The Tea Estate – Part 1: Mist

The tea bushes ran down the hillside in perfect green ribbons, and Anika could see at once that something was wrong.

"The yellowing," said Rohan, at her elbow. "On the lower slopes. Three seasons now."

She crouched, turned a leaf over, rubbed it between her fingers. She was twenty-nine, an agronomist from Colombo, sent by the company to find a cause and a cure. Mist curled across the hills, pearly and cool, and the air smelled of wet earth and bruised leaf.

He was thirty-three, tall, in a faded green shirt with rolled sleeves, with a lean, tanned face and watchful eyes. He had grown up on the estate. His father had managed it before him.

"Soil?"

"I've tested it."

"Water?"

"Tested."

"Then I'm afraid I don't know," said Rohan, with a rueful smile. "I only love it."

She looked up. He wasn't joking. For a long moment they were both silent, listening to the pickers singing down the slope, their baskets bobbing like lanterns in the mist.

"Show me everything," said Anika.

For weeks they walked the estate together at dawn. He showed her the old terraces, the springs, the shade trees his grandfather had planted. She took samples, ran tests, filled notebooks. In the evenings they drank tea on the veranda of the bungalow, watching the sun slip into a bruise of purple cloud.

"I think it's the shade," she said, on the twenty-first day.

"The shade?"

"Your grandfather planted the right trees. But in the last decade, they've grown. The lower slopes are in permanent shadow."

Rohan stared at her, astonished. "Of course."

"Prune them. Thin the canopy. In a season, the bushes will recover."

He laughed aloud and spun her round, her notebook flying. "Anika. You're a genius."

"Can I ask you something?" she said, breathless.

"Yes."

"Do you always hug people who tell you to cut down trees?"

"Green?" said Rohan, grinning.

"Green," said Anika. "Very green."

Continue the story: Part 2 – First Flush.