Munnar

My happily cartwheeling thoughts put on their finest British accent as I stroll through the tea estate: an ocean of endless green rows, so perfectly planted, so perfectly manicured. The hills are alive with the sound of music and the sweet kiss of soft rain. Every angle of the green expanse is a postcard. Just to the west, a perfectly symmetrical pyramid of green-plaited rows rises regal from the mist. Like something one expects to see on an elite garden tour where pruning sheers are paintbrushes and working hands the color of sunshine are descendants of Monet and Van Gogh. Nature would not craft the hills in this way - as predictable as the sound of a typewriter's clicking keys, but the green-striped ocean of tea is beautiful.

What is most remarkable is the brilliant quality of color amidst the dancing glow of drizzle and sunshine. A thousand shades of green: young tea leaves with a sun-glaze shine; old tea leaves on the edge of a purple storm; young tea leaves in the soft shadow of morning rain; old tea leaves smiling at noon's sunbath sweat. And decorating the hills like candy or Christmas ornaments are the tea estate houses, where hundreds of fieldhands live with their families. The modest concrete buildings are painted the most brilliant shade of indigo -- a blend of the brightest sky-blue and a newly bloomed violet. Indigo bright walls with red tin roofs, turquoise doors, florescent yellow dahlias growing in the garden and a clothesline showcasing the whole color-spectrum of breezy laundry. I snap photo after photo to capture the radiance of the color explosion: an impossible task. Camera can capture the gateway-moment to memories but cannot sing the sweet buzz of life happening in such a swirl of vibrant color.

Men and women painted ebony by the sun walk barefoot through the steep green ocean rows and prune the tea plants over musical chit-chat. Men work with a machete like knife to clear the beautiful lantanta and morning-glory weeds that encroach upon the neat seams of the tea slopes. Women work with special pruning sheers that have an attached bag for gathering the tea leaves. In an instant of clip-clipping, the ebony handed smile fills the small bag and in one smooth motion delivers the green harvest to a large bag worn on her waist. Generation after generation the same: all day planting, tending and harvesting tea. Like mother and father; like grandmother and grandfather. Since the British came and saw green fortune in these hills. It's surprising how beautiful deforestation can look when so carefully groomed and green.

I am glad to meet these tea-estate hills, where the land-locked ocean is manicured-green and the houses are colored indigo and smell of woodsmoke and spice. I am glad to meet the hospitality of barefoot fieldhand generations and feel silenced by the calm, steady rain. I am glad to chance upon this friendly tea-estate town where school girls wear fresh flowers in their braids and smile bright-eyed into the softness of morning: their pink bows reflecting lantana light. Munnar: high up in the Kerala clouds, a green tea-estate ocean blooms its way into high-noon cups and saucers across the world.