Following being handed over the reins of Limbuguri and with the responsibility of the factory having been passed on to a new assistant who had been transferred there from another estate, an extended daily drive for inspection of specific areas of that large 980 hectare was de regeuir. Driven by a yearning to get a firm grip on ‘my’ property as quickly as possible and to prove my worth to Mrigen who had reposed such faith in one who was of a relatively young age, heading out well before the crack of dawn, I took it upon myself to visit every single remote and tucked away corners of the estate.
Dotted around the periphery of the estate were several Assamese bastis, many of which I’d have to traverse through to get from one of the estate fields to the other. Along the way, wherever I’d see a couple of the village folk lounging around, I’d stop to have a chat with them before driving on. In one of these casual conversations, one of the villagers asked me whether I’d met the ‘Boga Sahib’ (literally ‘White Boss’) who lived in one of the bastis. I most certainly had not. In fact, had never heard anything of this nature. Intrigued I started asking around whether anyone on the estate knew of any such person and finally learnt that there indeed was an elderly white man who yonks before had been a manager on this very estate, had married one of the estate labour girls and had, on his retirement, built himself a house in one of the bastis where he currently lived.
It was my senior friend Ron (the lynchpin of our Brahmaputra forays) who came up with the answer to the mystery of the ‘Boga Sahib in the basti’. Told me that he was aware that a Jimmy Stuart, better known as Stu, on his retirement from Warrens way back in the past, had decided to not return to the UK and had settled down in a basti close to Limbuguri which was his last billet pre-retirement. Having been handed over this straw to clutch on to, I dug deeper and was finally pointed in the direction of the basti where the ‘Boga Sahib’ lived.
A couple of days later, being in the vicinity of the basti Stu was supposed to be a resident of, I drove to the house of the ‘Gaon Burra’ (village elder/chieftain) who after insisting I have a cup of tea with him, walked me across to what was the only brick & mortar (only partial I may add) building in the basti, knocked on the door before walking off leaving me standing in the veranda. From behind the closed door, I could hear some shuffling sounds followed by the rattling of a chain before the door opened to reveal an elderly and stooping, bald headed white man confronting me with a quizzical and surprised look on his deeply wrinkled face.
Regardless of my having been expecting to see a ‘Boga Sahib’ I had to literally restrain myself from blurting out the only words which at that precise point popped up in my head “Dr Livingstone I presume”?
Having explained to him who I was, the gentleman pulled up two rickety chairs on to the veranda. The moment we were both seated, his first utterance of “You’re the first English speaking person from outside the basti, come to see me in almost ten years” were followed by a barrage of short staccato sentences with words literally falling over themselves, almost as though yearning be heard. What I was witness to was a catharsis of pent-up emotions, almost like a pan of milk which had been simmering for ages (in his case – years) and was now on the boil and frothing over.
What I learnt about Stu in that very first meeting was that his father had been an engineer employed in the railways and that he, Stu, had been born in Jabalpur and when five years of age, had been sent back to England for his education. On completion of his schooling and wanting to get back to India, he immediately joined the then James Warren & Co and was posted to Upper Assam. During his tenure of 38 years, he had been to England once every three years on furlough and had, on the second leave got married. His wife who had never left the shores of England ahead of tying the knot being unacclimatised to the heat and humidity of Assam had quickly concluded that this was not the life for her and, a short and stormy three years later, headed back to England to be never heard from again.
On reaching the age of 57 Stu hung up his boots and returned to England where he had no family nor any friends, stayed there for all of four months before, in his words “feeling like a fish out of water” decided to head back to Upper Assam, the only place he had ever known as home. With no desire to be alone and lonely for the remaining years of his life, having bought a small plot of land in the basti abutting the estate he had last served on and building himself a rudimentary thatch house, started living with the lady who for many years had been the maid in his bungalow, whom he finally married. His return from his futile visit to England was all of 21 years to the day that I met him. All this was shared to me within an hour of my having shaken hands with the gentlemen.
Having to get back to my routine, while he was most reluctant to see me go, I finally managed to pry myself away from him. But with a promise that I would visit him again as soon as I possibly could.
Following that first meeting, having been hit hard by the sheer loneliness of the gentleman and having sensed his desperation for contact with a person he could relate to, I made it a point to drop in on Stu at least once a week. Every time I came away from his place, with his loneliness getting through to me, it was always with a sense of sadness. A gloomy feeling which I’d unburden myself of by sharing it with Kitty. Almost a year after my first meeting with him Kitty asked me whether I’d like to invite the gentleman over to the bungalow some evening for a meal. An excellent suggestion which I acted upon the next time I dropped in to meet Stu.
Overwhelmed by his profuse thanks for the invitation, that evening I sent the driver across to pick up the gentlemen and fetch him to the bungalow. The Stu who walked in was not the dishevelled Stu I had been meeting in the basti. All spruced up and wearing a tie, “I haven’t worn one in 20 years” he said. His exuberance was so palpable that no child with a new toy could have been more excited. Ahead of sitting down for dinner, the perfect gentleman thoroughly enjoyed his two small drinks of rum and water. Our bawarchi (cook) have prepared a roast chicken, one could actually sense Stu’s excitement from simply handling a knife and fork. The evening over, he left us overwhelmed with his profuse thank you’ s and repeated handshakes.
Following that first dinner meet, we made it a point to have him home at least once a month. Every single time he was driven into the bungalow, it was always this elderly gentleman bubbling over with excitement and happiness like a small child.
And then three years later 1990, which is when I resigned from my planting job to relocate to Dubai. I’ll never forget the day that I broke the news to Stu. That he was totally distraught would be an understatement. It was as though some great tragedy had befallen him. His words still ring in my ears “You were my last link to what USED to be my world.”
A couple of days before we were to leave Limbuguri, I received a somewhat formal
handwritten note from Stu that he would like to meet us one last time and that could I please send my vehicle to pick him up. That evening he arrived holding a small, gift-wrapped shoe box which he handed over to Kitty insisting that she open it in his presence. In the box were a couple of Wedgewood quarter plates, a few of them somewhat chipped. “These” he said “Are all that I have left from the set I had brought back from England when I first came to Assam. I want you to have these as a reminder of the kindness you have shown towards this old man.”
And then he did what for him was probably the unthinkable, he came across and hugged me, walked across to kiss Kitty on both cheeks and then quickly departed before we could see the tears streaming his cheeks.
Not having been able to venture across the 
and how! While my other friends, members of our ‘gypsy caravan’ had to make do with canvas bulking sheets borrowed from the factory sorting room, thanks to Sudeep Kumar, a friend and a colleague who’s Dad was in the army, I had the advantage of an army surplus parachute which was always put to some rather imaginative and innovative good use.
With the road surface being the only flat and level area we’d find on those steep slopes, the centre of the road was the optimum camping site. By early evening we’d all be keeping our eyes peeled for a water spring, regardless of the spring being just a trickle . The moment we’d spot one, we’d park the four Gypsies in a cluster leaving just enough space on the side so that in the unlikely event of any vehicle heading down or uphill, our campsite would not be disturbed. The first task, always, was to tap that sparse water source by arranging some large leaves or a split bamboo to make a spout under which we’d place a pan making sure that not a drop of the precious liquid was wasted. The immediate task having been attended to, we’d get on with arranging ourselves into a sort gypsy camp configuration, using the parachute and the canvas bulking sheets as roofing material. While the men would be busy taking care of the top, the ladies would get busy sweeping the road clean so that when we got into our respective sleeping bags, we would not find ourselves being poked in all sorts of awkward places with stones and other muck. It was only after all the chores had been done that we’d settle down to knock back a couple before passing out for the night.
organised, a tribal 
When we moved in, one would have safely assumed that the bungalow was likely being held together with a liberal usage of bubble gum, staples and cello tape. Being in an obviously precarious condition and liable to come tumbling down sometime in the not too distant future, it was assigned to me as an interim accommodation while the other assistants bungalow on the estate, which was unoccupied was under renovation.
bungalow, the fallout of decades of quick fix-it repair jobs, giving the appearance of being a massive patch work quilt, it was also apparent that while doing the many patch-up jobs over many years, special attention had been paid to the floors of the master bedroom and bathroom which were both somewhat akin to works of modern art. Besides the visual delight, walking across the floor was always a unique entertaining experience with each step being accompanied by a range of musical sound effects, creaks and groans.
While I’d refuse to testify to the veracity of this under oath, the story going the rounds was that this particular refurbishment had been necessitated during the tenure of Sukhi Dhillon (by then a senior manager of Warrens posted on Deamolliee Estate) while he was the mistry sahib on Rajah Ali. Sukhi, a rather prosperous looking gentleman built along generously rotund lines, had been the factory assistant on Rajah Ali very many moons before my time. The story, being a part of Warrens lore which was gleefully repeated and narrated was that one fine morning the wooden floorboards on which the thunder box rested had thrown up their hands in having to support the burden and had given way while Sukhi was comfortably seated on his throne. The gentleman, besides whatever else he may have been busy doing at that particular point of time, who had just a second before been reading his newspaper in the privacy of his loo, had found his quiet solitude rudely interrupted by suddenly finding himself still seated on the thunder box with his newspaper in both hands. The only difference being that now he was one floor down, on terra firma.
not relax would simply end up as another argument with her insisting that what was keeping her awake all night long was an eerie repeated thud which she could hear all night long and that could I not understand that our resident sceptre was simply waiting for her to let her guard down, so that he/she/it could pluck Madhav off her lap and spirit him away to inflict all sorts of unbelievable horrors on our child. On being prompted by his mother to “Tell Dada what happened at night” Madhav would parrot-like repeat her story, though very often with a slight smile. Needless to say that I simply dismissed the whole thing as unadulterated bullshit. The standard fallout of my disbelief being an ensuing argument. Squabbles which had my wife becoming more and more hysterical with each passing day so that, wanting to escape the daily tirade, I found myself spending most of my waking hours in the peace of my factory.
having locked the bedroom door from outside while heading out at midnight, around two O’clock I realized that I had forgotten to bring along the keys to my office desk. Having been blessed with a brain which was mathematically challenged and needing my calculator, I marched back to the bungalow to fetch my keys. On opening the bedroom door, very much in line with what I had expected, I found mother and son in the middle of the bed with Madhav pinned down on his mums lap, being rocked back and forth. By now fed up to my ears with the constant whining all I wanted to know was why, while she was welcome to stay up all night imagining all sorts of ghouls to be creeping in from each one of the crevices in the floorboards, she was refusing to allow Madhav to get a proper night’s sleep. The answer was “If you think I’ve gone mad and have been lying to you, just keep quiet for a bit and you’ll also hear the ghost.” Not wanting to get into another argument I sat down on the edge of the bed. All three of us quiet and waiting in anticipation.
sleepless nights for Madhav till such time as we gratefully moved to the plinth bungalow which, thankfully, being a relatively newer construction, had not yet had the pleasure of becoming possessed!
The upshot being that I ended up literally tossing the factory keys across to the boss with a “Since you can manage the temperatures better than I’m able to, you do it! I quit.” Storming up to the factory office I had my startled excise babu type out a terse one line resignation letter which was handed over to the office boy to find ‘Bara Sahib’ wherever he may be and to make sure that he handed that envelope over to Bahadur.
Walking into that office the first person I encountered was an extremely busy looking gentleman who was furiously hammering away at a typewriter. Having grabbed his attention with a couple of discreet coughs, I told him that I wanted to meet the boss, whoever that may be. And so found myself being ushered into the office of Mrigendra Jalan, the M.D. A short discussion with Mrigen ended up with me being offered not just a job but also a remuneration package which literally blew me away. After we had shaken hands on the generous offer, I was asked whether I would be willing to take on the job of managing the Limbuguri factory. An offer prefaced with me also being made aware upfront that Limbuguri was infamously well known in tea circles to be having probably the most undisciplined and militant labour force in the whole of Upper Assam. A statement which was almost like a red flag to a bull! Show me one impetuous youngster who wouldn’t accept a challenge?
swinging on the monorail, moving from the troughs to the rolling room. The next three days were a repeat of the first with me having to swallow my pride and cool my heels in the factory office from midnight to close to day break. By day four my patience had worn thin so that, having had enough of this utter nonsense, at 11 pm I got hold of the line chowkidar (his being the job of herding the workers into the factory, which he had simply not been doing) had him accompany me in the jeep and drove across to the labour lines. The factory workers houses being pointed out to me, I barged into one house at a time, physically dragging the factory workers out of their beds and into the jeep so as to get the factory running, as it should have been doing, by midnight. A fortnight of these nightly kid-napping escapades in the labour lines had the desired effect with the workers starting to trickle into the factory gate closer to midnight with each passing day. I would be lying if I was to say that I was not chuffed with myself for having managed this first step towards getting this disorderly factory back on track.
I had managed to get things going with the leaf being fed into the rolling tables a little past midnight. At 0230 hours the fermenting room supervisor walks into my office to tell me while they’d moved the first batch of leaf to the firing room, they were unable to feed the dryers because the dryers had not been fired up. 
Rushing across to the firing room I found the stoker curled up besides the gas stove, dead to the world. A good shake-up by the collar got the guy up to his unsteady feet. Bleary eyed he gave me what to him was probably the smartest military salute he had ever executed and then sheepishly turns the knob on for the gas flow. That done he starts patting his various pockets, doesn’t find what he is looking for and asks me whether I have a match box. My glare reminding him that I was a non smoker, he scoots off to get a match box from some other worker, staggers back to the dryer where he fumbles around dropping matchsticks all over the floor before managing to get a lit matchstick to the cotton wad coiled at the end of the rod which was used for lighting the stove. He then sticks the flaming rod into the gas furnace.
The moment this hapless fellow stuck the rod into the furnace, there was a huge ‘whoosh’ sound as the back flow blow-out flame hit him with massive force. Parked as I was alongside the dryer and sheltered from that blast, I saw the skin of the stokers unprotected lower legs immediately charring and turning jet black followed by his loud scream. Alongside me, the huge cast iron side plate of the dryer bulged out and then collapsed inwards with a very loud crack. The enormous rush of air which followed the explosion created a cloud which, while it appeared to be smoke, was in fact caused by decades of accumulation of tea dust on the rafters and eaves having got dislodged. By the time I recovered my senses, all I could see through all the ‘smoke’ was workers running around helter-skelter like headless chicken screaming ‘Fire! Fire!!’ at the top of their lungs.
smoke and general pandemonium had me too convinced that Limbuguri factory was burning down, in actual fact the only fire was the smouldering wad of cotton wool at the end of the stokers iron rod.
I ran to the centre of the factory, grabbed hold of the first of the terror stricken headless chicken who was running past me and over all the noise shouted at him to run out and bring back a fire extinguisher from the extinguisher bank which was at the factory main entrance. That done, I ran back to attend to the stoker who was writhing in pain. In the meantime back comes the worker whom I had despatched to get the fire fighting equipment, armed with one fire extinguisher. And then to my utter astonishment, the bloke lifts the cylinder up above his head and taking aim with one eye closed, heaves the extinguisher towards the fire, which flies through the air to bounce off the ONLY flame visible – that sad looking just about aflame cotton wad! An apology of a conflagration.
Be that as it may, having been paid for and with me now as the proud owner of this somewhat battered jalopy, plans were made to drive it back to 
addition to the spare in the boot, a jerry can for an emergency supply of petrol and a tow rope for a just in case…..!! The stupidity (the understanding of this statement will come up later in this yarn) was that the last item in that list of precautionary buys which, being VERY thick and giving the impression of being a very strong tow rope, was made not of the usual material of which such ropes are made, but of twisted NYLON fibre.
With the back seat of the Ambassador piled up with all sorts of bric-a-brac including plenty of tins of baked beans and pork luncheon meat, we were waved off by my sisters family, each one of whom had the look on their respective faces which seemed to suggest that we were heading out to face a firing squad! Be that as it may, Kitty and I with our one and a half year old Madhav lodged between the two of us, set off on our odyssey! Our first night halt destination, approximately 550Kms away, being Lucknow.
With the wipers on this aged vehicle, while clearly inadequate to the task, putting up a brave fight to give me a clear view of the road ahead, I had to peer through the windscreen with my neck craned forward to its limit and my eyes pinched into tiny slits, to be able to see anything on the road ahead. The further we got from Delhi, the more intense became the downpour. While it was apparent that there would be no let-up, with there being no option, we gritted our teeth and continued on our way at just marginally more than a sprinting snail’s pace.
just stay put and wait for the flood water to recede which they knew from many years of experience, would naturally happen in a couple of days. Having neither the patience, nor the time and nor the inclination to join the ever growing queue of vehicles, I was advised that I COULD get to Lucknow by going back about 10/15Kms and branching off on to the northern route which skirted the Nepalese border. The suggestion included a forewarning that the course suggested was not really advisable since there were long stretches of that route which were known to be dacoit infested areas and were accepted as being dangerous.
I tried to fire the engine a couple of times but there was not even so much as a stutter from under the bonnet. Hopping out from behind the steering wheel I lifted up the bonnet to apply my limited knowledge and to fiddle around with that extremely basic engine as best I could. Opened and cleaned out the distributor cap, checked all the leads to the spark plugs, made sure that the battery terminals were well connected….. the usual stuff. All to no avail.
Which he did! From where I was, peering through the windscreen, I saw this rope stretch taut before snapping in the middle, with my end of it whipping back to whack the roof of my car which had not moved forward even an inch. The trucker having stopped, with my scouting days coming to my aid, he and I tied a reef knot to join the two ends of the rope together and then gave another shot to be towed, but the moment the truck moved ahead a couple of feet- SNAP! The driver walked up to me and very apologetically told me that he couldn’t help any further and since this area was simply not safe, he would have to leave us to our fate and then off he went after untying his end of that useless rope and handing it back to me.
I explained to him that my car had died down on me and that we needed a tow to Pilibhit but that no one would stop to help us. In an almost fatherly manner, having first been admonished by him for being stupid enough to be driving along this particular road, this gentleman simply walked into the middle of the road and parked himself there. With both arms stretched out fully to their considerable length, he refused to step aside to let the first truck which came by heading towards Pilibhit, go past. Having shouted to the driver of this vehicle to come out of his cabin and having threatened the man with dire consequences if he did not help to tow us to the next town. Once again we went through the nylon rope futile exercise with exactly the same result as before. 
Having given me a good piece of his mind while he was still rummaging around in the back of his truck to ascertain that he had no ‘proper’ rope and having enquired the same from that hapless driver of the truck he had stopped and whose keys he had snatched from out of the commandeered trucks ignition and now had in his own pocket, Mr Singh did what I would have NEVER believed possible. In fact had this story ever been narrated to me by anyone else, I would have called the other person a blatant liar!
Having taken off his turban and now bare headed, the gentleman pulled out a large handkerchief from out of his cabin, tied that around his head in the form of a patka, shouted out a loud and jolly ‘Sat Sri Akal‘, got in behind his wheel and waited for us to start moving before he moved in the opposite direction.
A Tea Planters Tales 