Tea and Gunpowder

Tea and Gunpowder Set in early 1930s India, the novel explores various responses to independence and modernity under colonialism. The story is told mostly through the eyes of two young middle class sisters, whose education and wealth allow them freedoms denied to the average female of their time. They are caught up in the swirling controversies and theories about gaining independence from Britain, and while one sister sees steadily her vision of a non-violent incremental approach, the other sister shifts from her revolutionary sympathies toward a more nuanced understanding of longer term goals through education, labor mobilization, and a humanism based on Tagore’s ideals. She is also somewhat influenced by a cousin, who has, like many young men of his time been forced underground. The sisters find excitement and a sense of purpose in helping him spread Marxist pamphlets to workers and peasants. It is also a feminist look at the strangling lives of privileged middle class women; how they accept (or reject) their own subjection, and also how it is reinforced by nationalist rhetoric. While the sisters enjoy their financial independence and freedom, they also recognize new anxieties that attend their decisions. The novel takes a nostalgic look at the joint family (gently fraying, as tradition conflicts with Western ideas) and its strong ties that undergird much emotional intactness. The book is set in the hill regions of Bengal and in Calcutta, and provides a backdrop to the growing unrest of peasants and workers alike as the communists attempt to infiltrate the region. The tea in the title refers ironically to the iconic image of the smiling tea garden worker holding up two leaves and a bud of fine teas, to which she relates only as a means of production, and also to the fact that the comfortable lives most of the main characters is sustained by that same labor. The river Teesta and Himalayan mountain ranges are ever present in the lives of the characters in the shape of floods, hideouts, story-telling, British climbing expeditions, and the underground trails for moving weapons and subversive literature. Some landmark historical events like the Chittagong Armoury raid, the trial of Bhagat Singh, the Bhawal Sanyasi case, the storm over the Simon Commission report, the suppression of the vernacular and revolutionary presses are the historical context of the story. It is also a love story, as suggested by the epigraphs.