My Life in Tea

by Anwarul Azim

My Life in Tea tells the story of Anwarul Azim’s years in tea gardens. Interwoven into this beautiful narration is a nostalgic look at old Dhaka from the mid to late 1900s and the war of ’71. Readers will find intriguing the contrasting culture and jargon of the tea-gardens and will learn to appreciate their daily cups of tea with new insight into the effort that goes into providing the perfect hot beverage. Through masterful and often humourous descriptions, the book brings the sepia-tinted Dacca of the 1950s to life and narrates anecdotes about the University of Dhaka, the psycho-social aspects of middle-class families, the effect of the liberation war on the tea-gardens, and the differences between the city-life and the life in the tea-gardens. Through the pages, readers not only get a sense of the beauty of the tea gardens, but also achieve an understanding of the hierarchy that existed, the influence of British culture, and of course, of the people employed there. Most importantly, through this book, the readers will come to recognize and befriend a person who has led a life that has been eventful and adventurous.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 2023

Reviews

[Ayesha Chowdhury]

Reading about Dhaka and Chunaroghat at one go has been the part that hooked me on to this book given my family's roots in sylhet and move to Dhaka where me and my siblings grew up. As the author recalled in detail about the various works at tea plantations, where some of my own forgotten childhood days were spent owing to my uncles working there, I got an insight into how it might have sounded when the photo of me and my elder sibling was taken at a factory with loads of tea being processed behind us. To read about such particular moments so significant to our nation's history (formation of the country following the liberation war of 1971, and the rapid expansion of Dhaka's urbanity) on an autobiographical note has been quite fun and realistically imaginative too. At times the detailed descriptions of working and managing the tea gardens and factories went over my head - I couldn't picture half the items spoken about (owing to the jargon in tea), but then it was the stories about the interactions with these elements that made me understand how much had happened in the first 12 years of the author's life in tea, with a balance of turbulence and serene calm.