Reflections

At dusk in Kalabari Tea Garden, doors now close earlier than they once did. Fires burn longer in courtyards. Mothers call children indoors before the light thins into grey. Conversations pause when dogs bark. Across narrow mud roads, beyond bamboo fences and tin-roofed labour lines, the tea bushes stand quiet and waist-high. Somewhere within that green geometry, unseen, something moves. The Dooars — from duar, meaning “doorway” — stretch across the Himalayan foothills, forming the gateway to Bhutan and India’s Northeast. From the Teesta River in the west to the Sankosh River in the east, this is a landscape of transition: floodplains giving way to sal forest, braided rivers cutting through grassland, tea estates spreading across gently undulating terrain. Protected areas such as Gorumara National Park, Jaldapara National Park and Buxa Tiger Reserve anchor the region’s conservation map. Yet between them lies a vast working landscape — tea gardens, revenue land, riverbeds and small settl...