That Bangladeshis are voracious readers is evident by the passion felt at the book fairs or " Boi Melas" held in different parts of the country. But there is a shortcoming , a stark scarcity in books written in the English language by our authors in contemporary times.
It is not that our authors cannot write in English, particularly when we see the brilliant editorials and op-eds in the English language newspapers, excellent in content, articulation and clarity of thought and expression on the issue discussed. I guess it is the drought of readers of English language books in Bangladesh that dissuade authors.
I consider this unfortunate when masterpieces and international bestsellers are being written in original English by authors of Bengali heritage: Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhuti Roy, Monica Ali, to name a few. But happily there are exceptions, both fiction and not fiction, and when a bookworm looking for one written in English by a native Bangladeshi finds one, it is only natural to feel excited. And this happened to be the case with me when I came across the book entitled " My Life In Tea", written by Anwarul Azim, in the UPL Book Stall at the Ekushe Book Fair, 2025. The excitement was hyper for more than one reason: My addiction to tea, a romanticism in me of the life of a tea planter, and the author happening to be a friend of mine.
Anwarul Azim, known to his close friends as Shoku, and I grew up in the same neighborhood of Tejgaon, Dhaka, since the early '60s. Our initial relationship was somewhat distant, but we became close on Facebook when we interacted regularly. When I called him to let him know that I bought his book, I was pleasantly surprised that the apartment he lived in was just across mine.
I invited him over for a cup of tea when he graced me with an autograph of the copy I had in hand. I told him that I would withhold the reading for a fortnight when I leave Dhaka for the US. And I did exactly that, reading the book from cover to cover, finished it an hour before my flight landed in Atlanta. The fact that I never took my eyes off the book during the entire 18 hours of flight time, except for the breaks for meals, going to the rest rooms and the transit halt in Istanbul, is a testimony to Anwarul Azim's facile pen and adroit storytelling literary skill.
Reviewed by Hemayet Uddin
"My Life In Tea" is a story of a lifelong tea planter and the tea estates, but the author went much more beyond. He begins with a description of his early life in Manaipurpara, Tejgaon, which was then a sleepy village with pristine surroundings of the present-day capital of Bangladesh. A reader would have to struggle trying to conceive the author's depiction and description of the same area, which, as I write, has one of the most tedious traffic gridlocks of present-day Dhaka city, with endless waiting and unbearable sound pollution.
Anwar speaks of the dilemma when it came to choosing his career on completion of his studies. His father wanted him to be a civil servant because of what every middle class father of the time wanted of his son: a CSP Officer. But young Anwar had other ideas…. He had set his eyes on the private sector still in its infancy, weak with very limited scope and opportunity to build a career. He chose to be a tea planter, joining as a rookie assistant in the British tea plantation owned company, Duncan Brothers, and making his way up the ladder to an assistant manager, a full-scale manager, and finally to the Board of Directors of the Company.
Anwar's parent company owned tea plantations in Sylhet and Eastern India dating back to the early nineteenth century, when the British brought tea to the subcontinent and the aura of the colonial "koi hai" days culture never quite left the tea gardens after they left in 1947. Azim takes the reader into a deep nostalgia of the culture getting integrated in the life of the tea planters by his adept storytelling.
Like any memoir, Anwarul Azim's " My Life in Tea " is a monologue but a very interesting one. He keeps the reader captivated of his days with Duncan Brothers Tea from the beginning of his career till the end.
His account as a planter in the tea plantations in Sylhet takes the reader back in time when the beverage was introduced in the sub-continent by the pioneers and the culture and lifestyle of the planters remained, and perhaps still do, within the confines of the tea gardens. Strangely though, the days of the British Raj had an eerie impact on me for which authors like John Masters, Rudyard Kipling, E M Forster, William Dalrymple, George Francklin Atkinson, Jim Corbett, Amitav Ghosh to name a few, have been among my favourites.
Chastise me if you will for this inexplicable feeling of romanticism I felt of the days of the British Raj despite the white colonists disdain for the "natives" and their way of life; the very same people, many of whom took to crossing the rough seas to escape poverty ridden conditions and social discrimination in the land of their birth to lead a life of comfort, luxury and overlord ship over the indigenous in colonial India.
Anawarul Azim in his book brings back some essence of those days, of course, in the context of the British tea planters, both the early pioneers and the latter-day expatriate planters until they finally handed the management to the locals in present times. Reading Azim helped to bring about some moderation of the romanticism in me of a tea planter's life. He brings out into the open the brute reality at the grassroots with unqualified eloquence, highlighting the hardships that the pioneer planters had to brave: the harsh and hostile conditions of mosquito and leech infested jungles, enduring the heat, sweat and tears to clear, create and leave behind the eye-soothing miles and miles of picturesque lush green tea shrubs in the undulating tea gardens.
It was no milk and honey for the pioneers because of ubiquitous malaria and dysentery that took away many of their lives. Azim takes the reader to the cemeteries, including the one in Begum khan in the vicinity of Deundi tea estate, where the gravestones dating back to the 1800s still stand as sentinels. Their successors of today, do not have it easy either. Azim gives a vivid account of the back breaking grueling day's work both for the " Burra Shahib", "Chota Shahib", "Tilla Shahib" and the "Coolie" labourers, that begin from day break till end of the day. He speaks of the test of human endurance that an aspiring manager has to go through and that only the very tough and determined stay back to make a career while others quit.
The most trying exasperation in the life of a planter is loneliness where his nearest neighbor is separated by miles in another garden and bungalow. The initial three years for a rookie are compulsory celibacy. He hints at some of the more desperate British planter, driven either by sensual urge or defiance of solitude, seduces a damsel from the pluckers' quarters and "sires" an Eurasian.
Azim is equally revealing in accounting the perks to compensate the monotony by being provided with sprawling bungalows, the size and grandeur varying with the position held, together with an army of helping hands ranging from servants, cleaners, cooks, gardeners each on their on right a stand alone replication of Kipling's proverbial "Gunga Deen". And of course the quintessential Clubs where the planters from far and wide would come together once a week and on special days to socialize and revel playing games, and blow away the boredom and miseries by downing the " burra, chota and Patiala pegs" of Scotch while the wives gather to hike the gossip going around.
Given my personal infatuation with the " koi hai" days, I thoroughly enjoyed the author's account of the Club gatherings. Anwar was fortunate to mingle with his expatriate British colleagues and indulge in gay abandon at the Ballichhera, Lungla, Manu Clubs that he mentions in his book. Quite a departure from EM Forster's account of the Gymkhana Clubs of days of the British Raj in the "Passage to India" where Forster describes, "The(Chandrapore) Club is an anarchism, a caricature of the British world it attempts to imitate but which its members no longer know", and elsewhere, " Mrs More ( the central character of the novel) wishes she was a member of the Club so that she could have asked Dr Aziz ( the other central character of the novel) in ; but she knows that Indians who are neither the right colour not the right class, are not allowed into the Chanderpore Club even as guests".
Anwarul Azim also took me back to my own childhood days as I read his experiences of "Shamshernugger", "Alynugger", "Chatlapore", Langla teas estates which I had an opportunity to see for myself when my father was posted in Sylhet in the mid '50s, wandering off in the abandoned airstrips of Shamsher Nagar and the deep railway track marks still embedded on the soil that were used by the allied forces for the Burma front to confront the Japanese during World War 2.
The Author was not amiss in the discrimination of the plantation owners' preference to recruit managers from West Pakistan over Bengalis and of the tumultuous days of Bangladesh's war of independence following the Pakistani Army's crackdown on the people of East Pakistan and committing a genocide. He writes in detail of formidable challenges he had to endure in providing support and refuge to Mukti Bahini guerrilla freedom fighters criss-crossing the border with India at the edges of the tea gardens and protection of the lives of his non-Bengali West Pakistani colleagues from falling in harm's way.
In conclusion, Anwarul Azim's book is a labour of love, and the read is an absolute delight. It would be a loss missing out on it.
