Book review: Reading the tea leaves

Title: Tête-à-Tea — Anecdotes from a Life Immersed in Tea

Author: Gurinder Singh 'Indi' Khanna

Publisher: White Falcon Publishing

Year of publication: 2026

For most of us, tea is the cuppa that wakes us up in the morning; for the cognoscenti, it is a career; but for those who are passionate about it, it is a way of life. Indi Khanna, who will be a planter till the day he himself is planted on some hillside, belongs to this last category. Combine this with an amazing zest for life, the irreverence of his Punjabi blood, the memory of a pachyderm, and the storytelling skills of a born raconteur, and what you get is this exhilarating book.

This is not a book that tells you how to grow tea, or the difference between a first flush and a poker flush. What it does tell you, however, in 39 delightful chapters and with frequent use of the four-letter word, is about the hard-working, hard-playing life of a tea planter in India, starting with the ‘muster’ before sunbreak and ending with that last drink at the Planters’ Club (or in a swamp, as the chapter 'A Slight Mishap' honestly reveals!) post-midnight.

Tea as a commercial crop was introduced in the Assam Valley by the British in the 1830s and had expanded to the Nilgiris in the south by the 1850s. It is today one of India’s biggest industries: the country is the world’s second-largest producer, churning out 1.38 billion kg every year from 619,000 hectares of plantations, valued at US$12 billion.

But it is more than just an industry or a product. Tea is the stuff of legends; it has created an entire subculture and way of life, and those who work on its plantations are a breed apart, not unlike the pioneer homesteaders of the American Wild West. The USP of this book is that it introduces us to this genre of homo sapiens as few others do.

Tea planters, of necessity, had to be self-sufficient until very recently, in the era before four-lane highways, televisions, cell phones, OLEX or Blinkit, the internet, fax machines or mobile banking — which is the period the author recounts in this book. They had to be innovative, creative and adventurous, prepared for surprises, and ‘jugaad’ was part of their SOP.

The forty-odd stories in this book explain this in greater and side-splitting detail. A few need to be mentioned to give the reader a flavour of what Indi Khanna has cooked up.

'Nothing Was Ever Im-'piss'-able' informs us that an important part of an assistant manager’s job was to faithfully record, in a rain measure, every morning the precipitation in the preceding 24 hours, since it had a bearing on productivity and future planning. Indi was perplexed by the fact that, of his 13 fields, one consistently recorded much higher rainfall than the other 12. Looking at it from every angle failed to provide any reason or answer for this mystery.

So he decided to pitch his tent one night next to the rain gauge to witness for himself any unusual phenomenon that could explain it. He was roused from his sleep well past midnight by lusty singing and swearing. He saw the night watchman, thoroughly sozzled, totter and weave his way to the rain gauge and empty his full bladder — with remarkable accuracy — into the said receptacle, before wandering off.

He apparently did this every night, being a man of regular habits. Indi had solved the mystery, though he does not tell us what exact explanation he gave his boss.

My favourite story in the book has the same thread — or is it ‘stream’? — of piss running through it. Appropriately titled 'Pissing Golf', it details how native jugaad modified the original game of golf invented in St Andrews.

At the Planters’ Club, one didn’t need to be good at golf to win a tournament; one needed to have a strong bladder and do the Kegel exercises regularly. The rules of the tournament demanded that one have a very large, Patiala-sized drink — Bloody Mary or beer — before teeing off at each of six of the nine holes, the others being ‘dry’ holes.

No great shakes, you say? But wait for rule 2: no one was allowed, on pain of penalties, to relieve himself behind a bush or elsewhere until he had holed out at the ninth hole!

Try that, Tiger Woods.

One presumes that those with prostate problems were not encouraged to take part in the tournament.

The other stories are equally hilarious and give us an honest glimpse of the lives of the planters, whether in Assam or the Nilgiris, places where the author served. They include accosting elephants and wild boars; catching trout in mountain streams, always ensuring that the fish caught were never bigger than the boss’s catch; floating down the mighty Brahmaputra for days on an improvised ‘home’ built on eight drums lashed together; bringing up kids with the sole assistance of a volume of Benjamin Spock; repaying Diwali card debts, not in cash but in bovine currency; and living in a haunted ‘chang’ house — one on stilts — where the thunderbox was wont to collapse if the incumbent didn’t watch his weight.

Each story is a delightful gem, related with self-deprecating humour. Indi Khanna churns them out not with his tongue-in-cheek, but with the said appendage firmly stuck out, challenging you to protest or do better.

Do not, however, presume that it was all fun and games for the planters and their families. Beneath the fun is the reality of an intrepid breed of men and women, fending for themselves in remote regions without the amenities we take for granted in today’s urban communities.

It was a hard life — living in isolated locations, cut off from larger family and friends for 11 months of the year; having to send their children to hostels at the age of five or six; working round the clock, 24x7, especially during the plucking and factory-processing seasons; finding their own quick fixes when things went wrong or broke; dealing with undisciplined and sometimes violent labour; and having a medical officer substitute for a vet and vice versa.

But they took all this in their stride, supported by a close circle of friends and colleagues, an undaunted pioneering spirit and, of course, that vital Planters’ Club.

In a way, they have created history. This book is a light-hearted record of how that history was made. Which is why it is a must-read for all those who partake of the cup that cheers but does not inebriate. And don’t take that last bit too literally, says Indi Khanna.

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of Holy Cows and Loose Cannons — the Duffer Zone Chronicles and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com