Do you know – what is the second most consumed
drink across the globe surpassed only by water !! – another surprising fact is
all of them – Black, Green, Oolong, White and Pu'erh come from the same plant
called Camellia sinensis, a sub-tropical, evergreen plant native to Asia but is
now grown around the world.
Morning
as one gets up – it is usual to have a cup of hot drink ie., Coffee for most
South Indians – some have tea too ! A
cup of piping hot water with a few tea leaves in it, some sugar and a few drops
of milk – doesn’t it sound refreshing like anything else in the world? And now
if you replace a cup of piping hot water with a cup of iced water and remove
milk (which makes the perfect recipe for iced tea), it sounds equally refreshing,
right? .. .. ..
do see this pipingly hot tea !! – an interesting process !! : https://youtu.be/C9pyRN_Y-hw
Tea
is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or
fresh leaves of Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to East Asia. After plain water, tea is the most widely
consumed drink in the world. There are
many different types of tea; some have a cooling, slightly bitter, and
astringent flavour, while others have
vastly different profiles that include sweet, nutty, floral, or grassy notes.
Tea has a stimulating effect in humans primarily due to its caffeine content. The term herbal tea refers to drinks not made
from Camellia sinensis. They are the infusions of fruit, leaves, or other plant
parts, such as steeps of rosehip, chamomile, and many other plant leaves,
flowers, roots and the like.
For
many of us, the quintessential office
tea round represented a social element in the workplace, boosting camaraderie as well as healthy and wellbeing.
.. .. and when the whole Globe worked from home, away from their Office
premises, the meetings were conducted by Zoom type virtual meetings where people
logged in with cuppa in hand!
BBC strives to be at the heart of controversies and Great Britain
often is exposed for its wrongful deeds – and imagine what they would have done
when they controlled colonies, people, media and more. For sure, they were not the kind rulers, they
were portrayed to be in our school text books.
Kenya's
parliament has ordered an inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse on tea
plantations revealed in a BBC report. The BBC found more than 70 women had been
abused by their managers at plantations operated, for years, by two British
companies, Unilever and James Finlay. The
companies say they are shocked by the allegations. Four managers have been
suspended.
The
Fairtrade Foundation described the allegations as "appalling", and
said the investigation - by BBC Africa Eye and BBC Panaroma - were
"nothing less than a #MeToo moment for tea". Ms Kemei, who serves as
woman representative for a tea-growing area in Kericho county, said the report
highlighted the "entrenched" sexual harassment at "tea
multinationals operating in our country". MP Beatrice Elachi said it was
unfortunate that such incidents were still taking place. "Today is a very
difficult day for me as a woman, leader and citizen of Kenya. Today I've been
reminded that slavery still exists in this nation; I cannot explain how a man
has violated women in tea plantations for 30 years and nothing has been
done," she was quoted by local media as saying.
Deputy
Speaker Gladys Shollei ordered a committee of MPs to complete an investigation
into the allegations within two weeks. In the BBC investigation, one woman said
she had been infected with HIV by her supervisor, after being pressured into
having sex with him. Another woman said a divisional manager stopped her job
until she agreed to have sex with him. "It is just torture; he wants to
sleep with you, then you get a job," she said.
A BBC
undercover reporter, who posed as a jobseeker, was invited to a job interview
by a recruiter for James Finlay & Co. It turned out to be in a hotel room,
where she was pinned against a window and asked to undress by the recruiter,
who has worked on Finlay's plantations for more than 30 years, and had already
been flagged as a "predator" by a number of women who spoke to the
BBC. Unilever faced similar allegations more than 10 years ago and launched a
"zero tolerance" approach to sexual harassment as well as a reporting
system and other measures, but the BBC found evidence that allegations of
sexual harassment were not being acted on. The BBC's Tom Odula spoke to women
who worked on tea farms run by both companies. A number told him that because
work is so scarce, they are left with no choice but to give in to the sexual
demands of their bosses or face having no income.
In History
books, we read about – ‘Boston Sea Party’.
It was an American political and
mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December
16, 1773. The target was the Tea Act of
May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from
China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the
Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the taxes in the Townshend
Act as a violation of their rights. Protesters, some disguised as Indigenous
Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company.
The
demonstrators boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into the Boston
Harbor. The British government considered the protest an act of treason and
responded harshly. The episode escalated
into the American Revolution, becoming an iconic event of American history. The Tea Party was the culmination of a
resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, a tax
passed by the British Parliament in 1773. The Boston Tea Party was a significant event
in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the
Intolerable Acts, or Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local
self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston's commerce.
More than
the read above, the video is ofcourse is very interesting !
23.2.2023
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