Editorial

Security

Politics

World

Letters

Sports

Obituaries

Archives

by FACTOTUM

It was curiosity added of course to general interest in English Literature that impelled this writer to trek it to the Auditorium of The National Library and Documentation Centre where Prof. Dr. Gerhard Stilz of Tubingen University Germany enthralled a group of writers and enthusiasts on an intriguing subject "Buds or Leaves. The moral and aesthetic dimensions of South Asian tea plantations in colonial and postcolonial writings."

While readers would confirm that tea drinking is made a ceremony of, one little knew that tea and tea drinking had entered into the realm of literary writings.

Although tea was a popular brew in ancient China tea seedlings smuggled in by the colonialists to India and Sri Lanka flourished and was ably marketed in the west.

As early as 1657 a shop bill introduced 'Tea: Cultivation to Consumption' in a bid to displace other brews. Subsequent events prove that tea caught on.

The shop bill in Garraway's Coffee Home reads:

It maketh the body active and lusty
It helpeth the Headache, giddiness and heaviness thereof
It removeth the obstructions of the spleen
It is very good against the Stone and Gravel, cleaning
the kidneys and uriters, being drunk with Virgins
Honey instead of sugar
It taketh away the difficulty of breathing, opening

obstructions

It vanquisheth heavy dreams, easeth the Brain and

strengtheth the memory

Discounting the slur on Orientals the following four lines would indicate the favoured status accorded to tea.

Tea, although an oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast.

(Gilbert Keith Chesterton, "The Song of Right and Wrong", (1914)

As the topic indicated the aesthetic dimension filtered through even to post colonial writings in Sri Lanka and Prof. Stilz had delved deep into the subject as illustrated in his focusing on the following piece.

Dark ravines foaming white
Between flushing fields
Of maturing tea
Make the beckoning call.
Its urge ignites the fire
In muscles and marrow
Of lithe limbed girls -
Fieldwards drawn they go,
Baskets flung across
Beat rhythm on their flanks;
Their leaf-shaped eyes;
Their star centres
Scan the flushing rows,
And deft fingers clip
Two leaves and a bud
Two leaves and a bud

(C.V. Vellupillai, "In Ceylon's Tea Garden", qtd. in Sri Lankan Literature in English 1946-1998, ed. D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke (Nugegoda: Deepanee, 1998), 230).

There was much more for the audience to relish before the session ended fittingly with the brew that was the topic of the unusual rendition.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager