The Missing Sibling

 by Indi Khanna

While he was born in Simla, our son Madhav's formative years were spent on an estate in Upper Assam before he went off to a boarding school. The upshot was that Madhav naturally grew up with and adopted the 'garden Hindi' as his mother tongue. A language which I describe as the 'estate lingua franca'. 

A beautiful amalgamation of Hindi, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Bengali and a bit of 'huh?' to end up with the lilt and cadence of a 'musical composition' almost akin to the sweet sound of Swahili. 

There being no access to either a nursery or a kindergarten, as was the case on all tea estates in the North East and in South India, home schooling was the norm. Practically 24x7 my wife Kitty would, while not educating me on what the idiot Dr Spock had to say about bringing up kids, spend her time reading fairy tales and singing nursery rhymes to Madhav: nursery rhymes which were Madhav's only window to the world outside the estate. 

The first time we did our five day odyssey from Delhi to Upper Assam was when Madhav was all of two years old, which is when we purchased our first second hand Ambassador car in Delhi. Those were the days when roads, after one had emerged out of the 'big' city, used to be almost like a figment of one's imagination. 

In Eastern UP and extending into Bihar the 'highway' used to be liberally peppered with what were, for lack of a better word, called 'potholes', but were in fact craters from the surface of the moon magically transplanted on the highway. Potholes so generously expansive that when one drove one's car into one (there was no way one could circumnavigate the monstrosities) the roof of the car was well below the rim of the crater. But I digress, so let me get back to the main plot. 

While I was busy removing the wheel, we noticed Madhav going around the car in circles every now and then bending down to peer underneath the car

On the third day out of Delhi as we were getting close to Siliguri, the car had a flat. Just the fact that the tyres had brought us all this way having actually survived the UP/Bihar experience was in itself a miracle. Got the car to the side of the road, emptied out the boot and pulled out the jack. Once the car was jacked up, this being a part of his ongoing education, his mother informed Madhav that what 'Dada' had brought out from the boot and had put under the chassis was a 'jack'. 

While I was busy removing the wheel, we noticed Madhav going around the car in circles every now and then bending down to peer underneath the car. His search having yielded no results, he finally came up to his mother and in his most educated good garden lingo and with a very serious look on his face asked, 'Agar Jack waha hai, to Jill kaha hai?' (If Jack is here under the car, where is Jill?) 

Took us quite some time to stop rolling around in laughter and for the tears to dry up so that I could get back to changing the wheel and put Jill's brother back in the boot to drive on to Siliguri. The pleasures of growing up on an estate!

Meet the writer:

Indi Khanna with Xerox

With an industry experience and a tea knowledge base of four and a half decades and counting, I literally live and breathe tea. 

Starting my career in 1975 as an Assistant Superintendent with Malayalam Plantations Ltd, rolling up my sleeves by 'dirtying' my hands at the grassroots level and having literally 'grown' in the business, my experiences have matured me into a ‘one of a kind’ unique entity in the industry.

My journey which literally starts from the tea nursery and stretches all the way up to the consumer shelf, is in many ways unique. Regularly roaming the tea world, delving into the most remote areas wherever tea is grown or consumed, constantly interacting with Tea folk, I have always been learning and innovating. The invaluable experiences along this very interesting route have culminated into a unique new venture, a one-of-a-kind specialty tea manufacturing facility unit in the Nilgiris - www.teastudio.info.

My life has been and continues to be blessed.

Thankfully this very interesting Tea journey continues as an ongoing learning experience.

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!