Darjeeling (35 page)

This catastrophe remained deeply imprinted on the mind of Sanjay Bansal when he took over the garden from his father in 1992. “For the new owner this was one of the pinching proofs that the increasing use of chemicals (pesticides and fertilizers) in tea gardens had a huge negative effect on the soil structure,” wrote the newsletter by Soil & More, a Dutch soil and sustainable-farming consulting company. “Chemicals, especially the salt in fertilizers, destroy the microbial life which normally holds together the soil particles. This leads to a loss of soil structure causing either leakage of water or floods due to water logging.”
²⁰
Alongside the aggressive reforesting program, Bansal transitioned the garden to organic farming in 1993, and the following year introduced biodynamic practices.

The move from conventional farming meant the garden lost about a quarter of its yield, but it helped stabilize the land while being able to produce teas for the most exclusive names in Europe: Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Simon Lévelt, Alnatura, Lebensbaum, and Schwarzsee. Mariage Frères in Paris stocks more than fifty Darjeeling teas from thirty-plus gardens. A hundred-gram (3.5-ounce) packet of Ambootia’s second flush Brumes d’Himalaya—“Himalayan Mists”—made especially for the French boutique, sells for 120 euros ($170), the most expensive tea in the shop.

Bansal actively champions the organic and biodynamic movements, but on the ground, the garden’s manager, Jay Neogi, is more prosaic about its esoteric theories. Driving around Ambootia, he said, “I don’t see any pests.” Why not? “It’s ecologically balanced.” At being pushed for a fuller reason, he simply shrugged and smiled. “Seeing the effects but not necessarily seeing the cause.”

The fields were vibrant green, the bushes healthy looking. There was no barren earth. Herbs and mulching covered the ground between tea bushes. Spiderwebs stretched across bushes, dragonflies buzzed about, and even ladybugs, as featured in the Ambootia logo, crawled on tea leaves—all signs of a naturally healthy garden.

And a healthy place to work. “I feel different when I enter the garden,” said one of Ambootia’s field managers, a young Bihari who has worked on the estate for four years. In charge of one of the four divisions,
he has a dozen field supervisors and 220 pluckers under him. “I don’t have words to describe it. But I feel totally different. The air, the water.”

“Why do we believe?” Neogi asked. “Because the product is good. The outcome.” He considered this idea thoughtfully. “As long as the outcome is good, then we are satisfied.”

That satisfaction has influenced the entire Ambootia group, which has converted all of its gardens to biodynamic farming. Along with Ambootia, the group’s other ten Darjeeling gardens—Chongtong, Happy Valley, Monteviot, Moondakotee, Mullootar, Nagri, Nurbong, Sepoydhoorah (Chamling), Sivitar, and Aloobari—have also become certified biodynamic. According to the group’s precise general manager, Krishnendu Chatterjee, their eleven properties, spread over a total of 4,302.57 hectares (10,631.87 acres) containing 2,284.56 hectares (5,645.27 acres) of tea, are producing more than 12 percent of Darjeeling’s total output under Demeter’s strict biodynamic guidelines.
^*

To this list of biodynamic gardens is added another, Selimbong Tea Estate in the Mirik Valley near Gopaldhara and Chamong. The smallish garden, just 307 hectares (759 acres) and half that under tea, produces around 50,000 kilograms (110,000 pounds) of tea. It has held Demeter certification since 1997.

Biodynamically speaking, probably no other place in the world nor any other single product can match what is being produced by Darjeeling’s tea gardens. Around two-thirds of Darjeeling’s tea is organic. That is comprehensible. But that about 15 percent of its total tea can be called voodoo vintages is highly surprising, especially as the area does not market itself as such.

But does biodynamic tea actually
taste
better? Does planting according to the moon’s orbit and the position of the constellations make a difference
in that final judgment of a tea when it’s sipped from the cup? Does spraying the leaves with ground silica crystals that have been buried in cow horns give deeper muscatel flavors? A more nuanced body?

While some argue passionately that indeed biodynamic tea does taste better—and can point to stellar client lists as proof—this is, in many ways, not the main object. Rather, biodynamic farming seeks more than merely
taste
. “Biodynamics is a human service to the earth and its creatures, not just a method for increasing production or for providing healthy food,” wrote Storl.
²¹
Or flavorful teas. “The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings,”
²²
wrote the legendary Japanese philosopher and farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, who visited Makaibari when he was ninety years old, in his manifesto on natural farming,
The One-Straw Revolution
. Approvingly, Rajah Banerjee quotes this line in his own book.

As Steiner’s comment about stirring slurry reflects, biodynamic farming is done consciously. The passion is what matters, the reverential feelings that the farmer has for his crops and the land. “Whatever we do,” said the young Bihari field manager on Ambootia, “it is about nature.”

Such feelings toward nature have a long lineage in India. “Hindus, with their reverence for sacred rivers, mountains, forests and animals, have always been close to nature,” wrote Ranchor Prime in
Hinduism and Ecology
.
²³
Trees, Prime noted, have an important status: the great forests that once sheltered Lord Rama and his beautiful wife during their years of exile, and Krishna and his flute as he danced with friends and herded cows; the big shade trees—“silent symbols of India’s spiritual roots”
²⁴
—under which travelers rested from the heat and gurus passed on wisdom to disciples. “O King of trees! I bow before you. Brahma is in your roots, Vishnu is in your body, Shiva is in your branches. In every one of your leaves there is a heavenly being,” claims an ancient verse quoted by Prime.
²⁵
This early Vedic tradition of placing a high value on trees was passed down.
²⁶
Two thousand years ago the ancient Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus took note: “To anything they have started to cultivate they give divine status, especially to trees, violating which constitutes a capital offense.”
²⁷

“Most people farm for profits,” Rajah Banerjee said in the Makaibari documentary. “They’re looking for the flavor in their balance sheet. When we talk about the flavor and balance sheet of life, we are talking about healing the land and the tea and creating an environment whereby man becomes a rhythm of nature. We are not protecting or conserving forests.
It’s the reverse process. Man becomes a rhythm, a part of the forest, an extension of the forest.”

In his bungalow’s sitting room Rajah proclaimed, “The creature who wins against nature destroys itself.”
^*

Farming isn’t a battle against nature, but a partnership with it. It is respecting the basics of nature in action and ensuring that they continue.

We do not live nor farm in a void. There is a “connection between our environment and our way of life,” wrote Prime. “A way of life does not exist in a vacuum. It is based on a way of thinking: a philosophy of life.”
²⁸

Over a cup of freshly processed first flush tea, Rajah said, “When you eat or drink something, it becomes a material part of your being.”

*
 In August 2014, Ambootia’s factory, built in 1920 and completely updated and modernized in 2009, burnt to the ground. The fire started around nine
P.M.
, quickly engulfed the building, and by the time the fire brigade made it from Kurseong, all was lost. Plucking resumed the following day while the embers still smoldered. Until the new factory can be rebuilt, the green leaves will be processed at one of the group’s other gardens. After the factory at Monteviot burned down in 2004, the same year it was acquired by Ambootia, its green leaf was sent to Ambootia. Now, with Ambootia’s, it will get trucked to Moondakotee and Nagri tea estates for processing until the factory can be rebuilt.

*
 This echoes a line by the celebrated American environmental campaigner Rachel Carson: “Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”

For Darjeeling tea to keep its position on the top shelf of the world’s most distinguished products—or even, perhaps, for it to merely survive—the industry must go beyond simply turning 100 percent organic, offering new varieties of teas, opening new markets, or interesting more tea drinkers within India. The challenge is less in the soil, bushes, or leaves themselves than with the people who reside on the estates. A tea garden needs to be not just a sustainable, self-sufficient farm, but a sustainable, self-sufficient community. It’s not merely about creating well-made teas but also having a stable workforce. While Darjeeling’s celebrated flavor stems from leaves, its future rests in the people who pluck them. If you can’t get the leaves off the bush and processed, everything else becomes irrelevant.

The rapid rise of staggeringly high worker absenteeism in the last few years has moved this to the forefront of urgent threats. Of the major hurdles ahead, the gardens can—and need to—be proactive in immediately tackling this one.

“We know where they are going,” said Sanjay Sharma about Glenburn’s disappearing workforce, whose absenteeism has suddenly and swiftly climbed to around 30 percent. “We have to head off and head back workers. The only way is being able to offer them better employment, better quality of life. It’s a hard one. It’s easier said than done.”

To put the critical challenge in the simplest of terms: the future of Darjeeling depends on motivating a marginalized, low-paid labor force to continue working on the estates. This is particularly challenging when a single kilo of tea can sell for more than they make in the entire year, an especially stark notion at blue-chip gardens. Makaibari might get record
prices, but workers receive the same daily wages as on every other garden in the district.

Tea gardens are based on a Raj-era system that remains largely in place. “The colonial foundation is not working,” Rajah Banerjee said in autumn. “It’s broken.” A fundamental change in the serflike structure needs to evolve, to include more worker involvement, even ownership, to make them a dynamic, integrated part of the estate—and a party to its successes. “We need to look out an alternative window,” he said.

“It’s about partnership, not ownership,” insists Rajah. He refuses to call those who work on Makaibari
laborers
or even
workers
and instead refers to them as
community activists
or
participants
. This isn’t only about semantics, but, rather, deeply invested involvement. “They are not workers but a community. It’s their home. The key is in community participation.”

The 1991 creation of the Makaibari Joint Body (MBJB) was one initiative to encourage this. The committee, comprised of elected members from the estate’s seven villages, is mostly women. Elections take place every three years; the only permanent member is Rajah. The committee makes decisions about the garden and on microloans for projects such as homestay constructions. It runs a nursery and, in 2012, opened a small library with books to lend and Wi-Fi-connected computers to use. While three of the four computers were not working by autumn 2013, it was still offering free computer lessons to people on Makaibari. Even with class sizes of twenty, the continual waiting list reflects the program’s popularity.

Sometimes partnership comes in subtle forms. “Encouragement is partnership,” Rajah said one cold night in the spacious drawing room of the Makaibari bungalow. “Empowerment is partnership. What do marginalized women that have been empowered invest in?” He mimed jiggling an old-fashioned waist belt heavy with coins. “They invest in the best primary education. That creates awareness.” As he spoke, he made slow loops around the room. “Then they invest in the best secondary school. This builds capacity.” He stopped for a moment near his wife, Srirupa, who huddled close to an electric heater that reflected glowing orange in the lenses of her eyeglasses. “With awareness and capacity you create character, and if you have character, you can succeed at anything.” He smiled, then said emphatically, “
That’s
what you get when you empower the ladies!”

Estates across Darjeeling are trying various initiatives that range from reforesting—giving out varieties of trees, including bamboo, which has a multitude of uses—to harvesting rainwater and buying vehicles to ply the
roads as taxis. But the ancient cow has been the base for the most inspired schemes.

“A thoroughly healthy farm should be able to produce within itself all that it needs,” Rudolf Steiner stated in his second agricultural lecture.
¹
At the center of the farm and its health is the cow, both in traditional Vedic practice as well as in organic and biodynamic farming.