October's Excesses

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

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.

Site for the retirement home of our dreams!


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Durga Puja in the Tea Garden - 3

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

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

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

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.



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Red and Ready

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 Burra 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!

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

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

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

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

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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More on the Dooars

Scrabble - Crossing Borders

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.

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

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.


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

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?


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Carpe Diem!

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!

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