Across the Border

by Gowri Mohanakrishnan

Just how far would you go to play a game of Scrabble? We went to another country!

My husband and I had been married a few months when we played our first game of Scrabble one Sunday evening at Birpara Tea Garden. The atmosphere soon became unpleasant, and the competition deadly.

We had to pause to decide whether to continue playing or to give our marriage a chance.

Now it was quite difficult to work all that out because we'd stopped talking to each other during the course of the game. Eventually we picked up the board and tiles - which we'd hurled all over the jaali kamra - and put them into the bottom of a cupboard. There they stayed, and we resumed life as Mr. and Mrs. Mohanakrishnan.

Scrabble came back into our lives when our daughters were old enough to play. Once we had three generations playing in the bungalow - the girls, their grandmother, their uncle and mother - with father joining in when work permitted. We built up a whole lot of rituals around these games. We'd put on rock and roll CDs and eat pista nuts while we played in the February mid-morning sun.

The girls wrote down the scores in ruled notebooks, but there is no record of a single match between 'G' and 'M'.

Jayati and I enjoy the game!

My friend Jayati was in the eastern Dooars those days and we were in Moraghat in the Binaguri area. She told me she'd found a Scrabble playing friend in the first garden where she went as a bride. What great good luck!  A tea garden is such a lonely place for a young girl - imagine being able to play Scrabble at home with a friend!

We just had to play, we decided. Where, and when? The distance between our two gardens was considerable. The roads were terrible, and two dense forests (where elephants roamed and highway robbers lurked ) had to be crossed. We rarely travelled eastward, but Jayati and her husband had  to drive past our place to go to Siliguri or beyond.

One day when Jayati dropped in on her way back from one of these trips, we sat down to Scrabble without wasting a minute. We played two boards and Jayati battered me. Now we just had to meet and play again, so that  I could get even! We decided I'd take on the champion at a point which each of us could reach in less than two hours - the town of Phuentsholing, Bhutan.

Sounds strange? It's true! The geography of the Dooars is most interesting.

We met at the Druk Hotel in Phuentsholing, which has a peaceful and cosy atmosphere, with cheerful staff who take great care of you. We played the most enjoyable games, drank tea, and ate the kind of delicious snacky lunch that only women know how to order.

And Jayati won the day - again.

Map from Google Earth. Key by Swati Mohanakrishnan

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!
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