Never a Dull Moment

by Mirza Yawar Baig
I was a member of the team that built the Mayura Factory in the Anamallais where I was the Assistant Manager in charge of the building project. So, I was closely associated with the project from the word ‘Go.’ The factory was built on Lower Sheikalmudi Estate and AVG Menon, my first manager, was made responsible for the project. He appointed me as his assistant for the day to day supervision of the construction. So, I became the defacto Site Manager of the project. At that time, I was the Assistant Manager in charge of the factory on Murugalli Estate which borders Lower Sheikalmudi. Murugalli factory manufactured tea in the Orthodox way and I was well versed in that. Mr. Kumaran was the Tea Maker (that is what the Factory Manager was called) and was kind enough to teach me about his art. Tea making is an art. Despite all the science and technology that is in it and more so today, it remains an art which you must see those who know it, to appreciate. Kumaran was one of them.

Mayura Factory

When the Mayura offer came, I was told that I would not be relieved from my role in Murugalli factory and that if I wanted to take the offer then I was free to do it without any additional pay or facilities. I accepted. The thought that I could refuse didn’t even enter my head. For one thing, AVG was a dear friend and my first manager. For another, it was a unique opportunity for me to learn about CTC manufacture. And much more importantly, I would be part of a new factory project, which happened in the tea industry very rarely indeed. So, though it meant practically double the hours, I did this job gladly. Mayura was unique for many reasons. For one thing, it would have a capacity to process one-hundred-thousand kilograms of green leaf per day. At a time when the average production was two-thousand-five-hundred kilograms made-tea per hectare, this was a huge figure, one that nobody thought could ever be reached.

It was the vision of Mr. K. Ahmedullah the General Manager, and Mr. N. K. Rawlley, the Visiting Agent, who proposed the theory that creating capacity would stimulate production as it would put pressure on the estates to supply the factory and so the yield per hectare of the estates would go up. Initially, nobody believed them except the Murugappa family; Mr. Alagappan and Mr. AMM Arunachalam in particular. But that was enough as they were the ones who were funding the project. Once the factory was completed, Ahmed’s and Nikoo's vision was proved right. The production of the estates went up from two-thousand-five-hundred to four-thousand kilograms per hectare. Needless to say, this did not happen by magic. A lot of people put in a lot of effort, but there is no doubt that it was the presence of Mayura that pushed us all to excel. Once again this proved to me the value of vision.

Since the Anamallais is hilly, locating a huge factory was no easy task. It involved leveling the land to create the construction site. The main building was on columns, but we still needed a level site to locate all the rest of the buildings and bays. We had two bulldozers come up from Coimbatore to do the cutting and filling of soil on the hillside to get enough level land to start building. I went down to the site on the first day that the work started. The bulldozer operators were already on their machines with the engines running. I called the leader of the team to give him instructions. He switched off the engine and came to me. I showed him from which part of the hillside I wanted the soil to be cut and where I wanted it to be moved and dumped so that eventually we would get a flat surface. He listened in silence, then handed me the key and said, “Why don’t you show me how to do it?”

I was taken aback by this obvious insubordination so early in the morning. But I took the key from him, climbed up on the track of the dozer and into the seat. I started the engine, engaged gear, and started cutting the soil. I worked for about half an hour. Then I parked the machine, switched off the engine, got off the machine, and handed the key back to the driver and walked away, all in silence. I had a hard time keeping a straight face at the look of shock on the driver’s face for having called his bluff. The long and short of this was that I never had a problem with any driver again for the duration of the land clearing stage. When the work was done, and the drivers were going back, he came to me and said, “I apologize for challenging you on the first day, but tell me where did you learn to drive a bulldozer?” I told him, “In future, before you challenge anyone, first find out what they know.”

My knowledge of bulldozers and machinery acquired in Guyana in the mines, came in very handy when later I was doing a Job Evaluation exercise in the company and had to evaluate the difficulty of each job. Knowing how to do the job yourself is obviously a big advantage and not one that most non-technical people have. My learning in this incident of the bulldozer was the fact that to build credibility it is important to be able to lead from the front. You don’t have to do people’s jobs for them. It is not even desirable to do this. But you do need to demonstrate that you know what they do and can do it if necessary. It is when subordinates get the impression that you know nothing about what they do, that it makes them nervous and lose motivation. The good ones feel a little lost. The crooks take you for a ride.

Mayura Factory’s construction was a time of learning for me. The site engineer was a wonderful elderly gentleman called Mr. D.R.S. Chary, who stayed with me in my bungalow throughout the project. He was a very well read and learned man, many years my senior but with a great sense of humor. We hit it off from the first day and became great friends. Chary taught me a great deal about constructing large buildings. I found this a fascinating time and used every opportunity I could, to add to my knowledge. On the factory site, the contractor’s site engineer was another wonderful man called Mr. Dakshinamurthy. He also became a good friend and was helpful in many ways.

Chary and I lived in the bungalow behind the tennis court. We could see the construction site from our veranda. Since Chary was a Brahmin, out of consideration for him, I had instructed Bastian not to cook any meat while he was staying with us. No meat was cooked for over six months in our kitchen. I would go to some of my other friends like Berty Suares and Taher for my meat fix.

The bungalow had a somewhat shady history in that it was supposed to have been the estate hospital in the remote past during an epidemic and many people had died in it. All this and more news was given to me by my dear friend, Kullan. Kullan had retired and his son Raman was a worker in the Upper Division. Raman used to be my companion on my treks to Grass Hills and his father became my friend. Kullan would turn up in the evenings and he and I would sit out on the veranda and he would tell me stories of these hills. The fact that I had learnt Tamil and spoke it fluently was the root cause for this and many more friendships and for my being able to have a very different relationship with my workers, from most managers. What also helped was my whole attitude of treating my workers like colleagues and not as servants. They appreciated it and returned my affection manifold. Having said all that, Kullan refused to enter my bungalow and sit in the drawing room. He looked horrified when I suggested it and insisted on sitting in the veranda. There too he refused to sit on a chair and so both of us would sit on the steps. That having been settled, both of us would drink tea and Kullan would talk.

It was Kullan who told me about the number of people who had died in my bungalow it is erstwhile incarnation as a hospital. He told me that when he was a boy there had been an epidemic (my guess is cholera) and many people were brought to the hospital but few survived. This was evidently in the rainy season, which meant torrential rain. I asked him what they did with the bodies, because cremation would have been almost impossible. In any case most tea estate workers who live on the plantations, bury their dead instead of cremating them but that also would have been very difficult in the monsoon, especially if the numbers were catastrophic as they would have been during an epidemic. “They threw them into the ravine,” he told me, in a very matter of fact manner. “Which ravine?” I asked him. “That one,” he gestured to the ravine behind my bungalow. That was, to say the least, not very comforting. However, I don’t believe in ghosts and so was not too bothered. But….

My bungalow also had the dubious distinction of having a resident demon. There was a small shrine at one end of the garden, which I was told was a shrine to Karpuswamy (literally means: Black God), who the people described as a very powerful and evil entity that needed to be placated with an annual animal sacrifice. The sacrifice itself was not done in the bungalow garden because it was done at a larger temple, but every morning one of the tea plucker women would put some flowers at the shrine.

Mr. Chary, like most highly educated Hindus, did not believe in any of this, given more to keeping to the social norms than any real belief in the religious mythology. On occasion he would sit with me and Kullan and listen to Kullan’s stories with a skeptical expression on his face. But then in the 80’s there was precious little in the form of entertainment in the Anamallais and going to the Anamallai Club in Valparai meant a motorbike ride of thirty-five kilometers one way on windy hill roads and a return late in the night with good prospects of meeting elephants on the road. While I loved to do it and have some tales to tell, it was not Mr. Chary’s cup of tea. So, most evenings we sat in pleasant companionship and talked about Tamilnadu and Tamil culture or listened to Kullan.

Some weeks after Chary and I moved into the bungalow, some rumors started to circulate in the estate to say that my bungalow was haunted, and that people had seen Karpuswamy near the bungalow at night. I saw nothing and was not perturbed by the rumors. I don’t believe in ghosts and don’t believe that anything can harm or benefit anyone except the Creator Himself. So, I slept well. Chary told me one day when he was leaving after the completion of Mayura Factory that he never seemed to sleep well in this bungalow. But I was not sure how much of that was because of some unconscious effect of Kullan’s stories and Karpuswamy rumors and how much of it was plain indigestion or some such thing. He was over sixty years old at the time, after all.

I had recently bought a used Ambassador car. Among its other attributes was the fact that it was graced with a carburetor that was cracked down the middle and was held together with a wire. Now hold on – before you go making sly remarks about Ambassadors, ask yourself, ‘which other car would still run in this condition?’ And run it did. However, it did need long hours in the workshop. In the plantations the workshop came to you, as did most other things. One night Velayudhan, the mechanic, was working on the car in my garage behind the house. He worked late into the night and promised to return the next day to complete the job. The next morning there was no sign of him and when I sent someone to look for him, the man returned and said that Velayudhan was in hospital.

I was very surprised and concerned as the man had been working in my house the previous evening and had been well and healthy. What could have happened to him for him to be hospitalized? He was a cheerful and willing worker and I had a very good relationship with him, so I was genuinely concerned for him. I went to the hospital and first asked the doctor what the matter was with Velayudhan. The doctor told me that he had been brought to the hospital late the previous night hysterical, his heartbeat racing and in a semi-conscious state. He was so bad that the doctor had been afraid the man would have a heart attack or a stroke. All this seemed to have been brought about by intense fear. He had to be given a heavy dose of sedative to put him to sleep. In short, the man had been extremely frightened by someone or something.

I went to see him, and he told me the story, which I present to you without comment.

He said to me, “Dorai, I had finished my work for the day on your car and decided to take the short cut through the tea field down the hillside instead of the main road. It was a full moon night and the footpath was clearly visible in the moonlight. As I started down the path, I suddenly heard a heavy snort behind me, like a cow sometimes makes as it is grazing. I looked back over my shoulder and saw a huge man with flaming red eyes and huge teeth. I turned and ran and then I fell down and fainted.” Some people who were going past on the main road below heard the sound of his running and then saw him fall. They picked him up and took him to the hospital. There was some suspicion that perhaps he’d hit the bottle, but the doctor denied that and said that he did not show any sign of having been inebriated. He was just very badly terrified and completely hysterical with fear.

I lived in that bungalow for two years and went in and out at all hours, but never saw a thing. That is what led to the rumor that Karpuswamy was the guard on the bungalow and guarded me. In the plantations such rumors add to your mystique and reputation. In any case, I could do nothing to refute it.

Never a dull moment in the estates.

For more please read my book, It’s my Life
http://amzn.to/28JpEC2

Meet the writer: 

Mirza Yawar Baig. President, Yawar Baig & Associates (www.yawarbaig.com). Business consultant specializing in Leadership Development and Family Business Consulting. Was a planter from 1983-93 in Anamallais and Kanyakumari. Author, mentor, photographer, speaker, inveterate traveler. Working across boundaries of race, religion and nationality to bring hearts together. I was in tea for seven years and in rubber for three. Also planted coffee, cardamom, vanilla and coconut.

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