SUCH A LONG JOURNEY....BUT STILL STANDING TALL

“When I find myself in trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom; let it be, let it be……” This line is no longer an aficionado with the present generation who now know that they cannot be fooled by backmasking. Incidentally, backmasking is a way of putting secret messages on the song tracks by some experimental musicians. This song by the Beatles actually doesn’t mean Mother Mary in the true sense; they use it as slang for ‘Marijuana comes to me’. Then punch lines like ‘With a cigarette in my hand, I feel like a man’ no longer impress the matured young people.
Today’s youth has a mind of its own. Not likely to get caught up by fads, they are more health conscious, knowing the benefits of staying fit till the end. Likewise, the health pundits would rather recommend a steaming cup of tea for its antioxidant effects on the body than any other brew in hand. Tea is the new health mantra amongst the elitist and the fashionable, who can choose from a wide variety of tea recipes. Tea is here to stay for a long long time.
I often meet youngsters who opt for black, green or organic tea, cause they have probably read about their benefits in some way or the other. But very few, say around two out of ten persons know the history of tea in Assam, the pride of northeastern India and how it has been put on the global map.

Tea trade was an integral aspect of the East India Company. But tea trade was in barter of British silver, which became a vital concern. The political turmoil in China coupled with growing incidences of conflict between Chinese authorities and British traders aggravated the need of colonial tea pastures. The vast tracts of Assam’s tropical forest lie nearly in the same line of Chinese tea growing provinces. This drew the attention of the imperial scanner.
“The real purpose of the British was to turn Assam into an agricultural estate of tea drinking Britons and to transform local traditional institutions in such a manner as to suit the colonial pattern of economy.” Amalendu Guha (Planter Raj to Swaraj).
The endeavor started as early as 1819 by posting David Scott in Coochbehar and the saga began with planting Chinese seeds to the discovery of wild tea plants that grew in eastward Assam. In 1823, Robert Bruce met Maniram Dutta Barua in Rangpur, present day Sivsagar district of Assam, who appraised the tea drinking (Phalap in Singpho dialect) habit of the Singpho tribe and put Bruce in touch with the Singpho chief, Beesa Gram. After the death of Robert Bruce in 1824, his younger brother Charles Alexander Bruce took over the legacy of tea venture and became the government superintendent of tea culture.
In 1838, Bruce dispatched eight chests of Assam Tea to London which was auctioned on January 10, 1839 and fetched an exorbitant 21$ per pound. Prior to this, Europe knew only Chinese tea. The strong liquor and flavour of Assam’s black tea was unparalleled and created a furore in the whole of Europe. The wild variety got an official name, “Camellia Assamica”.
With the approval of private enterprise in 1841, there resulted a rush of British pioneer planters and a new era of tea in Assam. By 1862, 160 tea gardens consolidated their business.
Today, 750 large tea gardens and 43000 small tea growers of Assam have 17% of global tea production share. The present day tea industry reflects the legacy of the toilsome venture of the pioneer British planters and the painful sweated labour of the tea workers.
The perpetual green tea gardens along both sides of the mighty river, Brahmaputra, in the foothills and ever salubrious tea air envisages a unique socio-cultural niche that gives Assam its true identity.