'A nostalgic drive down the road to Nagrakata T.E. While memories
blur, the vision of Nagrakata as it was fifty-five years ago still
seems fresh'.
writes Aloke Mookerjee
Prologue: Aloke arrived at Grassmore on a Jamair flight, and he has described this journey in his story 'Unto the Unknown' (please click on the name to read the whole story).
He writes: 'The cabin door opened with a loud clang and I stepped out into a morning bathed in bright and clear sunshine. Ahead, a black and white windsock was fluttering gently in the cool early morning breeze. In a corner of the airfield, I could see a large tin shed that served as Jamair’s godown. A couple of tea garden ‘lorries’ were parked alongside, presumably, to collect their cargo brought in by the aircraft. A sporty ‘Standard Herald’ car was parked close to them, with what appeared to be a planter in shorts and an open necked shirt leaning against it. He turned out to be the other Assistant Manager of Nagrakata Tea Estate, waiting for me.' Read on...
Following introductions, my escort, Chand Kapoor, got me and my scant baggage into his new white Standard Herald motor car and we set off bumping along a narrow dirt track with tea bushes on either side. I was told we were driving through Grassmore Tea Estate, one of the five plantations owned by my employers, The Dooars Tea Company. The airfield land belonged to Grassmore, with the management responsible for its upkeep. Behind me, the roar of the old Dakota indicated the start of her onward journey to Telepara and then onto Newlands in the far east of the Dooars region.
It was not a long drive through the plantation and we were soon exiting the dirt track to turn onto a narrow tarmac road. Out from the confines of the plantation and its screen of shade trees, the view opened to reveal the wide expanse of an arrestingly attractive countryside at the foothills of the Himalayas. On its northern boundaries, the Kingdom of Bhutan, with the back drop of towering mountains, looked down majestically upon this lush green land. It appeared glorious; a startling contrast to the sterile city I had just left behind. The deep red colour of the ground all around seemed abundantly fertile even to an uninitiated novice. I was told that it was known to all as the 'red-bank' soil of the Dooars, rich in nutrients and organic matter and well suited to tea cultivation.
Towards the latter half of the nineteenth century, twelve tea plantations were established here by adventurous entrepreneurs on land granted by the then British rulers. They came from various walks of life but had in common the grit and gumption to plant tea on virgin grounds and create wealth from this new lucrative crop. Setting up what are now thriving tea estates was a remarkable achievement considering the remote location, the primitive living conditions and the hostile environment where wild animals and tropical diseases struck – often with fatal consequences.
Their toil in such extreme conditions payed off and, in the decades that followed, the tea estates flourished to support a large and growing population of varied ethnicity. The plantation workers were mainly tribals who had been relocated here from their original abode at the Chota Nagpur plateau in what are now Jharkhand and Chattisgarh as also from the Koraput and Ganjam areas of Odisha. A sprinkling of Nepali workers from the Darjeeling/Kalimpong hills nearby completed the motley group of the labour force. The Bengalis occupied almost all the clerical positions in the plantation offices.
Before the national highway through the Dooars was built, the one lane tarmac track we were now driving on linked Nagrakata with Siliguri, the commercial hub of North Bengal, to its west and to Assam in its east. The road meandered through dense tropical forests opening up to large stretches of rice paddy and verdant valleys with narrow bridges across stony mountain streams and rivers. From the rivers Teesta in the west of the Dooars to Jainti, Sankos, Toorsa and Rydak in the vicinity of its eastern boundaries, the region was gloriously unspoilt. The forests abounded with free roaming animals and birds of many varieties and the rivers teeming with fish. It was not unusual to encounter wild elephants or sambhars and cheetals, leopards, leopard cats, wild pigs, and if luck favoured, a Royal Bengal Tiger in all its majesty. Occasionally, small clusters of thatched roof huts with mud plastered walls half concealed within luxuriant bamboo and banana groves, would come in view looking tranquil in the dappled sunlight. The population was not overpowering yet and life in the villages of North Bengal was still relatively easy.
The Club
Soon after, we were driving over a narrow one-way wooden bridge across what I learnt was, the ‘Ghatia Nadi’ and a little later, a small ‘bungalow’ style structure with a green corrugated iron roof appeared on the right. I was told that this building in the midst of a well maintained nine-hole golf course was Nagrakata Club, the entertainment hub of the planters in its vicinity. The towering blue mountains of the lower Himalayas formed an imposing backdrop for this isolated structure conspicuous by its singular presence, seemingly, in the midst of ‘nowhere’. I would soon enough learn what this charming yet unpretentious little building meant to our lives in the far-out land of tea.
The planter members of Nagrakata Club, including wives, could not have exceeded sixty individuals yet the club maintained three lawn tennis courts, one hard court, a cricket field, a football/rugby field and a nine-hole golf course. Inside there was a library, a billiards table, a ping-pong table, card tables and finally the well-stocked bar, where the ‘meetha-pani walas’ were eyed with derision and disdain! The changing rooms were well equipped with hot and cold showers, easy chairs and benches. The ladies’ powder room with its comfortable upholstered sofas and tall mirrors was all luxury that pampered to the whims of the fastidious ‘memsaabs’. A hall with a projector room at one end and a small neat stage with a cinema screen at the other completed the available facilities. There were no air-conditioners. No one missed them despite the hot and humid weather of the summer and monsoon months.
Full membership with credit facilities was extended to the new planter immediately on his arrival. In addition, reciprocal membership facility allowed him free access to all the other planters’ clubs located in various tea districts across the entire tea region including the town clubs of the Dooars and Assam. The planting community consisted of a disparate crew comprising Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen and Welshman from the UK along with a growing number of Indians and Anglo Indians, from across the country, who had begun to replace the expatriates.
Television was a distant dream. Home entertainment was limited to the wireless radio or music from vinyl records. Sound devices ranged from the ancient valve radio sets to the simple battery-operated record player. The new radios with their ‘piano key’ controls were considered a great advancement and high in aesthetics as compared to the decrepit old models with rotating knobs! Occasionally, the trendy ‘Ahuja’ radiogram with its lacquered lustrous coating would appear conspicuously in the ‘gol kamra’ of its proud owner. Its gleaming presence with the ‘hi-fi’ sounds, were impressive enough to attract the envious eyes of the deprived and reason enough for the demand of a celebratory drink or two. The promise of an impromptu party was now definitely hovering in the air!
There were no cinema halls, restaurants or bars to speak of. The clubs were thus created by the pioneers as the centre of their entertainment and extra-curricular activities where they met on certain evenings of the week when its doors opened for sports and the weekly cinema show. A strictly enforced dress code ensured all male members wore a tie with full sleeved shirts and trousers for the Sunday night cinema shows. In the hot and humid months of summer and rains, it was all too common to see the male members attired in their well washed, starched and pressed white cotton trousers with an equally white full sleeved cotton shirt and neck tie. Blazers or jackets with trousers or lounge suits formed the cold weather wear. It would be many years before this dress code was relaxed sufficiently enough to allow for the more comfortable and practical open necked shirts in the summer and monsoon months.
To ensure a full turnout, the senior planters severely disapproved any form of private home entertainment on club days unless, of-course, all the members were invited! While, many, today, would consider such controls as rather ‘autocratic’, it did succeed in gathering individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures, at one venue, and knit them together for a common purpose by making them integral to the many memorable events regularly organized by the key members. ‘Club life’ thus came to be ‘sacrosanct’ for all.
Other than the club, the precinct of Nagrakata boasted of a lone fuel filling station, a small post and telegraph office, one tiny provision store, a dated magneto telephone exchange and a catholic mission. There was also a small police-post with two lethargic constables of weedy visage in attendance. It would be some years before the importance of establishing an efficient police post here was realised.
Chhawachharia’s
Chhawachharia’s petrol station appeared soon after the Club on this seemingly insignificant road. Owing to its location at a junction, where roads from three directions converged, this station became a prominent landmark for motorists passing by. Its one and only petrol dispensing machine was a rare antiquity with its pair of the one-gallon glass bottles, prominently in view, wherein petrol was manually pumped up with a lever, alternately filling one bottle whilst the other emptied its swirling amber contents into the tank of the vehicle!
Chawachharia, the Marwari owner of the station, met all the fuel requirements of the plantations within Nagrakata area. A wobbly two storey wooden bungalow standing isolated on stilts, in the midst of tall trees and greenery, acted as his office and residence. One could not but admire the Marwari’s sense of enterprise and pioneering spirit for creating a thriving business activity in such a primitive location. Chawachharia was a tall, lanky and bespectacled person with affable ways cloaking a shrewd nature. By allowing easy credit to the planters, the reckless and the wild would often build up huge unpaid bills with scant regard to the consequences.
Eventually unable to clear the accumulated dues, some would, as a last resort, relinquish their only means of mobility to this wily individual who would accept the reimbursement with a well rehearsed doleful look and sorrowful eyes. On having acquired his new asset, the canny Marwari moved swiftly to dispose it off for a hefty sum leaving the erstwhile owner quietly cursing and kicking himself. The ‘hefty’ sum would be amusing by our current standards as one could acquire an used Austin, Morris, Hillman or Ford in decent condition at the price of a pair of shoes today! The cost of mobility, whether by foot or wheels, seems to have gone a long way!
Tigers of the Teesta
The road forked at the petrol station with one that went west to Siliguri across the river Teesta over the iconic ‘Coronation Bridge’. Another small road, not far from the petrol station, branched out and went south towards Jalpaiguri, the administrative headquarters of North Bengal, also located across the River Teesta. The Coronation Bridge remained the sole link between the Dooars and Jalpaiguri through a long circuitous route via Siliguri. However, when necessary, we preferred the much shorter route by taking the road near Chawachharia’s petrol pump. This track wound its way southwards through the countryside past the tiny towns of Lataguri and Moynaguri to reach the banks of the Teesta across which was the quaint North Bengal district headquarters. On arrival at the riverside, we would drive across its stony bed but only in the dry cold weather months when the turbulent waters of this temperamental and sometimes devastatingly life threatening river roaring down from the Himalayas, had receded sufficiently to enable ‘fair weather’ crossings in a motor car.
Many taxies were available at the riverside to ferry those arriving without their own transport. Endearingly dubbed as ‘The Tigers of the Teesta’, these taxies of the ‘nineteen thirties’ vintage formed an enchanting fleet comprising Fords, Chevrolets and Buicks, complete with wire wheels, canvas tops and klaxon horns! The bevy of the fading beauties would be seen clipping happily along across the river bed carrying their load of passengers all day long with a jaunty confidence that put many younger vehicles to shame.
Along with these narrow bumpy tarmac tracks, a metre gauge railway line through the Dooars, formed its life supporting arteries by connecting this pristine expanse to the rest of the country. Without them this bountiful land would have remained out of reach and sight to many.
AG Division & The Tea Research Centre
Back at Chhawachharia’s, a road also turned right to climb gently past the Dooars Branch of ITA’s (Indian Tea Association) Tea Research Centre (as the Nagrakata branch of the TRA was then known) located within the ‘AG Division’ of Bhogotpore Tea Estate. ‘AG’ stood for ‘Alston’s Grant’ – Alston being the pioneer who planted tea here in about 400 acres of virgin land granted to him by the British rulers towards the end of the nineteenth century. Grants such as this allowed tea to develop and flourish across the Assam valley and the Dooars, Darjeeling and Terai regions of North Bengal.
Sukhani Jhora
Left of this road opposite the AG Division, a mountain stream from the Bhutan hills had over many centuries cut deep into the ground of red earth and boulders to form a steep and narrow ravine now covered by tall trees and dense vegetation. I would soon learn that this stream, locally known as ‘Sukhani Jhora’, was an important source of water for Nagrakata Tea Estate. Recalling his early planting days, Keith Turner, a senior manager of the Dooars Tea Company related once to me how, in the past, the blood curdling roars of Royal Bengal Tigers would often be heard here. Now, only leopards, jackals and the odd wild pig could be spotted from time to time. The great striped cats had retreated – away from the ever encroaching and marauding humans. The Sukhanbari Division (name derived from the Sukhani Jhora) of Nagrakata Tea Estate could be seen across the ravine through gaps between the trees and foliage.
The Post Office and The Dakwallas
The tiny Nagrakata Post Office now passed by on our right. This was the venue where the ‘Dakwallas’ of all the plantations within the precincts of Nagrakata congregated daily with their leather bags filled with letters and parcels. The humble bicycle was the sole means of transport for this sturdy breed. They would pedal long distances, over undulating and often steeply inclined roads to post and collect the outstation mail for the estate and exchange all local correspondence between plantations. The collected mail would, without fail, reach the plantation offices during lunch break of every working day and placed on the Manager’s table in a neat pile, ready and waiting for his post lunch arrival. When facilities for instant mail were still beyond imagination and the realms of reality, our pedal pushing communication system worked unfailingly day after day through rain, hail or shine.
The Telephone Exchange
The small one roomed Nagrakata Telephone Exchange also appeared in the vicinity of the Post Office. It connected the tea estate offices, the club, the Central Hospital, the Manager’s bungalows, Chhawachharia, the Catholic Mission, the police post and other miscellaneous subscribers of the non-planting community. Assistant Managers were excluded from this ‘exalted’ (but, in reality, a rather dubious) facility. For their personal communications when a phone call became necessary, the Assistants would rely either on the office telephone or after hours, if urgency demanded, remain obliged to the Manager for the use of the ‘Burra Bungalow’ instrument. Cranking a small handle attached to the heavy Bakelite magneto instrument for access to the operator of the dated exchange was, more often than not, an exercise fraught with frustration and futility. Yet life continued smoothly enough without the seamless connectivity that we are now so accustomed to.
Dey Stores
Dey Stores came up next on this road to Nagrakata Tea Estate. The tiny shop stocked provisions required for the household. In all my years in Nagrakata, I never did meet the owner, Mr Dey, although I was told he did indeed exist! Instead, the diminutive Mrs. Dey, with her head invariably covered with one end of her limp cotton sari, would always be available to meet the customers’ needs. In the small dark room, lit up by one hurricane lantern, she stocked all that was needed for the home from ‘Brasso’ and ‘Silvo’ polishes to ‘Brylcream’, toothbrushes and toothpastes, bread, butter, salt and sugar, cooking oils, ketchups, squashes, cordials and tinned foods. ‘Mansion’ and ‘Red Cardinal’ Polishes for furniture and floors were provided by the company free of cost (as were ‘Flit’ and a flit gun to keep the ubiquitous mosquitoes at bay).
White Label, White Horse and VAT 69 whiskies, Carews Gin and XXX Rosa Rum were, at times, enticingly displayed on the shelf. Mrs. Dey also stocked Three Castles, Players No.3, Players Navy Cut and Gold Flake brands in the popular cylindrical canisters of 50 cigarettes. A canister with a matchbox atop held firmly in one hand (when not inside the ample pocket of our fashionably floppy shorts or trousers) came to be the standard portrait of the well-heeled planter. Credit was always available and so this tiny lantern lit shack with its rusty tin roof and earthen floor became the pillar of support to our ‘high’ living!
The alluring ‘icing on the cake’ of high living, however, appeared from beyond the confines of Dey Stores and across the boundaries of the Dooars. The Great Eastern Stores of Chowringhee Road, a prominent retailer of quality food products in Calcutta was ever ready to meet our requirement of food items not available ‘up-country’. Upon receiving our written order, this ‘venerable’ store would promptly prepare the food parcel and hand it over to Jamair to be flown up to us for collection.
To our delight, the insulated ice-boxes containing such delectables as fresh ham, bacon, sausages, pork chops, and sometimes a tender undercut (eye fillets) would always arrive in perfect condition to be relished till the next consignment! The convenience of credit cards did not come to mind as none were in existence. A planter’s credit worthiness was, however, never in question and he rarely needed a wallet in his pocket (not quite the ‘Royalty’ style but imperious enough!). A mere signed slip of paper listing the purchases was all that was required by the shop owner. This facility was available at virtually every store starting from the smallest estate kyah shops to bigger ones in the ‘one horse’ towns across the Dooars and even extending to some of the large established stores of Calcutta. It made our shopping sprees perhaps a trifle too convenient.
St. Capitanio
Soon after Dey Stores, in a sparsely populated locality known as ‘Champaguri’, a large drab grey concrete edifice appeared, on the right of the road, contrasting strangely with the lush greenery all around. I was told that this was St. Capitanio, an Italian Roman Catholic Mission established more than forty years before my arrival. The Italian mission head, Father Artico is to be credited for the decades of his dedicated service since its inception at a time when very few would have ventured into this remote and inhospitable region. The catholic workers from the nearby plantations congregated here every Sunday for their morning mass. Christmas was celebrated with great fanfare and enthusiasm – the highlight, of-course being the Midnight Mass, which the catholic plantation workers attended from far and near.
The Raintree
And finally, forming another prominent landmark on this road, the wondrous spectre of a huge green and lustrous Raintree loomed up before us immediately after the Catholic mission. Massive, with ample spreading boughs, it stood in glory deeply rooted as a silent sentinel of the road and territory around it. The road forked here. One that continued straight, climbing gently up past Nya Sylee and Hope Tea Estates and thence downhill onto Jiti plantation with the Kingdom of Bhutan beyond. The other fork turned sharply to the left in front of the raintree and rolled quickly down to Sukhani Jhora. Thereafter, over a small one-way wooden bridge across the stony mountain stream, the road continued and climbed steeply uphill to the gates of Nagrakata Tea Estate. And so, it was that, in a mere few hours, I found myself catapulted far from the familiar bustling metropolis of Calcutta, to begin a new life in the wonderous Dooars, somewhere ‘beyond the fringe’!
Click here to link to images of Nagrakata on Facebook
Editor's Note:
Nadi/Nuddy - river
Meetha Pani - soft drink
Gol Kamra - drawing room
Kyah - a trader running a small shop with basic supplies in the tea garden
Meet the writer:
Here's what Aloke has to say about himself : 'Long retired from
tea, but still active in business. Even after all these years, tea
remains to live strongly in my thoughts; they were the best years of my
life. Other interests? Always loved Jazz music - still do and have
written about this incredible genre. Love vintage airplanes (thus my
love for Dakotas!) and cars, and intend to make this my next focus.'
Aloke's also written The Eager Beaver , A Spiritual Encounter,
Gillanders and the Greenhorn and Unto the Unknown for Indian Chai
Stories. Here is the link to all posts by Aloke - https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search?q=aloke
Is this your first visit here? Welcome to Indian Chai Stories!
You will meet many storytellers here at Indian Chai Stories, and they are almost all from the world of tea gardens: planters, memsaabs, baby and baba log. Each of our contributors has a really good story to tell - don't lose any time before you start reading them!
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, long, or 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/Indian Chai Stories
writes Aloke Mookerjee
Prologue: Aloke arrived at Grassmore on a Jamair flight, and he has described this journey in his story 'Unto the Unknown' (please click on the name to read the whole story).
He writes: 'The cabin door opened with a loud clang and I stepped out into a morning bathed in bright and clear sunshine. Ahead, a black and white windsock was fluttering gently in the cool early morning breeze. In a corner of the airfield, I could see a large tin shed that served as Jamair’s godown. A couple of tea garden ‘lorries’ were parked alongside, presumably, to collect their cargo brought in by the aircraft. A sporty ‘Standard Herald’ car was parked close to them, with what appeared to be a planter in shorts and an open necked shirt leaning against it. He turned out to be the other Assistant Manager of Nagrakata Tea Estate, waiting for me.' Read on...
Following introductions, my escort, Chand Kapoor, got me and my scant baggage into his new white Standard Herald motor car and we set off bumping along a narrow dirt track with tea bushes on either side. I was told we were driving through Grassmore Tea Estate, one of the five plantations owned by my employers, The Dooars Tea Company. The airfield land belonged to Grassmore, with the management responsible for its upkeep. Behind me, the roar of the old Dakota indicated the start of her onward journey to Telepara and then onto Newlands in the far east of the Dooars region.
It was not a long drive through the plantation and we were soon exiting the dirt track to turn onto a narrow tarmac road. Out from the confines of the plantation and its screen of shade trees, the view opened to reveal the wide expanse of an arrestingly attractive countryside at the foothills of the Himalayas. On its northern boundaries, the Kingdom of Bhutan, with the back drop of towering mountains, looked down majestically upon this lush green land. It appeared glorious; a startling contrast to the sterile city I had just left behind. The deep red colour of the ground all around seemed abundantly fertile even to an uninitiated novice. I was told that it was known to all as the 'red-bank' soil of the Dooars, rich in nutrients and organic matter and well suited to tea cultivation.
Towards the latter half of the nineteenth century, twelve tea plantations were established here by adventurous entrepreneurs on land granted by the then British rulers. They came from various walks of life but had in common the grit and gumption to plant tea on virgin grounds and create wealth from this new lucrative crop. Setting up what are now thriving tea estates was a remarkable achievement considering the remote location, the primitive living conditions and the hostile environment where wild animals and tropical diseases struck – often with fatal consequences.
Their toil in such extreme conditions payed off and, in the decades that followed, the tea estates flourished to support a large and growing population of varied ethnicity. The plantation workers were mainly tribals who had been relocated here from their original abode at the Chota Nagpur plateau in what are now Jharkhand and Chattisgarh as also from the Koraput and Ganjam areas of Odisha. A sprinkling of Nepali workers from the Darjeeling/Kalimpong hills nearby completed the motley group of the labour force. The Bengalis occupied almost all the clerical positions in the plantation offices.
Before the national highway through the Dooars was built, the one lane tarmac track we were now driving on linked Nagrakata with Siliguri, the commercial hub of North Bengal, to its west and to Assam in its east. The road meandered through dense tropical forests opening up to large stretches of rice paddy and verdant valleys with narrow bridges across stony mountain streams and rivers. From the rivers Teesta in the west of the Dooars to Jainti, Sankos, Toorsa and Rydak in the vicinity of its eastern boundaries, the region was gloriously unspoilt. The forests abounded with free roaming animals and birds of many varieties and the rivers teeming with fish. It was not unusual to encounter wild elephants or sambhars and cheetals, leopards, leopard cats, wild pigs, and if luck favoured, a Royal Bengal Tiger in all its majesty. Occasionally, small clusters of thatched roof huts with mud plastered walls half concealed within luxuriant bamboo and banana groves, would come in view looking tranquil in the dappled sunlight. The population was not overpowering yet and life in the villages of North Bengal was still relatively easy.
The Club
Soon after, we were driving over a narrow one-way wooden bridge across what I learnt was, the ‘Ghatia Nadi’ and a little later, a small ‘bungalow’ style structure with a green corrugated iron roof appeared on the right. I was told that this building in the midst of a well maintained nine-hole golf course was Nagrakata Club, the entertainment hub of the planters in its vicinity. The towering blue mountains of the lower Himalayas formed an imposing backdrop for this isolated structure conspicuous by its singular presence, seemingly, in the midst of ‘nowhere’. I would soon enough learn what this charming yet unpretentious little building meant to our lives in the far-out land of tea.
The planter members of Nagrakata Club, including wives, could not have exceeded sixty individuals yet the club maintained three lawn tennis courts, one hard court, a cricket field, a football/rugby field and a nine-hole golf course. Inside there was a library, a billiards table, a ping-pong table, card tables and finally the well-stocked bar, where the ‘meetha-pani walas’ were eyed with derision and disdain! The changing rooms were well equipped with hot and cold showers, easy chairs and benches. The ladies’ powder room with its comfortable upholstered sofas and tall mirrors was all luxury that pampered to the whims of the fastidious ‘memsaabs’. A hall with a projector room at one end and a small neat stage with a cinema screen at the other completed the available facilities. There were no air-conditioners. No one missed them despite the hot and humid weather of the summer and monsoon months.
Full membership with credit facilities was extended to the new planter immediately on his arrival. In addition, reciprocal membership facility allowed him free access to all the other planters’ clubs located in various tea districts across the entire tea region including the town clubs of the Dooars and Assam. The planting community consisted of a disparate crew comprising Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen and Welshman from the UK along with a growing number of Indians and Anglo Indians, from across the country, who had begun to replace the expatriates.
Television was a distant dream. Home entertainment was limited to the wireless radio or music from vinyl records. Sound devices ranged from the ancient valve radio sets to the simple battery-operated record player. The new radios with their ‘piano key’ controls were considered a great advancement and high in aesthetics as compared to the decrepit old models with rotating knobs! Occasionally, the trendy ‘Ahuja’ radiogram with its lacquered lustrous coating would appear conspicuously in the ‘gol kamra’ of its proud owner. Its gleaming presence with the ‘hi-fi’ sounds, were impressive enough to attract the envious eyes of the deprived and reason enough for the demand of a celebratory drink or two. The promise of an impromptu party was now definitely hovering in the air!
There were no cinema halls, restaurants or bars to speak of. The clubs were thus created by the pioneers as the centre of their entertainment and extra-curricular activities where they met on certain evenings of the week when its doors opened for sports and the weekly cinema show. A strictly enforced dress code ensured all male members wore a tie with full sleeved shirts and trousers for the Sunday night cinema shows. In the hot and humid months of summer and rains, it was all too common to see the male members attired in their well washed, starched and pressed white cotton trousers with an equally white full sleeved cotton shirt and neck tie. Blazers or jackets with trousers or lounge suits formed the cold weather wear. It would be many years before this dress code was relaxed sufficiently enough to allow for the more comfortable and practical open necked shirts in the summer and monsoon months.
To ensure a full turnout, the senior planters severely disapproved any form of private home entertainment on club days unless, of-course, all the members were invited! While, many, today, would consider such controls as rather ‘autocratic’, it did succeed in gathering individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures, at one venue, and knit them together for a common purpose by making them integral to the many memorable events regularly organized by the key members. ‘Club life’ thus came to be ‘sacrosanct’ for all.
Other than the club, the precinct of Nagrakata boasted of a lone fuel filling station, a small post and telegraph office, one tiny provision store, a dated magneto telephone exchange and a catholic mission. There was also a small police-post with two lethargic constables of weedy visage in attendance. It would be some years before the importance of establishing an efficient police post here was realised.
Chhawachharia’s
Chhawachharia’s petrol station appeared soon after the Club on this seemingly insignificant road. Owing to its location at a junction, where roads from three directions converged, this station became a prominent landmark for motorists passing by. Its one and only petrol dispensing machine was a rare antiquity with its pair of the one-gallon glass bottles, prominently in view, wherein petrol was manually pumped up with a lever, alternately filling one bottle whilst the other emptied its swirling amber contents into the tank of the vehicle!
Chawachharia, the Marwari owner of the station, met all the fuel requirements of the plantations within Nagrakata area. A wobbly two storey wooden bungalow standing isolated on stilts, in the midst of tall trees and greenery, acted as his office and residence. One could not but admire the Marwari’s sense of enterprise and pioneering spirit for creating a thriving business activity in such a primitive location. Chawachharia was a tall, lanky and bespectacled person with affable ways cloaking a shrewd nature. By allowing easy credit to the planters, the reckless and the wild would often build up huge unpaid bills with scant regard to the consequences.
Eventually unable to clear the accumulated dues, some would, as a last resort, relinquish their only means of mobility to this wily individual who would accept the reimbursement with a well rehearsed doleful look and sorrowful eyes. On having acquired his new asset, the canny Marwari moved swiftly to dispose it off for a hefty sum leaving the erstwhile owner quietly cursing and kicking himself. The ‘hefty’ sum would be amusing by our current standards as one could acquire an used Austin, Morris, Hillman or Ford in decent condition at the price of a pair of shoes today! The cost of mobility, whether by foot or wheels, seems to have gone a long way!
Tigers of the Teesta
The road forked at the petrol station with one that went west to Siliguri across the river Teesta over the iconic ‘Coronation Bridge’. Another small road, not far from the petrol station, branched out and went south towards Jalpaiguri, the administrative headquarters of North Bengal, also located across the River Teesta. The Coronation Bridge remained the sole link between the Dooars and Jalpaiguri through a long circuitous route via Siliguri. However, when necessary, we preferred the much shorter route by taking the road near Chawachharia’s petrol pump. This track wound its way southwards through the countryside past the tiny towns of Lataguri and Moynaguri to reach the banks of the Teesta across which was the quaint North Bengal district headquarters. On arrival at the riverside, we would drive across its stony bed but only in the dry cold weather months when the turbulent waters of this temperamental and sometimes devastatingly life threatening river roaring down from the Himalayas, had receded sufficiently to enable ‘fair weather’ crossings in a motor car.
Many taxies were available at the riverside to ferry those arriving without their own transport. Endearingly dubbed as ‘The Tigers of the Teesta’, these taxies of the ‘nineteen thirties’ vintage formed an enchanting fleet comprising Fords, Chevrolets and Buicks, complete with wire wheels, canvas tops and klaxon horns! The bevy of the fading beauties would be seen clipping happily along across the river bed carrying their load of passengers all day long with a jaunty confidence that put many younger vehicles to shame.
Along with these narrow bumpy tarmac tracks, a metre gauge railway line through the Dooars, formed its life supporting arteries by connecting this pristine expanse to the rest of the country. Without them this bountiful land would have remained out of reach and sight to many.
 |
| Teesta River at Japaiguri. Image: Wikivisually |
AG Division & The Tea Research Centre
Back at Chhawachharia’s, a road also turned right to climb gently past the Dooars Branch of ITA’s (Indian Tea Association) Tea Research Centre (as the Nagrakata branch of the TRA was then known) located within the ‘AG Division’ of Bhogotpore Tea Estate. ‘AG’ stood for ‘Alston’s Grant’ – Alston being the pioneer who planted tea here in about 400 acres of virgin land granted to him by the British rulers towards the end of the nineteenth century. Grants such as this allowed tea to develop and flourish across the Assam valley and the Dooars, Darjeeling and Terai regions of North Bengal.
Sukhani Jhora
Left of this road opposite the AG Division, a mountain stream from the Bhutan hills had over many centuries cut deep into the ground of red earth and boulders to form a steep and narrow ravine now covered by tall trees and dense vegetation. I would soon learn that this stream, locally known as ‘Sukhani Jhora’, was an important source of water for Nagrakata Tea Estate. Recalling his early planting days, Keith Turner, a senior manager of the Dooars Tea Company related once to me how, in the past, the blood curdling roars of Royal Bengal Tigers would often be heard here. Now, only leopards, jackals and the odd wild pig could be spotted from time to time. The great striped cats had retreated – away from the ever encroaching and marauding humans. The Sukhanbari Division (name derived from the Sukhani Jhora) of Nagrakata Tea Estate could be seen across the ravine through gaps between the trees and foliage.
The Post Office and The Dakwallas
The tiny Nagrakata Post Office now passed by on our right. This was the venue where the ‘Dakwallas’ of all the plantations within the precincts of Nagrakata congregated daily with their leather bags filled with letters and parcels. The humble bicycle was the sole means of transport for this sturdy breed. They would pedal long distances, over undulating and often steeply inclined roads to post and collect the outstation mail for the estate and exchange all local correspondence between plantations. The collected mail would, without fail, reach the plantation offices during lunch break of every working day and placed on the Manager’s table in a neat pile, ready and waiting for his post lunch arrival. When facilities for instant mail were still beyond imagination and the realms of reality, our pedal pushing communication system worked unfailingly day after day through rain, hail or shine.
The Telephone Exchange
The small one roomed Nagrakata Telephone Exchange also appeared in the vicinity of the Post Office. It connected the tea estate offices, the club, the Central Hospital, the Manager’s bungalows, Chhawachharia, the Catholic Mission, the police post and other miscellaneous subscribers of the non-planting community. Assistant Managers were excluded from this ‘exalted’ (but, in reality, a rather dubious) facility. For their personal communications when a phone call became necessary, the Assistants would rely either on the office telephone or after hours, if urgency demanded, remain obliged to the Manager for the use of the ‘Burra Bungalow’ instrument. Cranking a small handle attached to the heavy Bakelite magneto instrument for access to the operator of the dated exchange was, more often than not, an exercise fraught with frustration and futility. Yet life continued smoothly enough without the seamless connectivity that we are now so accustomed to.
Dey Stores
Dey Stores came up next on this road to Nagrakata Tea Estate. The tiny shop stocked provisions required for the household. In all my years in Nagrakata, I never did meet the owner, Mr Dey, although I was told he did indeed exist! Instead, the diminutive Mrs. Dey, with her head invariably covered with one end of her limp cotton sari, would always be available to meet the customers’ needs. In the small dark room, lit up by one hurricane lantern, she stocked all that was needed for the home from ‘Brasso’ and ‘Silvo’ polishes to ‘Brylcream’, toothbrushes and toothpastes, bread, butter, salt and sugar, cooking oils, ketchups, squashes, cordials and tinned foods. ‘Mansion’ and ‘Red Cardinal’ Polishes for furniture and floors were provided by the company free of cost (as were ‘Flit’ and a flit gun to keep the ubiquitous mosquitoes at bay).
White Label, White Horse and VAT 69 whiskies, Carews Gin and XXX Rosa Rum were, at times, enticingly displayed on the shelf. Mrs. Dey also stocked Three Castles, Players No.3, Players Navy Cut and Gold Flake brands in the popular cylindrical canisters of 50 cigarettes. A canister with a matchbox atop held firmly in one hand (when not inside the ample pocket of our fashionably floppy shorts or trousers) came to be the standard portrait of the well-heeled planter. Credit was always available and so this tiny lantern lit shack with its rusty tin roof and earthen floor became the pillar of support to our ‘high’ living!
The alluring ‘icing on the cake’ of high living, however, appeared from beyond the confines of Dey Stores and across the boundaries of the Dooars. The Great Eastern Stores of Chowringhee Road, a prominent retailer of quality food products in Calcutta was ever ready to meet our requirement of food items not available ‘up-country’. Upon receiving our written order, this ‘venerable’ store would promptly prepare the food parcel and hand it over to Jamair to be flown up to us for collection.
To our delight, the insulated ice-boxes containing such delectables as fresh ham, bacon, sausages, pork chops, and sometimes a tender undercut (eye fillets) would always arrive in perfect condition to be relished till the next consignment! The convenience of credit cards did not come to mind as none were in existence. A planter’s credit worthiness was, however, never in question and he rarely needed a wallet in his pocket (not quite the ‘Royalty’ style but imperious enough!). A mere signed slip of paper listing the purchases was all that was required by the shop owner. This facility was available at virtually every store starting from the smallest estate kyah shops to bigger ones in the ‘one horse’ towns across the Dooars and even extending to some of the large established stores of Calcutta. It made our shopping sprees perhaps a trifle too convenient.
St. Capitanio
Soon after Dey Stores, in a sparsely populated locality known as ‘Champaguri’, a large drab grey concrete edifice appeared, on the right of the road, contrasting strangely with the lush greenery all around. I was told that this was St. Capitanio, an Italian Roman Catholic Mission established more than forty years before my arrival. The Italian mission head, Father Artico is to be credited for the decades of his dedicated service since its inception at a time when very few would have ventured into this remote and inhospitable region. The catholic workers from the nearby plantations congregated here every Sunday for their morning mass. Christmas was celebrated with great fanfare and enthusiasm – the highlight, of-course being the Midnight Mass, which the catholic plantation workers attended from far and near.
The Raintree
And finally, forming another prominent landmark on this road, the wondrous spectre of a huge green and lustrous Raintree loomed up before us immediately after the Catholic mission. Massive, with ample spreading boughs, it stood in glory deeply rooted as a silent sentinel of the road and territory around it. The road forked here. One that continued straight, climbing gently up past Nya Sylee and Hope Tea Estates and thence downhill onto Jiti plantation with the Kingdom of Bhutan beyond. The other fork turned sharply to the left in front of the raintree and rolled quickly down to Sukhani Jhora. Thereafter, over a small one-way wooden bridge across the stony mountain stream, the road continued and climbed steeply uphill to the gates of Nagrakata Tea Estate. And so, it was that, in a mere few hours, I found myself catapulted far from the familiar bustling metropolis of Calcutta, to begin a new life in the wonderous Dooars, somewhere ‘beyond the fringe’!
Click here to link to images of Nagrakata on Facebook
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| A raintree somewhere on the Birpara-Falakata road, Dooars, 2008 |
Nadi/Nuddy - river
Meetha Pani - soft drink
Gol Kamra - drawing room
Kyah - a trader running a small shop with basic supplies in the tea garden
Meet the writer:
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| Aloke Mookerjee |
Is this your first visit here? Welcome to Indian Chai Stories!
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There was a large Masonic Hall on the way to Nagrakata used very infrequently. Some of the older Planters belonged to the secret society of Freemasons and Estate workers kept away (rumours of secret rituals in the Hall).
ReplyDeleteDooars Tea Estates were established in the late 19th Century when land was annexed from Bhutan following the Anglo-Butan War of 1860 later to become Jalpaiguri District.
Waste Land Act allowed Government to lease land to local entrepreneurs and substantial areas were leased to Indians who later transferred some of the leases to U.K based Tea Cos. A number of Indian Tea Cos also existed from the 19th Century. Dooars Tea Co Nagrakata, Ghatia and Bhogotpur established 1885-86, land previously of Binod Behari Dutta transferred to Duars Tea Co. Grassmore in early 20th Century.
Interesting history of The Dooars Tea Company and Binod Behari Dutta. Wonder if any of his descendants are around. Might be interesting to talk to them. Had forgotten the Masonic Lodge... and vaguely remember it now that you mention. The secret rituals during their periodical meetings earned the name 'Jadoo Ghar' and refered to as such across the country (barring the South I suppose)!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.benudbeharidutt.com/contact.html Mr Dutta started his jewellery business in Calcutta in 1882 and Dooars Tea Co started their tea plantations around 1885/86 seems somehow connected.
ReplyDeleteAs a family, we have a particularly soft spot for Nagrakata, and to experience the route through your eyes several moons before us was a fascinating ride. So much has changed since, and so much continues to remain the same!
ReplyDeleteLoved the sprinkling of humour throughout your piece.
Grateful we met, better late than never...for which we must thank Gowri Mohanakrishnan, the sutradhar of this blog!
Thank you Roma for your good words. And yes, I am also happy to meet you all due to the great work by Gowri! I would love to visit Nagrakata again even it may be a disappointing experience in many ways.
DeleteJust by chance, I came across this blog. My first visit to Midis was in 1972. A contingent of 30, a special bus full. I have put the cart before the horse.
ReplyDeleteYes, we were from Munnar, representing erdtwhile Tata Finlay Ltd ( A company merged with James Finlay's and Tatas).
This is for the annual Sports Meet with Mudis Club, alternating the exchange visit every other year.
That is the year Tamilnadu lifted the Spirits ban. So all of us being in our late 20s, started the Millie from Udumalpet and continued till Midis by lunch time. None of us were in our senses.
The story goes on. The games were played serously, sportsman 'spirit' et al. The 3 days stay at this Midis Club and the generosity of hosts is par excellence.
I shall continue this episode tomorrow.