We all have met certain students who can survive without water but absolutely not without tea. Good for them; there is a whole day dedicated to tea: 21 May is International Tea Day. For many of us, tea is more than a beverage. It is a form of self-defense against early morning classes. One of my friends, Priti, is the perfect example of that.
She simply cannot function without her morning tea. It is not even about taste anymore; it is like a nesha, an addiction, a ritual of survival. Morning classes would be impossible without it. For students like Priti, tea has become an absolute necessity.
And then there is the other group. The aesthetic tea enthusiasts. You will find them at cafes like Yum Cha or Crimson Cup ordering drinks with names like “chai tea latte”, which literally means “tea tea latte”.
These cups are not just drinks, but they are content for them. The perfect cup of cinnamon swirls and almond milk froth is photographed, filtered, and posted with captions like “tea is peace” or “chilling with BFF at Crimson Cup”. However, for both groups, tea is essential. It is how they function, study, survive and sometimes, how they express themselves online.
But while we sip our tea, pose with our cups and rely on it to push through the chaos of student life, do we ever pause to think about who actually makes this tea?
There are thousands of workers in Bangladesh tea estates, mostly in Sylhet and Chattogram, who are barely surviving. These workers are often unpaid for weeks at a time. They live in poorly maintained labour quarters and work in conditions that have barely changed in a hundred years.
In a heartbreaking report by UCA News, it was revealed that many tea workers went unpaid for weeks, leading to starvation. The report states, “Bangladesh’s unpaid tea workers face starvation, neglect as entire families waited helplessly for wages that never arrived.”
The Daily Star further reported that over 12,000 workers under the National Tea Company were not paid for nearly seven weeks. One line from the article is particularly haunting: “The workers did not know how to feed their families, let alone how to celebrate their biggest cultural occasion.” And this was not a one-time issue. It happened just before Durga Puja, one of the most important festivals for many of the workers.
The injustice does not stop at wages. As the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre explains, tea workers are “trapped in generational poverty, facing low wages, harsh quotas and no land rights.” Most of them were born in the garden, grew up in the garden and are now raising their children in the same garden quarters without access to quality education, healthcare or the right to own land, the very land their families have worked on for generations.
The Business Standard sheds light on their fight for dignity through movements like the Chandpur Bhumi Rokkha Andolon. Here workers are demanding land rights and recognition. Their voices are rising, but they are often unheard or quickly forgotten.
And that is the problem. Every few days, a headline flashes across our screens, another protest, another wage crisis, another story of a child with no school in sight. We read it, we frown, we might even repost it and then we scroll on. As the youth of this country, with access to education, media and platforms, we have the power to speak. We have the power to amplify and then act. Yet we remain passive. Watching the headlines as history repeats itself. Our generation is full of potential and idealism, yet we struggle to turn awareness into action.
This International Tea Day should be more than just about our own cups. It should be about the lives behind them. If tea keeps us awake, then it is time we stay awake for the truth. The truth is that our comfort is often brewed in someone else’s suffering. While we sip, they struggle.
Let us turn our campuses into spaces of awareness. Let us talk about these issues in our classrooms and clubs. Let us ask where our tea comes from, demand ethical change and support the workers who make our daily rituals possible.
So today, as you hold that warm cup in your hands, think of the cold realities behind it. Let your tea not just wake you up for class but also wake you up to injustice.
Because justice, like tea, is best served strong.