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Saturday, September 8, 2018

A Taste of Home

by Gowri Mohanakrishnan 

On a cool and cloudy morning like today, I could have fooled myself into believing  I was in Bagracote Tea Garden in the late eighties. It must have been the freshness of the rain-washed breeze; Bagracote was a place where it rained everyday round the year. At three p.m., without fail - and that, as I said, was in the late eighties.

Those days, a hot meal of Uppuma and chutney like the one we just had for breakfast would have taken me back 'home' in the same way.

Home : a world both Mohan and I had left so far behind, in Delhi. We had to travel for many hours to reach Delhi. There were no telephones and certainly no coloured images flashing on screens to bring other worlds into our lives all day and everyday. For this reason, very few people in the city knew anything at all about tea gardens. I had never heard of the Dooars myself until I got married!

We were all afloat in a world that was remote and had very little in common with life in urban India. Almost all the little towns in the Dooars had come up only because of tea gardens, and the gardens themselves were less than a hundred years old!! The nearest city was Calcutta. There was no way you could bridge the gap between city  and garden with ease in those days; besides, each seemed to exist in a different time zone. 

Language, music and food: these were our connect with home. It was much the same for the people we knew here, for all our friends, for all Mohan's colleagues and their wives. In this way we were all united, in spite of  the things that made each one of us different. We had all created a home away from home. We had gained a new community, new relationships, and a  new family where we lived. We had two homes, then, and we enjoyed each in its place.

Most of the young planters today have their families living in towns nearby. There are two reasons for this. First, most of them belong to this region. The tea growing areas of North East India have well populated towns, and any number of youngsters choose tea as a profession. People from places like Delhi, Dehradun, Chandigarh or Kolkata don't turn up in large numbers looking to make a life in tea any longer.

The second reason is that many girls who marry planters get an opportunity to work in town these days, and their children attend school there. The bungalow becomes a weekend home for them, and often the planter husband/father goes and spends Sundays with the family in town. There is no longing for a home far away, and therefore no need to create another in the garden.
Painting the verandah at Moraghat T.E. Burra Bungalow before Diwali
Some years ago, one of Mohan's assistants - let's call him Vijay - asked to go home, to a town just 50 kms away from the garden, for Diwali. His wife and children lived there, in the house in which he had grown up. They would visit him on weekends.

This conversation took place at the club Diwali 'do' when all the children were having a wonderful time with 'pataakas' (fireworks). Diwali was two days away. We would all do up our bungalows with a bit of paint, lights and so on every year.  Diwali has a special quality in the garden, an added 'flavour', and I've always believed it is enhanced by the darkness and silence around us.

To get back to the conversation -  Mohan asked Vijay whether he really wanted to leave his bungalow in darkness on Diwali night, and the boy replied quite blandly that the bungalow could never be 'home' for him, so why should he stay there and not light diyas (lamps) at home in town!

We were really stunned to hear that he - and so many others, as we now realise - thought that way!

Somehow, our longing for the old 'home' meant we lavished a lot of love on our new homes in what was then a distant land. We gloried in the otherness of  this life. And this was home, after all, for our children!

One year, we were in Delhi at Diwali time. Our little one was just two years old. She heard the sound of 'pataakas' (fire crackers) going off early in the evening, and she announced happily to her grandfather that elephants had come! That was what firecrackers - especially the loud ones called 'chocolate bomb' or 'atom bomb' - meant to a tea garden child, because they were used to frighten herds of wild elephants and keep them away! Our children's idea of 'normal life' included elephants, leopards and snakes, forests, rivers and mountains.

The world of tea gardens is still unique. The language(s), the jargon, the 'dastoor' or customs ( most of them quirky and anachronistic ) and the hierarchy, the feudal spirit, the grave danger, the solitude, the darkness, the silence - it's all one of a kind. Definitely not a life to be taken for granted.
Workers dancing and singing at Diwali time, Moraghat T.E. Burra Bungalow

Meet The Writer/Editor: Gowri Mohanakrishnan  

 I was teaching English at Indraprashta College in Delhi when I met and married my tea planter husband in 1986. He brought me to the tea gardens - a completely different world from the one I knew! Life in tea continues to be unique, and I began writing about ours many years ago.

Early in 2018, I started Indian Chai Stories to collect and preserve other people's stories from tea.

The first chai stories I ever wrote were for a magazine called 'Reach Out' which Joyshri Lobo started in the mid eighties for the Dooars planters. Some years later, Shalini Mehra started 'The Camellia' and I started writing there regularly. Shalini put me in touch with David Air, the editor of Koi-Hai, who gave me a page there.  My family has always believed that I can write, and that is what keeps me going, whether I agree with them or not.

Here is the link to all the stories I have written at Indian Chai Stories - https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Gowri%20Mohanakrishnan 



Is this your first visit here? Welcome to Indian Chai Stories! 
Do you have a chai story of your own to share? Send it to me here, please : indianchaistories@gmail.com. 
 
My name is Gowri Mohanakrishnan and I'm a tea planter's wife. 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, short, impossible, scary, funny or exciting but never dull. You will find yourself transported to another world! 
 
Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea!

ADD THIS LINK TO YOUR FAVOURITES : 
https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/
 

22 comments:

  1. As always, how beautifully you have written, Gowri! The times, they have changed, indeed!
    You'd better believe your family when we say that you can write!!! And how!

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  2. Great site!One day I will try and write something about my 15 years in planting across India, E. Africa and PNG

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  3. Where did it go, that yester glow...?

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  4. Lovely, Gowri, especially love the last bit: ...the hierarchy, the feudal spirit, the grave danger, the solitude, the darkness, the silence - it's all one of a kind"....says it all so well.

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  5. AS always expressed straight from the heart, Gowri. So many of your observations are what we have experienced too. Great article.

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    1. I do miss having all our old friends in the gardens!

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  6. Always enjoy reading your stories

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  7. Lovely,Gowri,recreated your life in tea so beautifully ...it’s a different world out there ...

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  8. An eye opener for me Gowri. I had no idea the profile of the tea planter had changed like you relate. How much it must impact what tea 'was' all about. Thank you for the post! You do have a flair for writing!

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    1. Thank you, Shipra! The good old days are alive only in our memories and our stories!

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  9. Very nice indeed, Gowri. Yes, tea was our home, wonderful and staggerlingly different from life in a city. I remember returning to the garden from leave and breathing in the clean air deeply with a sense of freedom that tea with its vast open spaces allowed. Sad to hear of the change taking place but that is to be expected I guess.

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    1. Yes, Aloke, it was as wonderful to return from leave as it was to go home to loved ones!

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  10. You have shown how different tea life is. It’s unique and often so challenging. Has it become easier now with families living in towns and mem Sahibs taking up jobs? Sounds a bit like the army and non-family stations! Definitely ,a lot of the charm of bungalow life as guided by burra and chhota mems seems to be lost!

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    1. Indeed, Chinny, the charm is quite lost - but no one's sorry: they don't know what they're missing!

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  11. Gowri despite having settled down in city now for last eight years, the word Home still evokes pictures of our Nudwa home in the garden. Home is where heart is and a place to which poignant memories are attached. will share a poem on this blog that i wrote when we were leaving tea and our home at Nudwa for 27 years.

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  12. Gowri, like always you can transport us so seamlessly into your story... It does feel like you're watching it all unfold in front of you. Super enjoyed reading this��Btw,I like to think of myself as part of your family that believes in you writing a good story and keeping the reader engaged till the very end��

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    1. Dear Cocktail Passions,
      Indeed you are family! No getting away from that for you!

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