This past weekend, we went back to the tea plantation of O'land, located on the border of the states Tamil Nadu and Kerala, in the south, for Misha's work retreat.
The trip started not too successfully, with us missing our flight. This July, Indian airlines changed their rules to not allow check-in past 45 minutes before the flight; earlier we had been allowed in as late as 25 minutes before the scheduled (an ironic word given how "on time" Indian flights usually are) departure.
We were punished with a flight to Bangalore the next day, from which we drove for 10 1/2 hours to our destination.
The inconvenience afforded me a glimpse of a very different, developed world, on the outskirts of Bangalore, the infotechnology capital of India--its unexpectedly broad highway, cleanness and modern, colorful buildings reminded me of nothing so much as Florida.
The drive through many provincial southern towns was also quite pleasant--while the dirt and poverty are there, they are not as glaring as in overpopulated Bombay, where people just seem to be piled on top of one another. Here was the charm of green fields wherever you looked, relaxed living and men dressed not in the typical city outfit of semi-formal trousers and shirt pulled tight over carbohydrate-eating belly, but long skirts (called lunghis) often rolled up to reveal spindly, muscular legs in the manner of a somewhat ragged male miniskirt.
The stay at O'land, the tea plantation, afforded some hikes, though with more obstructed views than last time; it is still monsoon time and the mountains were shrouded in a thick layer of mist.
There were activities planned for the 17 guests, specifically a cooking competition where we broke up into groups of three and made dinner for the rest of the group. The dishes were split between Indian and Western (lasagna, banana bread, orange chicken stew), with even more of the latter. Misha and I and one other person were the only Westerners, but many people had studied or lived in other countries; also, as I said before, these representatives of the middle and upper-middle class seem to exist on two planes simultaneously, to mix English and Hindi, watch Hollywood and Bollywood movies, etc.
Some of the remarkable Indian dishes were spicy Goan sausages (Goa, which was Portuguese until 1960, is the only region in India where pork is enthusiastically consumed) and pakoras, both pictured here. The latter is a typical Indian snack made of a mix of diced potatoes, onions, cauliflower, cheese, eggplant, green chillies and a dash of baking powder and rolled in a batter of basan (local flour), water, salt, finely chopped coriander, chopped fresh mint and a little bit of turmeric; everything is then deep fried and served with a dip of strained curd with added salt and garlic or coconut chutney.
In general, Indian cooking--aside from making the omnipresent rice--is quite fussier and time consuming than the Western kind; you can't get by with, say, grilled chicken and salad, not to mention that fresh salad is unknown in Indian cuisine because vegetables are always put into dishes and cooked.
Finally, because this is a tea plantation and tea picking happens year round, there was a tea gathering competition that Misha's younger colleagues participated in, collecting, between 12 of them in 2 hours, only 1/10 of what a typical teapicker gathers in a day.
I also got a lesson in the making of white tea--the most expensive kind because of the amount of labor involved. Once the tea leaves are gathered (they are pictured here next to the monkey-favored jackfruit), they have to be picked over to find the youngest, unopened ones. These are then dried in the sun for about ten days, and finally they're ready to brew.
Since I spent half an hour gathering the tea for one cup, my recent turn to art-making just might end up being a more profitable occupation.
No comments:
Post a Comment