Seventh Chords

Hang Out There!

2011-10-27T23:16:00.007+05:30

Tindharia in the Darjeeling hills is the first important railway station on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR).
It is on National Highway 55 which connects - when it is in working order - Siliguri to Darjeeling.

We drove up to it one Sunday afternoon with some friends last July. One of them, a Darjeeling tea expert, pointed out the Tindharia Locomotive and Carriage Workshop to us. The three rooftops perched on the top of the hill made a pretty sight.

We drove past and went up to the railway station. It was also a lovely old building. I wished we could have taken a train ride there, but the train service had been suspended because landslides had snapped the road link and damaged the tracks beyond Tindharia.

We wondered whether repairs would be completed. The scene changed completely in September, when the earthquake struck. A large part of the hillside below the locomotive workshop fell away.

We drove up in the direction of Tindharia today with our younger daughter. She loves the railways, particularly the DHR. This time we couldnt even reach the station.

I did not have my camera with me. These pictures were taken on my old fashioned (four years old is old fashioned these days) phone camera.
No complaints. They pretty much convey what we saw.

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) is a World Heritage site.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee describes it thus:
"The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is the first, and still the most outstanding example of a hill passenger railway. Opened in 1881, it applied bold and ingenious engineering solutions to the problems of establishing an effective rail link cross a mountainous terrain of great beauty. It is still fully operational* and retains most of its original features intact."

*see above

Hello, darkness my old friend!

2011-10-01T08:21:00.016+05:30

Darkness everywhere. It terrified me, a Delhi girl in my early twenties on my first evening in a tea garden.

That night, a few of us rode from Birpara Tea Garden to Lankapara Tea Garden in an Ambassador car. It was a memorable ride - the car hurtled into the darkness at top speed. It was hard to believe there was a road. There probably wasn't. I'd never been in such inky darkness before.

When the terror of the ride ended, there were the introductions to strangers at the party. I was the new bride in the district. There was only one reason I didn't want the evening to end. The drive would have to be repeated.

While stepping out of our hosts' bungalow, I looked up at the sky. There were stars everywhere! I'd learnt to recognise the major constellations and the planets in Delhi's night skies, but this sight made my head spin. There were stars where I'd been used to seeing dark spaces.

For the first time, I saw the Little Bear - Ursa Minor. It had only been a name on a star map before this. In Delhi, we could spot two stars from Ursa Minor - the Pole Star Polaris, and Kocab. These stars augured well - I was going to love a lot things about my new life in tea.

I missed the city lights. Here, darkness fell by six-thirty in the summer and by five in the winter months. Twenty-five years ago, there was no electricity anywhere in tea gardens save in the bungalows, factories and hospitals. The towns nearby were not much better. There was no street lighting, nor were there any neon signs.

Our daughters never feared the dark as babies. They wouldn't cry or get restless when the lights went out. My husband always said that this was where we failed, having grown up in a city!

I can't say when I started appreciating the darkness in a tea garden. But you do need darkness to appreciate the beauty of light.

My cousin Ambika wrote about this on her blog recently. She had linked another article for star gazers. It is really sad to think of children growing up without seeing stars in the night sky.

For some years now, I've enjoyed taking a solitary outing at nightfall. All those years ago, the loneliness was as frightening as the darkness. Over time, a love of solitude replaced the fear. Silence and darkness can become a rich environment for those who like to wander about in the spaces of the mind.

We should be alright in a world where 'Daylight is good at arriving at the right time'.*

Beware of darkness

Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night

- George Harrison

*George Harrison, 'All Things Must Pass'

Earthquake!

2011-09-19T08:59:00.007+05:30

Sunday evening, Biswakarma Puja Day. It was chilly and it had been raining for nearly twenty four hours. My daughter Swati, my husband Mohan and I were sitting with our cups of tea. We were arguing idly about whether we should catch a movie later in the evening. Suddenly Swati said, 'Earthquake!'

I had just felt a little movement, but hadn't identified it.
'Run, Ma!' she said, and already, everything was shaking violently. A loud grinding and rumbling sound started off.

We were shaken and rattled about. The lights went off at once. The noise was frightening. Once we made it outside we stood together holding one another at the door. We knew we should be running down the stairs but we couldn't move. The building was rocking violently. It felt as if everything would come crashing down any second.

We heard people wailing loudly from the direction of Siliguri.
The last time I'd heard that many people shouting was when India won the cricket World Cup.

We stood hugging one another, unable to do anything more than keep our balance. It was pitch dark. We couldn't see the stairs. As soon as the shuddering stopped, the lights came on and we took the stairs down - gingerly, because they were slippery after the rain. Two young girls who live upstairs rushed down, sobbing loudly.

Everyone in the three buildings that make up our apartment complex had come down.
No one was hurt but people were just too scared to go back inside.

We looked up and wondered if the structures would all come down any minute. We saw tall cracks - as high as twelve to fourteen feet - around many of the walls and pillars on the ground.

'We should live in a bungalow again!' I said to Mohan. We've felt a number of mild earthquakes over the years. In a bungalow, it would take a moment to run out on to the front lawn! And those old tea bungalows were built to withstand more than earthquakes.

Ten days ago, Delhi had an earthquake. My brother and I were chatting about it on GMail last week.
"Was it scary?" I asked.
"Nothing serious ... not scary ... but it's a unique feeling ... a wave which passes through your body ... your head stops feeling it by the time your legs start feeling it"
"You make me want an earthquake!!!!" I said ... and he reminded me of these words when I spoke to him later in the evening.
It felt a little eerie to re-read that chat. He'd written, "The feeling reminded me of all of us watching the landslide in Sikkim...it oozes"
Today's quake had its epicentre in Sikkim, less than 60 kilometres from Siliguri.

Time calmed us all down. I stopped holding on to my daughter. We walked around a little freely. We tried to call our elder daughter in Delhi. All the phone lines were jammed with similar panic calls.

My husband walked around inspecting the cracks with some of our neighbours. 'Only the brick work and plaster have cracked,' he said. 'The pillars are unharmed.' Only then did we think of climbing the stairs back up to see what damage had taken place at our flat.

No, the building was not going to collapse for now. Still, all the neighbours pulled their cars out of the ground floor parking lot and parked them out in the open.

In the flat, we grabbed our cooling cups of tea and checked the damage. A broken photo frame, a chipped plate, some books knocked down. My 'puja' in disarray. Nothing too bad. Nothing that couldn't wait till later. We put on floaters so that we could run if required, and went downstairs to wait in case there were aftershocks.

Swati and I sat down in the car, though she and her dad had already decided not to drive out to the wide open spaces like I wanted to. They both said we ought to leave the roads free for people who might need to be rushed to hospital.

We managed to make our phone call to our daughter Parvati, alone in Delhi, frightening and reassuring her in the same breath.

Three young boys from the our building walked by. They were in high spirits.
'We could have died!' one announced happily in a loud voice.
'How many times have we studied earthquakes in class! Who thought we would feel one!'
Swati and I couldn't help laughing when we heard them.

It turned out the boys had been to the movie hall - the one we'd been debating about.
They'd all rushed out when the false ceiling started crumbling down and the hall filled with clouds of dust.

One boy popped his head in at my window. 'You are going to sit the whole night in the car, Aunty?' he asked.
He couldn't be more than eleven years old, and he'd braved the earthquake in the movie hall.
'That will be silly, no?' I asked him. 'Want to sit with us?"
He ran for his life. Again.

This post appeared in The Statesman, Kolkata, on 20 September 2011.

A Trained Eye

2010-11-16T19:15:00.010+05:30

When we were children, every time we went on a train journey, we would look out of the window at level crossings and feel sorry for the poor people who lived in the middle of nowhere between the big railway stations.

After I married my tea planter husband almost 25 years ago, I've lived in that world of unimportant level crossings. Our tea garden is just one of the sights that can be seen on the train line between Delhi and Guwahati.

One Diwali/Kali Puja night many years ago at the Kali temple level crossing near our home, the gateman kept the gates closed so he could light candles on the bars.

Those were days when there was less traffic. Every time a vehicle crossed, he'd open the gate and his candles would go flying. When he closed the gate, he would arrange the candles again and light them with great care, apparently undisturbed by the thought that they would only burn until the next vehicle came along.

It was a pleasant surprise to see a small puja pandal near the Chalsa level crossing. It must have been put up for Kali Puja, which was over ten days ago. A pandal's basic function is to provide a platform for placing the image of the goddess. Pandal decoration has become an elaborate and showy affair in the towns here these days.

This structure, however, seemed to be a labour of love - a work of art that came straight from the heart.

The model of the train engine was true to life, and the cabin a perfect replica of the real thing. Hats off to the people who built it. I'm not surprised they didn't want to pull it down.

Above: the 'real' cabin at the crossing. The number is the same as the one on the model.

Now that the festive season is finally over, I'm done with complaining about its drawbacks. Its good to see signs that people everywhere had their share of fun.

In the Moonlight, on a Magic Night

2010-10-25T00:42:00.015+05:30

Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy has a magical passage in which Kabir and Lata, young lovers, take out a boat on the river Ganga on Sharad Purnima night. Reading that passage aroused my interest in the night of Sharad Purnima, the brightest night of the year.

'Purnima' means the full moon, and Sharad is the name of the season that comes after the monsoon rains, marking the beginning of cool weather in most of India.

The Sharad Purnima is the equivalent of the equinoctial moon. During the equinox, the moon moves closest to the earth. So when you have a full moon around that time, it appears larger and brighter than usual. People in the Northern Hemisphere see the brightest full moon of the year around the time of the Autumnal Equinox, September 23rd. And I don't want to offend my friend Uma in Australia - you'll see yours in March.

Sharad Purnima did not coincide with the Equinox this year, but it occurred a month later.

The Sharad season begins in the Indian month of Ashwin (called Ashshin in Bengali, and Aippasi in Tamil). The Indian calendar measures time in terms of the sun as well as the moon, with the year measured in solar time, and the months in lunar cycles. The months in this calendar don't run parallel with the months in the global calendar. When Ashwin coincides to some extent with September, chances are that Sharad Purnima will coincide with the equinoctial moon. If not, it will be the full moon after that one.

The Ashwin moon is especially significant. The new moon or Mahalaya Amavasya marks the beginning of 'Navaratri', nine days and nights of goddess worship. In Bengal, it is the beginning of Durga Puja. The tenth day of the moon is Bijoya Dasami. The night of the full moon is observed as Lakshmi Puja.

Lakshmi is the goddess of prosperity. The moon is a symbol of plenty: a good harvest of course, but much more than simply wealth. The fulness and brightness of the moon on this night stand for fulfilment, the abundance of blessings, peace and well-being.
It is said that any wish made on this night comes true.

Seasons of Splendour by Madhur Jaffrey, a book my daughters read when they were children, is an interesting compilation of the legends and folk tales that surround Indian seasons and festivals. It mentions the tradition of threading a needle 100 times in the moonlight on Sharad Purnima night. The moonlight supposedly contains drops of nectar, which enter the eyes of the person performing this feat.

I love the Bengali tradition of Lakshmi Puja. It is a day of great piety. A religious festival like this one has a simplicity and charm quite untouched by the bustle and commerce of the 'big' festivals. Any festival held in a tea garden is enhanced by the surroundings: by the large open spaces, and the peace and quiet.

Unlike Durga Puja, which is conducted by a community of people, Lakshmi Puja is performed in people's homes. An elaborate feast is prepared. For many years, a Bengali family in our garden has been sending us 'bhog' or 'prasad'. There is luchi (the Bengali Poori), paayesh (kheer/payasam), narkul nadu (coconut laddoos) of two kinds, white and brown, and the delicious bhog khichuri (rice and dal savoury) with the vegetable side dish called labra . It is delicious - like all consecrated food offerings are.

In the Dooars, the moonlight is undiluted by city lights or smog. The Sharad full moon rises over treetops, and the silhouettes of the trees seems to shrink in contrast. The light is silvery all night. I stand and gape at the moon for as long as I can. It is said that standing in the moonlight and absorbing the rays is good for the body. It does your soul good too, I'd say.

Sharad Purnima was two nights ago, on October 22, but it was not the brightest night of the year in the Dooars. The sky was overcast until almost ten o'clock and we couldn't see the moonrise, easily the best part of any full moon night.

Last night, the moon was still almost full, as it was again tonight; a perfect round, and to our delight, perfectly visible when it rose.

Killer on the Tracks

2010-09-29T18:28:00.014+05:30

24th September 2010 :

Seven elephants, including babies, were knocked down and killed by a speeding train at Moraghat Tea Estate. We live on the estate, which my husband manages. All of India heard the news over television, and it spread over the world in no time.

At 4.30 a.m., our chowkidar (watchman) Madan told us that an elephant, a large tusker, had entered the bungalow compound about half an hour earlier. It had walked down the half-mile long road from the highway to the bungalow. It shook the large iron gates open. It walked all around the compound. The two watchmen on duty ran and hid indoors.There was no damage barring a few huge footprints on the lawn. And a gate connecting our bungalow to the deputy manager's bungalow next door was knocked out of shape. That gate was made of iron rods! My husband's phone started ringing before six o'clock. He knew it must be something serious. The caller was Joy, the assistant manager who looks after the NG Division. His news was about elephants as well: the train accident had taken place in his division near the railway line. This news had spread all over the garden as soon as it happened (around midnight), and some workers informed Joy. He told them not to disturb the manager so late at night.

We went to the site, a distance of around one kilometre from the bungalow. Hundreds of people had gathered there. A baby elephant's carcass lay in the wide drain near the track. The mood was gloomy as it was lifted on to a lorry.

Crowds of people from the workers colonies rushed to the spot as soon as they heard about the accident. All but one of the elephants were alive at the time. We heard that they were crying in pain. A little calf was walking around in the broad drain, which was filled with water. As more people gathered, they started calling out to the elephants.

'Ganpati Bappa, Morya!' they shouted, asking the elephants to get up and walk again. People say the elephants would have survived if they had been rescued earlier, and that the forest department should not have waited till daybreak to begin removing them. The poor animals must have suffered terribly.

Elephants kill at least one person every year on this estate, and there isn't a living soul here who doesn't fear them. An elephant is perceived as an enemy. All this was forgotten that night when they lay there dying.

Moraghat Tea Estate falls on the elephant path between two stretches of forest. Every one is aware that elephants begin to move around the area in the evening. A herd had been creating havoc for the past ten nights in the tea area, pulling down shade tree branches, uprooting fencing posts and flattening plants. The wildlife squad in the region must have been aware of their presence here. Perhaps they could have alerted the railways.

It is really strange that the train's engine driver did not see the elephants on a full moon night. People say that he was drunk. Some say he reversed the train at top speed after hitting the first elephant, and that was how so many of them got hit. Everyone asks why the signalman at the level crossing nearby did not alert the engine driver or the stationmaster at the previous station. There was some talk about the 'symbolic arrest' of the train's engine at Alipurduar station.

Train services resumed within hours of the accident, and we now hear a loud whistle when a train goes past. Every time a train anywhere in North Bengal hits an elephant, the whistles begin to blow. Once the outcry dies down, these precautions are forgotten. Reports say 26 elephants have been killed by trains in North Bengal in the last seven years.

Ironically, one man from Moraghat Tea Estate died at the site of the accident that morning. Jaisingh, sometime worker, was a smoker of 'bhang' and was always in a hazy state of mind. A lorry hit and killed him on the spot.

Yesterday, another piece of news came to light. The elephant that walked into the bungalow had not nudged the gate open. That was the work of the chowkidar Dhiraj, who spotted him in the distance and opened the gate to get a good look!

We expect more visits from the herd.

Kings of the Road!

2010-09-22T17:27:00.016+05:30

The Teesta, from Sevoke

How lucky I am to live near this river. How much luckier I need to be if I want to reach this spot without being held up by road blocks, natural or man-made. Here's one of the man-made variety, below.

Issuing directions all around

These pictures were taken when we were waved down at a place around 50 kilometres away from Siliguri, and almost the same distance from our garden. The mob blocked the road using a favourite shield in the area-- school students. Their 'demand' was for a new 'request bus stop' on the National Highway. The children had to walk to the regular bus stop from their school because the bus drivers wouldn't stop when they waved them down.

Most of the buses on the highway run long distances, and surely the passengers wouldn't want random additional stops. How long did the children have to walk, my husband asked some chatty looking bystanders. He was told the distance was under one kilometre.

A peculiar feature of these roadblocks is that once the mob stops your vehicle, it doesn't allow you to reverse or retreat. The idea is to cause as much nuisance as possible to members of the public. Once you're in, you park your vehicle and sit quietly.

The mob is quick to feed on the mood and is on a power high. Youngsters - little boys who must be in Class 5 or 6- slap the rumps of vehicles and strut around.

If you ask any questions, it is in a soft and quiet voice because you don't want to inflame the already excited 'dada log' or bosses of the moment. In short, you feel you're trying to appease the people who have broken the law. I feel wretched, but I console myself with the thought that when the authorities turn up they will do the same thing and then proceed to negotiate.

Last weekend we were 'caught' again on the road to Siliguri. This time it was at a small settlement near the hills. The road - the National Highway, of course - was blocked by local residents and the children from two nearby schools. The previous night, a couple of children from the busti had been trampled to death by elephants. What a terrible way to die.

We didn't have to ask when the road block would be lifted. From long practice, we knew that it would remain in place until the 'concerned authority' (as we say here, and with no ironic intent) showed up with promises of a hearing, of compensation or redress. In this case the mob was waiting for the forest department officials to declare compensation for the families of the victims. The law is quite clear that every death caused by an elephant has to be compensated. I wonder why the protest had to be staged. Was it because of some past callousness or lapse? That was not the time or the place to find out.

As soon as two or three Forest Department jeeps arrived, we were waved on our way.

Too close for comfort. I wondered whether I was being foolish, taking pictures with my phone! At the first roadblock, someone screamed 'No Press' when a vehicle with a press sticker inched ahead. I heard another person shout that the press would report the roadblock, but write nothing about how the schoolchildren had to walk all the way to the public bus stop on the highway.

Jam on the Sevoke Road in the hill section
With naturally occuring road blocks like this one above, do we need to create more?

Flooded!

2010-07-16T12:01:00.017+05:30

We had a tragic reminder of the intensity of monsoon rains in the Dooars recently. A trainee assistant from Chengmari Tea Estate got swept away by a flooded rivulet. He was on his way to the bunglaow from the office on his motorcycle, and there were a few other people making their way home along the same route. All of them crossed the flooded stream just minutes before Debashis attempted it. His body and his motorcycle were found in the tea area several hundred metres away.

Dooars is full of rain-fed rivers that look deceptively small most of the year. Visitors to the area are quite naturally tempted to go in for a little paddle. People who live here maintain that you should only enter a river between the months of December and February. One year, a student from my daughters' school drowned in a river at Puja time in the month of October. There may not be too much water in the a river at that time, but the currents are strong, and the stones on the river bed are slippery with slime. A fall is enough to knock anyone senseless and the currents do the rest.

The tea area of 'NG' in the background.

These pictures were taken this morning after a night of rain. They were all taken from inside the jeep as it was still raining. The swollen flood you see here is not a river. It is the overflow from a storm drain that carries rain water down from the Bhutan hills.

Flooded section of the road to Samtse, Bhutan, and close-up, below.

Flooded paddy field to the left of the picture; drain to the right. Taken from the bridge across the drain.

This is all Moragaht Tea Estate: it is the division called 'NG' or New Garden. 'NG' is separated from the main division by the broad gauge railway track. On either side of the railway track there are roads - one is the National Highway 31 C that goes to Guwahati, Assam. The other is the road that connects us to Samtse, Bhutan. It is only used by Samtse residents and by the people living in the tea gardens that lie in that direction. The land between the tracks and the roads on either side is used for paddy, maize and mustard cultivation. It is under paddy at this time of year, but it's completely under water in these pictures. The drain, or the 'Haati Nala' as it is known, flows west (at that point)of the Bhutan road.

Since it had rained all night, the pluckers who'd been assigned to the flooded area were given work in the other division. Some jobs like guatemala* planting were held up, and people who were working on these were laid off for the day.

We saw a few of the planting men walking down the rail track. My husband called out to them and asked them to stay away from the flooded area. They said they'd only come to take a look since they had nothing else to do today. One of them smiled and said, 'Dhoop aaney se ek din dono bela kaam kar ke make up kar dega.' ('We can make up with a double shift one day when it's sunny !') Completely unperturbed - you have to like his attitude.

*A kind of grass, planted in areas where tea has been uprooted. It regenrates the soil before new tea is planted there.

Two in the (Tea) Bush

2010-06-21T20:05:00.007+05:30

I used to think only Englishmen dying of malaria in colonial India could hear the brain fever bird. I had no idea that it's a bird we've been hearing for many years and I paid for this knowledge with one night's sleep.

It was a night in March, and the bird shrilled outside my window without a break. There was no way I could sleep. It felt as if the bird was crying inside my head. By morning, I thought I'd gone mad. The bird didn't stop. Morning is supposed to bring great clarity of thought to the human mind. I had my moment - it became clear that the bird was saying, 'Brain fever! Brain fever!'

There are three shrill notes which the bird repeats over and over. Then there's the variation. It breaks off to do a warble of continuous climbing notes that serve as a short introduction to the same old three note cry.

Once you find out what the cry means, you hear it even more clearly and you find yourself waiting for the next one. There's no way you can mistake it for anything else. My brother Bala, who was visiting at the time, thanked me drily one morning for having explained it all to him. He'd lain awake the entire night while the bird went full throttle outside his window. We two were fellow sufferers; my husband slept the dreamless sleep that comes to tea planters!

When we'd finished making plans to eat the bird for breakfast, we read as much as we could about it on the internet. The bird is called the Hawk-cuckoo. It is small - about as big as a mynah - and black in colour. It's Hindi name is 'Papeeha', and it's said to be crying 'Pea Kahaan' (where's my love?) in search of its mate. In Bengali, they say the bird is crying 'Chokh Geilo' (Lost my eyes!)

Vikram Seth's novel A Suitable Boy has a poem called 'The Fever Bird'. I could not find the text anywhere on the web so I've copied it here.

The Fever Bird

The fever bird sang out last night.
I could not sleep, try as I might.

My brain was split, my spirit raw.
I looked into the garden, saw

The shadow of the amaltas
Shake slightly on the moonlit grass.

Unseen, the bird cried out its grief,
Its lunacy, without relief.

Three notes repeated, closer, higher,
Soaring, then sinking down like fire.

Only to breathe the night and soar,
As crazed, as desperate, as before.

I shivered in the midnight heat
And smelt the sweat that soaked my sheet.

And now tonight I hear again,
The call that skewers through my brain,

The call, the brain-sick triple note--
A bone of pain stuck in its throat.

I am so tired I could weep.
Mad bird, for God's sake let me sleep.

Why do you cry like one possessed?
When will you rest? When will you rest?

Why wait each night till all but I
Lie sleeping in the house, then cry?

Why do you scream into my ear
What no one else but I can hear?

(A Suitable Boy; 1993, Viking, pp. 949-950)

I've always admired Vikram Seth's poetry, but this poem is especially meaningful now. The lines I like best are :-
'The call, the brain-sick triple note--
A bone of pain stuck in its throat.'

The mynah, crow and peacock are all sweet-sounding compared to this horror. It kept me awake for hours every night. I filled my time writing my own poems to the tormentor.
These are my two Hawk-cuckoo haikus:

Brain fever bird bores
sleepless mum. Delhi, daughters
dream of birds singing.

"You complain of noise.
We long to hear a bird singing:
Town, bird, a far cry."

The bird's frenzy reduced somewhat by April, but it still goes off like an alarm once every few nights. If you have never heard this bird, you're lucky. If you want to risk it, here it is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPPzdx0gX8k
**************

We hear another bird now, one that sings sweetly. The Indian cuckoo is called the 'Bou-Ko-Tha-Ko' bird in Bengali. Its song has four notes. The story goes like this. The bird has just brought his bride home. She is a shy girl who doesn't say anything. The bridegroom pleads, 'Bou, kotha kou', meaning, 'Bride, say something.'

In North India, it is said that the bird cries out upon waking and discovering that his bride has run away with her lover. He goes, 'Main sota tha'. (I was sleeping!) through the night. The song has a variation, where the notes move higher up the scale. This is also explained in the legend. The deserted husband makes enquiries everywhere. He hears that the lovers have fled to a town called Champapur. He decides to follow them and changes his cry to a more urgent call, 'Chal Champapur!' (To Champapur!)

Tea planters say the bird is calling, 'Orange Pekoe', 'Broken Pekoe' or 'Make more pekoe'!!
You can hear it here on wikipedia.

The Fruits of Labour!

2010-05-29T16:57:00.006+05:30

These plums are the fruits of labour. Pick them, and you are committing yourself to some hard labour!

The plum tree in the compound didn't fruit at all last year because of the terrible drought. It was a loss - there was no plum jelly on the table.

This year the tree has put out its best. You'd hardly think this little guy was up to it, looking at the size and shape. It's in a dark corner of the garden, leaning on the garage wall.

The first time the tree fruited, we thought we could eat the plums as they were. They were small, but looked rich and luscious. One bite was enough to put us off. They werent just sour, they were bitter.

Those days the old Bawarchi (cook) Lakshman Singh Pradhan - but we never called him that; he liked the title Bawarchi - was alive. He was the last of the old-timers: a man who could cook several kinds of cuisine and could bake beautifully as well. I asked Bawarchi if we could make jam with the plums since they were so sour, and he said it wouldn't be possible.

Before I could argue, he said we could make jelly but not jam. I realised that he was a man of superior knowledge. He explained that he would stew the fruit whole, then strain the liquid into a cloth bag and collect the slow drippings. He would then take an equal weight of sugar, and boil it with the liquid till it reached setting point. So our first batch of plum jelly - not jam - was made by Bawarchi himself.

Boiling the fruit

In the bag. Govind is securing newspaper around it to keep the ever present 'poka'(insects) away.

In spite of the sweltering weather, we've been pickling and preserving fruits as if they're going out of fashion.

From left: Plum Jelly, Sweet Lime(Mausammi) Marmalade, Marwari Mango Pickle, Avakkai Mango Pickle.

When Seen In Perspective...

2010-02-11T11:56:00.006+05:30

Location: Monkey Point on the road to Lava and Kalimpong.

Location : Ambiok Tea Estate, also on the road to Lava and Kalimpong.

RIP Bagan Babu

2010-01-21T10:18:00.002+05:30

I always knew Bagan Babu was very old, but he just didn't look his age. If you met him anywhere in the garden, he'd be on his motorcycle. He'd pull off his cap and greet you with a big and happy smile. His face looked creased with smiling, not with age. Everyone in Moraghat remembers him that way - smiling and happy.

He died on Christmas day, 2009, aged 92.

People who live to a ripe old age pray that they remain active and in full possession of their wits. I wonder how many people visualize themselves working full time after the age of 75 or so. Not too many, I’ll bet. Our Bagan Babu worked at his post until the end of his life. This was remarkable, considering a bagan babu, or garden clerk, works out in the field and not at a desk.

Krishna Das Sinha was born on Janamastami, the day of Lord Krishna's birth. His parents lived in Cachar, and their roots were in the neighbouring state of Manipur. His son and daughter say they don't know the exact date or month of his birth in the Gregorian calendar.

At 17, Krishna was a good footballer. One day, when he was playing in a football match at Bhubandhar Tea Garden, the Burra Sahib spotted him and asked who he was. The Burra Babu of the garden told him the young man was his nephew. 'Get that boy', said the Burra Sahib, and that's how Bagan Babu started his life in tea.

Bhubandhar was a MacNeill and Barrie garden. In 1965, the Manager, Mr. J.G. Mortimer, was transferred out to one of the company's Dooars properties, Moraghat Tea Estate. He brought his Bagan Babu with him.

Bagan Babu moved into the quarters where he lived for the rest of his life.

Mr. Mortimer was the last British Burra Sahib of this garden. Bagan Babu stayed on to serve under 14 more managers between 1967 and the present time. MacNeill and Barrie sold the garden to HMP group in 1971, and they sold it to the present holders, Binaguri Tea Company, in 1990.

Bagan Babu's wife died in 1990 after a long illness. The couple had nine children. His second son Kanti started working in the garden as a babu himself, and Bagan Babu retired within a year of that. He didn't stay at home after retirement, but took up an assignment at Moiradanga. This was one of the new small holdings that was coming up near Falakata, a town around 30 kilometres south of Moraghat. He planted tea there, and organised the local population along plantation lines, appointing sardars and baidars among people who had never heard these terms before.

Tragedy struck in 1994 when Kanti was killed in a motorcycle accident. There was no one here in the family to take employment in his stead. So Bagan Babu was recalled, and he came back to work. When we moved to Moraghat in 1996, we heard the entire story.

A couple of days before Christmas, Bagan Babu complained of congestion and chest pain. He stayed home - a rare occurrence. In all his years of service, he'd reported sick only a few times. My husband went to see him, and found him working on his leaf chits. On Christmas Eve, Bagan Babu went to Birpara Hospital. He didn't need any help to get into the ambulance. The doctors at Birpara examined him and advised him to go to Siliguri for more tests. He would need a pacemaker, they said.

The following afternoon, Shankar driver picked him up in the ambulance to take him to Siliguri. It was cold and cloudy when they set off. Bagan Babu's breathing was a little laboured, and Shankar said he could hear him from the driver's seat. Shankar called Bagan Babu's old colleague on his cell phone - Kaji Babu, who'd been the second Bagan Babu until he left this garden two years ago. Kaji Babu caught up with the ambulance on his motorbike and greeted his old friend.

Bagan Babu could not speak. He saluted Kaji silently. The end came somewhere near Gairkata Tea Estate, not too far away from home. Shankar said they had been moving very slowly, stopping once or twice to feed him a little water, when suddenly, they couldn't hear the sound of his breathing.

Kaji Babu was inconsolable. 'He was like a father to me, ' he said. 'But he did "Salaam" to me before he died.'

Aurora Surrealis?

2009-11-04T10:37:00.008+05:30

Sunset on November 2, 2009
Aurora Surrealis?

This was the biggest and the grandest sunset I ever saw in my life. And no, don’t even bother to ask - I had stepped out without a camera. These pictures are all that my phone (Sony Ericsson) could manage. Not that my camera could have captured the scale or the intensity of the colours in there. About half of the sky was covered by this spectacle. The lit up clouds were dazzling with broken rainbows - something like a petrol slick on a puddle. It’s not a very poetic similie, but I only saw this sunset because I was on the highway!

This was over a large open area to the west of the highway, over the burial ground from which the tea garden gets its name (Moraghat, place of the dead) In the distance there was a small graveyard, with all the graves freshly limewashed for All Souls' Day. In the East, the full moon of Karthik Poornima, birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, was rising.

Overhead, there were fluffy cirrus clouds, looking like tiny lambs. The quality of the light was such that you could sense the distance between the clouds and the sky beyond. Now that's a thought for All Souls Day.

My husband was on his evening round of the division to the East of the highway, and I called him so he could join me, but he was deep inside the garden. The sunset would end by the time he reached me, he said. So the driver, who'd been taking me to the wool shop in Binnaguri, and I, stood and watched.

A few buses rolled past. Two men on a bike stopped and one, like me, took out his phone to capture what he could.

Sunset on November 1, 2009

To quote from Notting Hill, 'Surreal, but nice.'

See skies from around the world at Skywatch Friday.

Gerberas and Saddam Hussein in the Forest

2009-10-30T10:54:00.003+05:30

Chalsa forest is one of my favourite places in the Dooars, and when the roads were in better shape, I'd drive into it once a week, just to look around and soak in the atmosphere. One road leads deep into the forest and climbs up to the Jaldhaka settlement in Darjeeling district.

On Sunday last, we went up that way. It is a quiet place, and a drive there offers some lovely views of the Jaldhaka River and the hills. It also gives us a chance to take short walks in the hills. There is hardly any tourist traffic there.

The Sipchu Beat Office
Before we crossed over into Darjeeling district, we passed the Sipchu Beat Forest Office. We saw a small hothouse with flowering plants and stopped. There was a cluster of buildings belonging to the Forest Department and we didn't want to enter without permission. A little boy was the only person in sight. He looked nothing like a forest officer, but he told us we could go in, and then ran off, shouting that he would call the 'Beat Babu'.

The Hothouse
We entered the hothouse and found excellent specimens of gerberas growing there. The 'Beat Babu' -- Beat Officer -- turned up with the little boy. He was a pleasant, soft-spoken man. Probir Choudhary was happy that we liked his flowers. I'd assumed they were part of a tissue culture project, but he told us they were grown from seeds bought in Pune, Maharashtra - the other end of India. We asked if he could sell us any plants, but he said they only sold flowers. He didn't have little seedling plants, or else he would have shared them with us, he said. However, he plucked five beautiful blooms for us - one in each of the colours that grew there. They're still standing tall in a vase in the dining room, a week later.

The little settlement had a Sunday quiet about it. The boy couldn't get over the way we were fussing over him. He was shy and happy all at the same time. We asked him his name and whether he went to school. His name was Saddam Hussein, he said, and he went to the small school which stood among the cluster of buildings.

Mr Choudhary with Saddam

These people lived in the heart of the forest, surrounded by wild animals, including bison, leopards and elephants. There was no market for miles around. I wondered how often they had people they knew visiting them. Mr.Choudhary asked us where we'd come from. When we told him Moraghat Tea Estate, he said he'd always wanted to visit the nearby Gairkata town, where his in-laws live. He said it was too far away for him to make the trip. It isn't over 35 kilometres away from the beat, but that is a remote settlement, and there's probably just one bus a day out of it.

Mr. Choudhary brought out a visitors book for us to sign. A lot of people seemed to have stopped and visited here on their way to Jaldhaka or the Chhapramari Wildlife Reserve, and some were from overseas too. There was something very fine about this man. He seemed to exemplify that courtesy, goodness and dignity which reminded one of an older, unhurried world.

Entry in the Visitors Book made by some overseas visitors on the day of the Total Eclipse, July 2009.'Who knows, maybe we can extend a project with tulips?' they write.

The Jaldhaka River

Close Encounters of the Herd Kind

2009-10-26T22:00:00.007+05:30
Last Monday, we went to Bagdogra, a drive that takes about three hours from our garden. At around ten in the morning, we were crossing Damdim in the Western Dooars, and we saw a large crowd and some jeeps on the road ahead. We thought it was a 'jhamela' (trouble) of some kind. Our Dooars residents are volatile and quick to take offence, and they vent their feelings very visibly, so that 'jhamela' is a part of daily life, like 'Bandh' (strike) or potholes on the road.

There were men in uniform there too, and that helped to confirm what we believed. We expected anything from a murder to a road accident to a political demonstration. Since no one stopped our car, we drove ahead.

The cause of all the excitement was a herd of elephants. They were in the tea area off the road about 500m away from the highway, around 30 in all, adults and calves, all standing in a tight group, facing out in different directions.

The crowds had collected there to stare. The uniformed men, who were officials of the Forest Department, couldn't do much to convince them to make way for the elephants to get away. An ice cream seller was doing brisk business, and it looked like the start of a long day - and a long wait for the elephants. They were trapped where they were, not wanting to move because of the growing crowd of people.

The poor elephants were still stranded when we returned down that road around sunset time. The gawping crowds had grown, and now it was like a mela - a fairground - with so many motorbikes, cars, cycles and drifters. We slowed down, but didn't stop to join them.

My husband Mohan said sundown was the time when the elephants would come into their element. But while they waited, which had been all day, they had stood without a sound and without a drink of water, intent on protecting their young. They showed no signs of wanting to harm the crowds of people. There was no shade where they were standing, and they had been hurling mud on their backs to keep cool.

We'd experienced much the same thing in Moraghat T.E. early this year when around seven elephants strayed into the tea area and were forced to stand there all day, while the crowds - some of them coming in hired cars from Birpara, 20 km away - stayed till it was dark.

It was obvious all through that the elephants showed more maturity than human beings! Their behaviour signifies a superior instinct for survival and a superior understanding of coexistence with fellow creatures. They follow all the old rules, while we break them.

And yesterday, on one of our early-start-to the-cold-weather Sunday drives, we just missed running into a herd of around 40 to 50 elephants in the heart of Chalsa forest, between Jaldhaka and Chhapramari. It was sundown -- their time, and the forest -- their beat. Had we dawdled five minutes before setting back from Jaldhaka, we'd have driven into them. I'm glad we didn't disturb each other.

This is a picture of a tame elephant that belongs to the Forest Department, probably on its way to give tourists a ride. This was shot near Chhapramari Wildlife Reserve in Chalsa forest by Mohan.

Niswarth and Durga Puja

2009-10-04T10:51:00.004+05:30
Puja, the biggest festival of the year, just went past. Nothing could dampen the spirit of celebration in the Dooars gardens - not the drought, and not even the high prices of food and goodies. Niswarth's people celebrated with a musical entertainment show in Bagracote Tea Garden on September 25, 2009.

In keeping with the Puja spirit, the show was open to all. There were a number of entertainers from Bagracote, but the Niswarth performers were the highlight of the show. Surjya Oraon's song had everone cheering and clapping loudly. This was the only way they communicate their appreciation to Surjya, who can't see.

About half an hour into the show, we heard there were two and a half thousand spectators. Later, even more gathered. It wasnt possible to get the exact number, but it turned out that all the labour lines were 'Khaali' and every resident of the garden was at the show!

The show stealer was Deepa, who danced to a lively Hindi film song. This lovely girl has malformed feet; they are twisted and point backwards. The CD took some time to find. Deepa was all ready to dance, and she waited quietly, smiling and excited.

When the music began, Deepa danced with terrific energy, mouthing the words of the song and enacting all the emotions expressed by the singer. There were four boys dancing with her. Two of them cannot hear at all, and the other two have very limited mobility. Their team work was remarkable.

As they danced, the crowd went wild. There was no way anyone present would think of the hardship or sorrow of such physical afflictions. Emotions ran high. There were some women sitting behind me, clapping with their hands high in the air, smiling and weeping at the same time.

Thank you, Deepa, and boys. You showed us that music and dance are for everyone, and that they have the power to fill us with happiness.

Deepa became something of a star that night. Representatives of the local press were seen clustered around her for a long time.

Talking Boxes

2009-09-06T00:17:00.003+05:30
Tributes paid,
wreaths laid.
Flags half mast:
Relive days past!
Son anointed,
Successor appointed
Madam arrives
son in tow
PM postpones
all to morrow.

Bharat desh,
always mourning
celebrating
always rating,
telly-phoning
phoney telling.

What about Air Force boys?
What about suicides?
What about the failed monsoon?
Price of sugar, over the moon.
Please, put reality on hold
Live funeral should not go cold.

NISWARTH

2009-08-24T13:13:00.010+05:30

At Niswarth's Disability camp in Dibrugarh, Assam on August 16, 2009.

Niswarth, a registered charity, is an organisation that works for the welfare of disabled people in the tea gardens of Dooars and Assam. It is run by a tea planter here in the Dooars. Niswarth was started in Bagracote Tea Garden in 2007 by Harsh Kumar and his wife Neelam. Neelam suffered a stroke which left her with some degree of disability. She passed away in 2008, and after this Harsh redoubled his efforts to improve the lot of those who lived - and lived pretty much on the edge - with disabilities.

Surjya Oraon is blind. His life changed considerably once Niswarth became a part of it. At one time Surjya would go to Oodlabari town everyday and beg for a living. He is now fully employed at the incense stick production unit run by the Niswarth Centre in Bagracote. On Founder's Day, April 3 2009, which would have been Neelam's fiftieth birthday, Surjya opened the evening's program with a song.
'Chhoo kar mere man ko, Kiya tu ne kya ishara.' (You reached out to me, you touched my heart.)
'Badla ye mausam, lage pyaara jag saara' (Everything changed, and the world feels like a beautiful place now.)
Surjya's song moved all the people present - it was so melodious, so heartfelt, and so filled with meaning. Surjya's is just one story. There are many people with limited mobility who have received wheelchairs and tricycles, there are deaf-mute children who have been sponsored to attend special schools in Darjeeling, and there are elderly people who have had cataract surgery in Siliguri free of cost.

Many of the disabled residents of Bagracte Tea Garden work at the Niswarth centre, making incense sticks and greeting cards.

The idea of working for the disabled and underprivileged garden residents came to Harsh and Neelam long before she was taken ill. They wanted to keep a living link with the tea world, not just a club membership. It had to be something, thought Harsh, which would be a living connection after retirement, not just with Burra Bungalow and its new occupants, but with the garden and with all its people. Niswarth today has a growing band of workers, volunteers, well-wishers, and of course, beneficiaries.

Niswarth has organised disability camps at Anandapur, Siliguri, Bagrakote and Birpara tea gardens in the Dooars, and in the month of August, 2009, the first such camps took place in Assam. These were held at Panitola Group Hospital and in Dibrugarh town. At the Dibrugarh Disability camp, 205 people were identified as eligible to receive government Disability Cards. Earlier, only 15 people in the area had cards. At the Panitola Camp, 359 people were identified. In the Dooars, 539 people have already been issued government Disability Cards. Card holders are entitled to free rail travel and free bus rides. They are also entitled to free disability aids and appliances. In the Dooars, 291 people have received appliances like wheelchairs, tricycles, crutches and hearing aids. The distribution of these appliances was organised by Niswarth members.

Niswarth was in Assam again to conduct a Disability Camp at Moran Tea Garden on August 30. The camp covered 14 tea gardens from Sibsabar and Dibrugarh districts.

Funding is a constant and growing need as we expand our scope of activities. It would be wonderful if more people could give a thought to making some contribution towards Niswarth.
Our homepage is http://www.niswarth.com/home. Please read about our latest activities here on koi hai - http://www.koi-hai.com/niswarth.html

Big Boy - Shoot at Sight

2009-08-20T12:54:00.011+05:30
My husband decided to shoot this visitor as soon as he saw him in the verandah. A rather Bhayanak (scary) moth.

Photographs by Mohan

Goodbye, Friend

2009-08-10T21:24:00.005+05:30

Sunrise, 2008

One of the victims of this year's drought and failed monsoon was our Kala Siris, or Albizia Chinensis tree. It was the tallest and grandest tree in our bungalow. My husband loved it like anything. Today, a team of trained workers chopped off all the branches. Tomorrow, the trunk will go and the roots will be dug out too. We'll miss it. So will all the crows - it was their favourite perch. A blue-throated barbet nested in it last cold weather.

Here's an excerpt from an entry made some time in September 2008:
...the splendid creature who dominates our front garden year round is this towering specimen of Albizia Chinensis. We call this tree 'Kala Siris' here. It is a variety of mimosa, and in the months of May and June it produces lovely scented 'shaving brush' flowers which are light green in colour. The species is prone to canker, and a goodish bit of the tree had to be lopped off two years ago. In spite of that, this grand old tree still towers at around 60 ft and hasn't lost its beauty.

The last sign of life the tree showed was in June 2009 when it put out new buds. Within a week, they all died. We'll miss you in the garden.

Totality

2009-07-22T05:41:00.006+05:30
We had a cloudy sky today, with pretty dense clouds in the East from 5.15 in the morning, when I first looked out. Just last night I'd thought I wouldn't mind missing the total eclipse if it rained heavily. It looked like we would have neither! Anyway, we had a plan ready - we would drive towards the south, taking the road to Gairkata, from where we might get a different looking sky. We started at around 6.15. By the time we'd driven for a few minutes, the sun had moved behind a thinner layer of clouds. There were little breaks in these clouds. We had welder's glass with us, and I saw the 3/4 crescent through it, so we stopped. There were some puddles in the ground, and we kept looking at the sun in them. We were the only two people there.

Just before totality, the sun came out of the clouds and we saw our shadows on the grass in that weird light. The wind dropped and it was very still. When totality began, we couldn't see the eclipsed sun at all. The clouds ate it up. But it became really dark, much darker than I expected, and two or three trucks went past with headlights on. We could barely see each other, and the trees around us had become shadows. It felt strange - scary, even though we knew it was going to happen. We never saw that blacked out sun, but it wasn't a total washout either.

Back home, the night watchman looked relieved to see us again. He told us it had become dark suddenly and that he had run and switched on as many lights as he could.

Think Positive!

2009-04-11T22:54:00.004+05:30
"Reminding someone of their misery makes them frown even more. Putting a smile on someone’s face costs nothing. Think about it.

Think positive!"

This is from 'Advertising and Positive Thinking' by my brother Bala.
Read the rest of the article here.

Waiter, There's An Elephant In My Tea!

2009-04-07T11:53:00.011+05:30
Of the herd of elephants that entered Moraghat Tea Estate on Monday night, seven hung around till Tuesday morning, and ended up staying all day. They had moved from the inhabited parts of the garden to the NG Division, which borders the National Highway and the broad gauge railway line.

This made it easy for passersby on the highway to stop and stare, and also made it impossible for the elephants to get out from the tea area and head back to the forest!

Three adults and four calves - they stood in this formation almost all day.

When they got agitated, one of them would charge ahead!

Elephants can cause a lot of damage, and these boys were doing their best to drive them away. It isn't good to be in the path of an elephant when it runs towards you. It can race along at 60km an hour.

Our garden's boys dont fear elephants - they're charging at them to frighten them away.

We went as close as we dared (about 100 feet) to take these pictures. One of the big guys started off in our direction, and we ran into the vehicle, then raced off - under the branches of a tree that you know who had knocked down.

Racing away

By late afternoon, people were arriving in hired cars to stand and stare.
Our visitors went away only after nightfall. Today Mohan looks glum - the damage they did will cost the garden a few lakhs of rupees!

A Rescue Mission

2009-04-03T10:30:00.012+05:30
Geeta was coming to the bungalow to work this morning when she saw a bird trapped in a fence around the tea area. She sent Jithroo there to rescue the bird. Jithroo has a way with animals. Our pets love him, and the cats think he's playing with them when he goes about his work with a broom. Jithroo freed the bird - it was a peahen - whose neck had got caught in a bit of fencing wire. He put it in the little coop where Salman and Goni used to sleep when they were tiny kittens. (In the picture, above)
Garden people know exactly what to do with wounded animals. They kept it in a place where it couldn't move around too much, and where it was dark, so it would feel comforted. We don't see too many peacocks and peahens in the tea area, but there are plenty in the forest nearby.

Mohan rang up the Wild Life Squad in Binnaguri. Their team came in promptly. The bird looked quite comfortable in their arms.

This is Bittoo, who came along for the ride with his father.

The bird was loaded into the vehicle without any fuss. It will be released into the forest now.

Darjeeling : Jaldhaka River

2009-04-02T17:03:00.008+05:30

That's Bhutan, on the other side of the river.

The hills to the left of the picture are in Bhutan.

One For the Road - Spring Water!

All's Well That Ends Dry Spell

2009-03-29T10:23:00.003+05:30
The first drops of rain we got after a four-month long drought came with a lot of special effects. Strong winds started blowing at around eight in the evening. The verandah was like the set of a disaster-on-board movie. Anyone who wanted to stand straight in there had to cling to a pillar. No standing around however, it was all hands on deck as chairs, tables and flowerpots had to be got out of the wind to safety. There was some rain, which we sensed more by the sound it made on the roof than by sight. The drops disappeared into the dry earth as soon as they fell. My husband spoke to the Company Saab in Kolkata and held the receiver up so that he could hear the raindrops on the roof.

It was over in a few minutes. We went to bed, and after a couple of hours I woke up to a racket. It sounded as if an elephant had entered the labour lines. People were bursting crackers and shouting, and dogs were barking madly. My husband spoke to someone over the cell phone. About two hours later, there was a crash that sounded like the end of the world. There was a flash of green light - now I know what Harry Potter felt like - and then everything went dark. Mohan knows how courageous I am, and how calm I remain in a crisis. So he was already holding both my hands and telling me not to worry. There was a mild burning smell around us. Mohan went out with a torch to check for damages. There didn't seem to be any. Our lights didn't come back for twenty minutes, by which time it had started to rain. The relief of hearing falling rain and the lights coming back were enough to send us back to sleep.

The next morning, Mohan reported that there'd been very little rain. But he was all smiles. The drought was over. What other news, I asked. Plenty. The elephant had crashed its way through the fencing around at least four houses, eating all the bananas planted there. No one in the garden was upset. The elephant was lucky for us all, they said - it had brought rain! One Assistant reported that when the lightning struck, the main switchboard of his bungalow had caught fire. Luckily, he managed to put it out. In our bungalow, the burning smell had been coming from the plug-in adaptor to the cordless phone. It had burst when lightning struck. Oh yes, and the water pump had died in the night.

It was a cheery morning. The sun shone in a sky that was blue for the first time in months. The bungalow was alive with activity. An electrician was fitting a substitute water pump. The Malis - gardeners - were sweeping up leaves which were strewn all over the compound. A boy started washing carpets, something he'd been putting off because of the dust haze in the air. The only sad faces I saw were those of the hollyhocks in the garden - they were all laid down by the storm.

And Pretty Maids All in A Row

2009-03-24T10:26:00.008+05:30

My mother says hollyhocks are always Late Latifs. Well look at these, strutting their stuff now,when the rest of the garden is going into a decline. Hollyhocks bring memories of the garden of my childhood home in Delhi.
My sister Viji would walk me around the lawn, and she would would make a 'doll' for me using a flower and a bud. Can you imagine how thrilled a little girl would be to get a doll which looked like a princess with a flowing gown?

This is the first time we've managed to grow hollyhocks like these. It's a joy to share them here.

Dry Days and Fakkar Baba

2009-03-21T09:03:00.006+05:30
I wait for my husband to come home from his evening kamjari and say those three little words that mean so much to both of us: 'Let it rain. Let it rain. Let it rain.' It is now 140 days since we had rain in the Dooars. The forests look like they could turn into Australian bushfires. The sky is a sickly dust haze. Days are hot and the nights turn unpleasantly pleasant, ruling out all chances of a cloud build up. 'Coming home looking like a thundercloud every day won’t help', I used to tell Mohan some weeks ago, but I don't have the heart to say it any now.

Garden people have this habit of consoling themselves with saying that the next Puja on the Indian calendar will bring rain. So everyone starts off with cheerful assertions about how it will rain on Saraswati Puja (January). The wise ones don't stay disappointed for long, and they start to say, 'It will rain on Shivratri for sure.' That comes in mid-February. Hmm. 'Fagua' is the next cry that goes up. 'Surely Fagua/Holi will bring rain.' That's mid-March. It just went past. What now?

Fakkar Baba of Oodlabari was well-known all over Dooars. He died of cancer some years ago. Baba was a devotee of Lord Shiva and was said to be a seer. He smoked hard all the time. Whatever he smoked early in the morning had him in a trance, and people said that was the best time to consult him. He was known to predict promotions and transfers of Chhota Saabs and Burra Saabs in the Dooars gardens with some accuracy. If he ever predicted who'd get the sack, they never told. Rain was his area of specialisation. The Baba had devotees who'd invite him to their gardens to conduct special 'Pujas' for rain.

(Also pulished on www.koi-hai.com)

Just Dandy!

2009-03-19T14:38:00.003+05:30

We bought these lily bulbs when we visited Gangtok last March for the International Flower Show. Mohan planted them, and we had one flowering plant last summer. This one has bloomed earlier than we expected. No one's complaining.

Flowers From My Friend

2009-03-15T18:55:00.016+05:30

Manashi's Garden

Antirrhinums: 'Madame Butterfly'

Nothing gives me a bigger kick than other people's gardens. When I look around my own, I see dead leaves somewhere, an unwatered plant somewhere else, weeds, or something to do. Other people's gardens offer a complete break from thought. You just look, enjoy, and absorb.

Manashi's garden was wonderful when it peaked in February with dahlias everywhere. That was more than a month ago. Now that the dahlias are gone, the 'late latifs' are having their day.

Phlox were late in all our bungalows. These pink beauties are like little rosebuds, aren't they?

Carnations brave the Dooars weather! I have never succeeded in growing them!

The drought in the Dooars is alarming now. Manashi told me that she'd heard some crackling sounds coming from the garden yesterday afternoon. When she went to the verandah to check, she saw one of the big bamboos at the edge of the compound had caught fire! (You can see the bamboos in the first picture).
Over 120 days - that is four months - without rain. The husband, poor man, found a forecast by the BBC which said it would rain tomorrow. It's brought him some comfort. The BBC, he tells me, actually records daily temperatures in Siliguri, a place that other major news channels ignore.

Manashi's Bungalow at the DBITA

A Breather in Kolkata

2009-03-11T09:43:00.011+05:30

Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

The tea planter and his wife love a quick getaway to the heart of the city. One little whiff of urban life is good for our lungs. It refreshed us before I returned to my station on the verandah and the husband to prepare for the season, and to fight the drought.

...and Queen Victoria's Statue

City walks were good fun, but the pavements in Park Street finished off my 'stout walking sandals'. I sought comfort in Flury's coffee and confections.

Isnt it lovely here? Even the decor is all caramel, coffee and cream! Service comes with a smile. Went back again for breakfast (hash browns, rolls, muffins, and coffee). Mmm.

The window display reflects Park Street. Well, they wouldnt let me photograph it from inside. I loved the old baking tins and moulds on display, and I wonder if the cocoa pods and beans are visible.
So that is my world this week, and do see other people's worlds here.

No One's Safe?

2009-03-09T20:28:00.008+05:30
My husband Mohan was a little late back from office today. I heard the horn of his Gypsy near the back gate - he seemed to be pressing it with some urgency. Then I heard raised voices. Oh no, I thought. Holi is still two days away, and someone's wandered into the bungalow compound, drunk out of his senses.

It wasn't an intruder, but someone had blocked Mohan's path into the bungalow. That's why he'd sounded the horn. He needed help, not for himself, but for the poor creature that was making its way across his path in some pain.

It was an injured snake, a 'dhamna' or rat snake. Mohan saw it in time, and stopped his vehicle while the snake crossed slowly to safety. When he took me back there to take a look at it, it lay still. As we began moving away, it started trying to move under cover somewhere. Someone had probably stepped on it, or thrown a stone at it. It's spine was broken, and we could see an open wound.

Mohan called for the Factory Assistant, Kingshuk Chakravorty. Kingshuk is gifted; he has a way with snakes. He picked up the dhamna, and it allowed itself to go limp in his hands. However, he said we couldn't save it. He left it in the tea area, where it could lie unseen until the end.

Kingshuk examines the snake

Sshh! Exams are Here!

2009-03-02T19:48:00.012+05:30
When I was in school, there was something called 'Martyrs' Day' on January 30. That was the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's death. A siren would sound all over Delhi at 11 a.m., and we'd maintain two minutes silence.

I can't remember when that practice was given up. 'Martyrs' Day' came to mind recently for a reason that has nothing to do with Gandhiji. Our neighbourhood seems to be going through a period of self-imposed 'state mourning'.

In our North Bengal, 'Chakka Jam' (Freeze the Wheels!) is the cry that goes up everytime a political party calls a 'Bandh'(strike) and life grinds to a halt. At this time every year, it is 'EGG-JAM!' that puts an end to all movement. And no, it has nothing to do with avian flu. Do read on.

My husband asked a young couple whom he met in a shop, 'How's life? Where are you, we don’t see you at all these days!' To which both husband and wife pulled long faces, looking almost like cartoon characters in their mock dismay.

The husband answered, 'My daughter's exam is there.' He sounded so tragic, as if something terrible had happened to him. The daughter is a student of Class One. When my husband laughed out loud, he was told, 'You don’t know there is so much competition, it is very tough, very tough.' 'Syllabus is too much' wailed the wife, and went on, 'If we don’t sit with her, she won't study. And if she doesn't study, where will she go tomorrow? There is so much competition in every area! We have to think of her future also.' My husband said 'Goodnight' as soon as he could, and made his escape.

For the last three weeks, one has heard of nothing but exams! Jokes apart, something has to be done about what final exams do to children and their parents in our country.

1. I cannot understand why parents are called to school to take home their children's progress report cards two or three times a year. Invariably, there is a session where the teacher presses for improvement in several areas, and the parent goes away feeling that all spare time should now be directed to supervising the child's study hours.

Suggestion to schools: Call only parents of problematic cases to the school. Do not allow parents to compete over compared report cards, and do not expect every child to score 80s and 90s.

2. Parents, especially mothers, 'teach' their children at home after school, and 'make them do homework.' They end up making life at home a nightmarish extension of school for the poor children.

Suggestion: Schoolteachers should instil a sense of responsibility in a child. The child should know that she/he has to complete the day's homework and bring it in the following day. This can be done if -:
(a) learning exercises are completed in school - e.g., oral question and answer sessions to test understanding, after which (b) only one or two questions are assigned as written homework. In some instances, the oral tradition should be revived, and no written work assigned at all. (For example, learning multiplication tables).

3.Children who are 'forced' into supervised study sessions will never do their own work unless supervised, and will never learn to take the responsibility for any of their actions.

Suggestion : Parents, get a life! Find something else to do with your free time! Rebel against the 'mourning period' and go to a party.

4. Coming first in Class 2,3, 4 and 5 are not going to count in 'today's competitive world'. Do you want your child to burn out early, lose interest in studies and turn rebel?

Suggestion: Exams come every year. Childhood never comes back. So are you going to take your loved one's childhood away?

The Niswarth Story

2009-02-26T15:15:00.017+05:30
Niswarth (Hindi word; meaning - unselfish) is the name of the organisation started in Bagracote Tea Garden, Jalpaiguri District, by the Manager Harsh Kumar and his wife, Neelam. The aim of the organisation is 'providing employment and a social standing to the underprivileged in our society.' The focus is on disabled people.

Neelam passed away a year ago, on the 29th of February. A little over two years before that, she had suffered a stroke. Life changed drastically for both Neelam and Harsh. They fought hard against the effects of the stroke, which affected her movements and her speech.

Neelam Kumar
Neelam was a cheerful and lively person, full of fun. All of us who knew her found it tough to reconcile to what had happened. Harsh and Neelam were a devoted couple, and their son and daughter, who live abroad, made frequent trips home, providing help and moral support. Her strong nature and the family's love helped; Neelam improved tremendously.

Harsh learnt and read everything he could about stroke related disabilities. At such a time, the couple's thoughts turned to those who didn't have the means to help themselves. And that was how they started 'Niswarth', in 2007. In May 2007, members of Niswarth started a scheme providing employment to the disabled - the production of incense sticks.

Soon after Neelam passed away, in March 2008, Harsh donated Rs. 4 lakh to Niswarth. Duncans Industries allocated land and a building for the organisation in Bagracote Tea Garden.
Harsh Kumar
In July 2008, Niswarth held a Blood Donation and Disability camp. Identity cards were organised for hundreds of disabled people. At a camp in December 2008, hearing aids, wheelchairs, tricycles, crutches and disability cards were distributed to 176 beneficiaries. In January 2009, an eye camp was organised in collaboration with the Lions Club of Siliguri.
Harsh started talking to his friends in other tea gardens about hosting such camps.

In February, Anandapur T.E*., Kumlai T.E. , Leesh River T.E. and Nowera Nuddy T.E. in Dam Dim Subdistrict, and Moraghat T.E. in Binnaguri Subdistrict organised eye camps.
Early on the morning of the 16th February, a team of doctors, nurses and technicians, headed by Dr. Agarwal of Siliguri, set up camp in the garden hospital in Moraghat. Over 250 people got free eye check ups. Forty were diagnosed as cases for cataract surgery, and were taken to Siliguri the same evening by the team's Lions Club bus. Their stay, surgery, and treatment was all taken care of at the Lions Club Hospital.
'Thank you' from Moraghat Tea Estate to Dr. Agarwal and team

The patients returned to the garden after two days. An optician came in from Birpara town to collect prescriptions and take measurements for spectacles, which were made available at discounted prices. Two children, deaf and mute since birth, were taken to visit the Niswarth centre at Bagracote the next day. They could be sponsored to attend a special school in Gangtok, if their parents wish to send them.

Next up on Niswarth's calendar is a Disability camp at Birpara Tea Garden on 1 March, 2009, for the gardens in Dalgaon Subdistrict. Niswarth will also sponsor deaf and mute children between the ages of 5 and 12 at special schools from March onwards.

Niswarth is a registered charity. If you wish to make a donation, or help in any way, please visit http://niswarth.com/home

*T.E. - Tea Estate

Cheap Thrills

2009-02-23T20:37:00.003+05:30
February is the season of film award functions. I watched almost all of the BAFTA awards, and the last (and most exciting) part of the Oscars. The BAFTA ceremony was businesslike and neat. The host's humour was inoffensive and he didn't talk too much. Bollywood's Star Screen Awards were disturbing. The chief host Sajid Khan dressed in drag, and made continual references to the movie Dostana in which John Abraham and Abhishek Bachhan pretend to be gay.

I couldn't understand this obsession with gay sex and how it could be a source of amusement and/or titillation. Where does it fit into a film awards function,of all things?

While flicking channels, I found last year's Filmfare Awards were on. The 'King' Khan Shahrukh and his co-host, Saif Ali Khan, were doing a comic act. The main theme of the show was the supposed humour in a situation where 'macho' guys like them are mistaken for a gay couple in a movie they did a few years ago. So what Shahrukh did last year became a model for a 'lesser Khan' like Sajid to copy this year.

It's bad enough that there are movies that exploit the theme of homosexuality, and get a 'U' certificate from the censor board. Entertainment channels on television are watched by children of all ages. Should sensitive and confusing subjects like sexual orientation be treated as a source of crass humour and titillation? Saif Ali Khan and ShahRukh Khan are both fathers of teen or pre-teen children. Guess we should ask them.

Small Dreams of a Cancerian

2009-02-23T11:44:00.004+05:30
(A poem written ten years ago)

On my decision to stop teaching

To revered writer Vikram Seth

Most humbly do I dedicate

My decision to waste no time

(In teaching drama, prose and rhyme

To feckless and ungrateful youth --

I will resign and that's the truth!)

O Master, in your steps I follow

(By penning doggerel so hollow)

If I should give my Muse a twirl

We could do you A Suitable Girl.

Speechless

2009-02-17T09:25:00.001+05:30

More like this one here.

Give Me Love, Give Me Peace on Earth

2009-02-09T12:37:00.008+05:30
Today, I'm quoting from my own blog. There are two paragraphs from 'The Dooars: A World' below.

1.The Dooars is a world that abounds in natural beauty, with its forests, rivers and mountains. There are more than two hundred tea gardens here. We call them gardens and not estates. It makes the place sound idyllic, maybe like a Garden of Eden, and in some respects that isn’t too far off the mark. Many people who have seen the Dooars have described it as Paradise.

2.North Bengal began to grow into the multi ethnic region it has become today. Most people speak Hindi, Bengali, Nepalese and three or four aadivasi dialects like Oraon, Munda and Saadri with ease. For non linguists, it is enough to know Hindi. Anyone from any part of India can come here to live and soon start feeling at home. The provision shop in the town nearby will start supplying him with a magazine in his language and some foodstuff or other which is a specialty of his region!

There are two truths here about the Dooars. It is a place of great natural beauty, and it is a place of ethnic diversity. I didn’t mention how all the different communities lived together harmoniously when I wrote the above piece. It was a given, it was the way we were.

I'm not pretending that life as a tea planter's wife has been idyllic. There's loneliness, the lack of intelligent occupation, and no chance to build a career. Sometimes they are enough to crush the spirit.

The dangers in this world range from snakes, elephants, storms and floods to highway dacoity, labour agitations, and sometimes physical assaults on tea garden executives. These are the hazards we live with. They may be slightly unfamiliar to city people, who live with an entirely different set of problems and dangers. This is a kind of jungle, while the city, maybe, is another.

This blog has never been a place where I write about our problems, but today, things are different. We are all watching and listening as violence rages between two ethnic groups all over the Dooars. The Dooars was inclusive and welcoming. We used to call it a ‘Mini India’ very proudly. We have caught up with the rest of India. Our small towns have Section 144 imposed on them, and the names Banarhat, Birpara, Mal Bazaar and Nagrakata have made headlines. For all the wrong reasons.

Star Quality

2009-02-05T14:09:00.011+05:30

These are starfruit, or kamrak, and like all the goodies of the season, they are golden and juicy. Around eight years ago, a boy came up to our bungalow gate on a bicycle and asked the gardener if he could meet 'Aunty'. He said he had many fruit saplings for sale. Mithhoo made him wait at the gate, and came to ask me if I'd like to take a look. We needed to plant some fruit trees in the compound, so I said I would. Like most salesmen, the boy talked too much and tried my patience. He did have some interesting saplings, including starfruit, chikoo, litchi and hibiscus. He swore they were excellent, all of them. He was quite dramatic, wanting to make a good first impression, and he ended each declaration with 'Aunty!' Mithoo wasn’t very pleased. Once the boy went away, he told me he thought that 'Aunty Wala' talked too much.

We referred to him as 'Aunty' after that. The sales talk turned out to have been justified. All the saplings took root, grew well, and produced what he'd promised they would. 'Aunty' came by to check their progress, and sold me chrysanthemums. We grew exotic hibiscus: yellow, mauve and orange. The chikoo and guava plants did well. The star of the lot was the kamrak.

Mithoo by the Kamrak tree
The little thing grew quite well, and I ignored it, thinking it would be many years before it produced any fruit. It looked quite pretty as a young bush. Within two years of our planting it, we got fruits - and how! Every branch and bough seemed to hang with fruit. My friend Usha called it a 'teenage pregnancy' and asked me to take good care of the plant. The tree - actually hardly that yet - fruited twice a year after that first time. We had to add vertical supports to the boughs. You can see why, in the picture.

Every rainy season, the tree begins to look like a green cave. It is the best garden umbrella you could have. The area under it serves as a rest and recuperation outpost for weary indoor plants.

Mohan in the hidey hole

Sometimes in Winter

2009-02-02T22:54:00.007+05:30

The afternoon light was perfect, and these images needed no enhancement.
A future memory, already golden.

'I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling'
- T.S.Eliot, 'Preludes'

Three Poems

2009-01-30T11:03:00.007+05:30
On Facebook

You read my status
message, and if you respond,
You're jobless, like me.

The Victim

Bitten by kitten!
Goni bit my big toe, he
Punctured my ego.

No Victim

I'm not cowed : dont try
me. Break out, instead, from that
Closed pen of your mind.

Winter's Gold

2009-01-25T19:42:00.016+05:30

January is drawing to a close, and we are in a hurry to enjoy what is left of the winter season. When the morning's fog clears, the marigolds in the garden look as if you could drink the sunshine out of them. There are fresh oranges to juice up, and though they get more expensive every year, they taste great.

Home-made Marmalade - No sitting in the sun and making this!

Sweet and golden are the days spent idling in the winter sun. The festival of sun-worship, Sankranti/Pongal, just went past. The Bengali month of Poush finished in mid-January. It is a special month for foodies : a host of traditional sweets are prepared with 'khejur gur', the jaggery made from date palm syrup. Jaggery is a wonderful thing to eat in winter, and far more healthy than refined white sugar. Date palm jaggery has a mature mellowness and booziness which is quite missing in sugar cane jaggery. It is sold in rounds like this one, below.

Khejur gur and Sandesh
When the month of Poush began in mid-December, I started checking with our general store owner in town whether his stock of Khejur gur had arrived yet. He said, 'Abhi kahaan itna thhanda hua hai? Thhanda hone se aayega' (Is it cold these days? the gur will only be ready when it is really cold.) The 'gur' needs sunshine as well as cold to reach the right levels of sweetness.

Golden brown Khejur gur Roshogollah puts regular white Roshogolla in the shade. Khejur gur roshogollah, sandesh, paayesh and kalakand are sold in shops. The best sweets, though, are the ones made at home. Bengali women who are experts in the kitchen make amazing sweets from khejur gur. When my mother is here, she too makes her special 'Thenga Paal Payasam' with Khejur gur. I find myself closing my eyes just thinking about that Payasam.

The 'Paayesh' in this picture was painstakingly prepared by Mrs. Rama Mitra-Majumdar in Moraghat and sent to all the bungalows a couple of days ago. The base is paayesh, thickened milk sweetened with Khejur gur, and the rice flour peetha/dumplings are filled with coconut and jaggery paste. Simply heavenly.

26 January is a favourite date for picnics. We had our garden families' picnic at the Pump House in the "NG" Division, on 25th January. The smiling faces say it all.

Indolence is Bliss

2009-01-21T16:02:00.003+05:30

Out to Lunch
Not the best of days, a too watery sun and more winds than I'd care for, but better than indoors, definitely.

Worm's Eye

Tara's Birthday

2008-12-13T15:35:00.003+05:30
My new post is at another blog. Here is a link to it. The subject of my post sat and gazed at me very intently until I gave right in, and got down to work on writing. I hope she approves of what I've written.

Cooch Behar : Rajbari, Raash Mela and More

2008-12-06T17:08:00.025+05:30

Cooch Behar’s ‘Raash Mela’ is said to be one of the oldest fairs in the country. Raash Mela begins at the time of the full moon in the month of Kartik (that’s a fortnight after Diwali). The Mela isn’t just a fair, it is an extension of the religious festival that is celebrated at the Madan Mohan Bari, a temple that was built by Maharaja Nripendra Narayan of Cooch Behar over a hundred years ago.
So the palace, the temple, and the fair are all part of one composite experience for most people, as it was for us when we visited on the Sunday after the festival began.

The drive to Cooch Behar is a part of the experience too. The road to the town, when approached from Jalpaiguri district, has very little traffic. It is scenic, as it goes through the rural heartland, mostly paddy fields. Cooch Behar town is the headquarters of the district of the same name.

Torsa River
The Rajbari, the palace of the erstwhile rulers, dominates the town. Its people are intensely proud of their past – of their heritage as the former subjects of the Koch kings. The loyalty to the royal family is palpable.

Our visit was on the first fine cold weather Sunday, and the palace and its extensive beautiful grounds were filled with people. The palace is awe-inspiring. It reminds you of grand buildings like Victoria Terminus - now known as Chhatrapathi Shivaji Terminus - in Mumbai and the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata.

It was commissioned by Maharaja Nripendra Narayan in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Four years ago, I remember seeing a signboard outside a bicycle repair shop, just outside the palace walls, that read ‘Maharaja Nripendra Narayan Cycle Repair Shop’ – the sign’s dimensions, of course, exceeded that of the shop’s. This time, I saw a glass fronted double storied building across the road that called itself the ‘NN Shopping Mall’.
I asked the owner of the café within what the NN stood for. Not a doubt about it: Nripendra Narayan. The café had an enormous portrait of his Maharani, Suniti Devi.

The palace was handed over to the Archeological Survey of India in 1982. Some of its rooms are now viewing galleries open to the public. The Durbar Hall just takes your breath away, with its high dome and arches. In the centre of the marble floor, cordoned off by a wooden railing, is the insignia of the Royal House. One of the rooms, which houses a billiards table in excellent condition, has a ceiling with exquisitely painted panels. The colours have faded a little, but the artwork is beautiful. Unfortunately, some of the motifs have been replicated inexpertly on panels bordering door frames in what looks like poster paint.

There are cobwebs and there’s dust, and a good bit of one wall in the Durbar Hall is damaged by seepage. The wooden doors could do with a dab of polish, one feels. Every one of the doors is inlaid with panels of Belgian glass. These are in really good condition, and the motifs on the glass are intricate.

The Durbar Hall displays fine portraits of Maharajas and Maharanis, and a number of photographs. One section called ‘The Royal Children’ aroused our curiosity. There were some photographs of charming children, but not one was labeled! So we couldn’t catch even one picture of Maharani Gayatri Devi, the well-loved daughter of this house. Two galleries displayed stone sculptures dating back as far as the ninth century. One would do well to keep an entire day for just those two galleries.

The custodians of the palace had requested us to leave our cameras outside. There was a glass-fronted cupboard with little lockers, into which we could place our cameras ourselves, lock them in and take the key with us. I was quite taken with the simplicity and the ingenuity of this plan. The people who did this job were really courteous, soft-spoken, and smiling, even though they had to repeat the same thing so many times to so many different people.

When the sun was setting, we left the palace for the Mela. We had to walk the last half-kilometre to the huge Mela grounds, as even the cycle rickshaws that were permitted after the ‘No Cars’ sign were stopped beyond a point.

The Mela is an itinerant fair. These small town fairs have a distinctive atmosphere. They look like bazaars on a weekly market day, and they do good business. There were stalls with everything from pickles, toys and images made of shells or clay, ladies handbags, shoes from Agra, stone and metal implements for worship, cast iron tools, kitchen ware in wood, plastic and metal, bangles and trinkets. We wandered around the mela wondering at the absence of crowds, considering there’d been so many people walking into it with us! I saw the circus tent on one side – that explained it. No doubt those crowds would come pouring out of the tent once the show was over.

Madan Mohan Bari
The exit route from the Mela was along the road leading to the Madan Mohan temple. A mela and a temple – frankly, I expected crowds, noise, and discomfort. To my surprise, there was no microphone playing Bollywood hits, nor was the crowd aggressive. The people seemed so peaceful and their joy – our joy – at the sight of the beautiful temple grounds, which were decorated with fairy lights, and little pavilions, was quiet, and devout. There was no jostling, no urgency.

The Raas Chakra was the first thing we saw – we could see it before we entered the temple. It was a sort of maypole cum prayer wheel. People turned it by the bamboo poles at its end. They were almost jogging around it, and they were laughing and happy. I’d read that the Raas Chakra, which is at the heart of the celebrations, has always been made by Muslims; it’s a part of the tradition. What looked like a laminated panels turned out to be paper cutwork. The design was so delicate, and yet the paper must have been quite strong. At the centre of the panels were images of Lord Krishna. Madan Mohan is another name for Lord Krishna, and the festival celebrates Krishna’s ‘Raas Leela’.

Near the Chakra, there was an enormous statue of the demonic Putana reclining with a tiny Krishna dancing on her breast. I’d heard that the Rajbongshis traditionally made their idols larger than life, and this idol’s dimensions were really something. The eyes of the figure were distinctive. They were very large, and downward slanting at the outer corners. They gave even the evil Putana’s face an expression of child-like wonder.

Putana

The temple’s walls and domes were white, and the domes reminiscent of Islamic architecture – that seems to be a distinctive feature of Koch temples. The silver images of the presiding deities were small and beautifully worked. Once again, they were cast in the distinctive style of the region. I couldn’t recognize Durga because she looked quite different from the traditional Bengali portrayal. The colours that the image used were distinctive too. The eyes, again, were large, appealing, and mystical. All the images had been placed outside in the verandah for worship during the festival. All the priests were dressed in white panjabis and dhotis. The people were serene, the pace was slow.

Politeness everywhere. There was police too, everywhere, but they were unobtrusive. When someone spotted us with cameras near the Raas Chakra, he tapped my husband quietly on the shoulder, and asked, ‘Dada, coupon niyecchen?’ (Have you bought coupons for your camera?)

I’m sold on Cooch Behar. Politeness seems to be a way of life with its residents when dealing with visitors to the town. And yet, a disturbing image lingers in the mind. Soon after we entered the town, we saw a crowd of people in the compound of a house, and all over the street outside. There was a police jeep with a mournful looking sniffer dog staring sadly out of the back window. The first word that came into our minds was ‘Jhamela!’ – the word that covers trouble of every kind in North Bengal. It wasn’t a political rally or a demonstration, as we feared. Someone in the crowd told us that the lady in the house had been robbed and her throat had been slit.

Building housing a Government Office

So that was My World, this Tuesday. See other people's worlds too!

Braveheart

2008-12-04T00:50:00.006+05:30

Col. N.J. Nair of 16 Maratha Light Infantry is the only Indian to have received the country's two highest awards for bravery, the Kirti Chakra and the Ashok Chakra. He was killed in action in December, 1993, while fighting extremists in Nagaland. Col. Nair was posted in Mal Bazaar in the Dooars in the late 1980s, and at the time he became a close friend of our friend Jose Varghese. Jose was an army officer himself before he became a tea planter. He outlined the story of Col. Nair's life and death to me, and it is obvious that he thinks the colonel was a great man and a great soldier.
What I have to say here is put together from Jose's personal reminiscence, and from a printed record, the 'Tribute to Dear Jayan', published by the Old Boys’ Association of Sainik School, Kazhakootam, Kerala. The material was painstakingly sourced and forwarded to me by my former student who is now an officer in the Indian Army, Capt. Manohar Diyali.

The Colonel was an outstanding student at the Sainik School, Kazhakootam, as the teachers' touching tributes show. They speak of his intelligence, his all-round excellence, his charm of manner and his willingness to take on challenges. They also mention his fierce spirit of independence, his sense of honour, and his discipline. His batchmate, Lt. Col. K.J.Samuel (Retd), recalls the daredevil whom he met three years after they passed out from the Indian Military Academy. It was in Meerut, and 'Jayan' was on a 'ramshackle Jawa motorbike', driving down to Kerala 'with not much more luggage than a toothbrush and toothpaste...and the clothes on his back'.

Jayan, adds Lt.Col.Samuel, married late because he felt he may not be able to give his best as a sodier otherwise.
He almost didn't live to see his wedding day.

In 1983, he masterminded a daring operation against insurgents in Mizoram, for which he was awarded the Kirti Chakra. The rebels had been attacking local boatmen and extorting money from them. Col. Nair and a few other soldiers disguised themselves as boatmen and sailed on the river, watching and waiting. When the attackers struck, they were shocked to learn who their 'victims' were. A fierce battle followed, with much exchange of fire, until the rebels were overpowered. Col. Nair was severely wounded in the abdomen. Surgeons had to put in about eighty stitches, and they were worried. He was in a critical condition. 'He lingered on the brink for weeks and then recovered swiftly, surprising the doctors,' says former teacher N.B. Nair. He adds, 'Soon he was in active service declining offers of soft postings and staff appointments...Jayan believed in leading his men to battle always from the front, never goading them from behind.' Col. Nair and Manju were married in Trivandrum soon after the Mizoram operation.

The Ashok Chakra is a posthumous award.
20th December, 1993. Col. Nair - now Colonel and Commanding Officer of 16 Maratha Light Infantry batallion - was heading a convoy along the Mokokchung-Mariani Road in Nagaland, when a group of about a hundred armed extremists ambushed them. Fourteen soldiers, including a JCO, were killed on the spot. The Colonel was severely wounded, but he crawled across the road, and ordered a Lance Naik to climb on his shoulders and throw two hand grenades in the direction of the attackers. That took care of them for a while, and the Colonel quickly organised his forces. He led from the front throughout, killing one of the insurgents. They were defeated, but the Colonel died as a result of his injuries.

I asked Jose whether they had stayed in touch after the Colonel was posted out of Mal Bazaar. They had not. Jose himself was transferred to a garden in Darjeeling, and that was a remote world-in-itself with no proper communications even in the 1990s. On the morning of Republic Day in 1994, Jose's young brother in law in Bangalore was shocked to see Manju on live television, receiving the award from the President of India.

Col.Nair's story is a chapter in one of the textbooks taught in Kerala schools. His son has read it too, says Jose.

Sweet Thoughts

2008-11-25T18:13:00.007+05:30

Boy Wonder
This little roadside stall was positioned outside the Raash Mela in Cooch Behar. The boy must have been adding a special finishing touch to the sweets!

'Sweety' is the name of the sweet shop in Falakata where we saw these irresistible little gems. It is a well known haunt for sweet-crazy folks. The shop does great Channa Bhatura on Sunday mornings, too. We asked these two gentlemen who run the place what the sweet is called. It doesn't have any name, apparently. It is a sort of cham-cham, that's very spongy and sugary. And it tastes every bit as good as it looks.

See many Worlds here!

In the Nursery

2008-11-23T10:17:00.009+05:30

Buying flower and vegetable seeds and seedlings for the cold weather necessitates a long road trip to Siliguri or to Mal Bazaar. It’s a bit like an annual pilgrimage. We (women) obsess and worry about whether we'll be too late in the year to plant, whether we'll get seeds, whether the seeds we do get will germinate, and what the weather will be like. A friend's husband asked us why we did it at all if it was so painful. Men never understand that we love to complain to them about the things that we really like doing. We enjoy the whining as much as we do the planning, purchasing, and the planting itself.

I like visiting the Paul Nursery in Mal Bazaar to pick up seedlings and seeds. It’s a favourite haunt with most tea garden people. I first visited the nursery in 1988, and have been a regular there ever since.

Paul Nursery was established in 1957 by Mr. Jyotirmoy Paul. He is in his late seventies now, but is actively involved in the daily business of running the nursery.
He remembers every one of his regular customers. It is obvious that his family reveres him. They all pitch in and work there, collecting and packing seedlings for customers, watering and tending the plants, writing out bills and so on. No one ever rushes around in a hurry or talks loudly. They answer all the customers’ questions about plant care patiently. Mr. Paul has given me some great tips over the years. This time I met his young grandson (in the picture, with his parents and grandfather), who was home on leave from his army posting, and helping the old folks out. The nursery’s a good place to spend some time in, just walking about and looking around. It isn’t a ‘garden’ but it fits my idea of what a garden should be like – it soothes and relaxes the spirit. There’s a sense of order and of peace. The courteous welcome, the presence of the family, and the old world atmosphere make each visit a happy experience.

Jalpaiguri : Jurassic Park and Lost World

2008-11-20T08:12:00.014+05:30

Sitting on a Park Bench

Topiary

This Was : The Jalpaiguri Club

Sunset over the Teesta River

Three Friends

These are pictures I took on a visit to Jalpaiguri town. This town came up when tea was planted in the region in the nineteenth century. It was almost destroyed when the Teesta River flooded it in 1968. Businesses moved out and relocated to Siliguri. Jalpaiguri is still the headquarters of the district administration, and the 'official' quarter of the town is full of colonial buildings. The Teesta flows to its south now, behind an embankment.

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Sick of Life? Try Well of Death!

2008-11-15T18:47:00.019+05:30
The 'Well of Death', when I saw it in my childhood, was a part of the circus. It was a huge hollow globe made of stout iron wire mesh. A man would drive a motorcyle all around it, speeding up in no time to a dizzying momentum. He'd ride circles in all directions while the motocycle roared like an angry lion, and everything around it shook and rattled terrifyingly.

A favourite story in our family is about our mother's youngest brother disappearing from home one evening when he was a college student. He went along to the circus and rode the motorbike around the Well of Death, and then came back casually as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened! He must have had a deep understanding of the physics of it all, and such guts too!

These four handsome young men are daredevils if I ever saw any. Between them they rode two Maruti cars and two motorcycles in this Well of Death (picture below), which was the biggest draw at the Mela that was here recently.

This structure is made up of boards, which in turn are made of wooden planks nailed together. It didnt look too solid to me. See the gaps between the planks, and lights shining through from little holes here and there? The structure, which includes staircases, and a gallery with a railing around the top, is assembled at every location that the travelling fair visits. It takes four to five days to set it all up at each venue, said the organiser of the show.

Here's what it looked like from outside.

Took some courage even to climb this staircase of angle iron - but I didn't let on!
They must be doing a thorough job of setting it up; the boys drove without a fear. Two of them, I was told, were the sons of the owner of the show. Well that was an act of good faith! But I didn't care what my husband said about it being a simple matter of centripetal and centrifugal forces, and of the chances of an accident being close to nil. I was terrified throughout. The boys started up their cars and bikes, and climbed easily on to the wooden surface, which was almost perpendicular to the ground. They then raced madly around in circles, climbing higher and higher, until everything was shaking and rattling deafeningly like a high intensity earthquake. They were so close you could have reached out and touched them from the viewers' gallery right on top. That was about forty feet from the ground up.

As if all that weren't enough, one of the bike riders casually let go of the handlebars, and moved his frame so that he was sitting side saddle. He crossed his legs and studied his nails in a great show of nonchalance. The crowd loved it. Then the boys driving the cars opened their doors, drove side by side, and held hands. The next act - of unnecessary cheek - was the car drivers standing up, with only their feet inside the car. They rested their heads on their arms on the tops of the cars, feigning bored sleep!! I found myself wondering what could ever give them a high after this experience.

Not for the faint hearted! But no wonder the show was such a draw - see how eagerly these young girls climbed up to the gallery!

Fair and Lovely : The Mela

2008-11-10T18:42:00.034+05:30

The Mela arrives in Banarhat town every October, in time for Durga Puja. This travelling fair has around four hundred and fifty people moving with it. Before Diwali, the Mela moves east to the town of Hamiltonganj. Its next stop is the Raas Mela in Cooch Behar. In Banarhat, the Mela is located in the extensive grounds of the Bengali High School. The area is roughly the size of two football fields!

The Mela includes a Meena Bazaar, which features stalls selling pickles and preserves, bangles and trinkets, toys, ceramics and household stuff like plastic containers, cast-iron garden and kitchen tools, handbags and carrybags. There were more than a hundred and fifty stalls there this year. It is the biggest attraction in the region for tea garden workers and their families, and for the people who live in small towns nearby.

This youngster barely noticed that I was taking his picture - he was lost in his own world. All these pictures were taken with my husband's Sony Ericsson phone. In all the excitement of going to the Mela, I forgot to pick up my camera. No regrets, though. The phone camera doesn't have a flash, and so all the pictures are lit with whatever light there was - sometimes bright and white, sometimes yellow.

This young man above insisted on seeing his picture, and said he liked it!

What an array of munchies. They were absolutely delicious.

I loved the long-handled spoon which this man used to make his 'special mixture'.

The umbrella repair man is hard at work! These little figurines are made of clay. They are so realistic and so colourful. I noticed my face in the picture, later - reflected in a mirror while I was clicking!

Mouthwatering. Bamboo shoots, limes, mangoes, berries like 'ber' and 'karaunda', chillies, garlic and ginger - hot pickles, sweet pickles and tangy chutneys - these boys had everything in their stall. All these pickles, I was told, are made in village homes. The buyers include customers like us who buy small quantities, as well as firms who buy in bulk, then bottle and market them.

The little boy was so happy he was being photographed. On my second visit, he greeted me with a delighted, 'Oye!'

The gentleman above is a Lifestyle Guru of sorts. A real fairground character, he seemed to exercise some power over us all - his patter had us standing at his stall for so long. He had crystals, magnets, feng shui charms, and gizmos to massage aching limbs.

A stall that actually admits to imitation!

The Mela had several food stalls, a number of rides and games, and a dance show by performers dancing to Bollywood music, which I heard was a huge hit!

This Magic Show tent is a regular feature. It used to be a great favourite when the girls were little. The magician not only sells you tricks, he takes you into a little partitioned section of his tent, and teaches you how they're done!

Chief organiser Barun Babu - ever smiling!

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Free Some Day

2008-11-05T11:32:00.008+05:30

Burning eyes and the excitement of catching the American election news on CNN early this morning brought back memories of another election, one which took place more than twenty-one years ago.

New Delhi, March 20th, 1977, early morning:
My Dad sitting with his ear close to the old Pye Radio, on which the BBC newsreader's crackling shortwave voice announced the unbelievable, all the way from London. The Emergency was over. Indira Gandhi had lost the election and resigned.
My brother, telling us he'd gone to the University everyday during the Emergency singing, 'Free some day, yeah, free some day, yeah, we'll all be free some day.'
Now we were. Never mind that All India Radio did not make any announcements until much later in the day.
No election has roused as much enthusiasm and spirit in me as that one did. My father was wise enough to realise that the revocation of the Emergency in the last minutes of her rule had been Indira Gandhi's cleverest move. He still looked thoughtful while we rejoiced.

Watching Americans weeping with joy after the election results were announced, my elder daughter asked, 'Why cant we feel so much patriotism?’ to which her Dad replied, 'It takes a war or a cricket match to make us feel patriotic.' I like to think that a day will come when a young person will lead our country, too. That day, I am sure our politicians will not be dressed in sleepwear, as they are today.

Our Cha Bagan Diwali

2008-10-31T10:36:00.016+05:30

The first sign of Diwali in the Dooars is the sight of Mt.Kanchenjunga in the clear blue skies. Our friend Partha De, who lives and works in Siliguri,sent us this picture of the view from his office and his home.
Diwali is a fusion of many elements in the Dooars. The Dooars is like a mini- India, and the political climate is not exactly idyllic these days. Yet, its people have a long-standing history of harmonious coexistence, and that has survived here through turbulent times in past years.
Diwali celebrations in the Dooars are spread out over four to five days. What I find most charming about a tea garden Diwali is the quiet atmosphere in all the bustle of activity, and the total darkness against which Diwali lamps and lights sparkle.
It is customary to clean out and spruce up the house before Diwali lights are lit. Our bungalow gets a small face-lift every year, and every worker in the garden gets some 'choona' - lime - and a day off, to whitewash his house. It is the time when we are in the frenzy of sowing seeds for winter vegetables and flowers as well.
When our children are home for Diwali, we get to see a fine Rangoli like this one, over which they slave for a few hours, and very happily, too.

The rangoli all lit up on Diwali night, and below, in detail.

Diwali night invariably coincides with Kali Puja. The Kali Mandir is filled with worshippers, and often the Puja goes on through the night.
For most people in India, the second day of the new moon is Bhai Dooj. Here, it is celebrated as Bhai Phota by Bengalis and Nepalis. Sisters felicitate their brothers, and put a 'tika' on their foreheads, and pray for their long lives. The traditional Nepali goodie at this time is the 'Sil Roti', which is made from rice paste. If Durga Puja brings Bhog Khichdi to mind, Kali Puja means warm sil roti and spicy chutney on chilly evenings. And this, after we've eaten Diwali sweets and mixture, is a welcome change of taste!
For the Adivasi residents of tea gardens, it is the time for 'Jatra'; a song and dance celebration. Groups of men, women and children go around the garden after nightfall, singing, dancing and playing drums.

The groups traditionally visit the Bara Saab and Chhota Saabs at their bungalows, perform for them and pull them in to dance with them, as they did with us.

Below, a video which our elder daughter took of one of the energetic dances, while we tried to keep pace with the dancers. The drum beats are wonderful!

Two Silhouettes

2008-10-24T22:36:00.007+05:30
SkyWatch Friday

Sunrise on the Morning of the Harvest Moon

Samtse Sunset

One evening, we went for a ramble in the little town of Samtse, Bhutan. Up in those hills, the sky seemed so much closer.

Please click on each picture for an enlarged view.
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Brownie Points!

2008-10-20T17:23:00.009+05:30

Gone are the days when every tea Bara Bungalow had a cook who would bake all the bread its occupants needed. Even so, we had dear old Baruah baking all our bread for us less than fifteen years ago. Baruah and his contemporaries are no more, but I do know of some chai memsaabs who turn out very good bread at parties or club 'do's. I've tried many times, with fresh yeast, dried yeast, and ready to use powdered yeast. And realised that bread making was great, but it was not for me.

When my younger daughter started saying she wouldn't eat any refined flour (or Maida, as we call it in any number of Indian languages), I had to start substituting it with wholemeal, or atta. We can't get brown bread anywhere in the Dooars, and we can only find it once in a while in Siliguri. Even then, it isn’t convincingly brown - it looks as if it's been coloured!

I started turning out simple breads from 'The Good Housekeeping Cookbook' and 'Woman's Weekly Magazine' recipes to fulfil this new demand for brown bread. Here I should make something very clear. I'm not a very industrious or self-sacrificing person. A recipe has to be quick and simple if I'm to try it out. No one ever tells my family how lucky they are to have this earth-mother-goddess turning out amazing food for them all the time. And there is no danger of it ever happening either. Wholemeal scone rounds and wholemeal picnic lunch loaves have simple, two-step recipes. I wouldn’t touch them if they didn't. The breads are all baked with baking powder as the leavening agent, and though delicious (if the recipe is followed correctly), they tend to be a little heavier than yeast breads.

And then Jayati, a friend who is much younger than me, said they'd been baking their own brown bread, with fresh yeast bought in small quantities from the bakery in Hamiltonganj, a town close to their garden. Her enthusiasm infected me. Should I try, just one more time? I bought 100 grams of fresh yeast from the bakery in Banarhat town, and opened the 'Good Housekeeping Cookbook' again. I found a wholemeal bread recipe that doesn't call for the dough being 'proved', or allowed to rise, twice. It is all done in one shot. Mix, knead, prove, rest, and bake. Hmm. Right up my street - and there's even a 'rest' thrown in there. So I went at it with great energy. Kneading and pumelling the dough was a fantastic stress buster. To my delight, we got lovely, soft, delicious brown loaves. See the picture? The husband said that he would no longer worry about what to do if the tea industry came upon bad times - he could run his wife's bakery shop.

SkyWatch Football

2008-10-17T10:43:00.009+05:30
This week, I put my sunrise and sunset pictures aside for the time being, and went to a football match with camera in hand. The match had some exciting moments, but we found time to look at these lovely skies as well.

Centre Field

Shoot!

Word Games

Half-Time

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Top of the Morning to you!

2008-10-16T11:41:00.004+05:30

Wonder what this little guy is called. He was sitting so still; he didn't even disturb the dewdrops on the blades of grass. This is my frist time with a camera critter. The subject posed most obligingly. You'll find many shots of camera critters here.

October's Excesses

2008-10-14T07:58:00.016+05:30

Mitkoo is not making a model of the Himalayas. He has spread out an old cotton saree over stakes to protect young gerbera plants in the flowerbed! The October sun will scorch these plants if they're exposed to it so soon after they've been planted. The cool nights and the morning dew are helping them come along nicely, though!

'There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad, she was horrid.'

The last three lines of this rhyme were often quoted at home when I was a little girl. I always hated them, because they applied to the only little girl in a house full of grown ups and older children: me. And why did it have to be a girl in the poem anyway? I just found that out. The poet Longfellow composed and sang these lines to his baby girl as he held her in his arms!
This poem is what comes to my mind every day in this month of contrasts, October.

The mornings are chilly and clear, and they seem to promise that the cold weather is on its way. By eleven, the sun is scorching down from clear post-monsoon skies, and the heat, glare and humidity are enervating. By four-thirty or so in the evening, it is pleasant and the daylightlight is soothing, almost golden. Within the hour, the sun has already set, and it is pitch dark!
The early sunset is because of our eastern location. We're by no means the furthest east in the country, and in those places the sun must set even earlier. Tea gardens in Assam, the first state to the East of us, have worked their way around this problem and they have followed something called 'Garden Time' for years, which is one hour ahead of Indian Standard Time.
These flowers from our garden are themselves an embodiment of contrasts. This arangement of bamboo orchids and ixoras echoes the colour schemes of the paper flowers my mother would make and string up for her 'Kolu'. See how dark the shadows are in the second picture?

And this lovely flower which we value more for its scent than its appearance is called Coral Jasmine -- 'Pavazha Malli' in Tamil, and 'Sheuli' in Bengali. The two colours do seem to stand for the heat and cold that the flower's blooming season brings!

A Himalayan Sky Watch

2008-10-09T17:06:00.012+05:30

One of the things that makes the place where we live special is that it is just below the Himalayas. We cant go very far North without climbing them. This picture was taken near a little stream that flows into the Teesta River. It is as if the monsoon doesn't want to leave us - we had a rainy morning and it was a cloudy, breezy afternoon when this picture was taken.

This picture was taken the same afternoon, and it shows the Eastern skies. It is one of my favourite vistas - of the Teesta River as it leaves the mountains and flows into the plains. Below, a close up of the same view.
Please click on each picture for an enlarged view.

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Durga Puja in the Tea Garden - 3

2008-10-06T21:05:00.005+05:30

Thakur Moshai conducting Saptami Puja

At this time of year, three forms of the Goddess are worshipped in Bengal, and at three different phases of the moon. Durga Puja is at the time of the growing moon. Ma Durga is both mother and daughter. On the day of the new moon, Mahalaya, she leaves her husband's home for a visit to her parents, with her four children, Ganesha, Kartikeya, Lakshmi and Saraswati. She arrives on Shashti, the sixth day of the moon, and that is the day when her image is installed. Puja is conducted between the sixth and the tenth day of the growing moon.

This month's full moon is called Sharad Purnima. It is the brightest full moon of the year, and the Goddess is worshipped as Lakshmi, the embodiment of fulfilment and prosperity in every sense.

The dark night of the new moon that follows is the night of Kali Puja. The Goddess takes on her most fearful and powerful form as the destroyer.

The Colourful Puja Pandal - with the inevitable tea garden water tanker parked nearby!
Wishing everyone a very Happy Puja!

Get the Puja atmosphere - watch this video, hear the drum beats!

Durga Puja in the Tea Garden - 2

2008-10-05T11:28:00.009+05:30

Puja Arrives - Shortly after the images were installed on Shashti evening,5 October 2008, Moraghat Tea Estate

Legend connects Durga Puja to Dusshera, when Rama killed Ravana. It is said that before leaving for Lanka to fight Ravana, Rama felt he needed the blessings of the Goddess, who is the embodiment of Shakti, the powerful female principle. He performed Durga Puja.

It was,the legend goes, the first time that Durga Puja was performed in the 'sharad' or autumn season, and ever since that time, Durga Puja has become a 'sharad utsav' - an autumn festival. Another little story is connected to the puja performed by Rama. One hundred and eight lotuses are needed for Durga Puja. Rama searched high and low and got the lotuses with some difficulty. The Goddess decided to test his faith. When he counted the flowers, it always appeared that he was one short. Rama took out his bow and arrow and prepared to shoot out one of his eyes to make up the number. The Goddess relented, and accepting that his faith was true, she appeared before him and blessed him.

The 'Dhak' Player Wecomes the Goddess
Ma Durga arrives on different forms of transport every year.This year, we are told, she arrives on an elephant - an auspicious omen, but departs in a palanquin, which symbolises conflict and unrest everywhere. That's nothing new in these troubled times.

Durga Puja in the Tea Garden - 1

2008-10-04T14:11:00.014+05:30

Durga Puja at Moraghat Tea Estate, 2007

Pomelo at the breakfast table is a sure sign that Puja is here! It's the size of a smallish football, and has a sweet-sour-mildly bitter taste. This fruit is one of the many offerings that is made at Durga Puja, and it is among the food items that are given out as prasad after being consecrated. In all these years, the pomelo tree in the compound has followed the Indian calendar accurately - if Puja is late, the fruits ripen late, and if it is early, then the fruits are ready early as well! This year's Puja starts on Sunday, 5 October.

A Light Moment

2008-10-02T21:03:00.014+05:30

Searchlight : After the Rain

On some evenings there are moments which are sheer drama : fleeting and spectacular, they leave you with a sense of having been a part of some celestial phenomenon. It is a matter of timing; you have to be on the spot, and it has to be one of those 'happening' days.

Soul Searching

The second picture is about evenings when nothing happens. Nothing, that is, other than the daily marvel of day turing into night. The silence lingers as the world slows down, and the pensive soul can gather its thoughts and feel the presence of another, deeper, silence within. These are moments in time and yet out of time, for time itself seems to stand still, and the moment can last forever in a memory.

This man, sitting and fishing at the broken remains of a bridge over a stream, seems to be at one with the stillness all around him.

Angler's Rest?

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Red and Ready

2008-09-30T14:10:00.028+05:30
Durga Puja is next week, and there's that special something in the air that marks this season.
Our flower beds are empty, but the hibiscus, or Jauba, as we call it here, is coming out in full force. The flower is used for Puja every day in Bengali homes, and the 'Panchamukhi' (literally, five-faced)jauba
is said to be a must for worshipping the Goddess during Durga Puja. It's a compound flower, round in shape, and it looks as if it is made up of five flowers fused together. The cracker-red flower in the first picture is a 'panchamukhi'. The second picture shows one single-centred and one double-centred flower, both growing on the same bush. They're the same size as the 'panchamukhi' - measuring almost five inches across.

For years, Mithhoo the Mali fought my love of hibiscus - it was too 'common' to grow in Bara Bungalow, he maintained. He's changed his ideas, and he grows all these specimens now with some pride.

Some Little Ones
The flower on the extreme left of the picuture was sourced from somewhere and planted in the compound by Mithoo himself. It doesn't grow upright on the bush, but hangs like a pretty twirling bell.

This really large bloom may be a 'common' or 'everyday' variety, but that doesn't stop it from being a real beauty.

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Slugfest!

2008-09-27T12:48:00.004+05:30

This little guy turned up as a surprise - a free add-on -- on the plate of flowers which had been picked for worship. He (aren't little boys made of slugs and things? It has to be a he!)- he had burrowed so happily into this red hisbiscus. He looked rather sweet, and he was a fellow lover of hibiscus, wasn't he? So he was deposited, flower and all, into a little patch in the garden under the shade of some arum lilies. Looks happy, doesn't he?

Highway to Heaven

2008-09-26T00:56:00.010+05:30

Follow the Sun

Angels and Demons

Young Bala, who's in his early twenties, drives me around to the points on the road where I can get the best views and the best shots of sunsets, clouds and trees. Over the last month and more, he's turned into an appreciative and committed skywatcher.

Bala on alert!
It's been interesting to see this young fan of Bollywood film stars turn into a lover of the skies. He takes the Ambassador car up to the highway at top speed, finds the best locations, lurks at a protective distance from me and expresses impatience if I miss out on a moment -- or a 'scene' -- as he calls it. Today the camera's battery was dying faster than the sun, and Bala was really upset that I missed the red glowing bars of clouds with which the evening signed off.
Please click on each picture for an enlarged view

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Garden Fresh

2008-09-23T20:12:00.007+05:30

This is my first 'Ruby Tuesday' post. Something Red : This platter of flowers for worship looks so full of Vitamins A & D!!

Some 'Sell Buy' Dates

2008-09-22T14:20:00.015+05:30
September is almost done, and Puja is on its way. Tea planters look dourly on early sunsets and pleasant evenings and begin to mumble about ‘autumnal flavours’ and an early end to the plucking season. It is really the beginning of a season of economic activity of another kind. Almost all the tea gardens in the Dooars have made annual bonus payments to their workers. Starting today, the weekly ‘Sunday Haat’ at every little town will be transformed into a ‘Bonus Bazaar’. Every worker in tea waits for the Bonus to make the year’s big purchase – in the old days, they confined themselves to cows and bicycles, but today it could be a washing machine, a motorcycle, a new television, a fridge or a cell phone.

New clothes are a must for Puja. Little stalls like these do brisk business, even in the heat of the afternoon. The poor girl, though, seems to have had enough already!

There are any number of people waiting to relieve the workers of their earnings. The first among them are the ‘Kabuliwalas’ – money lenders – who might have lent them sums at exorbitant rates of interest. There are the unions who want to collect their subscriptions as soon as the workers are paid. Then there are those selling the local brew. ‘Haria’, or rice beer, is available everywhere. Women try to keep the big drinkers away from these stalls, so that they don’t lose the entire bonus in a few merry hours.

A lottery is so tempting! Especially if the big prize is so attractive!

This is also the beginning of what is called the ‘Dacoity Season’. This violent criminal activity is also assigned a season here, and blandly given a name. Criminals who are waiting to loot Puja shoppers begin their own round of economic activity. With the sun setting as early as six p.m., looters waylay people heading for towns located on the highways. Their favourite method of operating is to cut a tree and throw it across the (single lane) highway, forcing vehicles to halt. People rarely venture out on cycles or on foot after dark, because of the fear of elephants. Those who go out in vehicles, hired or personal, have to rely on quick reflexes, a good eye and the ability to reverse for up to one kilometer at top speed to escape attack. The highwaymen are always armed. With the national highways in their present condition, no one can speed away from the scene of a robbery. The local administration and the police do take preemptive action and round up the known hoods for a while. It doesn’t seem to help much, though.

Below: Viswakarma Puja, September 17, is a special day when vehicles are cleaned and decorated, and receive Baba Viswakarma's blessings.

Moraghat Tea Estate: Sunrise, Sunset

2008-09-19T08:52:00.022+05:30

Sunrise

The real hero of this piece is the sun. But the splendid creature who dominates our front garden year round is this towering specimen of Albizia Chinensis. We call this tree 'Kala Siris' here. It is a variety of mimosa, and in the months of May and June it produces lovely scented 'shaving brush' flowers which are light green in colour. The species is prone to canker, and a goodish bit of the tree had to be lopped off two years ago. In spite of that, this grand old tree still towers at around 60 ft and hasnt lost its beauty.

My husband and I saw the sky suddenly turning pink on the evening of these pictures and I ran out with the camera. The little white bit to the left of the pillar in Picture 2 is my husband, standing in the porch. Hardly any time passed between shooting Pictures 2 and 3. Someone else who was moving around was quicker than me and managed to turn on the lights outside the bungalow. So they figure in Picture 3.
Please click on the pictures for an enlarged view.

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Scrabble - Crossing Borders

2008-09-17T23:48:00.009+05:30
Just how far would you go to play a game of Scrabble? When I was in college, my cousin and I played obsessively at home, all afternoon and all evening every day, filling up registers with scores instead of study notes. When exam time came near, we had to stop, most reluctantly. That's when my friend Uma, who ran the college Quiz Club, started a round of Scrabble Championships on the lawns. I would mumble 'library' and stay in college till evening.

As newly weds, my husband and I played our first game together in Birpara Tea Garden on a Sunday evening. The atmosphere became so unpleasant, and the competition so deadly, that we had to decide whether to continue playing or give our marriage a chance. It was quite difficult to work it out because we'd also stopped talking to each other. That board - and the tiles which we'd hurled all over the verandah - went into the bottom of a cupboard and stayed there for some years.

So the next time Scrabble was played in the house in a big way was after several years. My brother visited from Chicago for the first time, and three generations - the girls, their grandmother, their uncle and mother - father joining in when work permitted - played Scrabble in earnest. We built up a whole lot of rituals that added to the fun. We'd put on rock and roll CDs, eat pista nuts and Cadbury's Nutties, and play like fiends in the February mid-morning sun, every day that he was here.

My friend Jayati, who lives in a tea garden quite far away, talked about her love of Scrabble some days ago. When she was newly married, she said, she found a Scrabble playing friend in the same garden. A tea garden is such a lonely place for a young girl, and this is about as lucky as anyone can get.

The next time Jayati was in the district she dropped in, and we decided we'd have a quick game. We had a great time and managed to play two boards. Now we just had to meet and play again! The distance between our two gardens is considerable. So we decided we'd meet at a halfway point. That would be a drive of about an hour and a half for each of us, and it just happens to be Phuntsholing, a border town in Bhutan. Sounds strange? It's true! The geography of the Dooars is quite interesting. All along the North you have the Bhutan hills. Bhutan, except for the border towns, is all mountains, and the Dooars is almost all plains. When people from Bhutan commute between the border towns of Phuntsholing and Samtse, they have to do it entirely via India.

Jayati and I enjoy the game!
We met at the Druk Hotel in Phuntsholing, which has a peaceful and cosy atmosphere, and a welcoming and cheerful staff who take great care of you. We played two most enjoyable games, drank tea, and ate the kind of delicious snacky lunch that only women know how to order.

Salman In High Places

2008-09-15T09:50:00.003+05:30
Salman, we all know by now, doesn't like being ignored. You have to give him constant attention. That’s the price you pay for just being with Salman. He was restless all afternoon yesterday. It was a raining a flood and he didn't like being indoors. I know he would have hated the rain even more. I'm sure he didn’t arrange his thoughts logically or think sensibly about what was good for him and what was not. He always wants action and excitement, and he didn’t like being stuck at home. Me, I am happy with a book or a soppy movie on a rainy day. With a little masala chai once in two or three hours.

While I was drinking tea and making rather contented noises, Salman strutted around and stood before me striking poses. To give him his due, he did all this without making a sound. He was looking particularly good yesterday, and I couldn’t help stealing a peek at his dreamy eyes now and then. He gazed back deeply and seemed to be urging me to stop reading and to provide him with some amusement.

I put my book down and turned to him. 'Now listen, Salman', and he looked at me with that intent gaze. 'You are very sweet and I love you, but I will not let you bully me.' He walked away haughtily, and he too seemed to have decided to change tactics, because now he resorted to being noisy - all to grab my attention, of course. So typically male. I turned my back on him and ignored all the sounds he was making. But not for long. Whatever he was doing sounded really strange. He was making scratching, scrabbling noises and I couldn’t imagine what he'd got up to. At first, I couldn’t see him at all.

Kittens!! They really are wicked things and love to hide, just to annoy us. Then I spotted Goni, who'd been playing under a footstool all the time that Salman had been strutting. The kittens became a part of our family when the IPL craze was at its peak, and our younger daughter named them for two of her favourite batsmen: Salman Butt, and Manpreet Singh Goni. Little Goni had come out to watch his brother's antics. He was looking at the curtains, and sure enough, there was a bulge in them. Only, the bulge was right on top - near the pelmet, and then it emerged as a defined form: Salman, of course! He jumped casually on to the pelmet. The wretch had climbed the curtains as easily as gymnasts go up ropes! He was so excited, and he couldnt wait to explore his new world! He prowled the length of the pelmet and back, twice. Then he looked down - oh, big mistake - and completely lost his nerve.

He turned back and did a slow crawl down the length of the pelmet, and turned at right angles where the pelmet turns to the top of the door in the opposite wall. To the side of that door, and just two feet below the pelmet, was the top of a cupboard. A safe landing in sight! Salman looked at it, but walked back and away.
.
From l to r, Goni and Salman
After doing another couple of lengths, he decided he could do it, and leapt. I was proud of our brave boy. Now all I had to do was to reach out and pick him off the top of the cupboard. I praised him and cuddled him like he wanted - but only for a bit, because he jumped out of my arms at once. For some more action.

Close of Day's Play : Bhutan and Dooars

2008-09-11T19:11:00.017+05:30

Watching the Torsa River run
My mother taught me, when I was quite young, to look out for 'special effects sunsets' at the end of the monsoon every year. As the monsoon clouds begin to gather up and withdraw before giving way to a new season, the evening sky becomes dramatic, while the weather turns milder.

A Little Heaven

Panning for Gold?

Sea of Tranquility

A Volcanic Cloud?

Check out SkyWatch Friday

Carpe Diem!

2008-09-10T14:41:00.008+05:30
News of the Big Bang experiment taking place today in far away Switzerland arrived here with - well, a bang. And a twist. The world, everyone in the tea gardens says, will come to a sudden and complete end today. A local girls' school declared a holiday. Dozens of workers in our garden stayed away from work. They've been busy at home slaughtering all their poultry and livestock in preparation for one last, grand, chicken and mutton lunch. Liquour shops have done brisk business as well. Way to go!

Partha on the Phone!

2008-09-10T10:19:00.009+05:30

Our friend Partha Dey went to Kalimpong recently, and these lovely pictures were clicked on that amazing phone camera of his!

A River Called Diana

2008-09-07T20:31:00.010+05:30

The River Diana always reminds me of the first Sunday that I ever saw it. That was in 1986, and after all these years here, I still dont know for whom it was named. That Sunday, in 1986, we were four young and happy people on the river bank. My newly married husband held my hand and helped me descend to the river while his bachelor friends looked away discreetly. 'Mohun, the married man!' they must have been wanting to yell, like a character in V.S.Naipul's A House For Mr. Biswas, but they were too polite to rib him in front of me.
Sandeep was new in the Dooars, like me, but he and Saumitro were old friends, as were Saumitro and Mohan, my husband. Soon we were all talking like old friends, that day at the riverside, and we all sang together in the car on our way back. The song, 'Yeh Dil Na Hota Bechaara' by Kishore Kumar. The reason for singing that song : we had just started getting Doordarshan in the Dooars, and were happily looking forward to watching the film 'Jewel Theif ', which features the song, that night.

High Tea?

2008-09-07T19:42:00.002+05:30

A Tea Board of India promotional poster with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay endorsing Indian Chai

Dooars Sunset

2008-09-02T17:24:00.013+05:30

Take a look at Skywatch!

On the Road, Again?

2008-09-01T14:09:00.013+05:30
On the topic of roads once again - it seems to be a pet peeve now.
These days, the PH -- Pot Hole -- factor plays a big role in determining whether we go out at all. The roads in our area have not been repaired for months. In some places, they haven't been maintained for years. Why remains a mystery. Another monsoon has us in its grip, and the rain-fed rivers are washing away what remains of them.
Where are We Going?

These roads are National Highway 31 and National Highway 31 C, which pass through Siliguri, and then go east through the Dooars, including Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar districts, to connect the North Eastern states to the rest of the country. I’m talking here about stretches of road that measure over 100 kms. These pictures were taken on NH 31C, between Banarhat and Mal Bazar (a distance of around 45 kms). I have yet to recover from this ride to go on to NH 31, where greater horrors await. One road bridge there seems to be hanging in there by sheer cussedness. This one over the River Diana doesnt look too sturdy, either.

The drive to Mal Bazar used to take us around thirty-five minutes each way in the good old days (two years ago). It took us an hour and ten minutes yesterday. When we returned home, shaken (and stirred), we were happy that we hadn’t been hurt, or even lost our tempers. It isn't a very smooth ride, you see. It is difficult to remain calm when you're being bounced and tilted dangerously into craters, and when every bone in your body is rattled about.
Craters, Banarhat

The picture below shows a stretch of a road near Nagrakata leading to a culvert that was washed away by a stream more than six years ago. The crumbling 'wall' of boulders is supposed to serve as a barricade. There is no warning sign, either about the missing culvert, or about the diversion. Our friends' son crashed into the boulders one foggy January night and was lucky to be alive - after six months in hospital.

We don’t need any politicians calling for blockades on our roads - our roads themselves don’t allow people to move around in anything like comfort. What is the solution? The sustained neglect of these highways by the authorities is alarming. The public isn't making any effective protest. We all complain, all the time, but nothing has come of it. Traders, schoolchildren, shopkeepers, tea garden workers - every resident of the region is affected.

It was amusing to see that our daily newspapers, published from Kolkata, brought out coloured supplements last week on North Bengal to attract tourists during the Puja season. Tourists? I wouldn’t put my enemies through travel on these highways!
The Bridge over Jaldhaka River

The cows aren't affected - perhaps, like them,we'll become completely placid, too, and travel only on foot.

Delhi : Jammin'

2008-08-22T11:19:00.013+05:30
I spent most of my time in Delhi on BRTC. 'Bread, Rice, Coffee and Tomatoes?' asked a friend. You wish.
BRTC is Delhi's Bus Rapid Transport Corridor. A good plan, but badly executed. It covers an almost 6km long stretch of road in densely populated South Delhi. It is supposed to be on trial. It is a trial - to commuters. Unfortunately for us, who are visitors to Delhi, it covered the distance between where we stay when we visit, and where our children live.
The idea of a dedicated bus corridor with well-built, comfortable buses that provide a regular service should have been put into practice long ago.See how good the new buses look?.
Delhi's public transport system has been in need of improvement since the 1970s, at least. Its buses have always been over-crowded, ramshackle, and irregular. Not to mention the horror stories of women commuters, or the number of people on the roads who are killed by rash bus drivers.

The BRTC is carved up into three lanes on either side of the central divider. 'These are as ugly as Kolkata's tramlines', said our friend Saumitro, 'but at least you can cut across those!' Cars far outnumber buses and two-wheelers in Delhi. They should have been provided with wider lanes for smoother and faster movement. Take a look at these deserted lanes. These are the lanes for buses and two-wheelers.

The BRTC idea is far better suited to Delhi than the Metro, says my brother.
'But how many years will it take us to learn discipline?' he adds. We still have a long way to go.

What’s worse than being stuck on the BRTC?
Listening to the bad jokes about BRTC.
However, when we saw this sign, that said, Delhi's Smart New Way to Travel' I couldn’t help adding 'Is To Stay in One Place'.
The driver of our auto rickshaw threw his head back and laughed in appreciation. He gave me a smiling salute at the end of our ride. Another day, we were saying how it would be realistic to celebrate one's birthday on the road, since no one could reach the party on time. At which that day's auto driver turned around to ask, 'Aaj aapka birthday hai?' (Is it your birthday today?) The husband said, 'Nahi, lekin aise baithhne se ho bhi jaayega' (If we sit long enough it will be my birthday soon). We were all fellow sufferers. The best crack came from one of the drivers himself. BRTC, he said, stood for 'Bahut Ruk ke Traffic Chalti hai' (I guess that would translate to But Really, Traffic Crawls. For us, who neither work nor live in Delhi, it was merely tedious. I felt for the cheerful three-wheeler drivers, who lost a lot of time - and fares - everyday. And almost forgave the surly ones who refused to take us.

Blogged On The Tracks

2008-07-16T09:42:00.009+05:30

Mohan Checks It Out- It Works!

It is about 10.00 a.m. on another typical July morning, all grey skies and rain-splashed windows. What's interesting is that I'm reporting all this from the Guwahati Rajdhani Express, somewhere near Moghulsarai and on the way to Delhi. Technology, Indian Railways : you've come a long way! Someone's playing the Beatles' 'In My Life' on FM Radio. Train journeys have always been fun, but this is too good!

Flying

2008-07-10T20:23:00.008+05:30

Pretty (and) Sturdy

2008-07-10T19:44:00.049+05:30
That's what these plants are, having survived a month of the monsoon. Gallardia is an ugly-sounding name for this really pretty flower, which I have never seen in this shade of yellow before.

The 'standard' colour is orangey red - like this one, here.
Gomphrena -- Another awful name for these bright and unpretentious 'Bachel-ors' Buttons'. They are tough plants, and they're nicely filling up the bed where the zinnias died out.

White crocuses spread like a rumour, outnumbering my favourite pink and yellow. They're bordered by portulacas, (below)which only peep out in the early morning.

They close up tight after 10 a.m. They're in two varieties, single and multi- layered. Again, the common name, Moss Rose, is so much prettier than the 'nursery' name. They did very well in our Delhi home in the early eighties.
We grew them in two old kitchen sinks. When my nephews came home for the summer holidays, these flowers were beautful in the cool early hours of the morning. They looked like fragile little roses, and the colours included magenta, bright orange, white and yellow. An image comes to mind - of my father smiling as he watched his eldest grandson sitting and watering each tiny plant gently.

I love the shape of this ixora bush.

A pot-pourri by Mithoo the flower artist - an arrangement combining bamboo orchids, heliconia, some geraniums that bloomed by mistake, bachelors' buttons and foliage.

Monsoon : Rath and Wrath

2008-07-05T17:43:00.011+05:30
For many years, I thought the Jagannath Rath Yatra – Chariot Festival -- was something that only took place in Puri, Orissa. It is held in cities all over the world. There is a Jagannath temple in Banarhat town, which is close to our tea garden, and a Rath Yatra takes place there every year. The deities of the temple are taken out on a carriage, which is pulled through the main street. After a short ride, they are installed in the grounds of the Banarhat Bengali High School. Seven or eight days later, the 'Ulta Rath' or return journey takes place. It is believed that the act of helping to pull the carriage, or even of touching the ropes, brings great blessings. There are Rath ‘Melas’ - fairs - at several places in the Dooars. They’re not as big as the traveling fairs that move from town to town during Durga Puja and Diwali, but they create a lot of excitement and activity.

Yesterday in Banarhat, I caught a glimpse of the Rath as it went ahead of several vehicles and large scattered crowds of people. Little children were out on their way to the fair, smartly dressed, and all of them had hair that looked as if it had been combed very fiercely by their mothers.

For my husband, and for all the tea planters in the area, the Rath Yatra is a very important date. The saying goes, 'Rath Brings Rain'. Sure enough, we recorded over 18cms of rain on the night before the Rath Yatra, and almost half as much on the day of the festival. For the next few days, until the 'Ulta Rath', the planters have their faith to keep them going.

I wonder why the rainy season has so many religious dates associated with it. In an earlier age, the monsoon weather was celebrated in art and song. There are a number of classical ragas in Hindustani music based on the moods of the monsoon. The Raag Kafi sings of thunder, lightning and sharp showers, while Raag Des is the raga of gentle drizzles. We all look forward to a good monsoon because rainfall continues to determine the fate of food crops every year in our country. Undoubtedly, the first rains cool the earth and bring happiness everywhere.

What follows is weeks of humidity, spells of heat, water logging, blocked roads, damaged railway lines, and cancelled trains. Buildings collapse after prolonged spells of rain. We see television images of people stranded for hours on rooftops in flooded villages or in vehicles on city roads. The news channels could use the same footage every year, and we wouldn’t even notice. It’s as if the phrase regular as rain has acquired another meaning.

Virulent fevers and water-borne diseases spread rapidly. The monsoon is the season of epidemics. We’ve already seen fetid puddles of water in potholes on the National Highway here. The open-air food-stalls at the Rath Mela couldn’t possibly serve food that is prepared hygienically. Not really a good time to celebrate?

Waiting for the rains in Mumbai with niece Deepa

Last year, we were in Mumbai just as the monsoon hit the city. It was incredibly beautiful; the rain clouds formed shifting pictures over the sea at Marine Drive. My sister Viji was disappointed not to find her favourite Bhel-Puri wala at his usual place. We’d all been keen on tasting that Bhel-Puri! When we learnt why he was gone, we felt quite good, really. The city’s health authorities had closed down all open-air food stalls - a very sensible and necessary precaution.

No Words

2008-07-02T18:18:00.014+05:30

The song 'No Words'from the album Band on the Run by Paul McCartney and the Wings - my favourite.

A Killer Strikes

2008-06-26T22:13:00.008+05:30
On 25th June, Manwar Ali, a resident and former worker of the tea garden where we live, was attacked and killed by a wild elephant. The elephant, a lone tusker, had entered the Bara Line - a workers' colony - early in the evening, and it had hidden itself quietly for some time before the people living near Manwar's house saw it. They gave chase, as they usually do, frightening it away with crackers and strong lights, and by making a lot of noise. Tea garden people are resigned to sharing their living space with elephants.
A tractor with powerful lights was driven around to send the elephant back in the direction of the forest. The chase ended - or so it appeared - and people went back home. Manwar Ali turned off to the side street where he lived, and stamped the dirt off his chappals. At the sound, the elephant came out from where it had been hiding, unseen, and hurled him to the ground, into the tea area. Manwar rolled into a little drain and hid there. The elephant sniffed around him once, and walked away. Manwar got up, and walked until he found someone. He told him what happened, and asked to be taken to the hospital. It was around eleven thirty in the night. People gathered at once and they took the poor man to the garden hospital, where the doctor examined him. He didn’t have any external injuries. However, the doctor recommended that he be taken to the hospital in Birpara town. Someone was sent to call the driver of the ambulance, but before he rushed back with him, Manwar died. He must have sustained heavy internal injuries. His head had hit against a tree trunk when he fell.

The shock was terrible. What a sudden, unexpected, fearful and painful death. Manwar's brother had been with him less than an hour before, in the big group that always runs behind elephants - keeping a safe distance, of course. No one tried to injure the elephant or to harm it in any way. It killed without a reason, and without any provocation.
The Assistant Manager alerted the Wild Life squad in the area, who turned up soon enough, but not before they expressed the fear that they might get beaten up by angry tea-garden workers. It has been known to happen. There was no trouble. The people were agitated, but not aggressive.
The state pays a compensation of Rs.One Lakh in the case of deaths caused by wild elephants. The Squad paid a small part of the sum as an advance towards funeral expenses.
There are so many cases of elephants killing people. According to a report in The Times of India dated 5 June 2008, 250 people die on an average every year in the country's eastern states in the man-elephant conflict. There is a website called 'Elephant News India' where I spotted the link to this article, and it carries 18 stories of man-elephant conflict for the month of June alone. Now there is one more.

Elephants are dangerous animals, and we in tea gardens have a healthy respect for them. There are as many elephant stories as there are tea planters. They are part of our lives, the tall tales that are told and retold over evening drinks in friends' bungalows. I don’t feel like recounting even one here now.
Visitors to tea gardens get really excited when they hear about elephants coming out for an evening round from the nearby forests. 'Don’t say you that you wish you could see an elephant,' my husband always tells them. That elephants can kill, and for no apparent reason, is something visitors find hard to believe. That they can destroy huge areas of cultivated land, including vast areas planted with tea, sounds impossible. My husband has more to say about elephants. They are huge, but light-footed. They can chase their quarry at great speed, running at something like 40km an hour. They have tiny eyes in proportion to their bodies, and weak eyesight, but their sense of smell more than makes up for that. An elephant is a master at concealment. It can hide in the darkness, even in the shadow of a tree.

The night after the attack, everyone was worried. A killer elephant generally returns to the place where it has struck. Manwar's brother, his closest surviving relative, was filled with sorrow, but he had no anger. He had a sad story to recount to my husband when he met him in Bara Line early in the morning. Their uncle was killed, over twelve years ago, at almost the same spot, and by an elephant. He'd been carrying a little child in his arms. The child was lightly flicked aside out of harm's way by the elephant before it struck the man down and killed him.

Harry Potter and You-Know-Why It Works

2008-06-25T00:56:00.012+05:30

The Harry Potter books may have started off as a set of 'different' school stories for young readers, but the final work in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , is nothing less than a full-pitched effort to sell England, Old and New.

The use of elements of Western mythology and folklore (including Classical, Celtic and English elements) ensured the early success of these books. They are the 'Amar Chitra Katha' of the English speaking world. The names Minerva, Pomona, Sirius, Bellatrix, Severus, Lucius and Draco are all Greek and Roman; Arthur, Percy and Ginevra are from Arthurian legend, and Hagrid, Hogwarts, and Hogsmeade have Gaelic/Celtic resonances. It is fascinating, it's entertaining, and educational.

How many young children read novels today? And yet they read these, or they have them read out to them. Myth and magic in their pure forms rule over any other form of fiction any day. Add to this the episodic format - with Harry and his friends growing up with their readers, one book every eighteen months, and you know why it all succeded. We're a civilization that loves to wait for the next episode, while we wonder what's going to happen. The number of websites devoted to guessing what would happen in the last book was mind-boggling.

The fantasies on sale are admirable : An orphaned, neglected, unloved and unremarkable boy discovers that he is a hero of sorts in a parallel, hidden world of which he first hears when he is eleven. He's a wizard; he can perform magic, but only after he's been to the school which teaches magic. He is invited to join Hogwarts, a residential school where he doesn't have to pay fees ( a sure-sell fantasy for parents), where every meal is a feast, and where he gets to sleep in a four poster bed with silken hangings. And he's inherited an enormous fortune from his parents.
He is the saviour for whom the 'other world' is waiting, because he is the only known survivor of the killing curse, which rebounded off him and neutralised its perpetrator, the evil Dark Wizard Voldemort. Once in school, he discovers that he has extraordinary skills, including sporting skills. School matches, house points and championships; night-wanderings, misadventures and punishments share the reader's attention with the hero's quest to destroy the returned Voldemort, who still wants to rule the world, but now wants to kill Harry first. The series could have coasted along these lines, but there was scope for much more, which someone was quick to realise.

After the weighty and messy Book Five, it appears that the author and her editors got down to giving a coherent shape - and a slightly different direction - to the last two books. Already the elements of the saviour and the chosen heir are in place. The last book, as many commentators have noted, has an increased number of elements of the Arthurian legend and the Grail Quest.(Remember the success of The Da Vinci Code ?) Only, this Quest is for something unholy, all the enchanted objects which enclose bits of Voldemort's soul and which must be destroyed. It is like the Dark Ages; the castle is without its king, the social order has been subverted, and fear and suspicion prevail everywhere. The school story is dropped abruptly. Harry, Ron and Hermione drop out, and are on the run through the English countryside, hiding in forests like Robin Hood and his band of men. Snape, the teacher who is Harry's tormentor and appears to be on the wrong side but is a double agent, morphs into a chivalrous lover: a Sir Galahad. He'd loved Harry's mother all his life, and he chose to suffer silently all along, maligned by both sides, to protect her son, eventually sacrificing his life. The transformation of Snape is a master-stroke.

All the elements of the Middle Ages are used to create an allegory with today's world. Voldemort is on an ethnic cleansing spree, ridding the magical world of all but Purebloods. He rules by fear, and he rules absolutely. Feudalism, hierarchies, servitude, and social discrimination are the evils which the young adventurers of the book seek to destroy. The world clamours for Harry, ' The Chosen One', Albus Dumbledore's anointed successor, but he chooses to relinquish the sceptre.

This formula has worked marvellously in an age of 'Us' and a nameless 'Them', whom it would be quite politically incorrect to name, and in an age that can't get enough of Prince William and Page Three Royalty. The Lost Heir motif is cleverly introduced in the last book, and Harry turns out to be the last in the line of the Peverells, the most blue-blooded of magical families! Potter's world becomes a metaphor for an idealised, multi-racial, tolerant and enlightened England, with an Heir-in-Waiting who chooses to abdicate! And the final flourish - J.K. Rowling puts a black man in the hot seat by making Kingsley Shacklebolt the Minister for Magic.

While Enid Blyton and the writers of her age appear hopelessly racist and xenophobic today, Rowling and team have spared no effort to produce something that is politically correct, and guaranteed to please everyone the world over. And in case they'd trodden on any toes - they seem to have done a quick review after the book was actually released - J.K.Rowling beamingly announced that Dumbledore was gay. It was like saying, 'See? We made sure no one's left out.'

Under June Skies

2008-06-10T17:48:00.010+05:30
Topiary. When you say that word in Tamil, you might be saying 'Throw your cap away.' Topi - erry! In that sense of the word, there's been a lot of 'topiary' in the twentieth century. I wonder why? With temperatures touching new highs every season, we need to keep our heads covered and cool.
If you wear a cap or a hat, you get funny looks. As a woman who wears a topi in the sun at all times, I've faced amusement, ridicule, cockiness and wisecracks, and I'm not exactly thick-skinned. In fact, it’s because of sensitive skin that I always wear protective head-gear. My brother in Delhi completely stopped wearing topis after a motorcyclist flicked one off his head when he was taking an evening walk.
A good alternative would be an umbrella, but the things you get these days are all made of synthetic material which compounds the heat. Instead of getting a little circle of cool shade, like what the black cloth umbrellas of old provided, you find yourself perspiring in a claustrophobic heat capsule.
Now that the monsoon is here, we know it's going to rain at any time, and without any warning. No one in a tea garden is going to leave home without an umbrella. Rainy, sunny or cloudy skies, that umbrella is indispensable.

Idler's Reverie

2008-06-05T23:19:00.005+05:30

I wish we only spoke in verse:
If prose was not allowed in speech,
And minds rephrased each thought before
It fitted into patterned lines,
Think how much less of hurtful noise
Or harmful rage would be expressed?

There'd be a world of silences,
And we would all then thinkers be,
And only that which qualified
As poetry would pass our lips.

Picture : Watercolor by Swedish artist Anders Zorn, from the Internet
Heartfelt thanks to sister Eliza

Haiku : Good Poets

2008-06-04T22:20:00.003+05:30
I am not averse
to verse, if it tells a tale
and tells it well.

Haiku : Bad Poets Society

2008-06-04T22:11:00.003+05:30
In verse the inverse
holds : imitation is not
a form of flattery.

Z is for Zinnias

2008-06-03T22:24:00.012+05:30

E.M.Forster's A Passage to India : Some Thoughts

2008-05-25T17:31:00.011+05:30
I read E.M. Forster's A Passage to India (published 1924) again, after a gap of over 25 years. It is a remarkable novel of British India. A recent article in The Guardian*, from which my brother Raja sent me an excerpt, helped me to understand some issues in the book.
The excerpt goes, 'We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational. It is no surprise, then, to find that we have civilisation whereas they have culture. The contrast between west and east is being mapped on a new axis.'

Forster says in the novel that in the 1920s, especially among the products of England's public schools, 'the arts were bad form'. Any mention of an artistic accomplishment like playing the viola is an affectation, or an embarrassment, especially to the Englishmen in India -- a breed Forster seems to have despised. Among Indians, however, he says, '...literature had not been divorced from civilization' and whether an Indian is educated in it or not, he responds, from his soul, to music, art and poetry.
This must have been because the Indians of the time, unlike the English, had no 'nation state' to inspire fine sentiments: they only had its culture.

Among the major characters in the novel, Fielding is the only Englishman who has Forster's complete approval. Fielding lives outside the tight little circle of the civil station and its rigid norms, makes friends with Indians, and cares very little for what his countrymen think of him. ' The remark that did him most harm at the Club was a silly aside to the effect that the so called white races are really pinko-grey.'
In a world where ' "white" has no more to do with colour than "god save the King" with a god' such a remark does Fielding no good. No wonder, 'the pinko-gray male whom he addressed was subtly scandalised; his sense of insecurity was awoken, and he communicated it to the rest of the herd.'
Fielding says to Dr.Aziz, ' Any man can travel light until he has a wife or children,' and adds that it isn’t only Englishmen like him who travel light, but the 'sadhus and such' of India. Then he says, 'I'm a holy man minus the holiness.'
'He had no racial feeling' the book tells us, 'because he had matured in a different atmosphere', having travelled all over the world.
The reader -- the Indian reader, in particular -- settles down comfortably to the idea that Fielding, indeed Forster, is Indian at heart.

Which is why Chapter XXXII comes as a shock, where the authorial voice actually shrugs off the East completely like a man shaking off a hypnotic spell, or a hallucination that was pleasant enough while it lasted, but is not wholesome at all. When Fielding, on his return voyage, sees the buildings of Venice, we're told, 'He had forgotten the beauty of form among idol temples and lumpy hills; indeed, without form, how can there be beauty? Form stammered here and there in a mosque, became rigid through nervousness....'.
There is worse yet. 'The Mediterranean is the human norm. When men leave that exquisite lake, whether through the Bosporus or the Pillars of Hercules, they approach the monstrous and the extraordinary; and the southern exit leads to the strangest experience of all.'
'Monstrous' and 'extraordinary' - So after all, we must hear the clichéd expressions of imperialism, which are used to dismiss that which cannot be understood, let alone appreciated. Further, '...tender romantic fancies that he thought were dead forever flowered when he saw the buttercups and daisies of June.' Your Englishman is normal again. Pinko-gray is white once more, when restored to the milder sun of England.

And yet we can’t discard all this completely. Once you recover from the sense of betrayal, you see another aspect that goes beyond a mere rejection of the East.
Forster goes on '...but something more precious than mosaics and marbles was offered to him now; the harmony between the works of man and the earth that upholds them, the civilization that has escaped muddle, the spirit in a reasonable form, with flesh and blood subsisting.'
Perhaps, like the ancient Romans, Forster wanted to believe that the Mediterranean is the centre of the earth. Perhaps, in Forster's world, the countries around the Mediterranean had arrived at that balance between civilization and culture which neither Forster's England nor his India could achieve.

Once again, the Guardian piece helps us to understand it all better.
' The problem is that civilisation needs culture even if it feels superior to it. Its own political authority will not operate unless it can bed itself down in a specific way of life. Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence - one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it. '

*By Terry Eagleton who is John Edward Taylor professor of English literature at Manchester University

Meme : Time for Tables

2008-05-22T23:18:00.006+05:30

After reading Nandita Iyer's blog, I really felt like cooking, and never mind that the kitchen is a furnace at this time of year! Nandita wrote to tag me, and here are the questions she sent - and my answers.

What’s your favourite table?

This is my friend Lesley's Christmas feast at Gandrapara Tea Garden. A great hostess. Her table's a big favourite with us all! And the little tea table up on top is a favourite too!

What would you have for your last supper?
I could never eat if I knew....

What’s your poison?
I can live without coffee, soft drinks or liquor but not without tea.

Name your three desert island ingredients.
Ingredients : Lemon, Coriander, Ginger
Essentials : A comfortable bed, drinking water, a beach umbrella.

What would you put in Room 101?
No one. Never.

Which book gets you cooking?
Any Enid Blyton - because everyone's always starving.

What’s your dream dinner party line-up?
I'll skip this.

What was your childhood teatime treat?
Adai on winter evenings in Delhi.

What was your most memorable meal?
I once had Rava Kesari followed by Thayyir Vadai for dinner at Saravana Bhavan in Chennai. Brilliant.

What was your biggest food disaster?
Pulao - see 'Scenes From My Early Married Life'

What’s the worst meal you’ve ever had?
Forgotten it!

Who’s your food hero/food villain?
Food villain - the man who puts sugar in Vegetable au gratin (there really is one!)
Food heroes - The 'Thakurs' who cook at picnics and wedding feasts.

Nigella or Delia?
I know neither.

Vegetarians: genius or madness?
Neither. Comfort, or force of habit.

Fast food or fresh food?
Depends. All Indian fast food is health food. So I might go for that every time - momo, idli, chaat, jhal muri.

Who would you most like to cook for?
Any kids - they're the most appreciative people.

What would you cook to impress a date?
I wouldnt even try (to impress, I mean)

Make a wish.
Thanks. I did.

I’d like to tag Raji, Viji, Kamini and Ambika!

Riders On The Storm

2008-05-20T10:44:00.005+05:30

Kolkata Knight Riders were wiped out in their match against Chennai Super Kings on Sunday at the Eden - by a Kaal Baisakhi. We're located around 600kms to the North of the city, and we were hit by a big one, too, just as the match was starting off. The sky turned black, winds blew as if they would flatten everything in sight, and the door to the garage flew off. Thanks to the match, we got to see this excellent photograph in yesterday's Kolkata newspaper, The Telegraph. A dementor ? What awaits the folks at Eden today?

Darjeeling : Some Views

2008-05-17T10:18:00.019+05:30

The sun rises over the Darjeeling hills at Runglee Rungliot Tea Garden.

Tea on the Slopes at Runglee Rungliot

The Road to Runglee, with a view of the Teesta River

These lovely pictures were taken by our friend Partha Dey, on a Nokia phone! Here is Partha talking into his camera...er, phone.

May Queens

2008-05-15T19:00:00.005+05:30

While we wilt in the scorching heat, these beautiful orchids thrive in their little corners in the garden! The lilac ones seem to have come up on their own, and have grown in this compound for years. The cluster of hanging orchids was planted by the gardener - from a sample his friend pinched for him from the forest!

IPL Twenty 20 Cricket - A Non-Viewer's View

2008-05-10T10:53:00.009+05:30
Twenty20 has turned home and family life upside down. The husband, who never had time for cricket or for television, now sits and watches every match and screams instructions to the players in different languages. Our younger daughter, always cricket crazy, supports almost half the teams, and my head reels at her lists. Try to make some sense of this. 'I support Uthappa at all times. So I'll always cheer for his team. Except’ she pauses significantly, ‘except when his team plays against Chennai Super Kings - because Chennai is my birth place! When Chennai and Uthappa's team are not playing against Royal Challengers, I'll always support the Royal Challengers, because I am loyal to Rahul Dravid! When the Deccan Chargers play any team other than these three, they have my support.' Of course, it's all as clear as cricket to me!

The husband doesn’t seem too clear on the issue of loyalties either. Kolkata is the top team, because, as he says, we live in West Bengal, and 'Our dal-roti comes from here.' That is totally acceptable. However, he will support Delhi because that is 'home'. Even, he adds, even when they play Chennai Super Kings, to which team we must of course be loyal, because of our Tamil identity. Of course, he will root for Chennai when they are not playing Delhi or Kolkata. So why was he screaming for Rajasthan Royals the other day? 'Cant you understand anything? This team has come up only because Shane Warne has so much team spirit! I like a good leader!' Between them, father and daughter seem to have a special place in their hearts for every team except the Punjab Kings XI - but I think I did hear 'I love the costumes!' the other day.

Very often, the father and daughter come to loggerheads over a match, and each one tries to enlist the support of the non-sporting, non-tele-goggling mother/wife. The husband was sure I was supporting Delhi against Mumbai (‘Uthappa!’). By sheer chance, I served uthappams for dinner, and our daughter punched the air in delight at the implicit support, while the husband ate each mouthful as if it were choking him. My sister from Mumbai, a dignified grandmother, called, and when I answered the phone (which I have to do because no one else gets up from their prime seats) she shouted, 'I don’t want to talk to you! Give the phone to your Mumbai-supporting daughter!' Their conversation was almost entirely made up of wordless, ear-splitting shrieks.

I thank God we still have some sane people left in the family. There’s our elder daughter, who wouldn’t watch cricket if you paid her, and my sister in Chennai, who is positively allergic to cricket. I might run away to either of them for the summer. I need to go and bury myself somewhere until the finals of this Terrible 20 Tournament are played out.

Flowers for Mrs.M

2008-05-06T22:05:00.018+05:30
These African violets are such shy beauties. For years, they didn’t do well at all in Moraghat. Shortly after we moved here, I managed to kill a whole collection of them. That we grow any at all now, is thanks to some timely advice from a friend.
An unexpected friendship sprang up between Mrs. M and me. She was a very Burra Memsaab – tea garden manager’s wife - of the district, and the senior catering member at the club. I was the youngest of the Burra Memsaabs here at the time, and was new to the district.
Mrs. M. asked me to make a cauliflower and aloo curry, as my share of Diwali dinner for around 200 people at the club. Our poor old cook did a great job, we all thought, giving the curry a special flavour and a thick gravy. At the end of the meal, Mrs. M. summoned me to the buffet table with a little gesture. She was tall, and she looked rather imperiously at me, and said, ‘Gorry’--this is how most people from North India pronounce my name–‘Gorry, why did you make this dish with gravy?’
'Mrs. M.,’I said, ‘You didn’t specify that you wanted it made without gravy.'
‘Well, you should have checked how it was made here.’
‘Mrs. M., since I’m new here, you should have specified.’
The younger of the catering members feared a flare-up, and came hurrying to soothe me. I could tell she lived in great dread of Mrs. M!
It turned out that Mrs. M liked me for speaking frankly to her.
I found this out when her car drew up quite suddenly at our place one morning. My Ma and I were sitting in the verandah. It was a lovely November morning. The girls were at school, and Ma was busy with her knitting. Mrs. M. got out of the car, and after the briefest of greetings, she said, pointing a finger at some pots, 'Those African violets are looking really unhappy over here!' She thrust her little bundle of crochet into my hands while she picked up two of the pots and wandered around looking for what might be a suitable new place for them.
After she’d put the pots in a place which seemed to satisfy her, she climbed up the steps to the verandah and greeted Ma, while I floated around behind her with all her crochet work. That was the beginning of a warm friendship, and it was the beginning of a new life for our African violets! Mrs. M. taught me that African violets need plenty of shade, and that they are shy –shrinking violets – that love to grow hidden among other plants. They have to be watered very carefully, indirectly, in fact, in a little plate placed at the base of the pot. The roots take in as much water as the plant needs through capillary action.

Mrs. M and I enjoyed a short-lived friendship – her husband retired from tea a few months after we came to know each other. Before they left, she asked the girls around to her place, ‘To play with my daughters’ dolls house’ she said. Her own daughters were away at college then, and instead of moping about how she missed them, she asked other people’s children over now and then. Swati and Parvati, who were around eight and ten years old then, went over, and had a great time playing with the dolls house, and running about all over the lovely garden there!

I called Mrs. M. on the phone to thank her, and I found she’d taken a real shine to Swati! ‘Would you believe it, Gorry! Your little one complimented me on my heliconia plant! There are very few adults I know who know the name of the plant, and this little one not only knows what it is, but was kind enough to admire it!’
We had a good laugh. This is a picture of a heliconia that grows here in our garden!

About Extremes

2008-05-06T20:06:00.011+05:30

Hydrange-as Sizzle in the Morning Sun!

The days are either scorching hot, or wet and chilly after a thunderstorm -- a bit like my life at present. I'm either inundated with work or coasting along vacantly. It tends to be like that when you work freelance, and from home, I guess. The tea garden word for the temporary worker who's employed now and then, is ‘Bigha'. So here I am, tasting life as a Bigha for the first time, and teetering between an existence as a jobless blogger and a blog-less jobber.

The Welcome Rain in the Afternoon

Pastels for Summer

2008-04-25T22:03:00.010+05:30

Tiny zinnia seedlings have gone into flower beds, but may never live to grow and bloom, as caterpillar-s are eating them up. The shrubs around the garden are putting out flowers now, and little dots of colour are appearing in new places every day!
When the heat builds up, and the days are humid, these are the coolers that soothe tired eyes and lift our spirits!

Hydrange-as

Wisteria in its corner