The Jungle Spice Garden

Field guide; saga; pharmacy; pantry - this memoir of the Spice Garden at The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy confirms that most elemental of Sri Lankan horticultural truths – that plants – all 7,500 of them found here – divide into just three categories. They are medicinal. They are edible. Or they are useless. Had we known this before things kicked off, life would have been much simpler; and plans far more straightforward. For, as with most plans, ours went off-mission within months, pursued across the neat pages of excel by the best intended of mission creeps. But God, as they say, is good; and no good God has much truck with plans of any sort. It took years to properly understand what a release this Plan Wilderness was; and just how unconditionally that most office Gulag of conditions had been trounced. Enslavement is a condition that takes time to undo. Even now, years later, I still place thankful and imaginary offerings of flowers and fruit before the alter of my imagined gods. As Mark Twain noted, “to succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” Servitude had begun to slide off, albeit unnoticed, just after the ceremonial signing of deeds to buy Mudhenna Wallawwa, the ancient crumbling plantation house and estate in the jungle northwest of Kandy. Over 30 people representing the sellers, attended by scores more attendants, met in an echoing room around a table that must have been related in some complex wooden way to that of State Banquet table in Windsor Castle. Signatories, witnesses, supporters, attestors, senior and junior legal counsels, tea bearers and not a few passers-by transmuted the transfer of a deed into a Dhurbar. The plantation came with twenty five acres of land that had long since reverted to jungle – though rampant hints of what once grew in smug order (rubber, cocoa, coffee, coconut) could still be glimpsed. The estate had been abandoned during the 1988 JVP civil war, the family fleeing to the greater safety of Colombo. And, as with all things tropical, the land settled back comfortably into the loving hands of nature, with a sigh, as if all that building and harvesting, planting, and living was in some inexpressible way, a trifling and passing distraction, now best forgotten. But possessing land is habit-forming. And soon enough our acquisition was followed by the purchase of more acres. And another house. Further acres, once part of the wider estate before it was decimated by Land Reforms, were incorporated on long term rents until the estate had more than doubled in size, the various land parcels threaded together by the slimmest of jungle tracks. One large plot was planted as vegetable beds but lay so trenchancy close to a misbehaved river that the onions, carrots, and sweet potatoes had little choice but to fester and moulder. Another was set aside to grow sandalwood trees. This, as it turned out, was a poor choice. Glamorous though the trees undoubtedly are, keeping them in the style to which they wish to become accustomed is harder even than keeping a mistress in Paris. The slightest variant in water resulted in sulky die-back. The tree’s high maintenance root system, which demanded the presence of other plant roots to attach to, meant a continual need to throw what amounted to hedonistic horticultural parties; and when all that had been sorted, Sandalwood Spike Disease arrived. An entire valley was planted out with thousands of bananas, all of which succumbed to Fusarium wilt. Lemon grass was seeded on well drained hill sides, most of which caught fire during the drought. Mushrooms, a great favourite of our auditor, were added - more out of good manners than any real attempt to be commercial. The old rubber terraces were recklessly entrusted to a horticultural bandit who lacerated the trucks to produce quick flows of sap, injuring the trees for years to come. Terraces of new rubber trees were established. “Harvest the latex,” advised one enterprising land agent, “and move up the value chain.” Make didoes,” he went on to suggest: “the few on sale on the island are all expensive imports.” Greenhouses of tomato and pepper were built and grown for the Maldivian hotel market until Spotted Wilt Virus raced through the plants, leaving behind such fruit as only the angriest chef might use. Several acres worth of nurseries to raise cinnamon, cloves and erica nuts were built, the tiny plants intended for resale onto the local agriculture board, though porcupine, gathering in force for nightly raids, had alternative ideas. As the estate’s plantation workers grew into a small army, supervisors with, it turned out, imperfect circadian rhythms, were recruited to manage and mentor the mildly mutinous troops. On the hottest days, sleep under the shade of mango trees seemed the only option. One manager, tempted to distraction by thoughts of ill-gotten lucre, was later to be seen gazing woefully...