Years had gone by since Lum Kwa’s death. Charles Bruce was no longer with the Assam Tea Company. It had been quite some time since he had been dismissed. The scenario in Upper Assam had changed drastically. Large tracts of dense forest had been cleared and tea gardens had been set up.

Disturbing the peaceful quiet of the compound, the manager’s horse stopped in front of the bungalow. In seconds, the stable boy came running from somewhere. The manager got off his horse and walked into the house.

‘Hey Big John, come here. Idhar aao,’ he called.

Leaving his job, Ho Han appeared before him with his head down.

‘Go to the machine room,’ the manager said and gestured with his hands. He explained through a mix of gestures and words that Ho Han was needed at the factory. He would know what it was once he got there.

Without uttering a word, Ho Han saluted and left. He walked through the small lane of the tea garden. On both sides, male pluckers were at work. The garden had been made by cutting the tea plants at the height of three feet. Now they were almost double the height. The workers plucking the leaves from those trees were soaked in sweat. They were all local labourers working under a local supervisor. Some distance away, a group of workers was cleaning and weeding a newly planted area. The European assistant manager was supervising with a short steel-tipped stick. He looked annoyed.

All the work had to be done with fewer workers. The local labourers did not want to work. They ran away whenever they got a chance. But the expansion of the tea gardens was in full swing. European tea traders were attracted to the tea business after Assam tea had been accepted at the London tea auction. Many European traders came to Assam after that to start a business in tea cultivation. The East India Company began to lease out thousands of acres of wasteland to European traders and a few local people who were interested in tea cultivation.

But as the number of plantations increased, the company began to face a shortage of labour. The region was sparsely populated. The locals were unwilling to work and difficult to manage. The Chinese coolies and carpenters were expensive.

There were not many Chinese tea makers at the time. Of these, some were experts at making black tea, while others were good at making green tea. The other Chinese were a mixed lot – packers, lead-canister makers, carpenters, and the rest coolies. In the beginning, a skilled Chinese tea grower had been a necessity. But now that some locals had already been trained by the experts, the tea traders did not feel the need for skilled Chinese people now. Since Lum Kwa was also not there to manage the Chinese workers, whom the tea planters considered aggressive and rigid, the company had stopped bringing in Chinese coolies.

The European tea planters were desperately on the lookout for labourers. In place of the Chinese workers, the recruitment of coolies from different parts of British India was on. The Indian labourers would be arriving in a day or two. Ho Han and his group had constructed rows of thatched houses with the help of local workers for the new recruits.