Once the lives of the tea workers was a very hard one with poor housing and very low rates of pay although much is being done now to improve their lot. Only the top three leaves or two leaves and a bud are picked. The pluckers, as they are called, pick them with their fingertips before transferring them to the bags, or baskets, on their backs. They carry a long cane which they lay across the bushes so that they are picked evenly. This gives the characteristic flat top to the shrubs along the terraces.
Bushes have to be picked every twenty days.
But a lot has to happen to the tea leaves from the time they are plucked until they reach our teapot. The pluckers deliver their load to the factory or collection depot. It is weighed to determine their pay. The leaves are then spread out in the factory to be dried naturally for fourteen hours, except in the monsoon season when they are heated by electricity for twentyfour hours. This reduces the humitidy by fifty percent after which it goes through rollers for twenty minutes where it is chopped and graded through a series of moving sieves.