Back in the Day - Part XII

 by Shipra Castledine

Hello again, dear readers! I'm delighted to bring you the latest from Shipra Castledine: Part XII of 'Back in the Day', the engaging account of her childhood in the tea gardens. Thank you Shipra! - Gowri

The other day I was talking to a friend who is a keen Bridge player. For those who are not familiar with it, Bridge is a card game played with four players. There are two types of Bridge games, one is Contract and the other is Auction. In the tea plantations indoor card games became a part of tea life alongside Mahjong. It stands to reason that this happened as there were not many social distractions in tea life that a city might offer.

As a child growing up in the tea gardens a Bridge table became a familiar sight. I have talked about the club days we would have on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the nearest tea club, mainly the Western Dooars Club in my lifetime in tea. With many getting their outdoor sports of tennis and golf in, there were others who did not partake and card tables would be set up inside the club. Good numbers would make up the four needed for a Bridge table and a number of tables would be active. This was serious stuff. Often a married couple would be ‘partners’ for a Bridge table and believe you me a few games of Bridge and the journey home could almost result in a marriage break up, the conflict was so fierce about how a partner had played!! Not to mention that many trips to the generous bar fuelled one’s emotions!

 

All images sourced from the internet by the author

My parents used to play Bridge too but they hardly ever partnered each other at the same Bridge table. Very sensible! Not so with my to be in laws. They always partnered each other when they were available for a Bridge table together. Oh my!! I have witnessed the arguments that ensued after a session! One of them could be positively virulent accusing the other of ruining the opportunity to come out on top as it was a points game. Sometimes there would be competitions going on so the points mattered.

I know of married couples leaving a Bridge session separately and going home as the conflict heated up that much! And that’s not an easy thing to do as going home was often vast kilometres away 😆 Hence my relief that my parents were never Bridge partners. I learnt how to play Bridge from my father. He was a cool man and played an intelligent game. But he never got into Bridge to the point he was consumed with the moves of the game almost all the time like some others were. He and I would practice playing Bridge with each of us playing two ‘hands’ meaning playing the part of another player. And Dad would go over what I could have done better so I could sharpen up my game.

Right around tea, meaning whether the Dooars, Darjeeling or Terai which were most of the tea districts in North Bengal, Bridge competitions would be held between the various tea clubs. These created opportunities for tea planters and their families to meet others and grow the team community. And as always they were occasions for hospitality to shine, with healthy rivalry amongst tea families as to who was doing a good job 👏🏻 🥪🫔

As I mentioned earlier my childhood in tea was in tea estates that had Western Dooars Club as our district club. My parents Sudhin and Gouri Bose would take me every Wednesday and Saturday to the club. My mother was not into outdoor sports. Dad would go off for a round of golf followed by a game of tennis. Mum would join other ladies after seeing to the tea items she would have brought from our bungalow. The ladies would either sit around and chat or arrange a card table where they played either Rummy or Canasta. I will mention here that my trips to the club would have been before I went to boarding school at age four and a half or otherwise when I was home for a school holiday.

Dad, who was not much of a drinker would often join a bridge table after the very lavish tea set out on long tables in the club. The card tables had an area of their own in Western Dooars Club, giving the players some quiet. As I narrate these memories the images come clear in my mind. Children playing outside as well inside on the wooden floors that acted as indoor badminton courts when there were players. Little ones would go to sleep in the cloakrooms, their ayahs in attendance and forming their own little social circle.

Mahjong was very popular too but it was more the ladies who played Mahjong. I would be fascinated by the sets that many homes owned. Some of the Mahjong sets were made of ivory! My mother owned a set and I can still see it in my minds eye. I did learn how to play and I would watch over my Mum’s shoulder as she would sit at a table of 4 again and pass a very pleasant few hours usually in the morning with another 3 ladies in our bungalow. Delicious morning tea, called elevenses in our world, would be served by our bearers. Thinking about these images now makes me appreciate what a privileged life I lead in my childhood.

Individual families would regularly have friends over to set up Bridge tables. A Bridge morning amongst the ladies was popular but there were many evenings whiled away to late hours where very serious Bridge would be played. Drinks and dinner were very much a part of these social get togethers. Children would play separately, have their dinner separately much earlier than their parents and at their own children’s table. We would often go to sleep at the host’s bungalow and have to be carried by our parents when it was time to go home.

Tea plantation life evolved from the time tea planters first started that lifestyle and I would credit these indoor games along with the contests and competitions as an occupation that contributed to the sanity and mental health of the tea population.

 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! 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 in 2018 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! 

This is the link to all the stories on this blog: https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/ Be sure to add it to your list of favourites! Happy reading!! Cheers to the spirit of Indian tea!

Back in the Day - Part XI

by Shipra Castledine

I am back after another gap! I guess it is because I am now in the timeframe of my last chapter, not living in the tea gardens but still very much in the tea industry and thus very much connected. Our holidays continued to be in the tea estates with one friend or another. The visits to friends in their bungalows was reciprocal as we would put them up when they needed to be in Siliguri. The close friends we would visit over and over again amongst others in previous years were Timmy Randhawa at Dam Dim TE and our trek to Dalsingpara TE to the Circars whenever possible.

We first started spending weekends at Timmy’s assistant’s bungalow when he was a bachelor. We would be comfortably put up in his large ground floor bedroom with a bathroom on that floor. Now, if any of you know Timmy you know that he was kind of OCD. Let me give you an example. Timmy would question if you did not clean out a tomato sauce bottle top before screwing it back on! So this leads to a funny incident which brings a laugh every time I recall it. The bathroom we used had a tub and a shower over the tub. There was a shower curtain that you drew around the bath so water did not slop all over the bathroom. We had all finished our baths and were outside enjoying the garden. Tubloo, my late husband, was the last to have his shower. I’m not sure why but I think Timmy came downstairs to check everything was alright for his guests and in that he visited the bathroom. As he came out to be with us his first question to Tubloo was ‘why didn’t you draw the shower curtain?’ I don’t think Tubloo deigned to reply. Timmy would have repeated the question to Tubloo a number of times in the course of the rest of the day ha ha.. I can walk into Timmy’s mind and envisage his horror at seeing water all over the bathroom floor!

And to this day we cannot forget Timmy’s cook Bahadur’s meringue custard! It would come to the table at the end of a wonderful dinner, in a big Pyrex baking dish, hot with wonderfully charred swirled blobs of meringue over a delicious baked caramel custard! I have never had anything that good since! And another thing I remember as a speciality at Timmy’s bungalow was a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast which was a creamy mound of scrambled eggs on a well browned fried slice of bread! You were served toast separately too.

In the memories I must take you all back to Ozzie and Chinny and our special connection with them. I am talking of the year Chinny got pregnant and decided to go ahead with the baby at the age of 45 I think it was. Chinny, you can correct me if I am wrong. Then started the visits to her doctor in Siliguri. It meant that they would need to stay overnight in Siliguri and we gladly had them stay with us. We shared Chinny’s term of pregnancy with her. The trials of being at her age and yet wonderfully bearing the pregnancy.

Came the final days. Chinny’s due date was nigh. They prepared to stay at our place till Chinny needed to go into hospital. The day / night Raoul was born Chinny visited her doctor in the day and he told Ozzie to go back to the garden as the baby was a long way in coming. So off Ozzie drove. Well, as babies do, Raoul decided to come into the world that night! Tubloo and myself took Chinny in to the hospital and waited, pacing the floor like expectant parents! It wasn’t too long later that Dr Mukherjee I think it was came out and announced that Chinny had had a healthy baby boy! It was SO exciting for us! And we felt so bad for Ozzie not being there. Ozzie came back the next day and I am sure he was the proudest Dad. We still have the beautiful painting that Chinny presented us.

Chinny's painting on the wall at the back

Ozzie and Chinny followed up with more visits to Siliguri for baby check ups. These connections are lifelong. I re-connected to Chinny on Facebook several months ago after a long long gap and the warmth and feelings were just the same. I know I can visit them in Chandigarh whenever it is possible and the hospitality will be the same as we had in Dalsingpara TE. So much life has happened in between and life changes. It is very comforting to find people like Ozzie and Chinny who are just the same.

My daughters have perhaps a stronger connection to tea as it is more recent and they were brought up in their formative years in Siliguri. They recall times spent in Siliguri with a great deal of fondness and homesickness. It was not only the beautiful surroundings that we lived in but the quality of life. And as Tubloo and I were both tea baba-s our children felt at home in the tea estates. When we recall memories from our years in Siliguri they remember the picnics and the food we all pooled in. One family outdoing the other. One spot in particular we would visit was a divine spot we named Carritt’s Beach. It was past the Coronation Bridge on Sevoke Road and on the road to Kalimpong and Sikkim. We would park our cars on the top and trek down to the Teesta river. It wasn’t an easy trek down but we all managed along with alcohol and food and rugs to sit on. It was incredibly beautiful. I can’t even tell you how many times we had a picnic there. Not to mention the moonlit picnics we would have to other easier access spots on the same road around the mountains. Hard to imagine these blessings we had, to take full advantage of mother nature in all ways. The bounty of her landscape, the fresh produce we enjoyed, the climate.

On Carritt's Beach

Another picnic spot my daughters remember is one that was closer to Siliguri. I can’t quite recall which direction it was but we would bump along kanchha paths to reach a big ‘jhora’, not quite a river but a strong flowing stream with plenty of rocks in it. On a hot day we would all just get in the water and sit on those rocks, have chilled beer and drinks and the food would be passed around in their containers. One of these times my daughters never forget and neither do I, is one where one of the ladies had brought delicious large jumbo prawns simply cooked in garlic and chilli. OMG, sitting in that cold water and eating those incredibly succulent, delicious hot huge prawns was heaven! These sorts of days went by in a wave of hilarity and enjoyment. The world has become so difficult now. I wish we could reinvent days like those.

One occasion we always remember is a day all the tea broker families who were living in Siliguri decided to get together for a men’s cook off. The menu was Khao Suey with all the garnishings. Naturally much alcohol was imbibed, cricket was set up on the lawns of the selected house we were having the day in. Pre lunch drink time went by, lunch time went by, tea time went by and the men weren’t finished with their cooking!! Loud men’s voices in the kitchen arguing over the progress (or non-progress) of the cooking emanated and the girls and children were getting famished. Ladies visited the kitchen from time to time to give their advice but were shoo-ed away! Guess what time we finally ate lunch!! 6pm ha ha Was it worth the wait??? Debatable but it was a memorable day! If you have eaten Khao Suey you know that it is a challenge not to dribble gravy! Rajiv Puri did not dribble! We were in awe of his fastidiousness!! Regardless of the time, we had double helpings and the dekchi of chicken Khao Suey was emptied!

If I were to enumerate all the wonderful outings and drives it would truly fill up a book. I am sure some of these recollections will resonate. More in my next….

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.' 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! 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

Back in the Day – Part X

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.

I think this is the driveway to the Manager’s Bungalow, Dalsingpara TE

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!

The road through the Dooars to Bhutan

Above, a typical stretch on the road to Thimpu

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.

Hansqua TE

 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

Back in the Day – Part IX

by Shipra Castledine

I was in boarding school at Loreto Convent, Darjeeling to 1966. At the end of the school year I was taken out and my mother and I moved to Kolkata and I was admitted to Loreto House. My parents made this decision as they wanted me to be with them and not go through my schooling and further education from boarding facilities. We initially moved in with my Sejokaku, Sejokaki and two cousins. I found a girl across the road who was at Loreto House so I started going with her to school and she became my best friend. We were quite inseparable and our families became really close. She lived in this huge house in a joint family. They were from a small princedom, what we called a zamindari family. Her extended family and friends became mine too and vice versa. My Dad would visit us as often as he could. Sometimes he would come on an official trip and go visit the Duncan Brothers head office in Dalhousie, Kolkata.

Kolkata General Post Office, Dalhousie Square. PC  http://double-dolphin.blogspot.com/search/label/%23DalhousiePhotoWalk

It was good to live with relatives. There was a lot of shared responsibilities amongst the adults and also a fair amount of sibling and cousin rivalry! After some time my parents felt it best to live independently. At this time we rented a small flat in Kolkata, near my Chotokaku (father’s younger brother) and Dad carried on in Baintgoorie TE. The change from a manager’s burra bungalow to a flat in South Kolkata that had Indian style toilets was quite radical! But my parents made nothing of it so I didn’t feel that there was anything to whinge about! Mum and I managed. The quality of part time domestic help was excellent in the South Kolkata localities. We had part time cooks who would, with practiced ease, produce yummy Bengali food! Quite a change from what we ate in Baintgoorie. As we were always foodies intrinsically, we appreciated the shuktos, charcharis, maacher jhols and other delicacies with as much enjoyment as we had the roasts and stews and other Western food we would have along with the curries and Indian food in tea. Life was affordable in those days in Kolkata. We could afford to eat good prawns, excellent quality river fish, mutton and chicken and wonderful vegetables galore.

Dad continued being Manager at Baintgoorie TE. He would visit Kolkata frequently and we would go out on the town. He was so good with children, in fact all of my mum and dad’s family members would do anything for us children. Anything that I have sight seen or experienced has been because of my Dad. And he would always make it exciting with street food and enjoyment. Later on he did the same for his grandchildren. And mum would join in everything. She always kept the home steady and comfortable and running smoothly, something I learned from her to practice in later years. No matter what turmoil I was facing I would ensure my home was running smoothly for members of my family so that there was some balance in our lives.

He was learning words and one of them was ‘ass’. So he was reading out ‘A – S – S – ass maane gaadha!

In that little, ordinary flat we became friendly with all our neighbours. And of course my Chotokaku and Chotokaki and their three little girls would be around all the time. The landlord lived upstairs. He had three children. The practice of Bengali children in families like theirs was to do their studies aloud. One evening when Dad was visiting we were hanging around in our drawing room and we could clearly hear the boy upstairs, around 11-12 years old, loudly studying English. He was learning words and one of them was ‘ass’. So he was reading out ‘A – S – S – ass maane gaadha (meaning ass in Bengali) and Dad says ‘gaadha maane aami (ass meaning me)” and we cracked up!!

My transition to a day school from boarding was quite big. But once again, as my parents made no fuss and treated everything as normal, I made the change reasonably easily. However I was an A grade student in Loreto Convent, Darjeeling but got a shock in my first examinations in Loreto House, Kolkata when I dropped to below the middle of the class in ranking! The competition was much more fierce in the city! And that became the story of my academics from there on! I did improve but never to get to the top of the class!

Soon after I started attending Loreto House we celebrated an event that had students representing as many Loreto branches throughout India. I was selected to represent Loreto Convent, Darjeeling as I had all the uniforms. So there I was in the smart winter uniform of warm long sleeve blouse, warm cotswool, pleated grey skirt, red and white striped tie, a smart matching grey blazer, grey warm stockings and black buckle shoes. When I arrived in school dressed in the uniform all the city Loreto girls crowded around me and oohed and aahed over such a beautiful, smart uniform! I can still remember that. And they commented on my pink face as I had the rosy cheeks from the cold climes of Darjeeling which I lost over the next few weeks of living in Kolkata.

When we were still living with my Sejokaku’s family and I had got very close to my best friend and her brothers we decided to all visit Baintgoorie for our school holidays. As we started arranging the holiday more young people got added on and ultimately it became my friend and her two younger brothers, my two cousins who I was living with and another cousin brother on my mother’s side. My mum was the chaperone for all of us children aged between 8 and 13. There was much hilarity and joyfulness on the flight from Dum Dum Airport to Bagdogra Airport. My Dad was there to meet us with 3 cars / jeeps and we made the journey to Baintgoorie TE. The young people were keenly looking around at a very different landscape to the city.

With four boys in the mix there was never total peace and tranquillity!

The drive straight away took us past tea gardens to the left of Bagdogra Airport. Then came the drive down Sevoke Road past Bagdogra township, so simple in its one street with shops on either side. Past North Bengal University on the left and on down to Siliguri. We did not get into Siliguri town but drove down the bypass, past a well known Buddhist monastery at Salugara township where the Dalai Lama visited frequently and was known to have been visited by celebrities such as Richard Gere and Steve Siegal. Then on to Sevoke where there is a big army cantonment. By this time the children were all quiet and taking in the beautiful surroundings. I still get homesick remembering that drive through forest on either side of the road, army quarters nestled between then the turn on to the range of hills with the Teesta River below that would take you either to the Dooars or up to Kalimpong or Sikkim. The drive to Baintgoorie TE took approximately 2 hrs. All the way we breathed clean, clear air, saw nothing but greenery, rice paddy fields, little towns like Oodlabari and the tea estates which were on either side of the road once we were past the hill range.

With four boys in the mix there was never total peace and tranquillity so inspite of their interest in the landscape there was still leg pulling and giddyacks happening in the cars! Anyway we finally got to Baintgoorie TE. The drive through the gates of the burra bungalow which were drawn open by two maalis was enough to impress the whole lot of us in the cars. Up a gravel driveway to this fabulous massive bungalow. As we all tumbled out of the vehicles Dad allocated our rooms to us. 3 of the older boys were assigned to a very large bedroom downstairs. Dad had put together 3 large single beds, more than enough room for all of them. The guest bedroom was given to my Sejokaku’s children and my bestie and I were given my bedroom. Thus started the most memorable, enjoyable holiday for all of us children.

We had a puppy at the time. His name was Chicko. That little puppy gave the boys a real run for their money as he would tear around the substantial gardens and through the bungalow, upstairs and downstairs with the boys racing after him! Taking tumbles, leaping over things and generally providing much entertainment for everyone else! Mum laid on meals by the gallons, delicious, comforting food that no-one fussed about. The physical activity, the unpolluted environment and the bountiful joyousness had appetites at their best and moreover mum was a good disciplinarian. She would be empathetic to a child’s complaints but firm and fair in her dealing of it. As a result though there were incidents of rivalry and taunting between the many children that we were, on the whole the holiday of two weeks went pretty smoothly. Many outings were had. Picnics, trips to the game forests, into Siliguri for a meal at a restaurant and of course the club days at Western Dooars Club.

 

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.' 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!  
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

Back in the Day – VIII

by Shipra Castledine
Author's Foreword: 'The days gone by... to me had a better quality of life.There was so much strength of character in our previous generations. And a simpler, more meaningful lifestyle. Anyway, we live with what we have and make the best of it :)...As long as saying something like that does not offend young people if they are reading the blog!'

Whilst my family was in tea India and China fought a short war. This was for a month between October and November 1962. The Dooars and all neighbouring areas are close to the Tibet-China border and are heavily populated with the defence forces of army and air force. This war naturally directly impacted the tea plantations. I remember that we were in boarding school in Loreto Convent, Darjeeling, and one of the days after the war broke out all of us children who were from the Dooars tea estates were pulled out of school and evacuated to Kolkata.

I was little, only seven years old at the time. Only mothers and children were evacuated and the men held the fort. We were taken to Bagdogra Airport which is an airforce airport in the Jalpaiguri* District of North Bengal also used by commercial airlines. There was this monstrous defence cargo plane sitting on the runway. We were directed into it to find that it was a double decker accommodation inside. It quickly filled up with all the evacuees. The seats were like single hammocks slung along the sides of the plane. It was all an adventure as we children did not understand the seriousness of why we were doing this. The plane flew to Dumdum Airport in Kolkata in a fairly slow, noisy flight. You could hear the drone of the engine and the propellers.

When we arrived at Dumdum we were taken to the jute plantations on the outskirts of Kolkata. The accommodation there was very comfortable and it was all very similar to the tea estates. I think we stayed there for the month that the war was on and then went back to our homes in tea as our school was closed for the three month long winter holidays.

The transport plane we travelled in in 1962 was very much like this one

We heard stories from our fathers about their experiences of the war as the fighting was very close.
My Dad related this incident of either himself or of someone we know ( I can’t remember who it was) who had driven to Siliguri about an hour and a half away from some of the Dooars tea estates and whoever it was had to drive further towards Bagdogra. After finishing up with whatever he had to do, he was driving back to go home to the gardens and his location was still in Bagdogra town. A Chinese fighter jet screamed over Bagdogra Airport and bombed the Indian air force fighter jets on the runway. Thankfully there were no deaths from that bombing, but it was drama and excitement for everyone around! That was a story that we remembered! Right through the month of the war all the Dooars and Terai tea areas watched air skirmishes between the Chinese air force and the Indian. But this time it was a bit closer for comfort than just watching them in the sky.

What Dad did tell me of firsthand experiences was him doing his normal rounds and living his normal life and hearing the fighter jets in the sky and he would look up to see either the Chinese chasing the Indian jets or vice versa!

Bagdogra Airport in later years - the building was much smaller and basic in 1962

There was the Indo-Pakistan war in 1965 that affected us again. Though the Pakistan border was not as close as the Chinese border, we felt the tensions in defence with our areas having such a strong presence of the army and air force. Generals and Colonels in the army were good friends with the tea planters as were senior air force officers and they would discuss as much as they were permitted to with their tea planter friends. This brought the machinations of war into our drawing rooms. And it also brought in the politics of both countries’ governments.

Radios would be on a lot to listen to the latest news. There was no TV for many years yet. I remember the sometimes volatile discussions held between my parents and came to appreciate much later on in life what good friends they were and how that quality impacts a relationship. Their marriage was built on a good friendship that had started when they worked together in All India Radio.

Mum was lucky in how she was able to settle down and enjoy tea life almost from the get go. It is a lifestyle so different from any other in India. Her father had been a senior tax officer for the British government and he was provided a house and had to maintain a lifestyle that kept him hobnobbing with the top echelons of the Brits and Indians. My grandmother was well educated, she was one of the first Indian girls to study in Loreto Convent, Darjeeling. Her English and also the English spoken by my Dad’s father was the Queen’s English. They had perfect diction and sounded very polished. I never heard a swear word growing up!! My parents too spoke that aristocratic English!

Well, my grandmother had two kitchens in her days as the tax officer’s wife. There was the lunch time Indian kitchen where she would be in her sari worn ‘desi’ style, sitting on the floor and cutting vegetables on a ‘bonti’ and helping cook mostly a Bengali lunch. She was a renowned cook in her day.

In the evening she would have changed into a stylish sari, wrapped in the modern style, her hair done up, crimped on both sides of the hair part and a neat bun at the back. Two jewelled hair slides would be in her hair neatly holding the crimps in place. I have one of those jewels on a locket today. It is a delicately made gold swallow embedded with rubies and pearls. This second kitchen would have ‘mugh’ cooks who were renowned for their cooking and they would be cooking up the most delicious bakes and roasts and puddings and cakes and all things European. The dinner table would be laid formally and it was the setting was the stuff of stories. And when my Didima entertained sometimes it would be garden parties with several small tables set in their garden and all of high society fluttering about and enjoying her excellent hostessing.

So to come down to why I digressed. This lifestyle in my mother’s younger days lent itself to merging into tea life as it was in those days, quite easily.

Bengali Bonti

A bonti is a long curved blade that cuts on a platform held down by foot. Both hands are used to hold whatever is being cut and move it against the blade. The sharper side faces the user. The method gives excellent control over the cutting process and can be used to cut anything from tiny shrimp to large pumpkins. The bonti’s uniqueness comes from the posture required to use it: one must either squat on one’s haunches or sit on the floor with one knee raised while the corresponding foot presses down on the base. As in other “floor-oriented” cultures, such as Japan, the people of Bengal were accustomed to squatting or sitting on the floor for indefinite periods of time.

This is very much what my Didima would have looked like in her evening formal sari-wear. The addition would have been the two jewelled hair slides in the crimps in the hair.

Like our forest department friends who gave us the opportunity to visit and enjoy every forest bungalow in the extended area of where we lived our army and air force friends likewise took us to restricted areas that only the defence personnel were permitted to enter. One of these border areas was at the India China border - the Nathu La pass, 16000ft above sea level. I am pretty sure I was not taken on the trip when my parents and Mr and Mrs Palit went to Nathu La. Kakoli, their daughter, was not taken either.

I can remember photographs of all of them looking quite cold and standing right on the border. My mum was wearing one of my Dad’s warm trousers and Mrs Palit was wearing one of Mr Palit’s trousers!! It was so cold up there! The army would be hovering constantly as they kept a vigilant eye on civilians coping with the altitude. The minute anyone showed symptoms of altitude sickness, they would feed the person pistachios and raisins and very sweet hot tea and if the person did not feel better they would immediately transport them down to a safe altitude which was Gangtok, the capital town of Sikkim.

Much later when I returned to live in Siliguri as a married lady with children we all made a trip up to Nathu La. I suffered some bits of altitude sickness but I did not need to be transported back down to Gangtok. All those who were feeling fine drove up to the border and watched the Chinese soldiers going about their business guarding their post. In fact they watched a mail exchange between the Chinese and Indian soldiers whilst they were there. The most beautiful sight we experienced up there was the Changu** Lake/. The Crown Prince of Sikkim and his wife had drowned in this lake. They were driving across it when it was frozen, but the ice broke and they crashed through. We saw the lake completely frozen over, and yet a month before that, my then husband the late KK Roy had made a trip up and we had photos of the lake, the deepest blue in colour in the midst of snow covered mountains. I will have to keep these photos pending as I cannot access them easily.

Changu Lake

Some of my father’s closest friends in his tea days were army officers. I particularly remember Col Nathu Singh who was posted to Mal Bazaar for some years and then he moved to the cantonment at Sevoke outside Siliguri. When he was at Mal we saw him very frequently as he would come over to our bungalow for meals or visit Dad whilst he was on his rounds. He and his officers would join us on club days at the Western Dooars Club and if I remember correctly there was a separate bar for defence personnel.

In turn we were invited to their army club. It was a wonderful association. This association allowed civilians to get membership later in the city army clubs. Like Dad got his membership at Fort William army club in Calcutta when he moved there. I also remember General Prem Singh though not as clearly as Col Nathu Singh. General Prem Singh was the one who brought in his division to patrol through the tea estate when Dad was having labour trouble. So ends this chapter with some of the many facets of tea life. To be continued...

* Bagdogra is (and has been for some years ) now in Darjeeling District
** Changu Lake is also called Tshongo or Tsomgo Lake
Photographs sourced by the author from the internet 

 

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.'

Read all Shipra's stories here:   https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Shipra%20Castledine 

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
 

Back in the Day - VII

by Shipra Castledine

Relatives visiting us in tea experienced a few days or a few weeks of a pampered, colourful time. Over the years that my father was in tea all our family on both sides visited. Now when they read instalments of my story they enjoy it as they relate to it. Like the new city people who came to live and work in tea, our relatives too got familiar with the very tea specific terminology. Like the paniwala, the bawarchi, the malibari. Being woken up in the morning with a ‘chota hazri’.

My Jethu and Jethima with my cousins, my Didi and Mejdi visited us one time at Baintgoorie TE. Jethu was a very humorous man and his relation of incidents was hilarious. He talked of the travails of the spring beds in our bungalows and on top of that, the ‘dunlopillo’ mattresses. It was true that these were really quite uncomfortable as they sagged when you lay on them. But the hilarious bit was Jethu describing that when he turned over on one side - and it happened to be the side to get off the bed - the mattress would flip up behind him and he would be on the floor!!! Not really a laughing matter, given that he could have been injured, but as he wasn’t it became a tale of great hilarity in the family!

Let me bring in the practicality of mosquito nets that we had to have hung around all beds if you didn’t want to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. The master bedroom was very grand in the Baintgoorie burra bungalow. You could probably fit in a current small sized flat into that bedroom! There were twin massive sized single beds joined, sprung with spring! But not dunlopillo mattresses! Over the beds was a ceiling fan (DC – direct current not AC – alternate current as electricity changed to in modern times). Above the ceiling fan was a large iron ring suspended from the ceiling. The ceiling was very high, I could say approximately 20 feet. On to this iron ring was hooked the mosquito net which then draped down all the way to the floor and stayed there as it was weighted down with stones sewn into the bottom of the net. One end folded over another at appropriate junctures of the net so one could just move the net aside to get out. 

This gives you an idea but it was much grander in the Baintgoorie master bedroom

My bed in comparison had posts and rods around the bed and the mosquito net was tied on to the rods. 

My bed would have looked more like this but the net would be all the way around and tucked under the mattress so you pulled it out and lifted it to get out of bed.

And then there was the sound of big black beetles hitting and bouncing off the walls of the bedroom! Jethu would recreate the sound of these beetles slowly buzzing around the room then hitting the weatherboard walls, so realistically that we would be in splits! Between mum and Jethu we were almost all the time in peals of laughter.

We enjoyed showing our relatives the beautiful parts of the place that we lived in. Picnics on riverbanks with clear water rushing along, white pebbled banks where we put out rugs and laid out a delicious spread. Sometimes it would be a picnic near a ‘jhora’ (a stream) with shady trees around, the water gurgling and as we dipped our feet in the water small fish tickled us as they went about their business. The tea estates were in lush surroundings of rivers, mountains and forests. Trips to forest ranges run by the West Bengal Forest Department were made when we had visitors. In those days you didn’t have to get lucky to see a Bengal tiger, leopards, plenty of deer and elephants. You would see the wildlife. The safari was usually carried out on elephant back. We would have lunch in their guest houses (dak bungalows as they were called) and it was normally a standard lunch of thick, rough rice, a thin daal and aloo bhaja then a fiery chicken curry cooked with free range chickens butchered on the day. It was sheer heaven. These chicken curries have gained fame in Indian recipes as Dak Bungalow Chicken Curry.

Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary, North Bengal

Jaldapara forest bungalow

Gorumara Forest was very close to our tea estates. We would go there often with or without visitors. The Mahindra jeep was the vehicle for rough terrain as was the Land Rover. Both these adequately traversed jhoras and mini rivers, rough forest roads and allowed us to regularly experience the forests and see wildlife.  Other than the government managed forestry there was plenty of natural forest around us to take drives to and spend time in them. There were times when some well meaning local would tell us to go away as a herd of elephants had been sighted and could meander along where we were. But the ultimate danger was from a rogue elephant who would have been kicked out of its herd for one reason or another. These rogue elephants were frustrated, often sick and angry. There have been deaths amongst the planters who have gone on shikar to kill one of these. 

Old Land Rover

 One of the best things I remember was driving out of Baintgoorie TE and coming to the cattle trap gate out of the estate and seeing the vista of the mountains in front. Sometimes if we were lucky we could see the snow ranges which is the Himalayas. I must talk about those cattle traps across the road in various parts of the estate. As a child I was mortally afraid of having to cross them. Luckily some of them had a little pedestrian gate on the side so we could walk through. But when there was no option but to step on the cattle trap........it took me 10 times the time it should have as I gingerly put one foot over two bars, stopped, almost shaking, then the other foot would come forward! And then there were the children who would literally run over them! Not fair! Growing up in a tea garden was the perfect playground for a child. Your imagination could run wild, you could be adventurous and you hardly spent time indoors.  

A catte trap

As there was no other means of entertainment in those days, everyone in the tea estates became pretty proficient with entertaining in their bungalows. The adults’ social life was a round of dinners at various bungalows some as far as a two hour drive, probably 60-70 miles away. Children weren’t always a part of these dinner parties. A reliable ayah would stay the night over to babysit us children. And if we were taken we usually went to bed at a good hour at our host’s bungalow with other children whilst the adults enjoyed a large part of the night away. We would be picked up sleeping when it was time to go home.

I spent only some years growing up in tea so I wasn’t a part of the adult activities till much later when I married and we were a part of tea life again. I do remember the ‘club do’s which us children would be a part of. On special occasions like Christmas parties the club that was in our district, Western Dooars Club for us, would usually hire a live band from Shillong particularly for the New Year’s Eve ‘do’ as there were good musicians there and there would be a rollicking show on, with dancing and fun. We would be allowed there for a while but got sent home with the ayah in reasonable time if it was safe for us to be sent home. By safe I mean how far we’d have to go to our tea garden travelling with the driver and ayah.

A lot of ladies and gents in tea were very good dancers. The jive and the cha cha cha were very in and rock and roll and latin American music was played in our homes whilst the good dancers tried to teach the amateurs!  And as I have mentioned in an earlier instalment, the food was something that should have been documented and photographed, it was of such high standard. All the memsaabs outdid themselves in stoking their bawarchis to shine and be better than the others in the district! For those of us who were natural born foodies the groaning tables of food were the highlights of our existence! And there was no hope ever again that we would get off that food wagon!!

On that hungry note Part VII comes to an end!

Editor's Note: 
Jethu and Jethima: uncle and aunt, specifically, father's older brother and his wife
Didi, Di : An older sister (or cousin)
Mejdi : literally, 'middle di', so neither the youngest nor the oldest
Aloo Bhaja : crisp potato fritters, a favourite in Bengal
(All pix in this post sourced from the internet by Shipra )

 

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.' Read more stories by Shipra here: https://teastorytellers.blogspot.com/search/label/Shipra%20Castledine

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