I Am DARJEELING TEA!! And This is My Mother's Tale Writes: Diwas Chettri

I Am DARJEELING TEA!! And This is My Mother's Tale

Writes: Diwas Chettri

Greetings! I am Darjeeling Tea, your morning cuppa and as some say "The Champagne of Teas" and this is my story.

The queen of Britain loves me, so do the Germans, Japanese and people all over the globe. My lovers and connoisseurs swear by me and say, I have got this awesome and unique flavour because of the weather and the altitude.

Really!

Well!! they all are wrong, let me tell you I have inherited this character from my mother my "Ama". It is the gentle touch of her fingers, her wrinkled smile, sacrifices, struggles, her sweat and blood and most of all her "HOPE" for a better life for me, her and my siblings that gives me this uniqueness. It’s her sweet aroma not mine.

I owe my life! my Superstar status to her and countless generations of mothers before her. It is their generations of loyalty, love and honesty that I am what I am today. Yet I cry everyday for her as I have done nothing for my mother.

I have got a VIP GI Status(Geographical Status), my mother sadly doesn't. In fact she doesn't have a status at all; she even doesn't own the land the soil where I was born where she was born. Yet! she doesn't complain because she has HOPE that one day she can own this soil that she calls her own.

I have travelled million a miles all over the globe, became the Official tea at the Olympics but my mother has seen these none. Still with pride she says that's my son! even if all the applause is reserved for me. I have filled the coffers with gold for those who seldom visit me yet I have done nothing for my mother who tends me. She struggles daily with her life, hides back her despair and tears just to feed me!

The summer heat at the foothills, the heavy downpours of the monsoon, the spine chilling bitter cold of the winters she cares for none and goes on tending me , feeding me without breaking a sweat, she is my mother and I her son the Darjeeling Tea.

I have been here since time immemorial, witnessed bloodshed and despair of my mother, my brothers and sisters. Many of my siblings, generations of my mother’s rest beside and beneath me- this soil, this "maato", this land, which nourishes me and my mother and yet we cannot call it our own.

Still life goes on as we have HOPE! this is my mother's story and I her son the Darjeeling Tea.
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‪#‎Dedicated‬ to my Mother who works at Singell T.E. and countless other mothers of Darjeeling, Dooars and other parts who have no land rights where their ancestors rest and to the Martyrs who have laid down their life for our land.

*Diwas Chettri is from Kurseong

[File pic for representative purpose only, Via: DAWN]