Zero Valley

Darjeeling is a well-known hill station in India. It also has some
great tea gardens. The tea that is grown here has a distinct aroma that
is known all over the globe. There was a time when business was great.
Things are not so good at the moment. A lot of gardens are closing
down. Zero Valley is lucky to be a successful tea garden where output
is increasing every year. It attracts great talent from all over the
country whenever the management advertises for a position. Recently
Zero Valley needed an assistant manager. A lot of people sent
applications. Ten candidates were shortlisted and one young man was
selected in the end. His name was Arin Roy. He had recently completed
his MBA from a reputed institution. Living in a tea garden and in
Darjeeling is not entirely a pleasant proposition. Specially if you
have lived in Calcutta all your life and know nothing about hills. The
climate is never hospitable and almost nothing is produced locally. But
Arin was ready to take up any challenge and emerge triumphant.
Darjeeling is situated nearly 7000 feet above sea level. It rains quite
a lot through the year. This makes it ideal for cultivation of tea.
Zero Valley was started in the sixties by Rod Poorie. He is no longer
around and the business is run by his wife. The garden is spread over a
large area amounting to ten square kilometres. Sometimes herds of wild
elephants pass through the garden without touching anything. Other than
the tea orchard there also exists a processing and packaging facility.
The tea is grown in shrub form and each plant is about three-quarters
of a person in height. The growth is always on a slope. Women perform
picking of the vital two leaves-one bud. Most of the other work,
largely menial tasks is performed by men. Initially, Arin Roy was put
in charge of distributing salaries. It was during the course of this
work that he met Mina. Nobody quite knew who Mina's real parents were.
Her foster father was a labourer in the garden. She was a senior
picker. Being an expert at her job she had been entrusted with some
supervisory work. She was paid more than her father and the man hated
that fact. He demanded that three-fourths of her salary be placed in
his hands. Whenever Mina protested her father would hit her, even in
public. Arin witnessed the beating up of Mina by Botbot, her father on
three occasions. When he could not take it anymore he physically
prevented Botbot from attacking Mina. Mina was spared but Arin came to
be hated and abraded by Botbot and his gang.
Arin and Mina kept meeting. Arin found out that she could read. He
gave her the few good books he had. And their friendship grew. He would
make one excuse or the other to see her in the course of the working
day. He would summon her to ask meaningless work-related questions and
she would humour him without complaining. When he distributed the
salaries every month he would pay her last of all. Thus he got to look
at her face for long as she was the last in the long queue. She too
began to show interest. She was great at brewing tea manufactured in
the garden. Every morning Arin would find a steaming cup of the drink
on his table. How the cup got there was an obvious mystery. The garden
is a small place. It is also cut off from the outside. Very soon people
began to talk about the love affair between the new assistant manager
and the pretty picker. Arin decided to visit Botbot's house. It was a
wooden hut with a tin roof. Botbot was probably expecting him to come.
Arin got to the point without delay, 'I want to marry Mina.' Botbot
pretended not to hear. Arin repeated his words. Suddenly three men
appeared from the kitchen. Using scissors and brute force they chopped
off all the hair on Arin's head. He had never felt so outraged. Arin
felt that a decision needed to be taken for better or worse. He spoke
to Mina. They felt they were adults and this was the only thing to do.
The next morning they started for Kalimpong where they would get
married. However destiny willed otherwise. A terrible landslide
occurred on the way and the car carrying Arin and Mina fell into the
river Tista. The lovers were never seen again.