Mindful and Grateful

Crushing, Tearing, Curling. That’s what tea leaves go through to become what is called ‘CTC’, the same tea that goes to make that wake-me-up cuppa in the morning. On a trip to Assam and visiting a tea factory on the banks of the Brahmaputra two years ago, I learnt that growing tea in a plantation and plucking the tender shoots off the top of the plant is only very preliminary stuff. What happens after that is the real story, involving an elaborate process of first transporting the plucked leaves to the factory and spreading them out on long trays where they are blow-dried. And then the dried leaves are first crushed, then torn and curled before being laid out once again flat on the floor to get oxidised, when they turn a deep brown. Next, the crushed, torn, dried, curled oxidised tea leaves are sent to machines that sieve them according to size and grade, before they are sorted and sent off to tea auction houses where they are bought by traders who add value (or not) before branding and packaging them for retailers. When Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hahn — as do other evolved teachers — repeatedly says, “Eat and drink mindfully; walk mindfully, act mindfully, and with gratitude,” the full import of those words hit you as you visualise all the labour, passion, energy, time, resources and costs that go into producing something we take so much for granted every day, like tea. And tea is just one of the zillion things we consume in a lifetime, each made by nature or by people and other animals engaged in the task of creating something.

Source: Economic Times, 29/01/2019