I first heard about Margherita 10 years ago and was immediately intrigued. A short and very scenic drive from Dibrugarh, this village in Assam remained on my bucket list since, and last week, the trip finally materialised.
Its claim to fame is not just as the source of India’s tea story but also of oil, coal and plywood. The Digboi oil refinery is a stone’s throw from here, oil having been discovered accidentally while the railway line was being built in 1881. Many of the tea estates en route from Dibrugarh—Bogapani, Dirok, Namdang—belong to McLeod Russell, one of India’s largest tea producers.
Margherita is also home to the Singpho tribe. I was here to meet Rajesh Singpho who produces the falap, a tea that’s native to this region and community—made from large-leaf Assamica plants, naturally withered, wok-fired and fermented in bamboo tubes, not unlike the puerh. In Rajesh’s home, over tea served with a side of jaggery, we talked about life in the village, and how borders change communities. For the Singphos and several other tribes in this part of India, borderlines placed them suddenly in three different countries—India, Myanmar and China. While this divide meant that the tribes were now of different nationalities, perhaps even different allegiances, it has forged a greater unity, a greater desire to define and protect identity, practices and way of life. They remain extremely close knit.
In 1823, even as the British were trying to break China’s monopoly over tea, Robert Bruce, a Scotsman was introduced to the native tea plant in Margherita. The story goes that a nobleman named Maniram Baruah introduced him to Beesa Gam, a Singpho chieftain who shared tea samples. The Assam tea story often recounts this origins and how it changed the scale and scope of the tea industry. The Khamtis, Morans and other tribes who live here were—and continue to be tea drinkers—are often missed out in this conversation. Some years ago, a Moran tribesman told me that had Robert Bruce met the Moran chief instead, he would have been served tea all the same—and perhaps the Moran people would now find themselves in the spotlight. A quirk of fate perhaps.
From Margherita, I drove up to Arunachal. Barring the border, the landscape and the way of life was no different on either side. I arrived in Margherita to see the birthplace of the Indian tea story. What I found was both grand and quietly ordinary. There are so many tribes here, so much history, so many untold narratives still waiting to be pieced together. And yet for the communities themselves, tea is simply livelihood and a way of life. As Takur Darrang, a veteran tea hand put it—it is “what salt is to food.” No home is ever without it. Often it’s grown in the kitchen garden and processed by hand. In every home I visited that week, there was a fireplace and a kettle, blackened with soot, hot water always ready for cha.
1001 Teas is a fortnightly series about the many stories hidden in the world of tea. Aravinda Anantharaman (@AravindaAnanth1) is a tea drinker, writer and editor.