Photography: Salman Saeed.
The tea workers are completely cut off from their origins in India. They can only partly recall the languages of their forefathers. They speak “a sort of distorted Hindi” that passes as a common language on the tea estates. They also speak in Deshali, which is a mixture of Bengali and language of Orissa. Their accents while speaking in Deshali testify their cultural corrosion.
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syedafarnaz said,
October 11, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
I have been to the tea gardens..and when i heard the tea workers talking..i really couldn’t understand their language properly. It wasn’t hindi or bangla..so it was difficult to communicate with them. So I can really relate my feelings to this piece of writing.
Dalva said,
November 11, 2008 @ 6:24 am
People should read this.
sayma said,
November 26, 2008 @ 8:47 am
i m not going to the tea garden in india but going sylhet tea garden and see many tea workers work there.