Asia Tea Enterprises

Up here in the Nilgiris, specifically in Ketti, things move at a much slower pace than they do down in the plains. Our post is Ketti Post, and the air is usually quite cool and damp, especially in the mornings when the mist hasn't cleared yet. We work with tea, which is what most people around here do for a living. Our building is just a plain structure where we sort through the leaves and manage the paperwork. It’s not a fancy tourist spot with a gift shop. It’s where we do the hard work of grading and packing. The floors are concrete and the walls are painted a simple off-white color. We hear the birds and the wind more than we hear cars or trucks. Some days the rain comes down so hard we can barely hear ourselves talk, but we just keep working through it. We have a small crew of people from the local village who come in every day. We’ve known each other’s families for many years. We sit on wooden stools and go through the batches, making sure everything is okay. It’s a lot of manual work and standing on your feet all day long. When the work is finally done and the sun starts to set, we lock up the big doors and head home. It’s a quiet life, but it’s our life and we’ve been doing it this way for a long time now.