Kallil Bhagavathy Temple

Kalil Bhagavathy temple is 12 km from Perumbavoor .

The way to it is hilly ups and downs .

Its a cave temple with 120 steps to be climbed to reach it .

Its said to be originally a jain temple .

Rock carved images of 23 th Thirthankara Parsavanatha 24th Thirthankara Mahavira and Padmavathi devi who is supposed to be worshipped as Bhagavathy by the locals are present .

Its traditionally owned by kalil pisharody family

Kalil means in stone as deity is inside a rock cave .

This was our final temple for the day .

 

The Tea Taster

A cuppa tea in morning or any time has always been a part of life for us keralites ,not to us alone to all parts of our country and to the world itself .

But do we know how much goes behind the humble tea we gulp several times a day between not the cup and the lips but between the leaf and the cup and the lips ?

Most of us have heard of wine tasters and also tea tasters .

We do know they are a highly skilled bunch of professionals who are vital to the market economy of these invigorating beverages used by mankind .

We have amongst our midst a very senior tea taster one who has created records with 50 years of experience in the field who still continues his highly attuned skilled job and has imparted his knowledge to a host of tea tasters in the country .

Ilet me introduce the sauve handsome elegant gentleman with the most pleasant countenance in this side of Cochin W.C.Thomas Sir .

Tea tasting had always made me curious to know more about it and

Thomas Sir was kind enough to give me a glimpse of the very select world of tasting tea .

W.C.Thomas was born in 1941 .

He had his schooling in Kottayam and Mavelikkara and college in MCC Madras and degree in Agriculture from Govt Agriculture college in Vellayani Trivandrum in 1964 July .

In August he joined the oldest tea auctioning firm Forbes ,Ewart ,and Figgis Pvt Ltd in Wellington island Cochin as a tea tasting trainee .

After initial training in Cochin he was off to Conoor ,Calcutta , Colombo,and in 1972 was off to London for advanced training returned in 1972 joined same firm now as a Senior executive ,Trainer,Director, and still carries on as a tea taster and auctioneer !

Tea tasting is not only a skill , its an art and has science and method in it ,though its a highly subjective judgement .

A potential tea taster needs to have excellent taste buds and most importantly an excellent sense of smell .

Taste alone is restricted to recognising Sweetness ,Sourness Bitterness ,Saltiness and Savoury taste ,but not the finer details like bitter sweet or chocolate sweetness or sweet pie but if melded with a keen sense of smell its discretionary powers get multlipied .

Of course canines have 3000 % greater sense of smell than humans .

Tea tasters also need to avoid spicy food ,alcohol ,or smoking they say to safegaurd their sensibilities .

Lets go into the mechanics of Tea Tasting itself as described by Thomas Sir himself .

A fixed weight of dry leaf

(of the tea variety )is weighed ,2.83 gm ( in his office ) is placed in a cup of capacity 0.142 liters and water just reached boiling point is poured into it uptill brim closed with a lid for exactly 5 minutes which is checked using an hour glass .

This is the brewing time .

After 5 minutes the contents of the mug is strained and poured into a tasting cup as a clear liqour while the infused leaf is kept on the lid .

The process is very precise and more than 200 to 300 or more cups are tasted every day .

Its important each cup has contents made by same standard .

There are three steps every taster follows .

First he examines the leaf in detail its colour moisture its flecks ie its physical characteristics .

Secondly he sniffs the liqour in the tasting cup without milk or sugar for its aroma first and then swirls the liquid in his mouth swishes it under his tongue to asess its qualities and then spits it into a spitoon .

What exactly does a taster look for ?

In leaf he looks for colour ,black,brown,mixed,if its curled moist or dry ,its stalk ,fiber ,and flecks gold or silver .

In liqour the charachteristic colour ,brightness ,strength,briskness,body ,quality,aroma,flavour,

At times the tasted sample is slurped using a spoon to get some oxygen along with the tea .

The colour of liqour is not just red or yellow or green it could be shades of the same like mahagony red to reddish amber ,green could be deep green to lighter bluish green the reason is the transparency of tea liqour reflects or refracts with light .

The tea taster is not just a machine trained to asess tea ,he is highly knowledgeable in the intricacies of how tea is grown, collected ,manufactured ,and marketed .

Hes aware of the type of tea and from where it comes from ,the climate in that tea estate ,and has a mental picture out of his experience in the field of these finer details before he attempts to judge on a sample .

Its vital that he does so too ,as his word on the tea values its price in the market , and hes part of its auctioneering too .

The tea so valued based on the market conditions and quality of tea is sent to all buyers of tea before auctioning .

In Cochin it was and is weekly auctioning .

Till 2007 it was manual auctioning and later e auction .

Thomas Sir has been in the field for 56 years and is one of the seniormost tea taster and auctioneer in the country.

In 2006 Thomas Sir got the honour of selling almost all the 945 lots of 4.5 lakh kg of tea recieved on that day for the auction from the estates probably only one such sale in the country in the manual auction times .

The auctioneer not only needs to be quick ,but also to get the maximum price possible , selling the maximum volume too .

Thomas sir has been in the jury of Golden leaf awards and has appeaerd in many prominent TV Channels to elaborate his profession .

The proffesion is hard, but rewarding

these days youngsters dont have the temerity to last the training sessions and hone thier skills .

I would like to end this anthology borrowing Robert Louis Stevenson calling tea as bottled poetry

(though he really meant wine I think )

Like all connouissuers do ,Thomas sir may also describe a tea dreamily ,as one full of earthy aroma perfumed with the pine needles of the foggy hills of Munnar ,Nilgiris or Darjeeling and after he tastes it as a placidly shifting liquid with intense flavouring of the tongue and an austere jolt of comforting warmth alertness and refreshment !

No

Not at all ,

its just my literary adventure and liberty taking off

Tea tasting to professionals like Thomas sir isnt breathless poetry of the teens ,but unsentimental spontaneous clinical judgement of a product and on whose pronouncement the commerce of tea is made .

#teatasting #cochin #tea #teaauction #teatasting #chai #teaestate

 

Sri Lankan Tea Shop

In a Hyundai hybrid driven by our chauffeur for 3 days from today ,just 63 years young ,strong ,wiry Dharma shree took us straight to pinewala from colombo airport .

We were sceptical to see elephant orphanages , as 100 yards from home we see the best specimens every day ,and it did prove to be a disapointment to the 800 SL Rupee ticket each (for SAARC countries )if other foriegn country we pay 4500 to see some anemic elephants standing around !!

After that disappointment ,we needed a good cuppa lankan tea ,so told Dharma to home in on a good old tea shop preferably the family corner shop ,avoiding those sanitary cafes if he can .

True to his salt Dharma sidled up a tinderbox teashop with an old couple making fresh aapams or white hoppers , frail and feathery like an angels gown .

The chilly red chutney was like an adrenaline shot to go with ,and some vadas were not bad .

And I waited for the piece de etat the famous Ceylon tea .

I had in mind the red coloured streaming cup of chai given to me once in a Manathavady tea estate ,and how i nursed it in the cold hill top .

The old man brought me instead an anemic pale white liquid ,which Dharma gulped ,and wife too did not seem to mind but no not me

TEA should not be so i said

Make it strrrrrong please ,red in color and be stingy with the sugar ,milk of course not the watery one .

He nodded as if telling

i have met idiots like you before .

I stood as he poured dilute tea concentrate milk powder dilute and some sugar .

After a couple of shreiks and head shakes he almost met my standards .

It became drinkable

So much for ceylon tea !!

 

Tea Tea Tea

 Much has been written about the perfect cup of morning coffee, especially the famed south Indian filter coffee, and about the modern coffee houses, the branded ones like Starbucks, coffee day, and many such.

But poor tea has no vociferous supporters to broadcast its position as the most brewed beverage and the most used drink in the world after water. But there were and still are people like C. S. Lewis who said " You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me".

Tea was once the mainstay of social interaction in the erstwhile British empire extending from Canada to Australia and New Zealand, but American influence and the marketing tactics of their MNCs led to the various types of coffee like Cappuccino, Americano, Latte, Espresso, plain black coffee, coffee with cream, iced coffee and many more.

But poor tea has remained just tea and tea alone till recently when a half hearted attempt has been made to market iced teas with different flavours like lemon.

Tea is an evergreen shrub, Camelia sinensis which if left to itself can grow into a tree but is generally trimmed to be maintained at about 2 metres height to facilitate manual plucking of its leaves. Camelia sinensis has two varieties; the subtype sinensis or the Chinese tea plant and the subtype assamica or the Indian type.

It is from these two varieties that the various types of tea like the green tea, yellow tea, white tea, oolong tea, pureh tea and black tea are produced. The various types of tea are obtained by adopting different types of processing procedures on the leaves.

Usually the leaves are plucked early at dawn to prevent the warmth of the sun's rays from changing the organic chemicals in the leaves. Traditionally the two topmost youngest light green leaves which have small fine downy white hairs on its undersurface is plucked along with the bud. The leaves are just dried for making green tea and they are steamed and pressed for producing the regular black tea variety. As the leaves get more mature and darker green there occurs chemical changes in the leaves leading to changes in flavour.

Tea is said to have three characters, namely, colour, flavour and body.

In India the Assam tea is known for its strong body, while the Darjeeling variety is famous for its subtle, delicate flavour. It is the nilgiris tea of south India that has a balanced flavour and body and hence tastes the best. The higher the altitude of the estate the better the variety grown in India. Tea is grown extensively in China, South and Southeast Asia and upto Cornwall and Scotland in the UK.

Tea contains quite a good amount of caffeine, about 4%, and also throbrome, just as coffee.

But while drinking the quantity of caffeine consumed may be less because the leaves are traditionally discarded after the decoction is brewed for a few minutes though it is perfectly safe to consume the leaves too.

Personally for me my morning cup of tea is the most indispensable and mandatory vitalising agent and I brew it myself. We get tea leaves (not dust) from the Kolukkumalai tea estate from the tea gardens on the slopes of Kotaguddi hills on the western ghats where tea is grown at a height of 6500 to 8000 feet above sea level. We prefer the flowery orange pekoe variety as it has the combination of colour, flavour and body suited to our taste. I usually use one tablespoon of leaves for each cup and add one extra spoonful for the pot. Boiling water is added, mixed with a spoon and the pot is quickly closed with a lid and allowed to brew for three minutes. We should not think that brewing it longer makes the tea stronger. It only makes it more bitter. To make stronger tea add extra tea leaves. Meanwhile milk is boiled freshly. Big tea cups (not the fancy ones holding 50 ml or so), ones having a capacity of about 200ml or more are taken, the decoction is mixed once again and when it settles filtered into the cups. Milk is slowly added, after removing the floating cream, and mixed till the desired colour is reached. As a connoisseur I do not add sugar. That tea when tasted in the cool quietness of the morning with the sun's early rays just appearing, with the loud chirping of the birds from the coconut, mango and neem trees in my garden, and the high pitched squeaks of the squirrels running up and down the trees as I sit at the dining table and lovingly look and appreciate the quarter century old neem tree just outside our gate makes the most ideal beginning of my day which later becomes one full day of meeting patients with their various aches and pains, deformities and injuries, wounds and scars, physical and mental trauma, cries and sighs, and it offers my only solace for my entire day.

I remember my undergraduate days when there were at least three tea shops around our college. The one most proximate to us was the Nair's tea shop inside the men's hostel campus from where the boys used to get their tea, coffee, cigarettes, biscuits, and small snacks like samosas. It used to be crowded always with one asking for a glass of tea, another a bottle of cooled drink, jostling with yet another lighting his cigarette from a small kerosene lamp with a thin strip of cigarette case cut like how the chefs make juliennes of carrot, and another helping himself to a biscuit or samosa. There were a few boys who were seen more often at the shop than at the wards or in the classrooms.

The second one was on the Poonamallee high road, opposite to our hospital, and because it is open from 4am to 11 pm, we used to visit it during our internship night duties, for our last tea of the day at around 11pm and the first one of the next day at 4am.

The third one functioned from a disused car shed opposite to our medicine block named the Dr. Guruswamy Block. It was patronised by the lady interns, PGs and assistant surgeons as it offered some privacy being within the campus. The shop keeper used to serve special tea and coffee to the students and doctors for a extra price of half or one rupee, and it used to taste good and better than the other two.

Tea making is an art and not all can reach the nirvana state of perfection in this art. This is one of the reason why coffee shops have multiplied and become more popular nowadays as the connoisseurs of tea would not drink a cup of tea outside their home fearing to risk tasting a brew of lesser grade than the one they are used to. They would prefer to have a cup of coffee than taste a cup of badly made tea.

George Orwell published an essay in 1946 detailing the method of making the perfect cup of tea and the eleven cardinal rules to be followed in the process. These include,

1.Tea is best made in a tea pot made of porcelain or ceramic or an earthenware pot. The pot should be washed only with plain water after making the tea and discarding the remnants. Soaps and detergents should not be used. And it should be dried in sunlight.

2.The tea pot should be preheated.

3. Good quality tea leaves from India or Ceylon should be used.

4.Tea leaves should be put into the pot. Usually one tablespoon each for a cup of tea and one extra spoonful for the pot.

5. The pot should be taken to the kettle and not vice versa and the boiling water should be directly poured into the pot. Some people especially the ones who advocate green tea as a health advisory ( though green tea doesn't appear to offer any extra vigour or confidence except a sour face on account of its bitterness) say that the water should be heated only to about 70* C when the first small bubbles start to rise from the bottom of the vessel, as according to them boiling the water renders it devoid of oxygen thereby reducing the taste.

6.Tea should be strong and should have a good body to taste apart from flavour.

7.Tea should be put directly into the teapot. Tea bags and using muslin cloth to tie the leaves alter the flavour of the tea.

8. Tea should be consumed generously from a cup of considerable quantity. A good breakfast cup would be ideal.

9.The milk used should be free of cream. Too much of cream would render the tea thick sweet and creamy.

10. Decoction has to be poured into the cups before milk is added to it and not vice versa.

11.Lastly tea should had without sugar. Some people say that it is bitter without sugar, but it is meant to be bitter. The same can be said of beer too. Nobody adds sugar syrup to beer. The mild bitterness has to be enjoyed. It is an acquired taste but can be cultivated.

Tea, especially the high tea of the Victorian England, when the sun never set on the British empire was famous throughout the world. The elaborate ritual of English ladies and gentlemen, sipping cups of Darjeeling tea, in their dainty little china cups, holding them between their thumb and the index and middle fingers, their ring fingers curved and their little fingers extended and not touching the cups were a familiar scene in most of the well to do families. Accompanied by thin slices of bread toasted to perfection and buttered, small slices of cakes, and buttered hot scones they made a substantial meal. This was such a vital meal of the day that Wilkie Collins wrote, " My hour for tea is half past five and my buttered toast waits for nobody ". As the sun began setting over the empire the grasp and hold of tea over the society gradually declined ,accentuated by the scarcity and rationing of food products during the second world war. But what is lost in this social turmoil can be gauged from what Henry James wrote, "There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as the afternoon tea ". This was coupled by the emergence of the USA as a major economic force in the world. The American MNCs marketed the Brazilian coffee available to them at low cost and made coffee a dominating brew in recent years.

There are a few things which have to be mentioned before ending. In India it is common to see people sipping tea from the saucers but this practice is abhorred elsewhere around the world. Most of the commercial tea packaged and sold in our market are blended tea and dust tea which are of teas of different types blended to give a standard color, body and flavor. But just as a connoisseur of whisky abhors blended whisky and opts for the single malt, a tea aesthete would not opt for commercial tea blends but would choose a particular variety of leaves from a particular estate.

Thus though tea packets are cheaper than coffee in the market, and tea is cheaper than coffee in the roadside stalls and in hotels, there are people like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the famous Russian author who said " I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea

My First Tea Estate

It was during my medical college days i went to a Manathavady tea estate .

I loved the hills even then though I had gone to many those days .

So when an uncle I met in a family friends house invited me over to come to his estate once i just took it up .

Uncle was a manager in a tea estate in Mananthavady in Wyanad in Kerala and i was in Madras .

But i had gone to my native village for holidays and i decided i will take up uncles invitation.

Those days no mobiles and i didnt warn uncle that iam taking up his invit !

So i took a train to calicut and later a KSRTC bus to Manathawady which takes 4 to 5 hours of winding strenous roads .

I reached the place by around 3 pm .

It was cold when i got down from the bus and the place looked beautiful and foggy a bit drizzly .

I asked in a shop on uncles tea estate

I was told it wasnt very far off i just had to walk for 5 minutes .

It was a pleasant walk

I walked into the tea estate factory an uphill walk to reach it .

Straight away i saw uncle dressed like a British plantation manager in shorts giving his piece of mind to an arrogant worker the kind you see only in Kerala tea estates unlike in other states .

Uncle was glad to see me asked me to wait for some time in the office .

He came shortly and took me in his Bullet along tiny paths in midst of tea plantations to reach his bungalow quite a huge one very British .

The door was opened by his man friday Lonappan .

Uncle told me to freshen myself .

In hill stations it gets dark quite early and we met again for dinner in a cavernous dining room where Lonappan served us hot pooris with fresh potatoe curry and hot tea .

Uncle a man of few words told me to go to bed as it was around 8.30 pm and people went to bed early .

I retired to a palatial bed room and laid down in a fourstead ,it was bit scary in beggining as it was pitch dark and every sound made me startle but somehow the warm blankets my travrl fatigue and Lonappans hot food made me sleep off .

In the morning i saw uncle for a glimpse he said Hari i need to go around estate please have your breakfast before you leave as i had told him i would return by morning bus

I thanked uncle as he sped in his Bullet .

Lonappan was more human in the daytime as he chatted with me gave me some hot dosas and tea which i had standing in the lawn bracing a chilly wind looking down at the lovely tea estate lying below me .

I still cant forget my first trip to a tea estate .

10

Bala

 

Tea or Coffee for Me

To me tea or coffee has to be just the way I want them to be

Iam a dictator here

No compromises.

Just the right temperature the right time it should be served

like I love to sip them with my food

breakfast or whatever neither before nor after

This sort of fad is a big irk for many .

For one my wife keeps calling me till I come immediately , once the coffee or tea hits the table .

In a hotel its always too early , as in Brunei where the drink comes first or ,too late ,as in Chennai where people drink tea or coffee as a dessert mostly to wash thier dosas down .

This quirk is shared by some in my matrileneal family ,we mallus being more possesive of this branch of our progeny .

But to others this seems almost a perversion !

Having said about timing let me now talk of the tea I like

I like tea coloured tinted yellowish red ,which proclaims its strength ,having tasted the pure strong tea from the cardamom hills of wayanad or the stepping Tata tea estates of verdant Munnar which is transported to the torrid planes and auctioned in Cochin where I lived half my life .

Either its because I rubbed shoulders with the tea tasters of Fort Cochin or wellingdon island who have a stiff upper lip when it comes to quality or because tame tepid sweet tea puts me off as much as an Adoor Gopalakrishnan movie does !

The Kannan devan hills with its thatched tea shops smoke emnating and merging with the mist of an early morning would be my mother of all teas !!

The version tea thariq served in Brunei or UAE with its syrupy milkmaid treacled sweetness makes me a bit sick !

As far as coffee is concerned having grown up in Mylapore in Chennai nay Madras in my days , where the mother of filter coffees are concoted by conservative madi sari maamis ,with a vengeance unsurpassed , and having imbibed this ambrosia in my childhood , my taste buds sneer at tame imitations of this ,

leave alone imitations ,the bitter concotions of modern coffee houses including the famed starbucks which is the fad of the yuppy crowd ,makes me pity their sorry destiny in calling the said beverage as class !!( tastes fiffer nit to insult anyine )

Similarly the mallu makes horrible coffee with powder not filter even the instant variety is murdered by him with no mercy and the milk is as watery as the periyar during monsoon which makes me run a mile !

So from a mallu go for a tea and from a maami go for a coffee .!

Purinjudha

Manasilayyo

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