The smell of rain on the bright tea was sharp and clean, hinting of the aroma that comes from a cup; the backs of the tea-pickers were burnt in the white, midday heat, even in the shade of their umbrellas

Behind the rolling green sea of tea plants the mountains of the Bhutanese border scratched the underbellies of the pre-monsoon clouds. Winds that smelt of rain filled the saris of the tea pickers. The sweat ran off their faces and down their arms. They flicked their wrists, shaking it off, before dropping the leaves into the conical baskets on their backs. They chattered and laughed, their fingers cropping through the bright flush on the tops of the bushes, milking the buds from the plants.

It is just after midday and the pickers moved out from the bushes to have their loads weighed before lunch. Young girls of perhaps ten or eleven stood at the edge of the picking section. They had babies tied across their backs and chests with bright strips of cotton; little hot-chocolate faces waiting patiently for the maternal milk bar that would arrive when their mothers had weighed in their loads.

In the factory below the garden, the stillness of the picking was replaced by the roar of the tea-making process. The giant airy building was in constant motion. Metal tubs of fermented leaves crashed in and out of drying bins, trolleys rattled up and down the passages, piled with tea en route for firing. Thin, brown legs darted around the continuous movement of the hungry machines; lines of CTC (high grade teabag tea) moved along belts, pouring in a continuous line like an unending trail of gunpowder, the dust constantly swept into piles by stooping women with bamboo frond brushes.

In one day the same leaves had been plucked, withered, fermented, fired and sorted from bush to teapot.

The manager’s garden sits peacefully above the thundering factory. Pineapples stood beside the vegetable garden on stubby stalks. The lychee tree hung heavy with pink fruit. Lemons, oranges, peaches, tamarinds, bananas and a cinnamon grow around the dak bungalow. Lunch had just finished; rich Assamese fish curry with sticky rice, fried aubergines and raita (curd with chopped onion and cucumber), all eaten with the fingers to get the real taste. The conversation centred on Michael Caine films, Indian politics, the plans for a grand coconut and chicken curry for dinner; all forms of escapism from the omnipresent topics of tea and terrorism in Assam.

Billy, the manager, had been talking about the primary school on the tea garden and his plans to start a Girl Guide and Scout group for the children of the pickers. He believes it will give them a sense of moral values and some pride in themselves. He speaks like a 19th century philanthropist.

There are nearly 1,000 people working in the garden with Billy as one of the new breed of Burra Sahib (big man – the senior manager). There is an entire community within the estate boundary. Every worker has a good house with solar lighting and pumps. There is a permanent staff of teachers in the primary school and a hospital with midwives and a doctor. 1995 was a record malaria death-free year for the garden but, as long as the mosquitoes fly, the risk of malaria is there. Billy has been researching organic repellent using the oil of the neem trees he has planted around the gardens. He is a popular manager.

At the end of Billy’s bungalow garden the frangipani tree was in full bloom. Below it, the roadway down from the garden filled with people as the picking day ended. The women had taken off the thick aprons that protect their saris from the tea bushes. It was a stream of bright colours, each woman carrying her conical basket on her head, many of them with the ubiquitous black cotton Sunlight umbrella stuck into the wickerwork. The babies were back with their mothers, their older sisters relieved of child-minding duties. The volume of chatter had increased since the midday heat among the bushes. They were heading home, even though home is still within the boundary of the tea garden.

There is a bitter edge to the tea garden in Assam. In the benign shade of the frangipani tree was a sandbag bunker. Inside the barricade stood a guard, his gun always pointed at the gate of the bungalow. He had the letters ATPSF on the sleeve of his uniform, Assam Tea Plantations Security Force. Wherever the management went in the tea garden at least two of these guards went too. Even a walk among the tea-pickers meant an entourage of two, one facing each way, their guns ready in their hands. Whenever Billy jumped out of his jeep to inspect some bushes, or to speak to one of the workers, a guard was by his side. A plan to leave the estate one afternoon to meet some local village weavers was abandoned as too much of a security risk. A local panchayat (village council) representative had just been murdered. Troops were pouring into the area to try and suppress the agitation boiling amongst the tribal separatists. The local tea plantation community was on a security alert.

The end of the working day in the tea garden is marked by the wail of an air-raid siren. It is an ominous sound, moaning over the hushed acres. The guarded boundaries are not impregnable. Two years ago a garden manager was shot by extremist Assamese separatists just outside his bungalow in Upper Assam. The garden managers, their families and assistants are soft targets for the separatists who rage against the foreigners from other Indian states. The core of the separatist movement comprises the Bodos, the earliest ethnic settlers of Assam. Their fight is against the great influx of Bangladeshis into Assam but, to the separatists, the tea planters are bigger fish, representing foreign tea companies in a system set up during the British Empire in India. This came to a head in 1979 when the violence really began in earnest.

In the aftermath of the general election in April 1996 the violence again escalated. During the ten days after the final vote count 101 villages in the region were burnt down and over 70 people murdered, including a leading Assamese journalist known to have been sympathetic to the separatist cause. Then an assistant manager was shot at point blank range by an Assam Tea Plantations Security Force officer over a misunderstanding about a television; suddenly every head was looking over every shoulder. Safety is not a state of mind that the tea planters are familiar with.

Billy looked out over a new section to be planted. “It would be a little like hundreds of thousands of North Africans pouring into France every year and just expecting to grab a piece of land and settle down.” He bent down over the young plants to check their condition.

He was out in this area of the garden to see a puja (prayer offering ceremony) for the new tea plants, the first to be put in since 1992. There were 3,000 plants but Billy was there to see the first lucky seven. A young plant was standing next to the plot where it was to be dug in. Beside it were five dark green betel leaves, each one with an incense stick burning beside it. The leaves had little mounds of chickpeas and glistening sweets piled onto them. A string of bright plastic flowers hung above the leaves.

Billy asked for the first hole to be dug. The women, who had been carrying the plants to the section in round baskets, gathered around. The hole was dug in the rich earth and the first plant went in. Everyone clapped. The puja chickpeas and syrupy sweets were passed around for a ceremonial tasting. Billy’s wife Alka stood under a tree, sheltering from the hot sun, lending her support. She clapped enthusiastically when the first plant was bedded in.

Billy is young to be managing an estate. Both he and Alka are passionate about what they are doing.

Later, on the netted verandah of their bungalow, Alka described the tea life of Assam. Sometimes her fingers strayed nervously through her pretty long hair as she talked about the security problems that they face every day.

“Each time Billy is not back by the time he said I start to worry and picture the awful things that might have happened to him.”

The tea garden is very isolated, cut off from the main roads by rutted, dust tracks. This makes them an even softer target for the hit squads. The separatists often move around the area on bicycles just looking like any other villagers making their way home along the dust roads.

After three years in this garden Billy and Alka have finally got a telephone. It arrived on the 26 January 1996. Alka remembered the exact date and clapped her hands in triumph. Prior to this she had driven two or three hours to the nearest towns to make a call. Their daughter is at school over a thousand miles away in Rajasthan and Alka’s friends are mainly in Delhi. Now she has a link with the outside world. Even when it takes 20 or 30 attempts to get a line she is grateful that she can do it.

It is like living on an island, a tiny kingdom under the constant threat of siege. Alka poured tea into fine cups, tea fresh from the garden. She talked warmly about the work she does with local women, selling their tribal linen weaves for them. She has plans to export and to find a really secure market for these women and their bright, check fabrics. She gains nothing from it. It means she can apply her mind to something beyond the boundaries of the tea garden. She answered positively when queried about the loneliness and isolation of a Burra Memsahib’s life.

“This is my role. I run Billy’s house and look after the staff here. I am here to support Billy so that he can do his job.”

Her staff is loyal and devoted. Sukkuji, the cook, has moved with them from garden to garden bringing his sticky pudding recipes and sartorial snappiness from kitchen to kitchen. Young Rita, Alka’s ayah (maid), has been with them since she was sixteen. Alka and Billy have become like her family and now they want to find her a good husband so that she can have her own family.

The tea company that Billy works for gives the female workers twelve weeks of maternity leave on full pay and they have to stop work four weeks before the due date. This is almost unique in manual Indian industry. Billy has gently tried to introduce the idea of family planning, offering Alka and himself as examples with their one daughter. This seems to be the one message that really takes root; though it grows slowly in the consciousness of a people whose culture dictates breeding as many children as there is floor space for them to sleep on. If, in their eyes, the rich and powerful tea garden manager only has one child, there must be some logic behind it. But, it is not an easy lesson for them to learn and the garden creche, run by a canny, one-armed, cross-eyed, matriarchal figure, is always full.

Billy stopped the jeep as he passed by the creche mother. She was standing in the shade of an acacia tree, each eye roaming in a different direction over her temporary brood. He asked her whether the children were getting enough milk and biscuit supplies. The matriarch shrugged her shoulders and said that supplies were short. Billy made a note to deal with it. The supplies arrived at the creche the next day. The attention to detail never falters.

There was a football match coming up at The Club, the hub of the tea planters’ social life. It was the most prestigious cup of the year and Billy’s team is not bad; even to the point of inspiring the flutter of a few rupees on the day. There was a long discussion on the topic of this day out; to go by jeep or minibus, minibus or jeep, early departure or mid-morning take-off. Everyone would have to leave the big event before sunset to get back to their gardens before dark. Even though they all travel with security guards, driving even in twilight is to be avoided. The terrorists love to be shrouded by shadow and the night.

In the tea garden all emotions and senses seemed a little heightened by this strange, isolated world. The smell of rain on the bright tea was sharp and clean, with just the first hint of the aroma that comes from a cup; the backs of the tea pickers were burnt by the sun in the white, midday heat, even in the shade of their umbrellas; Billy and Alka greet visitors from the outside world with greater warmth and generosity than most hosts; the frangipani smelt sweet and heavy above the sandbag bunker with its guard, his weapon always loaded, his eye on the road.

Billy’s team won the football match but the terrorism remains.