Dinanath Saura stared at me across the small room of his modest bamboo hut. "My father's first reaction was one of incredulity. 'How can a tea labourer become a tea planter? These are the hobbies of kings and emperors,'" he said, gently mocking his late father. "We have no business getting into them." Saura's face, creased by years of incessant labour under the intense Assamese sun, broke into a hesitant, questioning smile. "He would be proud today, no?"
"Indeed he would," I replied.
More likely though, Dinanath's father – a third generation tea labourer – would be astounded. The Sauras, like thousands of other families, were plucked by the British out of their native village in Odisha sometime in the early 19th century and brought to cultivate the fertile soil of upper Assam. Dinanath had achieved what his forebears could not have imagined even in their wildest dreams. Tea labourers do not get to be planters.