ASSAM: A Tea Garden Story

tea-bunglow ....Cinnamara T.E.

"There is something in the nature of tea gardens that lead us into a world of quiet contemplation of life .

It’s been over 25 years since my father passed away. Belonging to an era where there were no Jacksons blaring over the Mike and no Bills knocking at our Gates, he lived a life of splendid, serene isolation in the tea-gardens of Assam. Coming by a job was not a herculean task those days. Three good references and a solid pedigree were sufficient to fetch one a position in a sterling company.

So it was on a fine May morning in 1947, when the Company’s Morris Minor rolled into the ancestral home to take my father to his first place of posting as a tea planter. He left behind old values and set mores and geared himself for a society with a different ethos. It was a turning point in his life which was to determine all the events to come.

Weekdays meant hard work, temperamental labourers, snakes, leeches and sometimes leopards. Weekends were for unwinding. At the end of the day he would wash down his tiredness with a bottle of cold beer and call his life “gustatory heaven.”The local tea club was the hub of social activities. Gossiping, guffawing and sometimes even rubbing shoulders with the “Gora Memsahib’s” were a part of the drill. Father would delight himself looking at the young “Mems” through the corner of his squinted eyes.

Life was a perpetual kindergarten, for he learnt by the day. The finer nuances of better living, the essentials of wining and dining and the graceful steps of the fox-trot were imparted to him by his boss’s wife, Mrs Holmston.

Yet amidst the oomph, opulence and the frills that edged the job, what gnawed at the heart of the young recruits was the loneliness. Enveloped by acres of green plantations, bereft of the latest electronic gizmos that we enjoy today and the nearest town being thirty-five miles away, loneliness was a malaise which spread like forest fire among the new comers especially with the young British assistants.  Some took to reading books, others took to “Shikar” and yet there were a lot who hit the bottle.

And so it was the bottle that got hold of Mr. Smith of Yorkshire.

Living in a sprawling bungalow, Mr Smith’s life had all the ingredients to make a cocktail of isolation---parents and friends were far away, letters and newspapers took weeks to reach those days and the language barrier made matters worse. A drought, a sip, a gulp a swig ---anything would do to keep him company. He would drink himself to the ground.  His incorrect habits were noted by the boss. Fatherly advice was administered, but nothing deterred young Smith, and he continued drinking a drop too much.

Matters came to a head when the Yorkshire lad took to consuming the local brew. (Fotika) .The boss was not only perturbed but also embarrassed by the English-man’s commonness. Mr Smith opened a Pandora’s Box. The European planters met and secret confabulations continued. Plans were envisaged but nothing worked. “Shame,” they whispered. “Poison “they screamed. A few more weeks of trial, failing which he would be shipped home!

As Fate would have it, one afternoon ,they were returning on their bicycles from “kamjari” of the tea-sections when the sozzled Smith was seized by the need to respond to nature’s call. Like men of old who were bold he decided to water Mother Nature along the roadside.  Immediately, the shame-plant “Mimosa pudica” (touch-me-nots) which edged the dirt-track closed, folded inward and drooped as he emptied his bladder on them. Horrified, he told my father about it with stark fear in his eyes.
 Without batting an eyelid, my Dad explained it was the local poison which he drank that was killing the bounties of nature. Soon he too would be facing the same fate and making his way to the Land Beyond!!Only hope in hell could save him or alternatively give up "mahua."Period.

Mr Smith stayed on for thirty years in India. He remained a teetotaller forever and found a good friend for always.

                                    "Tea is the elixir of Life."