The Haunted Bungalow of Dumchipara Tea Garden

by S.Mohanakrishnan

 

The year: 1981                                  

I was transferred from Birpara Tea Garden to Dumchipara Tea Garden where my Burra Saab allotted me the ‘modified’ bungalow. I was supposed to share this bungalow with a new trainee who resigned and went away.

Every now and then I was asked by the Office Superintendent whether the bungalow was comfortable or not – he used to be the occupant before me. I was happy, and enjoyed living alone, but then I kept hearing strange noises coming from the false ceiling – as if something heavy had landed there.  These sounds were attributed to the expansion and contraction of the steel trusses.

Being a factory assistant, I had all night duty and I used to sleep for a few hours during the day.

As the cold weather approached, leaf intake went down and the factory was run in the daytime. Now I started sleeping in the bungalow at night. While I slept, I would feel as if some fabric had touched me or slithered over me. It happened every night. I started sleeping with the lights on, but still the thing continued.

One evening, I had invited the Senior Assistant and his family to have tea with me. Tea was laid out in the jalli kamra.  It must have been around 6:30 and we were going to start our evening drinks session.

Just then all of us clearly heard the sound of a child crying in the jhora outside – the bungalow was on a mound with a jhora on either side. We thought that some child from the line must have lost a goat in his care and was afraid to go back home. I sent my cook to investigate. As he went down from the gate, the crying stopped. ‘Koi nahin hai, Saab’, he shouted.

He climbed back up the slope and the crying started again. I sent him back once again. By this time all of us had come out to the bungalow boundary fencing. This time he called another bungalow servant to go with him and they both replied there was no one there.  When the crying started off for the third time the cook told me the sound was the noise made by a ‘pret’ – a ghost. I simply shooed him away.

After this, I realized that on the day of the regular chowkidar’s weekly off, no substitute ever wanted to come to my bungalow. Whoever dared to come complained the next morning that he had been jostled by somebody and his bedding had been yanked out from under him.

All the bungalows had two night chowkidars. One of my two was a ‘bowun’ (Nepali Brahmin) and the other was a practicing Buddhist  Lama who did ‘Lama-giri’ during the day.  These two were the only ones who would come to work on a regular basis.

In the month of December, the service engineer of the company arrived to stay with me while he overhauled the engines. As was the practice, we had a number of drinks before going to sleep in our respective bedrooms. At around one o’clock in the morning, he knocked on my door and told me there was something strange going on.

He had heard the sound of a water tap dripping into a bucket and woken up. He shifted the bucket from under the tap and went back to sleep, but in ten minutes the sound woke him up again. When this happened another couple of times, he decided to wake me. I went along with him to see for myself.  And I did – it happened again. After he switched off the light in the bathroom, things were quiet.

The service engineer went off on his rounds to other gardens and then back home to Siliguri. When he returned, he brought his eight year old son to stay. The boy wanted to ride his new bicycle in the wide open spaces of a tea garden.  

We returned to the bungalow from the factory that evening to find the boy sitting in the drawing room, looking frightened. This is what he told us.  He was playing in the guest room after he had finished cycling. He saw a man walking across the room from one corner to the other, and then disappearing into a cupboard! The man was dressed in khaki shorts and shirt and wore a sola topi on his head. After this, the boy didn’t stay alone in the bungalow, but kept close to his father.

The next incident also took place during the engineer’s stay. This time he had come without his son. We were eating our dinner when a very large cat entered the room. It came from the garage, but the door leading to the garage was closed. Even today, when I narrate this, my hair stands on end. It looked at me with huge eyes.  I picked up a knife from the table and raised my hand to throw it, but my guest caught hold of my hand, and said, ‘Na, Mohan! Eita onno jinish!’ (This is no cat! ) The cat – or whatever it was - left the room the way it had come in.

I shouted out to my chowkidars, but they stayed away.  Later they told me, ‘Yo toh ho, Sir, yo daily aunccha’ (This is the spirit that comes every day and troubles us).

I had not mentioned any of these incidents to anyone else at the time, because I was not scared.

A few months later: The chowkidar woke me up at four o’clock one morning – without a cup of tea. He said the kettle was missing. The previous night, I had placed the kettle on top of the ‘Bajaj’ heater/oven myself. I had gone into the kitchen after dinner. Burra Memsaab had sent a bowl of pudding, and after I had eaten, I wanted to make sure the chowkidars didn’t help themselves and finish the rest of it. After telling them to put the bowl in the fridge, I saw the kettle on a shelf, and placed it on the heater.

I blasted the chowkidar and asked him if he’d taken the kettle outside – for some other purpose.  He swore that he had not touched it. How could he, it wasn’t there at all! We looked for it everywhere – then, from the kitchen window, we saw it – it was in the middle of the lawn. The chowkidar brought it inside: it was covered in dew.

This was also forgotten after a few days.

The noises that came from the ceiling continued.

The new season started, and my night duties with it. One night, I came back early from the factory. Manufacture finished around one o’clock, so at two thirty or so, I was at the bungalow gate on my motorcycle.

I saw a wizened old man standing there. He was dressed in Khaki shorts, khaki shirt and a sola topi. I lost my cool and shouted at him, and asked him what he was doing there at that time of the night. He replied that he was just roaming around. Meanwhile I shouted for the chowkidars, who were looking out of the window – I could see their faces, but they wouldn’t come out.

There was a labour line behind the bungalow, on the other side of the jhora. People started shouting from there, asking me not to talk but to go inside at once. I told the old guy to get out anyway. He told me he was going, and he walked down the slope to the culvert. From there he vanished.

By this time both the chowkidars came out and when I scolded them, they said that this was the ghost which came every night, and walked through closed doors and windows – even in the form of a cat!

They both said they used to pray all night to keep it away.

The next morning, Nakul Singh baidaar who lived behind the bungalow and Rarh Singh, a football player, came and told me that I had been talking to the ghost of Man Bahadur Tamang. He used to be the head sardar of the garden. He had died in the 1960s. 

The bungalow, it seems, had been built on a Tamang (Buddhist) burial /cremation ground. The workers had repeatedly asked the then Burra Saab not to build a bungalow at that site. It was built anyway.

I continued to live in that bungalow till 1984, when I was transferred – back to Birpara Tea Garden once again. 

 Editor's note:
Jhora – a small rivulet
Baidaar – one who keeps the workers’ attendance records
Head Sardar : Head Supervisor   

Meet the writer:  

Mohan's first love is tea. He enjoys reading books on history and philosophy, tinkering with cars and machinery, driving and - when the mood takes him - tossing up a great Chinese meal for friends and family.

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My name is Gowri Mohanakrishnan and I'm a tea planter's wife. Yes, the story that you've just read is by my husband, S.Mohanakrishnan! I started this blog because one of the things that I wouldn't want us to lose in a fast changing world is the tea story - a story always told with great seriousness, no matter how funny - always true (always), maybe a tall tale, maybe long or short or just impossible, maybe scary, funny or exciting but never dull. Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea! 

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