fluid train of thought was cut short when our jeep halted abruptly in the middle of the road. Tiger Hill was still about a mile away, but the long queue of automobiles had eaten up all the space, forcing us to cover the last stretch on foot. The trail was relatively easy and we marched up alongside hordes of other people, including women in saris hitched right up to their knees.
On a clear day, it’s possible to see the Kanchenjunga, Lhotse and even Mount Everest from Tiger Hill. So I had envisioned the viewpoint as a narrow conical mound of earth protruding into the sky. Instead, we found ourselves on a broad plateau, jam-packed with tourists, all waiting for the sun to part the clouds. People were praying as though their lives depended on the sun making an appearance. The whole atmosphere was charged with religious fervour. The landscape was alright, but the view was pretty much non-existent due to the thick cover of clouds. The crowd and the noise destroyed whatever little tranquillity the place could’ve theoretically provided. At least River found his consolation in the women selling cups of steaming, hot tea from their huge colourful flasks.
The jeep driver had allotted us an hour to take in the sunrise, but I was done in about five minutes. Still, we hopped from one corner to another, hoping to find a better vantage point and not be stuck in the tenth row behind all the zealots fiddling with their cameras. But our search proved futile and we settled for asking a random woman to take a picture of us instead of the view. She stared at the camera uncertainly for a second and then pointed the display screen at us. River stopped her just in time else she would’ve blinded herself with the flash.
In the few minutes that we were teaching this woman how to use the point-and-shoot camera, the sun made a brief appearance on the horizon. This worked up the crowd like a missed goal on a free kick in the 92nd minute of a premier league final. We quickly ran to the edge to see if the sun had turned up in a different colour today. But goddammit, the clouds had taken over again. Then slowly, a rumble of voices rose in unison from the plateau, “ala re ala, suraj ala re!" The little chant spread swiftly and soon the entire Tiger Hill was swaying and shouting “ala re ala” to please the sun, that kept up its sadistic dance without any remorse.
As this was going on, River bent over my shoulder and whispered, “why are there so many Muslims here today? Is it a festival or something?”
“What do you mean? How do you know they’re all Muslims?”
“Well they’re all screaming ‘Allah re Allah’. Are you deaf?”
“They are not saying ‘Allah’, they are saying ‘ala re’, which means ‘come on’. They’re cheering for the sun to come out!”
“Oh, I see.”
The cheering continued for a long time and we all enjoyed it immensely; it didn’t really matter that the sunrise was a complete bust.
Since this trip, a lot of fellow wanderers have amused me with tales of their Tiger Hill pilgrimage. Argh, it was pointless. It was raining like hell. The fog was a motherfucking brick wall. Forget the view, I couldn’t even see two steps ahead of me. And after comparing all our stories, I’ve concluded that the famous Tiger Hill view is a myth, a nifty concoction of the tourism department. Nevertheless, I still recommend it as a must-see in Darjeeling because sometimes, an experience – no matter how horrible – is worth a lot more than a pretty view.
* * *
Our next stop on this mini-tour around Darjeeling was the Gurkha War Memorial, which stands in the middle of the Batasia Loop. Predictably, the war memorial was just as exciting as an
y other war memorial, maybe even less so. A tall white concrete pillar, extending like a phallus from the centre of a small circular island of grass, commemorated the bravery of all the Gurkha soldiers who have laid down their lives for the country since our independence.
The Batasia train loop was slightly more colourful, lined with flowerbeds and patches of manicured lawn. To this day, the loop is considered a marvel of train engineering – the only one of its kind in the entire world. It lets the toy train sidle along the hill’s periphery instead of leading straight up, thereby making it easier to climb the steep gradient. But I was more impressed by the great use the train track is being put to nowadays. When the toy train is not in motion, skilled craftsmen take over the entire loop, transforming it into a rough and ready market. Handmade sweaters, shawls, jewellery and even kitchenware are casually spread out over the metal tracks and the tourists gaily skip over the wooden sleepers to get from one vendor to the next.
Compared to Tiger Hill, we had only 15 minutes to loiter around the memorial, so River and I returned to the jeep pretty quickly. However, the others were nowhere to be seen.
“Where the hell is everyone?”
“I think they are busy looking for a good bargain on those hideous yak print sweaters,” I joked.
It turned out that I was actually right. They all returned an hour later with big bags full of yak sweaters and other knick knacks. It was barely seven in the morning; shopping was perhaps the least appropriate thing to do at this time. Besides, we still had a monastery to visit.
Perched atop a knoll at the outskirts of Darjeeling, the Dali Gompa monastery was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in 1993. We arrivedjust as the monks were finishing their morning prayer, so we had to wait in the huge courtyard that was on the other side of the thick curtain that cordoned off the main prayer hall. Their chanting sounded wonderful and I desperately wanted to go inside. Unfortunately, everything had been cleared by the time we got in. We didn’t even see any monks, just a few young boys sweeping the area with their spindly brooms. Maroon and yellow robes draped across their bony torsos.
Special Lassi Page 4