Sreemangal

Sreemangal exists because of tea. Commercial planting began in the Sylhet region in the 1850s, and the low hills of Moulvibazar, with their rain, drainage and shade trees, proved ideal; within a generation estates covered much of the district. The planters, mostly British companies, could not recruit enough local labour, and brought workers from central and eastern India — Chhota Nagpur, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and the Madras Presidency — in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Their descendants still make up the estate communities, speaking their own languages alongside Bengali.

The railway from Chittagong and Dhaka to Sylhet, built in the colonial period, gave the tea its route to the ports and made the small market town at Sreemangal into the trade's local centre, with brokers, warehouses and a station that still sits at the middle of the town. Government research into tea cultivation was established nearby, and the town became the recognised capital of Bangladeshi tea.

Labour history runs through the same ground. In 1921 thousands of tea workers walked out of gardens in the Sylhet region and set off for their home districts, an exodus remembered as one of the earliest organised labour movements in the region. Low wages, housing and land rights on the estates have remained contested ever since, and a wage strike across the tea sector in 2022 brought the gardens to a standstill. Since the late 20th century the town has gained a second livelihood in tourism, with resorts along the Bhanugach road and a steady flow of Bangladeshi visitors.

Few places in Bangladesh hold so many communities in so small an area. The estate villages are home to people whose ancestors came from central and southern India, keeping festivals, songs and languages that belong nowhere else in the country. Khasi families, related to the Khasi of Meghalaya across the border, live in punjis on the forested hills and grow betel leaf on the trees; they are matrilineal, with property passing through the youngest daughter. The Manipuri of Kamalganj, further east, are known for their weaving and for a classical dance tradition performed at the November full moon.

Religion is mixed. Muslim villages surround the town, the estate communities are largely Hindu, and the Khasi are mostly Christian, with churches among the gardens. Temples, mosques and chapels can stand within a few kilometres of each other, and each community's festivals are watched by the others.

Tea itself is a social institution rather than a drink. It is taken sweet and milky at stalls that double as village meeting places, and Sreemangal's tea cabins draw visitors from across Bangladesh for the layered tea invented here. Visitors are treated with warmth and considerable curiosity, and conversation turns quickly to where they are from and how the tea compares with home.

The upazila has more than 360,000 residents, of whom only a fraction live in the town itself; the rest are in villages and estate labour lines spread through the hills. Tea dominates employment, with plucking done largely by women who carry loads to weighing sheds and factories. Pay in the gardens is low and housing is provided by the estates, an arrangement that keeps families tied to them across generations and is the subject of long-running disputes.

The land does other work too. Rubber and lemon plantations, pineapple and jackfruit, betel leaf from the Khasi hills, and rice and fish from Hail Haor all reach the bazar, and fish from the haor is trucked to Dhaka. Tourism supports hotels, guides, jeep drivers and shops in and around the town, and remittances from the Gulf and Britain support many households, as across Sylhet division.

The day follows the gardens. Workers go out at first light and the weighing is done in the afternoon; the bazar is busiest early, and the town winds down soon after dark, when the estate roads are unlit and quiet. Water is the recurring worry — floods in the haor after heavy rain in the Meghalaya hills, and dry spells that hurt the tea crop — along with the slow conversion of forest and wetland to other uses.

Sreemangal's fame rests on tea. The seven-layer tea, made by pouring teas of different strength and sweetness so that they settle in visible bands, was devised in the town and is now sold at several cabins; ordinary tea here is strong, sweet and milky, drunk in small glasses many times a day. The gardens around the town supply leaf to shops selling everything from fine orthodox grades to the dust used in roadside stalls.

The everyday cooking is Sylheti. Beef or fish is cooked with satkora, a thick citrus whose rind gives a sour, perfumed edge; shutki, dried fish, is pounded into bhorta with chilli and onion; and shidol, a fermented fish preserve, gives a strong note to vegetable dishes. Small fish from Hail Haor, prawns and river fish appear on most menus, and rice is eaten at every meal.

The hills add their own produce. Pineapple and lemons from the plantations are sold at the roadside, jackfruit comes in early summer, and Khasi betel leaf is chewed with areca nut across the district. Winter brings pitha, rice cakes made with date-palm molasses, and the estate communities cook dishes carried from central India by their ancestors, including pork, which is rare elsewhere in the country.