WHERE TEA IS GROWN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23269, 11 February 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

WHERE TEA IS GROWN

Scenes Among Green Hil

By DOROTHY WALSH, Annamalais, Southern India

THE pi-overbial cup of tea! And it does not need much imagination to picture a group of gossips exchanging views in a hospitable country parlour. Tea, as the writer sees it, represents quite a different scene —a vista of green hills, rocky valleys and miniature Niagaras. Throngs of labourers in vividly coloured saris wending their way to the field of work are an essential feature of the picture. Graceful women with baskets slung over shoulder, they follow in the wake of an Indian maistry or overseer. His job is to supervise the work in hand, and as soon as the working block is reached he sets about the task with commendable vigour. The base of a low hill is chosen and each woman starting at the foot of a long line of bushes, works up tree by tree, picking the tender young leaves. The teabush thickened by excessive pruning reaches the height of about three feet. Only the freshest shoots are to bo picked, and the task is one in which speed and dexterity both play a large part.' It is fascinating to watch a really proficient labourer at work. Baby in the Tree-top Tongues keep pace with hands and the riso and fall of voices can be heard over the hillsides. In happy disregard of the noise around them, babies, who have accompanied their_ mothers, sleep in rough cradles comprised of doubled cloths suspended from overhanging branches. Shaded by silver oaks and small broad-leafed trees with brilliant yellow flowers the whole scene is one of life and animation. The rapidly growing industry necessitates constant felling of the jungle. Even now, from across the valley there resounds the dull crash of falling trees. A party of hillmen, short squat men with curly hair wield tho axe with practised hand. The great trees lie one across another in attitudes, pitifully grotesque; thero to remain till tho end

of the dry season when fire will be used to clear the ground ready for the tiny plants. Down in a neighbouring valley, rows of small baskets proclaim the fact, that here is a nursery of young tea trees awaiting transplantation. This _ is the domain of a venerable white-haired old man, who rules the urchins who assist him with an iron hand. Standing on the summit of a broad hill is the factory, a high grey build-

r j • : The Commas \ Since Mr. E. V. Lucas passed on • { many who k.ncw him well have re- : j called his close attention to punctua- « ■ (ion. : • He insisted on seeing more than \ j one proof of everything he wrote, and j ; not a comma or a hyphen escaped : i him. : i The story of Thomas Gray's con- j j cern about a comma in his Elegy j • is well k noWn : the poet would spend j j hours deciding to take a comma out j I of one of the verses, and Would j j afterwards spend hours deciding to ■ | put it back again. Thomas Campbell j j Was just as particular; once he j | Walked six miles to his printer and | j six miles back to ask him to change j ■ a comma to a semicolon. : I nii j

ing with black chimneys. It looks extraordinarily unlike the accepted idea of a factory with its surrounding hedges of flowering shrubs and its numberless glass windows. Tho entrance, a huge double* door, opens to the engine room 'where stands a small machine almost hidden between two gigantic whirring wheels. This is the engine, the pivot upon which the internal working of the factory depends. From here we pass into tho fermenting room. Long and green windowed, it lias a cool refreshing atmosphere, and it is here that the tea is allowed to ferment. Before this happens the fresh leaf goes through a pro-

cess known as "rolling," or being cut into smaller pieces. It is but a step to the almost airless drying room, where furnaces burn unceasingly; and then to the long rows of women who spend their day in ceaselessly picking flaws from the newly made tea. In the centre of the working part of the building is the office. Sacred to the manager alone it is a veritable crows' nest from which it is. possible to see the various processes through which the tea has to pass before it reaches selling form. Here the grades are tested by means of separation into different cups, each of which to the experienced tea-taster has a sharpness and pungency of its own. Above the ground floor of the factory are the withering lofts connected with one another by steep staircases. The fans, whose task it is to pump up the heat from below are in the centre part of the loft and each possesses a tiny intriguing room with bars crossing and recrossing in place of a floor. Through this the hot air rushes and circulates from room to room.

Through the throngs of labourers, who with the morning's pick, are now approaching tho factory, a lorry is making its way. It is loaded with chests of tea about to start upon their long journey over land and sea. Destined to bring pleasure to many, the cup of tea recalls to those who have travelled, happy hours spent in Eastern lands.