She is probably the reason we are a nation of tea drinkers. A comely smile connects cherry-tan cheeks, a mop of lustrous black hair peeps from beneath a colourful headband that holds aloft a polished cane basket and between her dainty smooth fingers a rain-washed tea leaf. All around her the supernal green glow of her sun-kissed workplace undulates in every direction. The trepidation in her eyes is alluring – one can easily change the leaf for a bitten apple. She is variously the quintessential worker adorning the cover of
From the balcony It must have been the same view that held the Muthuvan gaze two centuries ago. The tree line, the undulating hills and the Western Ghats segued into the argent skies through a thick veil of mist. In the calm of early dawn Nature stood motionless narcissistically occupied by its own unrivalled beauty, posturing for a heavenly selfie. I sat on the balcony of the homestay, go-juice forgotten, with the wonderment of peering into a zoetrope. A church bell tolled somewhere in the horizon followed by a muezzin’s
