MBAs, BOP & Acronyms

Hello again, dear friends! Sunday evening and I know we need a mood lifter right now. Well, Rajesh Thomas brings us a few much needed laughs and shares some interesting facts in this enjoyable piece! Happy reading.

by Rajesh Thomas

A thought that echoes through the hallowed corridors of the Head Offices is that what is lacking in the plantation industry is new ideas. But the sage wisdom passed on by successful old timers says that planting is primarily man management with large doses of commonsense, interspersed with attention to detail, something most of us learn the hard way and some of us when it is too late.

In one of the larger planting companies of South India, the Head Office in its infinite wisdom thought a good way to upgrade the talent pool of the mangers on the estates was to induct some of the new-fangled MBAs from the IIMs as assistant managers. Little realizing that these highly qualified MBAs may not be suited to planting and degrees do not mean a thing on the estates unless the people who hold them have an aptitude for the life. Anyway a few of these whiz kids eventually landed up for interviews.

In one of my previous stories I had mentioned about the interview process ( called the extension interview ) in the South Indian tea companies where the candidates are required to spend three or four days staying with the estate managers, wherein they are assessed of their suitability first hand.Please see 'The Interview' http://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-interview.html and 'The Extension Interview' by my good friend V.R.Srikanth http://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-extension-interview.html . These stories shed more light on the extension interview.

So, during the extension interview the candidates were taken to the field and the factory by the respective managers or assistant managers and learned a bit about how things work in a tea estate. Coming from the big city life on the estate was very different and fascinating to them. One of the candidates after his first visit to the factory and on his field visit with his manager, where the manager was explaining the field numbers, the young tyro asked him, "Now tell me from which fields you get the BOP grade?", leaving a rather bewildered manager to explain that all grades come from all fields.

This experiment came to nought before it started, when during the final interview, the General Manager (a very senior planter, who had spent his entire career in planting and was a few years short of  retirement) asked one of the candidates whether he had any questions for him. The only question the management prodigy had was, "All this bungalow, servants and clubs are nice but tell me how long will it take for me to sit in your chair?" leaving the venerable senior rather shaken.

Another planting company was looking for additional sources to augment income from estates and it was decided to venture into a bit of horticulture from areas unsuitable for tea cultivation within the gardens. The Bird of Paradise plant was selected to be grown, as it was thought to be hardy and the flower was supposed to command astronomical prices among the florists. Bird of Paradise flowers resemble a brightly colored bird in flight and in some places, they are also called the crane flower for the same reason.

As it was found, mentioning Bird of Paradise plant in correspondences and instructions a little tedious, it was abbreviated to BOP plant.

With work progressing on the planting of BOP plants, the D day arrived when the first lorry load of BOP plants arrived at the estate amidst a lot of excitement. The Tea Maker (equivalent of the Factory Babu in the north) burst into the estate office animatedly and exclaimed “I heard a new clone that produces only BOP grade has arrived and I want to see the plants “. The BOP plants like the MBA graduates turned into a wash out, this time due to marauding herds of Indian Gaur and troops of monkeys.

*BOP (Broken Orange Pekoe ) is a grade of tea, which is commonly used in tea bags and for every day use. The origin of the word "pekoe" is uncertain. One explanation is that it is derived from the transliterated mispronunciation of the Amoy dialect word for a Chinese tea known as "white down/hair". This refers to the down-like white "hairs" on the youngest leaf buds. Another hypothesis is that the term derives from the Chinese báihuā "white flower" and refers to the bud content of pekoe tea. Sir Thomas Lipton, the 19th-century British tea magnate, is widely credited with popularizing, if not inventing, the term "orange pekoe", which seems to have no Chinese precedent, for Western markets. The "orange" in orange pekoe is sometimes mistaken to mean the tea has been flavoured with orange, orange oils, or is otherwise associated with oranges. However, the word "orange" is unrelated to the tea's flavor.] There are two explanations for its meaning, though neither is definitive:

The Dutch House of Orange-Nassau, now the royal family, was already the most respected aristocratic family in the days of the Dutch Republic, and came to control the de facto head of state position of Holland. The Dutch East India Company played a central role in bringing tea to Europe and may have marketed the tea as "orange" to suggest association with the House of Orange.

Colour: The copper colour of a high-quality, oxidized leaf before drying, or the final bright orange colour of the dried pekoes in the finished tea may be related to the name. 

Meet the writer:

 Rajesh Thomas introduces himself:
"A second generation planter. Born and grew up in the planting districts of Southern India. Started my career in the High Ranges and Annamallais Planting Districts for twelve years. Had a stint in Africa for two years. Since 2009 been planting in the Nilgiris.

Read all of Rajesh's stories at this link: https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/J.Rajesh%20Thomas

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My name is Gowri Mohanakrishnan and I'm a tea planter's wife. I started this blog because one of the things that I wouldn't want us to lose in a fast changing world is the tea story - a story always told with great seriousness, no matter how funny - always true (always), maybe a tall tale, long, or short, impossible, scary, funny or exciting but never dull.
 Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea!