Makaibari spans 670 hectares over six separate ridges. The tea covers 270 hectares, while the woodlands cover twice that area. The tea is ensconced between the forests. This makes supervision difficult. In other plantations, the tea is a contiguous carpet. This means that one has to work thrice as hard to cultivate tea at Makaibari.

I devoured all the available literature as well as scientific publications on tea. My readings revealed that the concept of mulching was only touched upon and there was no reference to mulching in any published journal. Nature did not require any external help to sustain and evolve the myriad life forms comprising the ecosystem at Makaibari. How otherwise, could so many varieties of trees exist, cheek in jowl in a sub-tropical rain forest and harbour the wide diversity of organisms that they did? Human beings only imbalanced nature for their own use, and needed science to bolster the equation of their monstrosity. Science, it seemed, desired victory over nature, while conveniently forgetting that the creature that wins against the environment ultimately destroys itself.

One day, as I walked in a distant part of the plantation, I found a pheasant, which had succumbed to insecticide poisoning. Close observation for over a month witnessed the demise of a wild cat that fed on it. Finally, the carcass of a panther completed the chain of destruction. This was shocking.