49. A Predator- Lost & Lovelorn
A very Happy Women’s Day to all you lovely people at CFC/FOM!
Today, let’s think about the ladies who help to bring us all our daily cups of tea. Cheers to the women who work in the tea gardens and tea factories of our country. These resilient and committed women now perform many tasks that were earlier assigned exclusively to men. They have become the mainstay of the home as well as the workplace.
I would also like to thank my old friends, the wonderful women who were the first writers to contribute their tea stories to Indian Chai Stories when I set it up six years ago. Six years, and it’s come a long way. What started off with a few close friends sharing our adventures and experiences as if we were sitting together in a tea garden bungalow is now a collection of almost 250 stories with inputs from around 70 writers from seven countries!
As you know, I have been sharing stories by women writers in these past few weeks. Over to my dear friend Shalini Mehra, who takes us to Oaklands, which was her beloved home many years ago.Today’s story is set in Upper Assam – on the banks of the Brahmaputra, in Dibrugarh district, where tea was first planted. It’s an enchanting story, narrated with such ease that you are drawn into another world with the first sentence.
Cheers to Shalini and to my dear chai bagaan friends who wrote the first Indian Chai Stories: Ranu Singh Taragi, Roma Circar, Joyshri Lobo and Madhumita Neog. Thank you, my friends, for helping the newborn Indian Chai Stories on its way to win hearts and readers! Cheers to each one of the storytellers, and to you, my very dear reader!!
So go for that cup of garam chai and settle down to enjoy today’s offering.
I’ll be back next Friday with more. Yeh vaada raha!
– Gowri Mohanakrishnan
Indian Chai Stories
This segment is a result of our fruitful collaboration with Indian Chai Stories, a blog by Gowri Mohanakrishnan, a planter’s wife who’s been writing tea stories for many years and is also an active supporter of Chai for Cancer
Her stories come straight from the tea gardens of India and are best enjoyed with a cup of garam chai.
So go ahead #raiseyourcup #DrinkToACause
Visit www.chaiforcancer.org to donate towards our cause.