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The Hindu
Sunday, May 02, 2004
Literary Review
Stranger in the garden
`This is different from the usual quantitative studies which produce
massive data, reduced to tables, charts and other forms of
representation.'
THE book A Time for Tea deals with women and labour in an Indian
plantation in the post-colonial period. The author, Piya Chatterjee,
who lives in the United States, came for this study first in 1991 and
then in 1998-1999. This is different from the usual quantitative
studies which produce massive data, reduced to tables, charts and
other forms of representation. It is also unlike the qualitative
studies undertaken mainly by sociologists who would have limited
number of charts and graphs, but more of description and case
studies. The plantation Chatterjee chose to study closely was in
Dooars, beyond Jaipalguri in north Bengal.
This study is made up of the author's observations and talks between
her and women who, in answering her questions, never try to hide what
they feel. For example, at one of the earlier meetings, Chatterjee
shows two of the women she has befriended, Anjali Mirdha and
Bhagirathi Mahato, two empty packets of Brooke Bond tea she had
brought from Chicago. They had on their covers, two women - one a
photograph/ painting and the other an etching. Anjali and Bhagirathi
were puzzled at the way the packets were brought and also the
pictures, which they thought looked like cinema stars and they laugh.
As for Chatterjee, it was one of the "many texts that I offer to them
as one way to introduce my research project and uneasy presence in
the plantation". The women put forth their hands and asked to see how
the bushes had cut into them and how the tea juice had blackened
them. They said : "What do you memsahibs know anyway. Come to the
garden one day and may be you will see."
Chatterjee accepts the invitation and the women keep their word. They
walk with her to the plantations, to the Labour Lines (the rows of
small houses which the British built to house the low grade employees
where their numbers were large. Post-independent regimes continued
the same policy regarding housing) talk over several cups of tea and
meet more women and men. While serving her tea, the women say it was
not Darjeeling tea, but their own special tea and they laugh at
Chatterjee's bewilderment. Anjali explains that it was the tea which
was rationed to the workers and made from the lowest grade of tea
powder. Chatterjee notices a sort of good-humoured sarcasm among the
labourers on several occasions. About the book this is what she has
to say: "An ethnography of the quotidian, privileging the pragmatic
and contemporary worlds of women and men working in the tea fields of
North Bengal, will constitute the narrative seedbed of the book."
Chatterjee gives an interesting account of the history of tea itself,
beginning from China and travelling all over the world. Tea went
along with the expansion of the empire. We come to know how the white
sahibs started the earlier plantations. The titles of chapters like
"Cultivating the Garden", "Estates of a new Raj", "Discipline and
Labour", "Village Politics and Protest" give an idea of the contents.
The book has nine chapters, the first called "Alap" and the
single-page ninth chapter "A Last Act". The endnotes show that the
author has done excellent research with secondary material. The large
number of illustrations - mainly advertisements on tea, which still
continue to appear both in the print and electronic media - make the
texts more convincing and fascinating. I wish that such a
well-produced book was free of typos.
The book is unique in having a parallel, theatre-like narrative
running along the author's stories about the plantation, its
managers, labourers, the bungalows and the Labour Lines, the men and
women in the unions, their struggles against humiliation, or for
their izzat and rights, the rituals at home and in the village. They
have their lighter moments of laughter; they are keen to tell their
stories; they have the patience and the strength to endure. The end
of the last chapter is poignant. "Who can say anything about the
endurance of women? Perhaps the plantation is like Singhbum, a
white-haired old woman collecting firewood in the jungles, who never
answers a stranger, never looks at anyone. Keeping the intruders into
her grief, at a distance, beyond the barrier of her silence, she
continues collecting firewood."
A Time for Tea: Women, Labour and Post-Colonial Politics on an Indian
Plantation, Piya Chatterjee, Zubaan, p.417.
K. SARADAMONI
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