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When you drink hot tea, do you remember James Taylor?
By Sanath Weerasuriya
To them, he was like a god. He created history and a vital part of the economy of this country. 'I do not remember Mr. Taylor, sir, myself, but my mother and father often spoke to me about him. He was a very big man with a long beard. He weighed two hundred and forty-six pounds, and one of his fingers was as thick as this (three bunched together). That was all he needed to knock a man down. This building was his teahouse, here was the entrance, and here where the stream ran down on to the water wheel, which was twenty feet high'.

This is an extract from the book '100 years of Tea Industry in Sri Lanka', a story told by an estate worker about James Taylor, the father of Sri Lanka's tea industry, some 75 years ago. The 113th death anniversary of James Taylor, the pioneer of Sri Lanka's tea industry falls tomorrow. He was only 57 years old when he contracted dysentery and passed away on May 2 in 1892.

According to the Loolkandura story in the book, in 1892 when his new employers wanted him to take six months sick leave, Taylor refused and that made him resign from Loolkandura (Loolecondera as British planters used to call it), the pioneering tea plantation in Sri Lanka, where he was based.

"As children we sometimes used to push the lever, which connected the water wheel to Mr. Taylor's old roller, and made it move to and fro. The roller was broken up long ago, and the wheel too. His rickshaw, sir? How could a man as big as that go in a rickshaw, which could not go through a door? The labourers were in awe of him and when he came near they stood like this [hands beneath armpits], and they never spoke to him except through the Head Kangani." This is how the workers re-told the story of Taylor.

The story continues in the book……'My mother told me of his funeral. Twenty-four men carried him into Kandy, two gangs of twelve taking turns every four miles. It was about eighteen miles the way they went. They started in the morning and got to Kandy at four o'clock in the afternoon. A Sinhala woman who kept his house came out of the bungalow crying and waving her arms and would have gone with the funeral, but Mr. Gordon prevented her. The Kanganis and the labourers walked behind the coffin. They called him sami dorai (Oh God our God).'

Few individuals have helped to shape the landscape of a country, as James Taylor did ours. The beauty of the hill country as it now appears owes much to the inspiration of James Taylor who introduced tea cultivation to Sri Lanka in 1857.

Born on March 29, 1835 to a family of six children, his early childhood was not happy. He lost his mother at the tender age of nine. At 17, Taylor decided to become a pupil teacher in a church school and after a short spell he left the teaching profession to join J.A. Hadden, Recruiting Agents, from where he was sent to George Pride of Kandy, Ceylon to work as an assistant superintendent in a dying coffee plantation.

Thus James Taylor arrived in Sri Lanka, then known as "Ceylon" at the age of 18 in February 1852. According to records, he had been looked after by the Mackwood family in Colombo and after a few days sent to Kandy. He settled down in Weli Oya and started working in Mr. Pride's Naranhena Estate, a division of Loolkandura now, from where he moved into the adjoining estate of Loolkandura, which was also managed by Mr. Pride.

The estate changed hands in June 1857 and was sold to Keir Dundas and Co. in Kandy, who entrusted the task of tea cultivation to Taylor. A man of courage and personality, as described by many, Taylor managed to turn the estate around within one year. He apparently spent more time and money than his employers in converting the land into a tea estate. According to the book Sri Lanka Tea Exporters’ Directory - 2004 of the Sri Lanka Tea Board , Taylor may have been shipping tea to London for private sales before the auctions were introduced in 1883. According to his own words in the book 'I learned manufacture from others and from reading, but it took a lot of experimenting before I was successful'.

A man who preferred solitude, he did not participate in any of the planters' meetings or social functions. His passion was Loolkandura. However, in later years, the estate management changed hands several times and James Taylor found it difficult to adjust to the requirements of the new owners.

One hundred and thirteen years after his death, James Taylor has still not been properly recognized by Sri Lanka. His neglected grave at Mahaiyawa, his log cabin (almost destroyed) at Loolkandura and other relics of this great Scottish legend who loved Ceylon, should be maintained by the relevant authorities for future generations.

Every time we sip a cup of tea, we encourage the effort of this man, who put Ceylon on top of the world map, very much before Sri Lanka Cricket claimed supremacy in the world.

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