Teatime for the Firefly by Shona Patel Page A

creeping along the garden wall, stalking a sparrow, which was busy fluffing its feathers. The sun peeked through the parting clouds, and raindrops hung from the jasmine trellis like translucent pearls.
    I returned to the sofa and stirred my tea as I read on.
    The tea-growing belt in Assam was cradled in the fertile, silt-rich valley between two mighty rivers—the Surma and the Bhramaputra. The picturesque Khasi and Jaintia hills cut a green swath in between. This region was remote and largely unexplored. Tea plantations were located in far-flung areas, across bridgeless rivers, beyond the boundaries of any trodden path and in the middle of dense, malaria-infested rain forests surrounded by wild game and hostile head-hunting Naga tribes.
    In 1823 an intrepid Scottish adventurer who went by the name of Robert Bruce tramped through the leech-infested jungles along the Assam-Burmese border, encountering unexpected mishaps and every manner of blight and misery along the way. He had barely recovered from a potentially lethal snakebite when he found himself spending a night up a tree, bone-rattled by a rogue elephant he had unwittingly enraged by misfiring his gun. As if that wasn’t enough, he was constantly being stalked by the hostile head-hunting Nagas, who lurked in the brush with their black-painted faces and poison-tipped spears.
    Robert Bruce was beginning to regret this whole mission. He was harried and at the end of his tether when he spied a thin curl of blue smoke spiraling over the treetops. He approached warily, gun drawn, and came across a tribal settlement deep in the forest.
    He’d feared his intrusion would provoke hostility, and was surprised to find the gnomelike natives were a cheerful and friendly lot. They were the Burmese Singpo tribe, undoubtedly the sweetest, most benign people on earth! The Singpos welcomed him and escorted him with the beating of tom-toms to their moonfaced, lotus-eyed chief, who went by the grand name of Bessagaum Ningrual.
    Bruce was seated on an elevated platform, fanned by palm fronds and offered a swig of steaming brew from a bamboo cup. Not wanting to offend his host, he took a few hesitant sips of this strange concoction. To his amazement, he felt immediately relaxed and all his cares and woes floated away. After downing the last drop, Bruce was so invigorated that he wanted to scale a tree and shout at the sky. What was this strange drink? He was told it was Cha , a beverage made by steeping the tender leaves of an unknown plant in boiling water. The plant grew wild in the forest, and when he was taken to see it, he found it was the size of a poplar tree and had deep green serrated leaves and pale waxy flowers.
    Robert Bruce could not get over the remarkable rejuvenating properties of Cha . As he bade farewell to his friendly hosts, he carried the seeds of the plant in his pocket and turned them over to the Botanical Society in Calcutta for research and development. The plant was subsequently named the Camellia assamica . Research showed that when this plant was pruned tight like a privet hedge it flushed with a profusion of tender leaf tips. These tips, handpicked and processed, yielded the finest tea in the world.
    I was familiar with the camellia bush. It was a common flowering plant in Assam. Till then I had no idea it was the same plant that yielded Assam tea. In fact, we had a camellia bush growing right by the garden wall. I wondered if the leaves smelled anything like tea.
    Outside in the garden, the air was fresh and moist after the rains. The cat had nabbed the bird. It licked its paws and rubbed its whiskers and looked at me with baleful yellow eyes. All that remained of the poor sparrow were a few feathers and a bit of bloodied wing.
    The camellia bush in our garden was heavy with pink blossoms. The flower was larger than a primrose and similar in shape, and just as delicate and pretty. I picked a leaf and crushed it between my fingers. Strange, it hardly had any tea