Over the course of many trips to the tea country, Juliet Coombe realised her three-year-old son, Samad was an essential part of her team. Having befriended people wherever they went, Samad lured cooks out of their kitchens and tea pluckers away from the slopes and into conversation with him.
Juliet says the sight of her son listening to stories from plantation workers is one of her favourite memories from the six months she and co-author Daisy Perry spent working on ‘Generation T – Sri Lanka: The Ultimate Guide to Tea’. Here’s an indication that this is a book that’s as much about people, as it is about one of the world’s favourite beverages.
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| At the launch: (L to R) Anselm Perera, Hiran Cooray, Daisy Perry, Herman Gunaratne and Juliet Coombe. |
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As might be expected, corporate giants like Anselm B. Perera (Mlesna) and planters like Malinga Herman Guneratne make an appearance, but an equal number of pages are devoted to lesser known personages – Palaniamma, gardener and medicine woman and Kuttan the doorman are joined by a host of plantation workers, chefs, waiters, managers, naturalists and even a veterinarian. It’s the reason Juliet likes to describe the book as democratic –“we don’t care who you are or where you’re from, as long as you have a good story to tell,” she says.
In hot pursuit of tea tales, the two intrepid travellers set out to explore as much of the tea country as they could – venturing into remote villages and trekking across large plantations.
The result is a book that incorporates histories of people and places, as well as travel tips and explorations of Sri Lanka’s modern tea industry. It also documents a contradiction that has begun to take hold – tea culture is a new and burgeoning trend, but simultaneously, the industry itself is struggling. Planters say, skilled workers are migrating to the cities, and the amount of land under cultivation is dropping, even as the market gets more discriminating. Speaking of hotels like Heritance Tea Factory, Daisy says, “the culture is being heightened there, but in terms of the industry it’s really suffering.”
Still, people continue to find new uses for tea. Adding to its surge in popularity is the increasing awareness that it is no longer just for drinking. Juliet and Daisy devote the last chapters of their book to tea based recipes. Covering the spectrum from meats and curries to desserts and shakes, these are the inventions of chefs like Lal Fonseka and Vajira Gamage.
Throwing their net further afield, Juliet and Daisy identify places where you can bathe in tea or eat breads laced with tea; paint with tea in an art master class or hobnob with eccentric artists who turn tea bush roots into furniture and create tea-picking dolls out of old saris. Also, on the fringes are events like the annual tuk-tuk challenge – where three wheelers careen through the tea terraces.
For the more adventurous, in this case Daisy, there’s also the actual experience of plucking tea. Describing the weight of the basket and the need to deal with leeches and snakes, she says it’s painstaking work that requires real experience. Ruefully, she admits that plucking at a respectable speed is still beyond her ability. Following the trail from professional to personal, the two women found themselves intrigued by the cultural and religious mores of the plantation workers. “There were so many traditions and things we wanted to find out about,” says Daisy explaining they spent some time with the families to create chapters like the one on the Kandy District’s Hindu tea pluckers.
Aside from the text, the book includes many photographs, courtesy Juliet. A photojournalist turned publisher, she first came to Sri Lanka to document the situation post tsunami. Daisy, then a student of literature in London, arrived around the same time to help an NGO chart the altered coastline using GPS. Daisy fell in love with Sri Lanka, Juliet with a Sri Lankan, and they both settled down here.
Today, the two run the Sri Serendipity Publishing House together in Galle and Generation T is the third book to come out of the company. It has in its turn inspired several other books – “it made us realise there’s a whole book on tea cuisine and some of the characters in there should be writing their own novels,” Juliet tells me.
Explaining that some projects are already a reality, Daisy says they will be publishing Herman Guneratne’s autobiography, ‘The Suicide Club’ later this year, along with another guidebook to Sri Lanka. Talking about how her position as an outsider allows her to appreciate her adopted home all the more she says, “Ultimately the book is a reflection of the things that make Sri Lanka great.”
Green Tea and Chicken
Consommé by Lal Fonseka
of Jetwing St. Andrew’s
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 350g Chopped Chicken
- Mixed Fresh Herbs
- 200g fresh green tea leaves (if not available use dried leaves)
- 12 cups of water
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 50g onion
- 2 egg whites
- Salt and pepper to taste
Method
- Chop the chicken, onion and garlic and put into a pan with fresh herbs and tea leaves.
- Add the egg whites and mix all the ingredients together.
Add 12 cups of water and simmer for an hour at medium heat.
- Strain the soup with fine gauze cloth (rather than a metal sieve which may separate the soup)
- Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with fresh green tea leaves.
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