TEA & ME

 Author : E S J Davidar

With 5 pages of 19 black & white photographs and 2 maps.

Publisher : East West Books (Madras) Pvt.  Ltd., Year 2008, Pages 215

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Excerpts:

(1) There is this other story, a true one, which George Joseph, a close friend told me. The bungalow he lived in was built by a former owner of the estate, a retired Dutch sea captain who had apparently incorporated parts of his brig into it. George was to attend a party one night in a friend’s bungalow miles away. Before leaving he asked his servants to put out the fire, and to make doubly certain that nothing would ignite and cause a fire when they were away, he poured a whole jugful of water over the embers. When they returned several hours later, George thought he saw a light in the sitting room. Racing home, he flung open his sitting room door and saw to his utter amazement a beautiful fire blazing away in the hearth. The servants couldn’t throw any light on the matter. Legend has it that every night, a servant used to light a fire for the Dutch sea captain. The servant had died in service and his ghost was heard lighting the fire on several nights. The captain or his servants were never seen by any occupants of the bungalow, nor did they bother anyone in any way.

 (2) It was widely known that Madden had spies everywhere to report on his Executive staff. One day after lunch, I was riding my motorcycle to work, when I saw the ‘kaddai’ man (shopkeeper) standing outside his shop, looking up at the top road on which I was. As soon as he spotted me, I saw him glancing at his watch, I knew at once that he had been put on my tail, and had been asked to report on my work habits. In another incident which McIntyre told me, that he and a friend regularly beat it up somewhere or the other. Reports of their escapades reached England, and he and his friend were taken to task. They put their heads together to think who could possibly be passing on the information. They arrived at the conclusion that it had to be the local sub-postmaster who knew the Company’s address in England. They duly met the man, and expressed themselves freely about his character and his ancestry. Not entirely to their surprise, the periodical upbraiding that they received from their bosses stopped completely.

(3) One night it rained and rained like it had not done for many years. The estate roads were breached in several places and some minor culverts washed away. There was chaos everywhere. The stream passing through the division was in spate and a man trying to pick up a floating piece of firewood fell and was carried away by the swirling waters. His body was found snagged in one of the bamboo clumps at the bottom of Ranikoil. Alex took the body to Peermade in the estate lorry to the Police to get the post-mortem done. When he returned, Alex was furious. It turned out that when the lorry arrived to take the body, Chris Nicholl of  Kuduakarnam hopped in too. At the police station and again at the Government dispensary, Alex said Chris went in first and reported the accident. That was what had upset him. Alex was definite that Chris had no business to act as he did and exclaimed, “After all, it was my body !”

(4) The union decided, therefore, to concentrate on harassing me. They declared that until the dismissed man was given back his job, they would go on a hunger strike. A taurpalin shelter was put up just outside my bungalow gate, and two or three chaps sat in it day and night. None of the hunger strikers seemed the worse for wear even after several days o ‘going without food’. It was all a joke. When my wife and children came to be with me for the Christmas holidays, the demonstration was still very much on. We could hear what was being shouted clearly, as the sitting room windows faced the gate and were not far from it.

(5) Towards the end of January 1973, the Chairman wrote that the Board had approved in principle the idea of my wife accompanying me to England. We were to get there in June and stay for a month…. Early in June, a cable arrived from the Board regretting that only I was invited to England and asked me look for economy class tickets…. Later on the Board discovered places in London called ‘bucket shops’ and  booked me to fly by Egypt Air…I had not hoped for a holiday in England. It was the Chairman who had written several months earlier to say that the Board had approved of our visit to England in June. Now Madden was talking about emphasizing their regret… He was fond of saying that an Englishman’s word is his bond. There is no such thing… just a few years earlier, when the Executives in the Company were mostly European, they went back and forth with their families as they were entitled to regular passages. No one talked about economizing on travel then.

(6) On another occasion, my wife and I had adjourned to the sitting room after lunch, when our cook-butler rushed in. he was highly excited and hardly coherent. I caught the words ‘nalla paambu’. I asked him where, and he said just outside the kitchen. The kitchen stood by itself, a common feature in most homes built in the days of the British. .. I grabbed my .22 rifle from the adjacent bedroom, loaded it hastily, and rushed to the dining room window. Sure enough, there was a large cobra gliding along the outer wall of the kitchen. I quickly fired before the cobra could turn the corner and disappear. By great good fortune, my shot hit the cobra’s spine. It just lay there writhing, and I dispatched it with a couple more shots.

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My Take : The author has put out in a very enjoyable way the working of the tea estates, how the companies were run which were all British owned at the time, all executives were Europeans and policies made in England.

He was the first Indian to be taken on as an officer, retiring as the head of the company. Some incidents which he has described give a delightful detail of the officers, workers, labour problems etc of the many Divisions where he was posted.

          A delightful book.

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Subject Type - Reminiscences

Narrative Style – Excellent

Readability – Excellent

Maintaining Readers Interest – Excellent

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