The Modern Ghost

by Nandita Tiwari

This incident dates back to the year 2013, the month of February, when we got transferred from Dooars to Assam. Transfers are all well known in the tea community; what was new was that it was our first transfer to one of the Assam gardens.

North view of the Amgoorie bungalow. All pix by author 

And we drove into the majestic bungalow of Amgoorie, taking in the Assam weather, drinking in the nectar of fresh air, the lush green lawn, the colourful flowers and a strange feeling of everything new in and around us.

Akhil (my husband) dropped me to the bungalow and went for a round of his new garden. I sat on the lawn taking in the new place. As the sun began to set, the beautiful rays of light were vanishing and lush green lawn started to appear greenish grey to me. I started feeling lonely. So I moved inside the bungalow and the staff helped me unpack.

Ghost stories and tales of haunted bungalows etc. are often heard of in tea bungalows, and the bearer started narrating some of them, although assuring me that our bungalow was safe. I asked them to concentrate on unpacking. As we retired for the night after an early dinner, the first night in the new environment -- new bed, new staff, new room, all put together gave me an eerie feeling. So I recalled the time-tested technique of backward counting… 100…99…98… and soon dozed off.

The foggy compound

In the middle of the night, I woke up as I wanted to use the washroom. So I groped in the darkness and switched on the light of the bathroom and was relieved. The night was still; an owl screeched somewhere. However, my relief was short-lived. I heard a high pitched, loud noise of someone laughing - perhaps a woman or a child. “He-he-hee-hee-haa…” and I froze. 

The laughter sent shivers down my spine. It sounded exactly like what I imagined a witch’s cackle would have been. I cannot even begin to describe my fear. My hands and legs would not listen to me, they refused to move. My vocal cords refused to produce any sound. I mustered all the courage I could, taking God’s name and returned to bed.

I nudged Akhil a little but he was fast asleep, exhausted from the day’s activities. So I tried my best to go back to sleep. The next day passed by quickly with lots of unpacking, the incident of the previous night forgotten until… the evening chowkidaars were switching on the security lights of the bungalow and compound as I sat in the verandah sipping a cup of hot tea.

To my utter astonishment, I heard the cackle from last night again. Judging from the direction of the sound, it seemed to be coming from near the chowkidaar. There was silence again. 

To investigate further, I called the chowkidaar inside and found the cackle emerging from his pocket. “He-he-hee-hee-haa…”

The mystery was solved. The night ghost was caught. After reprimanding him and asking him to change his phone ringtone to a more conservative one, we went about the chores of the evening. 

Soon, we started settling down in Amgoorie. Last February, we completed six years and have loved every second spent here, night ghost and all. 

 

Meet the writer: Nandita Tiwari

Nandita joined the tea fraternity in 1991 when she arrived in Danguajhar in the Dooars. She and her husband Akhil were in various gardens in the Dooars for over 30 years, and also in Amgoorie (Assam) for a brief period of time. They are now settled in Siliguri.

In 2019, Nandita decided to start penning down some of the unique experiences that came her way. You can read her stories on her own blog, here: https://nanditat6.wixsite.com/rosee-t

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, long, or short, impossible, scary, funny or exciting but never dull. 

Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea!

Trains and Toddlers

by Gumi Malhotra

Holidays in tea meant going home for a month every year to reconnect with family. Phone calls were few and restricted to ‘how are you and the children’ and ‘all well’. As leave was often granted close to the time of travel and resources being scarce, more often than not it was the three tier on the Rajdhani for us. Many times it was just the boys and I, Sukhi would join us later.

Traveling with toddlers was a blur of sticky fingers, colour pencils rolling on the compartment floor, blankets which slid off and landed...yes, on the floor and a constant medley of ‘Mama susu aya hai’!

The trip to the bathroom was fraught with nameless perils and was an exercise in balance. One infant on the hip, the other holding on to your hand while you kept the door open with one foot, all the time saying, ‘Don’t touch anything’!

Let me not even start on operation clean-up!!

Looking back, I remember mopping up spilt juice, face-down ice cream cups, going to the pantry for boiled water for Lactogen and cleaning the boys' faces with Wet Ones till they shone pink. Looking out of the window and pointing out the changing landscape and birds to them, reading, napping and being cosy in our designated space.

The last train trip for us was in 2003 when I woke up at six to find our luggage gone. Someone had made off with it at Patna Station at two in the morning. Before I had time to feel sorry for myself I heard a ‘Good morning Mama’. I had the boys! Lost luggage faded in significance.

I miss those long rocking noisy journeys when Mughal Serai, Barauni, Katihar and Kishanganj were names that made up the distance between one home and the other.

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, 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


 Meet the writer: Gumi Malhotra

Gumi Malhotra

Hello chai people, here’s another attempt to pen down one of the million memories I carry with me. We came away twelve years ago with our hearts full ( not so much the pocket) of such nuggets. We live in Bangalore now and what started as a hobby in the gardens has become my calling. I paint pet portraits. The happiest days spent in tea were in the Jali kamra with my paints, the boys occupied with make believe cars and a steady stream of tea flowing from the kitchen. Cheers!

The Tea Planter Who Conquered Wimbledon

by Rajesh Thomas

A trivia question. Which planter had the unique honor of winning the Men's singles title at the Wimbledon Tennis Championship?

Before you could question my sanity, a planter certainly did have his name up, along with the hallowed immortals of the sport on the Wimbledon honors board.

On a sunny afternoon in London in 1877, a certain Spencer Gore emerged victorious against William Marshall in a tennis match, setting off one of tennis and sports' greatest legacies, known as Wimbledon or simply the Championships.

The settings those days was a far cry to what we imagine Wimbledon or the sport of tennis to be when men played in full pants and shirt sleeves and the ladies played in floor-length skirts, stockings, and long-sleeved tops, where hardly 200 spectators watched the proceedings, unlike the millions of television viewers nowadays. More importantly, the winner did not earn millions in prize money and endorsements! The winner's prize was 12 guineas and a silver cup. The guineas adjusted for inflation would total around 700 pounds today.

Wimbledon 1877

Tennis was still the gentle sport played in the front lawns by the rich people of England over evening tea.

The first edition of the championships was considered a big success and the tournament was set for a sequel in 1878.

Just before the start of the 1878 Championships a tea planter from Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known) Patrick Francis (Frank ) Hadow was on furlough* in his home country. He was a good cricketer in his younger days, having represented the MCC and Middlesex. He did his schooling at Harrow, the famous English public school where he excelled at racquets (an indoor game similar to squash).

Frank Hadow being a natural sportsman was persuaded by his friends to take part in the second edition of the Wimbledon Championship. He quickly adapted to the new game and reached the finals, where he was slated to meet the defending champion Spencer Gore. Frank Hadow defeated Spencer Gore in a tactical match 7–5, 6–1, 9–7 to claim the trophy.

Frank Hadow

Hadow noted that Gore's chief tactic was to approach the net and finish the points with his volley: a style Gore had mastered when everyone else played from the backcourt. Hadow countered the volley tactics of Gore by developing his new shot, the lob ( A lob is a shot which sails over the opponent when he is standing near the net, waiting to volley and into the open court behind him or her ), which he played to devastating effect.

The tables were reversed this year. While the rest of the field had no answer to Gore's net rushing tactics the previous year, Gore couldn't cope with Hadow's lob. Sport, like life, evolves, and in a few years William Renshaw, one of tennis's early greats ( he won seven Wimbledons and six in a row ) developed the overhead smash to counter the Lob.

Hadow's invention of the lob would be his greatest contribution to the game of tennis.

Frank Hadow never returned to defend his title at Wimbledon; the only champion in the history of the game to have done so. When queried on this, he is supposed to have remarked that it was 'boring' and 'tennis was a sissies sport played with a soft ball'.

It is rumored that he never played tennis again. More likely the logistics of running a tea estate and travel by ship would have also been a reason for the same. His next appearance at Wimbledon was in 1926, when he was invited for the fiftieth anniversary of the tournament,  and as a former champion he was given a commemorative medal by the All England Club.

Frank Hadow's planting career was reputed to be mainly in the Uva planting district of Ceylon. One of his brothers also served as a planter along with him in Ceylon in the 1870s and 1880s. It is assumed that they were a part of the early batch of planters who oversaw the transformation of the plantations from coffee to tea following the devastation of rust which completely decimated the coffee in Ceylon.

Little else is known about the life of Frank Hadow. After his retirement, he migrated to East Africa to pursue his interests in big game hunting. He had very good success in hunting returning with record size trophies in sable antelope, Cape buffalo, Uganda kob and eland.

No wonder he considered tennis a sissy game.

Postscript
Being a planter and a tennis aficionado, I would be grateful if anyone, especially from the planting community of Sri Lanka if they could add more to the life of Frank Hadow.

*Author's note: Historically, expatriate planters enjoyed annual leave of one month which they could spend in India, and once in three years they were given four to six months leave - or furlough - to enable them to go to their home town in Britain. This long period of leave was given to accommodate the long journey by ship.

Meet the writer:

 Rajesh Thomas introduces himself:
"A second generation planter. Born and grew up in the planting districts of Southern India. Started my career in the High Ranges and Annamallais Planting Districts for twelve years. Had a stint in Africa for two years. Since 2009 been planting in the Nilgiris.

Read all of Rajesh's stories at this link: https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/J.Rajesh%20Thomas

ADD THIS LINK TO YOUR FAVOURITES : https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/Indian Chai Stories.
Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea! 

 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, long, or short, impossible, scary, funny or exciting but never dull.
 Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea!

Glow-Worms and Kawakawa Tea

by Sarita Dasgupta

A cup of Kawakawa tea. You can see the antique stove on which it's brewed in the background

My last trip abroad was to Aotearoa – The Land of the Long White Cloud. An appropriate name for New Zealand, which always seems to have an unbroken bank of clouds lying serenely overhead. It is the most beautiful country I have ever visited, giving stiff competition to the scenic Pacific North West (Washington state) in USA.

Every place I visited had its own breath-taking beauty. While in Rotorua on North Island, I went to see the natural geysers, the thermal park with its volcanic rock formations, sulphur lakes and bubbling mud pools, a Maori village, and the spectacular glow-worm caves. It was at the Footwhistle Glow-worm cave that I first tasted the native Kawakawa tea.

Inside the cave

The Footwhistle Cave (or Te Anaroa Cave in Maori) is a stunning limestone labyrinth beneath the hills of Waitomo, with luminescent glow-worm displays. One enters in the pitch dark and looks up to see spots glowing like a constellation of stars on the ceiling of the cave. The ‘worms’ are the larva-like wingless female beetles which emit light in the lower abdomen, to attract the flying male. They produce hanging threads that look like strands of pearls amidst the limestone stalactites.

The cave belongs to 45-year-old Kyle Barnes. Kyle has more than 20 years guiding and customer service experience. His father, Ross, started guiding at the Glow-worm Caves in the early 1970s. He later joined the Department of Conservation as a Ranger, building walkways in the area. Two of his creations are rated in the top ten short walks in New Zealand.

When I asked Kyle how he’d come to own the cave, he said, "In New Zealand, if you own the land above the cave you own that section of the cave. My father and I helped develop and open the cave as a Blackwater rafting tour in 1991. I started as one of the first guides in 1992. I would crawl up the side passageways and I found that entrance you walked into. I realised it was on the neighbouring farm. I worked as a guide and slowly bought some houses and rented them and in 2007 sold everything to buy this farm. I purchased it and then the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) hit and all of a sudden, I owed more than the farm was worth. It was difficult to keep the farm and I sold off parts of it while we developed the cave."

Kyle Barnes walking down to the Footwhistle Cave

 "We opened the Footwhistle section of the cave in 2010. My father, brother-in-law, a local lady (Colleen, who was your guide) and myself guide the tour. My wife and sister-in-law work in the office." I asked Kyle about the Kawakawa trees on his land. He said many of them were growing on the land already, but he and his family had planted several hundred more.

Sir John Key in the Ponga Tea Hut

In March 2014, the then Prime Minister of New Zealand, Sir John Phillip Key, inaugurated the Ponga Tea Hut, a quaint log cabin at the top of the path leading out of the cave. There is a tall Kawakawa tree right outside the hut. The Prime Minister had planted that on his visit. Kyle says they developed the bush tea ceremony concept to appeal to tourists seeking a unique experience. Visitors stop off for a cup of complimentary Kawakawa tea after touring the caves.

Colleen leading us into the caves

After our walk through the glow-worm cave, our guide, Colleen, led us to the Ponga Tea Hut, where we sat at the charmingly laid out tables while she boiled hot water in a kettle on an antique iron stove and brewed the dried Kawakawa leaves. She then served us cups of the refreshing ‘tea’. As we sat and sipped the delicious brew, I looked out of the window at the Kawakawa tree and asked Colleen to tell me more about the special nature of this genus.

She told me that it belonged to the pepper plant class of trees (Macropiper Excelsum, as I found out later). It is native to New Zealand, and has distinctive bright green heart shaped leaves.

Kawakawa leaves

The Maori use its fruit, bark and leaves not only for medicinal purposes but also as a significant part of traditional ceremonies. An infusion of the leaves makes a tasty, refreshing cup of ‘tea’ which is considered good for digestion. It was drunk as ‘tea’ by early European settlers while awaiting shipments of black tea, but they soon discovered that it served as a great ‘pick me up’, as it was a refreshing and rejuvenating tonic, which increased one’s energy and stamina.

The Kawakawa leaves are harvested and hung in small bunches in a dry, airy room away from direct sunlight to reduce the moisture content. The leaves can also be dried for 12 hours in a food dehydrator set to its lowest heat setting. The dried leaves are separated from the stems (which are discarded) and placed in a pot with water brought to a boil then simmered for 15 minutes, allowing the water to reduce by a ¼ cup. A piece of ginger can also be added to the boiling water along with the leaves if desired. The brew is strained and served plain, or with a squeeze of lemon juice and raw Manuka honey (another New Zealand specialty). As Kawakawa tea has a relaxing and calming effect on the digestive system, it is a good postprandial drink.

Among the many exceptional and memorable experiences I had in New Zealand, walking through the magical Footwhistle Glow-worm Cave, and tasting the unique Kawakawa tea at the Ponga Tea Hut, would be somewhere on top of the list.

Pictures by Sarita Dasgupta and Kyle Barnes

Meet the writer: Sarita Dasgupta

Sarita enjoying a warm cup of Kawakawa tea

"As a ‘chai ka baby’ (and grandbaby!) and then a ‘chai ka memsahab’, I sometimes wonder if I have tea running through my veins! 

I have been writing for as long as can remember – not only my reminiscences about life in ‘tea’ but also skits, plays, and short stories. My plays and musicals have been performed by school children in Guwahati, Kolkata and Pune, and my first collection of short stories for children, called Feathered Friends, was published by Amazing Reads (India Book Distributors) in 2016. My Rainbow Reader series of English text books and work books have been selected as the prescribed text for Classes I to IV by the Meghalaya Board of School Education for the 2018-2019 academic session, and I have now started writing another series for the same publisher.

More stories by Sarita here : https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Sarita%20Dasgupta

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, 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/

A Cup of Indian Chai

by Seema Anand

Seema Anand tells us a story to celebrate our having crossed the 150 mark!!
Thank you, Seema - love the flavour of this chai story!

Meet the storyteller: 

Seema is a London based mythologist and narrative practitioner and although her sanity is a little suspect she is a brilliant story teller. Seema's work in the revival of women's narratives is associated with the UNESCO project for Endangered Oral Traditions. 

 As part of her (not so) secret formula for world peace Seema lectures on the Kamasutra and is an acknowledged authority on the erotic literatures of the East. In her less peaceful moments she also delivers courses on Tantric philosophy.

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, 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