Back in the Day – Part IV

by Shipra Castledine 
I am going to ramble a bit in this chapter. Recollections are swirling around in my mind since I began to write my stories.

When I was a child in tea the phone lines were manual. Meaning that you had to ask an operator at a central exchange, which might have been in Mal Bazaar in those days, to get you the number you wanted. 

The phone would ring and Mum would pick up the phone and the operator would tell her for instance ‘Sylee T.E. calling’. Jake Murray, a Scottish planter would be on the line, someone Mum knew as a friend but did she understand what he was saying - noooooo! 

She would say to Jake, ‘Just a minute, Jake’.  She would then call out, ‘Bunty, come here. Please listen to what Jake is saying.’ And I would understand quite clearly the broad Scots accent conversation and relay it to Mum!! 

Mum, later in life when telling me about our days in tea, told me about the ayahs I had as a child. They ranged from young, new bride Nepali ayahs to Santhali women. I remember she told me that the last ayah I had to the age I needed one was named Har Ka Maya and that she was an excellent carer. Mum said that Har Ka Maya was a class above and that she would teach me manners and behaviour apart from caring for me physically. 

Then there was another Nepali ayah who was our bearer Singbir’s wife and she was my ayah as a new bride. Mum was very very fond of her and whilst Kanchi took care of me, Mum took care of Kanchi! Kanchi was almost a child herself and I can still recall her pretty face. Then she got pregnant and started her own family of one terribly cute child after another so she stopped working for us. 

I remember the dining room in Baintgoorie where we would have most of our meals. As I have said in a previous chapter, in the summer months we would use the downstairs drawing room and there was a dining table there too. In the upstairs dining room I remember Dad, Mum, myself and some guests sitting down to dinner ( I was older then. Had I been a smaller child I would have been fed earlier at a smaller children’s table with either Mum in attendance or my ayah and I would be in my bedroom well before the guests arrived ). Singbir would come with a tray full of serving dishes which would have been transported by the paaniwallas (yes, in the burra bungalow there was more than one paaniwalla) from the baburchikhana down a covered walkway to the pantry and then set up on a tray. 

The tray would be brought up by Singbir who carried it up a flight of stairs to the dining room. Singbir would solemnly stand beside the guests first as they served themselves from the delicious array of food that Mum would have ordered and organised in the morning. As Singbir came around the table and stopped beside Mum, his face still poker straight, his stomach rumbled loudly. Mum had a great sense of humour and she was dying to laugh, as were we, but it was a formal set up and she couldn’t!!  Singbir continued his rounds of serving without missing a beat. Shades of a butler you would say!! Later on after the guests left Mum regaled us with a funny recall of the incident and had us in splits! And how many of us remember scrambled eggs as ‘rumble tumble’ and sausage as ‘saasit’. Ham was ‘hum’.

The Santhal labour and our help in the bungalows had names that a lot of the time followed the days of the week. That was how they were named, by the day they were born. So someone born on a Sunday  would be called ‘Etwa’, born on a Monday, ‘Somra’, born on a Tuesday ‘Mongra’, born on a Wednesday ‘ Budhu’ or ‘Budhwa’, born on a Thursday ‘Beeph..’ (can’t quite remember what a Thursday born individual was named), born on a Friday ‘Sukhwa’, born on a Saturday ... can’t remember.

Jake Murray was a good friend of Dad and Mum. He was single all the time we knew him as a planter. I remember him clearly even today. He was jolly and had a good sense of humour and an infectious laugh. Face to face Mum would follow his accent and I remember times of fun and laughter. Jake gave me my first puppy. It was a tiny Pekinese dog from a litter that his dog had. I named it Rintintin. 

A scene comes to mind of Dad, Mum and me in the lovely Baintgoorie drawing room. We had this comfortable deep sofa set that Mum had covered in thick white cambric slip covers which would come off when we had guests. There was a beautiful, thick carpet across almost the entire large drawing room which was cream with pastel flowers around the borders. There was Rintintin, almost invisible in the thick pile of the carpet as he was so small. His tiny dark brown face with black around the nose and mouth looking up at me as I lay on the carpet beside him. Dad on the carpet too and tapping his hands on the carpet and calling to Rintintin. With little barks the puppy would crawl on his stomach and inch forward to Dad. Two steps forward and one step back in play and yipping all the while. Sadly I did not have Rintintin for long. A jackal grabbed him on one of the occasions he went out on the lawn and that was the end of my little pup.

Western Dooars Club. How much I remember of this club. For a few years we would go to the old club beside the river. And then a new club was built, a bit farther from the river. A scene comes to mind at the old club that has remained with me all these years. It was New Year’s Eve. Celebrations were held by default for Christmas and New Year. Alcoholic revelry was part and parcel of tea life. My Dad was never a drinker. He would nurse a couple of drinks through an evening but get in there with all the raucous revellers, muss up his hair and appear as merry! The scene in my mind sees a number of planters, Big Mac (Donald Mackenzie) one of them, with linked arms and dancing around the club hall like the Santhals. Uncle Donald as I knew him, roared out ‘Sudhin come on in here’. I was standing at the bottom of the stairs to the club outside, with Mum. I watched as Dad went back in to the club to join the drunken revelry and I was petrified thinking that my father was drunk. Thankfully I learnt soon that he never was. Mum took me home knowing that the night would be long.

And I remember the club days with all of us as children when we were on school holidays from our boarding schools. While the grownups played tennis and golf we would tear around the grounds playing our own games whilst the ayahs sat around and gossiped. At tea time the children had a separate table to sit at. The ayahs minded us. And then I think of the glorious decorations put up for Christmas and New Year. 

This beautiful photograph of the Chel river is taken by Sayan and is from the website 'TrekEarth'

There was this beautiful lady, so artistic I wonder if she gained recognition after she left tea. Her name was Sheila Rana and her husband was Frankie Rana. She would decorate the ‘stage’ area we had in the club in the most creative, magnificent tableaus. I can’t even begin to describe how wonderful these decorations were. Every year was different. And the Christmas parties with one of the uncles dressed as Santa Claus. We totally believed it was Santa. One year Santa arrived on elephant back with his big old sack of presents. Another year he arrived in a helicopter!( courtesy our army friends!) What excitement for everyone. The spread of food over Christmas and New Year could rival the best of the best! Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) was as big an event because of the British planters. The decorations remained till a week after New Year.

We watched movies at the club too. The hall would be turned into a cinema with chairs arranged like a theatre. There was a large screen in the stage area and the projector was in a little room at the back of the hall. You can imagine in such an informal setting there would be comments and laughter and disruptions through the movie. And of course you could go to the bar and get a drink. Movies over and the night carried on for many.

My father’s younger brother, my Sejokaku, Sunny Bose, joined tea too as I mentioned before. He was posted to Meenglas T.E. as the factory engineer.  
Meenglas was not far from Baintgoorie TE. It was good to have relatives near. My father and Sejokaku were very close to each other. Sunny Bose was more of a flamboyant, colourful character than my Dad. I can remember his love of music. The jazz LP-s and the rock and roll. I would never have taken to jazz had I not listened to Sejokaku’s music. 

And his love of cars too. One time Sejokaku went to Saugaon T.E. to meet a Jamair flight and pick up another uncle who was the youngest of the brothers. My dearest Chotokaku. They were driving to Meenglas and Chotokaku was commenting to Sejokaku that one hears such tall stories of wild life in the tea gardens and pooh poohing:  were they true at all?! Well, as they drove into the garden, very propitiously a beautiful leopard leapt over the bonnet of the car and disappeared into the tea bushes. 

Ha ha, Chotokaku says ‘I’d better wind up my window.’ Yes, you’d better!!

That’s it for today folks!  Next instalment soon...!

Editor's Note: 
T.E. - Tea Estate
Paaniwalla - the cook's helper (or as one of our visitors labelled him, the sous chef)
Baburchikhana or Bawarchikhana - the kitchen
Baburchi/Bawarchi - the cook
Western Dooars Club - Shipra mentions the old club, which was known as the Chel Club. If anyone has photographs of the club, old or new, would you care to share them here? Please write to indianchaistories@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

MEET THE WRITER:

'My name is Shipra Castledine nee Shipra Bose (Bunty). My parents were Sudhin and Gouri Bose. I am a tea 'baba' of the 1950-s era. I spent a part of my life growing up in the Dooars and another large part of my life married to a tea planter's son the Late KK Roy son of PK and Geeta Roy of Rungamuttee TE in the Dooars. I continued to be in the tea industry for many years as KK was a tea broker till he passed away in 1998.' Read mo0re stories by Shipra here: https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Shipra%20Castledine

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