by Shipra Castledine
It has been a while since my last chapter. I had the good fortune to spend three months holidaying in India so my silence can be excused!
My last chapter stopped at a big holiday spent in Baintgoorie TE with childhood friends and relatives. Soon after that trip my father left Duncans Tea and he moved to Kolkata too. However my days in tea do not end there. I have spent a great many years as part of the tea industry. When my mother and myself moved to Kolkata at the start of 1967 we kind of lost touch with tea people and got busy in our city lives with my being enrolled in Loreto House, Kolkata. What a change it all was! Even after my father moved to Kolkata we somehow did not meet many tea people. There were a few close friends of my parents who were ex tea planters and we would socialise with them but that was about it.
The next time I met a number of tea people was when I was studying in college and we were invited at the last minute to my friend from Rungamuttee TE in the Dooars, Dora Roy’s wedding. My parents and I caught up with the Roys then at the wedding and soon after Tubloo (KK Roy, Dora’s brother) started dropping in at our place. That was 1974. One thing lead to another and Tubloo and I decided to get married. Our parents weren’t hugely enamoured of the idea as both of us were too young, but the families were well known to each other and the marriage happened in 1975.
After a couple of years working for Liptons in Kolkata, Tubloo was offered a job with a tea broking firm, Creswells, with a transfer to Siliguri where tea auctions had started. By this time we had a baby, our elder daughter Pompom (Anupa). Tubloo was ecstatic with the posting as it meant we could go live with his parents PK and Geeta Roy who had retired from Rungamuttee TE and built a house in Bengdubi, near Bagdogra, North Bengal. Times were turbulent in our lives in those years. We soon had another baby, Pixie (Anindita, our second daughter). And we moved to our own place in Siliguri. Whilst in Bengdubi we would sometimes visit Terai Club which was the tea club of the district. The socialising was pleasant in the club though it was not as active as some of the tea clubs in the Dooars. We carried on socialising at Terai Club whilst living in Siliguri.
As Tubloo’s job naturally took him visiting tea estates in the Terai district and the Dooars we became friendly with a lot of tea planters. Now started a time where my daughters got familiar with a tea planter’s life.
How they loved their visits to the tea estates. We would visit Dalsingpara TE and be hosted by Ron and Roma Circar. How they put up with the whole jing-bang lot of us including our major domo Margaret (children’s ayah) I wouldn’t know! We enjoyed our time with them immensely. One of our trips to them resulted in us picking up a gorgeous black Labrador puppy as their well bred Labradors would breed almost every year. In our time with the Circars we got to know Ozzie and Chinny Lobo too. Ozzie was Manager, Dalsingpara TE. All of them were / are wonderful people.
It would be hard to name how many planters we became friends with. Another bungalow we visited very often was in Leesh River TE. An assistant, Niraj Verma. He was a bachelor in the days we piled on to his bungalow too. He would make us all so comfortable. He would visit us in Siliguri too and I will never forget how much Niraj liked Bengali fish! He would eat Pabda, Bata, Illish and any variety of fish that Bengalis eat with such relish and real love of it. In fact we had a number of non-Bengali friends who would come to our place to have a huge meal of Illish Maacher Shorshe Bata! We gained a reputation for being hospitable and everyone knew we loved to entertain and feed people!
The good fortune of living in Siliguri gave us the delights of being able to travel the mountains around us. Going on day trips to Darjeeling was fairly common. The minute we started climbing the hills we would all feel ravenously hungry, barely being able to wait till we got to Kurseong where we would have a delicious breakfast at the Kurseong Tourist Lodge. We visited many hill stations whilst living in Siliguri. Many parts of Sikkim became familiar as we visited over and over. Kalimpong, always so pretty. The highlight of the mountains was Bhutan. What a country! We were lucky to make 3 trips to Bhutan. A pristine, grand, totally carbon footprint free kingdom. The journey to Thimpu (Bhutan’s capital) from Siliguri was approximately 14 hours. We would drive to Dalsingpara TE and stop over for the night.
The next day we would make the 10 hour drive to Thimpu. We had a big car, a Contessa which was sort of like the old Studebakers. I would fill in the space between the back seat and front seat with suitcases or boxes that would fit snugly in so I could then put a thick blanket over the entire back seat and the suitcases which created a bed for the girls. The first time we travelled up to Thimpu the car just did not want to move up in the Bhutan mountains! Between Phoentsholing, the entry township to Bhutan in the plains and Thimpu there was not a single car garage, petrol station or mechanic! We arrived in Thimpu with the car panting and puffing! And it happened to be a public holiday in Thimpu so not a mechanic available! Well, thankfully one of our friends who accompanied us had some Bhutanese friends. They called on a mechanic and it turned out that we had driven all that vast distance with not a hope of help, on a cracked carburettor cap! It was an adventure for sure!
Above, a typical stretch on the road to Thimpu
We became close to other tea planters who were in the Terai district. One of those families have continued to be my close friends. They were the Ghaffars and Aman Ghaffar was Manager at Hansqua TE that was at Aman’s time owned by a proprietor and not one of the tea agency companies such as Goodrickes or Duncans. The senior Ghaffars, more Aman Ghaffar than Dipi his wife, actually knew my parents when Dad was a tea planter and Aman would have seen me as a child. And then us Roys, Tubloo, my daughters and myself, as a family, got friendly with the senior Ghaffars. I graduated soon to the junior Ghaffars as I was sort of in between age-wise!
We spent many days in each other’s company and those ties in the 1980s have created bonds that have lasted. We share so many memories together that when we get together today the feelings are of familiarity and deep affection. All of us have our life stories but we inherently know each other for what we are. Dipi was from the old style of tea planter wives and her hospitality was outstanding. She and I share a common love of food and her table would be so grand and mouth-watering. And another thing about Dipi is her generosity. Throughout the years when we lived in reasonably close proximity Dipi would drive in to our house in Siliguri from Hansqua TE which was about 20km away and a basket of fresh vegetables from her malibari would be offloaded to us! I can still see the beautiful, just picked cauliflowers, shiny eggplants, young cabbages, radishes and so much more that we would enjoy cooking and eating for days after.
We were truly lucky to enjoy an unpolluted environment with the beautiful tea estates anywhere we looked and that we visited and the quality of produce and food that we availed. I would drive almost 30km to a poultry run by Catholic priests (we knew the priests) and pick up fresh eggs and undressed chickens. On a haat (market) day I would visit mainly Salugara Haat to pick up kilos of the most gorgeous pork we have ever had. I became well known for my pan bbq-ed pork rib chops! They were known by our friends as PC-s! The Illish we have had in Siliguri could rival the best of what you could get in Kolkata!
I will never forget a lunch we had where our dining table was full with more than 10 of us at the table. Lunch went on for a couple of hours as the men (as I mentioned before, non-Bengalis) devoured piece after piece of shorshe illish! Each one of them would have had more than 4 pieces each! I had to cook up fresh rice as they ate so they could keep enjoying the illish maach! Once done with the meal I began slicing chilled langraa mangoes. Oh my God! They went down like our friends had never eaten mangoes before! I had just the day before shopped 5kg of the mangoes. Every one of them was sliced and was polished off! Of course the standard of the mangoes was top class. And I used to rustle up desserts with the most gorgeous fresh cream from an army dairy in Bengdubi! You could say it was quite a life of decadence!
On that salivating note recalling the quality of food we enjoyed in our Siliguri days I leave you till the next chapter.
Meet the writer: 'My name is Shipra Castledine nee Shipra Bose (Bunty). My parents were Sudhin and Gouri Bose. I am a tea 'baba' of the 1950-s era. I spent a part of my life growing up in the Dooars and another large part of my life married to a tea planter's son the Late KK Roy son of PK and Geeta Roy of Rungamuttee TE in the Dooars. I continued to be in the tea industry for many years as KK was a tea broker till he passed away in 1998.' Shipra recounts her childhood in the Dooars and her school days in Darjeeling in a series called 'Back in the Day' of which Part VII went up in August. Read all Shipra's posts here: https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Shipra%20Castledine.
Is this your first visit here? Welcome to Indian Chai Stories!
If you've ever visited a tea garden or lived in one, or if you have a good friend who did, you would have heard some absolutely improbable 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. The blog is updated every two to three days. 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
It has been a while since my last chapter. I had the good fortune to spend three months holidaying in India so my silence can be excused!
My last chapter stopped at a big holiday spent in Baintgoorie TE with childhood friends and relatives. Soon after that trip my father left Duncans Tea and he moved to Kolkata too. However my days in tea do not end there. I have spent a great many years as part of the tea industry. When my mother and myself moved to Kolkata at the start of 1967 we kind of lost touch with tea people and got busy in our city lives with my being enrolled in Loreto House, Kolkata. What a change it all was! Even after my father moved to Kolkata we somehow did not meet many tea people. There were a few close friends of my parents who were ex tea planters and we would socialise with them but that was about it.
The next time I met a number of tea people was when I was studying in college and we were invited at the last minute to my friend from Rungamuttee TE in the Dooars, Dora Roy’s wedding. My parents and I caught up with the Roys then at the wedding and soon after Tubloo (KK Roy, Dora’s brother) started dropping in at our place. That was 1974. One thing lead to another and Tubloo and I decided to get married. Our parents weren’t hugely enamoured of the idea as both of us were too young, but the families were well known to each other and the marriage happened in 1975.
After a couple of years working for Liptons in Kolkata, Tubloo was offered a job with a tea broking firm, Creswells, with a transfer to Siliguri where tea auctions had started. By this time we had a baby, our elder daughter Pompom (Anupa). Tubloo was ecstatic with the posting as it meant we could go live with his parents PK and Geeta Roy who had retired from Rungamuttee TE and built a house in Bengdubi, near Bagdogra, North Bengal. Times were turbulent in our lives in those years. We soon had another baby, Pixie (Anindita, our second daughter). And we moved to our own place in Siliguri. Whilst in Bengdubi we would sometimes visit Terai Club which was the tea club of the district. The socialising was pleasant in the club though it was not as active as some of the tea clubs in the Dooars. We carried on socialising at Terai Club whilst living in Siliguri.
As Tubloo’s job naturally took him visiting tea estates in the Terai district and the Dooars we became friendly with a lot of tea planters. Now started a time where my daughters got familiar with a tea planter’s life.
How they loved their visits to the tea estates. We would visit Dalsingpara TE and be hosted by Ron and Roma Circar. How they put up with the whole jing-bang lot of us including our major domo Margaret (children’s ayah) I wouldn’t know! We enjoyed our time with them immensely. One of our trips to them resulted in us picking up a gorgeous black Labrador puppy as their well bred Labradors would breed almost every year. In our time with the Circars we got to know Ozzie and Chinny Lobo too. Ozzie was Manager, Dalsingpara TE. All of them were / are wonderful people.
 |
| I think this is the driveway to the Manager’s Bungalow, Dalsingpara TE |
The good fortune of living in Siliguri gave us the delights of being able to travel the mountains around us. Going on day trips to Darjeeling was fairly common. The minute we started climbing the hills we would all feel ravenously hungry, barely being able to wait till we got to Kurseong where we would have a delicious breakfast at the Kurseong Tourist Lodge. We visited many hill stations whilst living in Siliguri. Many parts of Sikkim became familiar as we visited over and over. Kalimpong, always so pretty. The highlight of the mountains was Bhutan. What a country! We were lucky to make 3 trips to Bhutan. A pristine, grand, totally carbon footprint free kingdom. The journey to Thimpu (Bhutan’s capital) from Siliguri was approximately 14 hours. We would drive to Dalsingpara TE and stop over for the night.
The next day we would make the 10 hour drive to Thimpu. We had a big car, a Contessa which was sort of like the old Studebakers. I would fill in the space between the back seat and front seat with suitcases or boxes that would fit snugly in so I could then put a thick blanket over the entire back seat and the suitcases which created a bed for the girls. The first time we travelled up to Thimpu the car just did not want to move up in the Bhutan mountains! Between Phoentsholing, the entry township to Bhutan in the plains and Thimpu there was not a single car garage, petrol station or mechanic! We arrived in Thimpu with the car panting and puffing! And it happened to be a public holiday in Thimpu so not a mechanic available! Well, thankfully one of our friends who accompanied us had some Bhutanese friends. They called on a mechanic and it turned out that we had driven all that vast distance with not a hope of help, on a cracked carburettor cap! It was an adventure for sure!
 |
The road through the Dooars to Bhutan
 |
 |
| Thimpu |
We spent many days in each other’s company and those ties in the 1980s have created bonds that have lasted. We share so many memories together that when we get together today the feelings are of familiarity and deep affection. All of us have our life stories but we inherently know each other for what we are. Dipi was from the old style of tea planter wives and her hospitality was outstanding. She and I share a common love of food and her table would be so grand and mouth-watering. And another thing about Dipi is her generosity. Throughout the years when we lived in reasonably close proximity Dipi would drive in to our house in Siliguri from Hansqua TE which was about 20km away and a basket of fresh vegetables from her malibari would be offloaded to us! I can still see the beautiful, just picked cauliflowers, shiny eggplants, young cabbages, radishes and so much more that we would enjoy cooking and eating for days after.
 |
Hansqua TE
|
I will never forget a lunch we had where our dining table was full with more than 10 of us at the table. Lunch went on for a couple of hours as the men (as I mentioned before, non-Bengalis) devoured piece after piece of shorshe illish! Each one of them would have had more than 4 pieces each! I had to cook up fresh rice as they ate so they could keep enjoying the illish maach! Once done with the meal I began slicing chilled langraa mangoes. Oh my God! They went down like our friends had never eaten mangoes before! I had just the day before shopped 5kg of the mangoes. Every one of them was sliced and was polished off! Of course the standard of the mangoes was top class. And I used to rustle up desserts with the most gorgeous fresh cream from an army dairy in Bengdubi! You could say it was quite a life of decadence!
On that salivating note recalling the quality of food we enjoyed in our Siliguri days I leave you till the next chapter.
Meet the writer: 'My name is Shipra Castledine nee Shipra Bose (Bunty). My parents were Sudhin and Gouri Bose. I am a tea 'baba' of the 1950-s era. I spent a part of my life growing up in the Dooars and another large part of my life married to a tea planter's son the Late KK Roy son of PK and Geeta Roy of Rungamuttee TE in the Dooars. I continued to be in the tea industry for many years as KK was a tea broker till he passed away in 1998.' Shipra recounts her childhood in the Dooars and her school days in Darjeeling in a series called 'Back in the Day' of which Part VII went up in August. Read all Shipra's posts here: https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Shipra%20Castledine.
Is this your first visit here? Welcome to Indian Chai Stories!
If you've ever visited a tea garden or lived in one, or if you have a good friend who did, you would have heard some absolutely improbable 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. The blog is updated every two to three days. 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
I have tears in my eyes now, remembering those happy days, later than those of which you write, but beloved nonetheless. Those long and winding roads flanked by emerald vistas as far as the eye could see, the comfortable and much loved bungalows, the warm company of fellow planter families, the club evenings, events and dos.... you've captured them all so vividly, and nostalgia has done the rest! Thanks, Bunty.
ReplyDeleteThank you Roma. All much loved memories. A way to keep them going forever. We are all forever connected ❤️
DeleteHappy times
ReplyDeleteHappy times.
ReplyDeleteLovely memory across a number of locations - very interesting.
ReplyDeleteDelightful story about memorable times. Stuff one dreams about.
ReplyDeleteVery well written, as always. A trip down memory lane for many a chai ka baba and baby. The transition from Darjeeling to Calcutta.. inevitable but with it's own challenges, the joy of being home in the tea estate burra bungalow.. all expressed beautifully..
ReplyDeleteExcellent narrative about a great life on the tea gardens. Never worked in that part of India but spent 15 years across the estates in South India, Uganda and PNG
ReplyDeleteThank you for your appreciative comments. It is all a much loved common sharing isn’t it.
ReplyDelete