Nkn in days of old
unfolds. What you can’t see is another clever touch created by the king’s corps — a series of underground conduits directing water around the fields.
Sensing that heat exhaustion threatens our welfare, our host, Stefan D’Silva, decides it’s time to head for the hills. It’s a long, winding drive to the tea country, a trip which Stefan enlivens with his encyclopaedic knowledge of his country’s wildlife and heritage. We see a troop of toque macaque monkeys and a black eagle scanning for prey. It is early afternoon when we get to Nuwara Eliya, a surreal town a mile above sea level. Neat hedges fence in gabled houses, towering conifers have replaced the lowland steamy jungles and three-wheeled tuk-tuks scuttle past red post boxes. This is the heart of Sri Lanka’s tea industry, and the legacy of the British planters who deposited their culture and their class system when they planted the hills. We get a taste of it at the Hill Club, a colonial institution which excluded women members for decades. Shooting trophies hang on gloomy walls and a lonely elephant leg rests by a wall. It feels out of place in a land of vibrant colours. We leave the 19th century for Stafford Estate, a 25ha plantation with a beautifully restored superintendent’s mansion. High tea of scones, coconut cake, cucumber sandwiches and fine tea is served on the lawn as afternoon shadows draw close. We are joined by Parakkrama Kiridena, a dapper gentleman in a flat cap, knitted cardigan and corduroys. He runs the plantation, and employs 50 staff. Tea jobs are for life, and Para is expected to provide cradle-to-grave comfort for his workers. Planters, he explains, must be “a father, a judge, a scientist, a lawyer, an accountant and an agriculturalist”. He carries the teapot for every event on the estate and must know all that goes on. The 45-year-old started his career as a “creeper”, a kind of indentured tea slave at the bosses’ beck and call 24/7. Some are notoriously mean but “I am not like that”, insists Para. The next morning he takes us through the property. He wears a leather jerkin, shorts and knee-high socks to protect his calves from tea bushes. Para carries a worn, banded stick, which, besides being handy to knock snakes aside, gives an accurate measure of the ideal picking height of his crop. It is cool as we wander along steep tracks, watching sari-clad pickers twist off the top buds. The women nod in his direction. He is reminded of an early lesson as a creeper. It was a wet day, and he set off with a brolly. His boss scalded him and he left it behind. “You cannot expect to stay dry under an umbrella when the workers are getting wet,” Para explains. “You must put up with everything you ask of them.” As the heat arrives, we trek back to Stafford Bungalow. Para tells us he is extremely content. “How could I not be,” he remarks taking in the green slopes with a sweep of his stick. Time, once more, for tea.