No Words

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

A Killer Strikes

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

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

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.

 Young Badal - his name means 'clouds'

Idler's Reverie

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

I am not averse
to verse, if it tells a tale
and tells it well.

Haiku : Bad Poets Society

In verse the inverse
holds : imitation is not
a form of flattery.

Z is for Zinnias

Civilisation and Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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 or 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 the game. 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

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

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

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

Crotchety Craftsmen : A True Tea Garden Tale

We lost two really good craftsmen in Moraghat Tea Estate in the same year. One was Bawarchi, the Burra Bungalow cook. His name was Lakshman Singh Pradhan but everybody always called him‘Bawarchi’. The other was the garden carpenter, the 'Kath Mistri', Biren Sarkar. Each of these men could be described as a ‘character’ in his own way. Each one had a strong sense of tradition and of his place in it.

Bawarchi was one of a kind. He was already a very old and frail man when we got to know him. At the beginning of every cold weather, he would announce that he was going to die. The poor old man would arrive at work early in the morning, hunched up and shivering. He'd go home for his breakfast and bath and come back at around eleven o'clock, now walking straight, and actually looking younger. We would ask him if he was himself or a younger brother. He'd give us his trademark crooked grin in reply.

Bawarchi's shopping lists were unique. He had a strong sense of loyalty to the old British Sahibs and his idea of 'essentials' seemed to be based on a longing for those bygone days. At the top of the list, I'd find, not rice, sugar, and atta and so on, but corn flour, Worcester sauce, beans and carrots. He once told me the British sahibs would eat potatoes with their meat instead of eating bread, rice or chapattis. He seemed to like the idea quite a bit!

Bawarchi was old, but he cooked like a dream. His soufflés and cakes were light and lovely, and he made wonderful Indian and Chinese food as well. His 'pandraas’, cutlets and pancakes stay on in our memories. The only 'baksheesh ' that the old man ever wanted was a 'Thank you!' And he got plenty of heartfelt thanks in his time. Poor old man, he died of TB. In the cold weather, as he’d said he would.

Biren was an old timer too - he was painfully thin; he had a weak heart, was very shortsighted, and lame in one leg. He'd come limping to the bungalow with a fine walking stick which he'd made himself, and he had a helper who carried all his tools. He wore a woollen hat all the year round, shorts, shoes and socks, and a pair of very thick spectacles.
Biren was really an artist. Wood was something he understood, and he must have picked up his craft from the Chinese carpenters who worked in tea gardens many years ago. There are some glass fronted cupboards made by him with carved wooden frames of classic Chinese design. He once made an oval picture-frame, and gave it a perfect gloss. The joints in the frame are invisible. He carved us two or three fine walking sticks as well. He loved appreciation, and he had a lovely smile that lit up his face with kindness and goodness. Biren’s helper had to bear the brunt of his tongue, though. He was quite tough with him.

It was decided that Biren would make a wooden frame for the fireplace - a complete wooden mantelpiece, and the entire design was to be of his choosing. He was really happy. He loved the idea, the challenge, and the thought that he was going to contribute something to the bungalow that would be a source of pride and joy for years to come. It was, in fact, his final masterpiece. He retired some months later, and he died soon after. That was some months before Bawarchi died.


Biren Mistri's Final Masterpiece

Biren would have to do the entire job of the fireplace in the bungalow. There was no way he could take anything to the factory, as he’d have to keep taking measurements during the course of the work. The old man was worried about his morning tea break. How could he manage to walk all the way home for his eleven o'clock meal then back to the bungalow, with his leg being what it was? Well that was simple enough, he was told: he could have a meal in the bungalow. Bawarchi was instructed to provide Biren with breakfast; chapattis and eggs, every morning.

No one anticipated the storm that the two proud old men would manage to brew up between them. To start with, Bawarchi was outraged. Did anyone realise who and what he was? He'd been working for years -- so many years! -- first in Assam, and then in the Andrew Yule Company Kothi in Karballa. He'd seen so many sahibs and memsahibs, and from the British days! He'd cooked for such grand parties, he'd turned out a hundred and fifty perfect tandoori chickens on one night, and now, in his old age, he was being asked to wait hand and foot on this – this Biren Mistri!!

Biren addressed him as ‘ay!!’ and ordered him about, he said.
One of the complaints Bawarchi made was absolutely ridiculous. He claimed that Biren was profiting unfairly from the situation. How? No one could understand. So he explained. We bought eggs from Biren’s house, where one of his sons ran a small poultry business. And then, Bawarchi said, stressing the point, he was fed one of those eggs everyday. How could Biren sell us an egg and then eat it himself??

Biren, for his part, ranted about how Bawarchi deliberately took advantage of his dependence on him for food. He insulted him in every possible way, he said. He made him wait, and purely out of spite. He couldn’t bother with cooking him even chapattis properly. He grudged him every mouthful that he ate. Who was he to counter Burra Saab's orders anyway? Biren Mistri could not handle the daily humiliation, he said. He would go hungry, but he would not tolerate the Bawarchi's insults, insolence or arrogance.

Now this was a Situation. Neither Biren nor Bawarchi could be ticked off and told to stop behaving like a child. Each one was given a patient hearing, and then offered a suggestion. Biren's meal was to be served to him at a fixed time. All that Bawarchi had to do was to see that it was cooked beforehand, so that when he went home to eat, one of the boys could serve Biren. The arrangement worked well for a few days, and there were no fireworks in the kitchen.
And then one morning, Bawarchi started off again.

He had found a rotten egg. He complained, and then he raged about the villain who'd sold it to us. He brought it in a cup and waved it about, shouting about dishonest people and the bad stuff they sold, and how it was he who was accountable for everything that found its way into the kitchen. Who would have to take the blame, after all? It was so unfair. He was simply delighted that he’d got some tangible proof of his enemy’s villainy. He was going to take full advantage of it!

Once he quietened down, Bawarchi was told that the egg could easily be replaced. Wasn’t it always? No, he said, if we wanted any eggs replaced, ‘they’ always asked to see the bad egg in the first place. Well, then, he was told; he could go and show them the bad egg and ask for a replacement. There were other eggs in the house for now. That seemed to be the end of it.
The next day, Bawarchi went about looking less grumpy than usual. His sudden cheeriness made me stop and ask him about the bad egg. Had he managed to get a fresh one in its place?
'No,' he said. He smiled his old crafty smile.
'I cooked it and fed it to Biren Mistri.'

Have You Seen the Light?

The Olympic Flame has reached Delhi.
Before the torchbearers could set off on their ceremonial run, hundreds of supporters of Tibetan freedom ran a parallel torch relay.
All during the elaborate 'security run-through' involving thousands of law enforcement personnel.
The day's papers and the news channels on TV have reported that security arrangements are at a higher level than those for Republic Day, when terrorist attacks are feared. Citizens of Delhi, watch out for yourselves today. The police are away on a 'red alert' assignment.

What is today's elaborate bandobust in aid of? Is it to show the world (through TV cameras) that India is willing to drop everything to protect a torch, which is, at the most, a symbol?

The third, and parallel rally of the day, is of course the media tamasha. Photojournalists and reporters are running frantically. Every news channel on television is fighting to get footage, so its smart young things can assure us brightly in careful tones that 'the flame is safe.' Oh, what a relief. How much sleep did anyone lose over it anyway?

Standing Tall

This beauty is a kind of semal, or kapok tree. Its special feature is the four-cornered base, almost like the base of a dart! The boy standing at the base of the tree is one Bala. The pictures of these giant American trees, below, were sent to me by another Bala.

Redwood Tree in Redwood National Park

Wawona Tree Mariposa Big Tree Grove Yosemite National Park

Potato (Mish) Mash

Yesterday we drove away from the tea gardens towards the agricultural lands that lie to our south. On Sunday evening drives, you get to see the jolly sight of people returning from their trips to the weekly bazaar.

Not everyone was celebrating yesterday, though. This is a bad time for potato farmers. Our district, Jalpaiguri, and the neighbouring Cooch Behar District, are big potato growing regions, and produce high yields to the hectare. Prices have crashed, and no one wants any of this year's crop. (Read more)The problem is aggravated by the absence of sufficient storage facilities, or of organised agro-marketing. We saw this dismal looking group waiting for a pick-up truck.

Last week there were long lines of potato-laden trucks at the gates of the few cold storage facilities in the area. The gates remained firmly closed. The trucks caused major traffic snarls on the national highway, and local drivers started referring to these as 'Alu Jams'.
No wonder most farmers are now dumping potatoes in the fields from which they were harvested.

Some ten years ago, this happened with the tomato crop. The roads around the farming areas turned red, as distraught farmers dumped their produce there.

A young goldsmith and jewellery shop owner from the nearby Banarhat town lost a lot of money in a get rich quick potato-growing scheme some years ago. He had to close down shop. For some months after, he could be seen roaming around aimlessly all over town. On one occasion, he was reeling about talking to himself, quite drunk. I last saw him hard at work as one of the many karigars (workmen) at another goldsmith's -- formerly a rival outfit -- looking as dignified as ever.

April Love

Thank God for April. The cold weather is officially over, but we can spend hours outdoors in this season. The best part of living in the Dooars is the amount of time you can spend outdoors in the year.

The cold weather is the time for cultivated blooms, but come April, and you can sit back and watch things grow. March is still 'winter' in this age of climate change, but days get hot because it remains dry.

April is a time of growth and of destruction. The storms that occur at this time of year, the 'Kaal Baisakhi', as they are called here, are like tornadoes. They begin with sudden cloud formations, high speed winds, and, if tea planters and the local farmers are very unlucky, hail! Then the welcome rain comes lashing. Tea garden managers rush out after each storm to assess what damage -- if any -- has been done, and they send up heartfelt thanks for rain. However, I am sure their petitions to the Almighty are peppered with many conditional clauses. It is impossible to find a planter who is entirely happy with the amount of rain he's received, and how, and when, and in what concentration.

On most mornings, I see something in the garden which makes me rush back inside to get the camera. The dark, poky, secret corners of the garden often house shy beauties like this wisteria, which has been growing here for years. Nature lovers have to venture into these corners in the tolerant spirit of acceptance, and be prepared to face snakes, insects, or painful bites from hairy caterpillars!
 Petrea - at the time of writing this post, I mistook it for wisteria
This star apple tree has no fruits on it now, but offers a nice place to hide in (and to sulk), if anyone should need to do so.
 The garden has many little hidey-holes for a child to play in. Our girls have left home now, so I particularly enjoyed having our friend's daughter, Susan, a sunny sixteen year-old, stay with us while she prepared for her board exams. Like all tea garden children she would wander about outside with the dogs, lost in her own world.

One of the things the Mali has learnt over the years is the art of seed propagation in plants which are traditionally grown by other means.

Plants like lilies are generally propagated through bulbs.

Easter lilies always produce thousands of papery black seeds which burst out of tight pods, though we never used to bother with collecting them. Mithoo, the Mali, scattered some of these seeds around, and behold, what emerged was this striking flower, almost a Tudor Rose of a lily, combining red and white so perfectly !

Picture Post : Peepul Tree and Tree People; at Jalpaiguri Town and Teesta River Bank