Wednesday March 14, 2007
By CLARA CHOOI
HE opens his windows every day to ‘savour’ a magnificent view of undulating hills dotted with millions of emerald-green tea bushes that sparkle like gems beneath rain-washed skies.
If he looks even closer, he would see his over 300 workers in a flurry of activity on the 650ha fields, their nimble hands skimming the low bushes in search of fresh two-leaf buds, which they pluck by the basket-loads.
Not far off, steam is billowing from the smokestacks of a tea-processing factory, the place where the leaves are sent to be withered, rolled, fermented and then dried into black tea.
If he listens hard enough, he could also hear the sound of tourists’ laughter in the wind, carried across the hills from a pretty cafe built to overlook the entire plantation.
Still, even with the knowledge that every grain of soil on that vast land contains a century worth of his family’s blood and sweat, Datuk A. Kesav Kumar is never one to stand on ceremony.
On the tea trail: A splendid view of the Cameron Bharat tea plantation in Cameron Highlands, Pahang.
Seeing green: Kesav Kumar explaining how only two-leaf tea buds are plucked to be processed into the finished product.
“I guess sometimes we just take the things we have for granted,” said the humble 50-year-old owner of the Cameron Bharat Plantations in Cameron Highlands, Pahang.
The plantation is the producer of the Cameron Valley brand of tea, available exclusively in the highlands.
Kesav Kumar said the birth of the plantation was truly a rags-to-riches tale – one that began with his grandfather A. Shuparshad and his migration to Malaya in the early 1900s.
“My grandfather came from Uttar Pradesh in India to get into the sundry business,” said Kesav Kumar.
Shuparshad, he said, opened a shop in Tapah supplying provisions to the workers who were then building the road to the newly discovered Cameron Highlands.
What followed was years of toil as the young Shuparshad slowly moved from his humble shop in Tapah to become the pioneer owner of a larger sundry shop business in Cameron highlands and finally the owner of a small tea plantation.
“He first started out by purchasing a 20ha plot of land at RM8 per acre. That same plot eventually grew into the 650ha that we own today,” said Kesav Kumar.
He added that his father, the late Datuk A. Brijkishore, took over the plantation in the 1950s and began expanding it single-handedly.
Today, the plantation’s yearly yield is about five million kg of tea leaves, 80% of which is sold to the country’s over 100 tea blenders, said Kesav Kumar.
“The rest is used to produce the Cameron Valley blend of tea, which is made from two of the best grades of tea leaves,” he said.
He added that the tea shop, located by the trunk road between Tanah Rata and Ringlet, was opened by his wife and sister-in-law three years ago.
As it fronts the panoramic view of the plantation’s rolling hills and manicured tea bushes, the shop has become a regular stopover for tourists, he said. -- The Star
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