Stayed on

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.

 

Exactitude

On an estate amongst the literally hundreds of cultivation related chores which the field assistant is tasked with, ONE of the most crucial one is the application of fertilizer in the fields.  While bulk of the estate purchases are taken care of at the estate level, with the cost of fertilizer being a major chunk of the cost of production, the ordering of this particular input, based on information and a requisition issued by the Estate Manager, was always the responsibility of a centralised purchase department, operating out of the Head or Central office of the Company.

During my South India stint the standard practice was that, me being the Assistant Superintendent, under my personal supervision I was required to draw soil samples from each field.  This was done by digging 18/24” pits in at least 10 spread-out locations in each field.  From the inner side of each pit we would first scrape out soil from the upper 6 inches (the top soil) of the pit and then scrape out a second sample from the lower (sub soil) layer.  The same exercise being repeated with all 10 pits, we’d create two, top and sub soil bulked samples, which were accepted as being representative of the whole field.  These samples were then bunged across to some lab for analysis with the findings being the basis for fertilizer being ordered and delivered to the estate for application. 

Easy as falling off a chair!

The exercise towards the ordering of fertilizer in Assam was a much more complicated practice and a totally different kettle of fish.  The basis of this operation was the premise that every single bush in each field must receive back the amount of nitrogen which the bush would have drawn out from the soil in the preceding season.  Theoretically brilliant!  How that dosage was to be determined was where the complexity came in.

The curtain opens with Act I of this comedy of errors:

• • This being a standard practice on any estate, records are kept of leaf harvested from specific fields.
  • Thrice a day, leaf harvested from various fields is delivered to the factory from various estate divisions.
  • Once there, the leaf simply gets bulked with the factory being unaware of which particular field in which particular Division the leaf has emanated from.
  • The bulked leaf is duly processed into made tea.
  • That daily production of tea against the total leaf received on that day provides an outturn %age.
  • This figure is conveyed back to the field office, on the basis of which the field staff determines the actual quantity of tea generated from each field.
  • Based on records of the bush population in each field, by the end of the season one is able to determine what was the actual quantity of tea contributed by EACH bush during that period.
  • So theoretically one knows how much nitrogen has to be fed back into the root system of each bush.

Complexity, on account of which the calculation of that figure was a whole nine yard exercise and the Assistant Field Managers responsibility.  Which basically meant that well ahead of when this information was to be submitted, for days on end the Assistant would end up sitting in his office every evening, working late into the night, calculating that magic figure for each field under his care.  Which is when that lovely theory would fall flat on its face and is the point where I need to get subjective.

In all my years of education, from primary school all the way through to university, the one subject which had me totally flummoxed was mathematics!  So now we have this somewhat brainless dolt (me) sitting with this very broad sheet of paper specially created for the purpose by pasting 5 or more sheets of A4s along the breadth of the paper so as to accommodate the dozens of columns required to calculate, one step at a time, the field-wise dosage per bush.  Having no calculators (Yup!  This was way before some genius unveiled that marvellous piece of electronics) to turn to for doing the dirty work, meant that I was required to exercise my limited collection of grey cells, wading my way through literally hundreds of VERY long divisions and multiplications to arrive at bush-wise dosage of Urea required in each field.  I have no hesitation saying that, thanks to my mathematical skills, the figures I arrived at were anything but pat!  Which I readily admit is actually a gross understatement.

Regardless, after many evenings of head scratching and liberal usage of a rubber eraser, on completing my end of that arduous clerical task, there being the fond hope that this venerable gentleman would be able to audit my miserable efforts, I’d pass on this papyrus scroll of calculation sheets to my Field Supervisor.  Utter bullshit because what I would have taken a month of long evenings to complete, this gentlemen would profess to have gone through in two days, before that sheet would land back on my table. 

Each of the four Field Assistant Managers (Dhoedaam being a huge property having 4 Divisions) having gone through a similar and what was at best a perfunctory exercise, the 4 of us would on an agreed date go to the Manager’s office to hand over our respective manuscripts.  This gentleman, I daresay being as much of a mathematical wizard as yours truly, would give the four newspaper size scrolls a cursory glance before appending his signature on each and then having the lot bunged across to our Central Office.  In course of time a long line of trucks loaded with our ‘oh so well calculated’ loads of fertilizer would trundle in. 

The upshot of the field-wise calculations was that in each field (my Division had 21) the amount of fertilizer to be applied to each bush was subjective to that particular field, with the dosage difference from field to field being very tiny, usually ranging anywhere between 120/130 grams.  To ensure ‘proper’ dosage field-wise volumetric measures had to be ‘engineered’. 

It was now that this farce would get multiplied manifold, leading into Act II

• • Fertilizer application, like everything else on an estate, being highly labour intensive one would end up having to organise about a hundred cloned measures for each field, which exercise proceeded along these lines:
  • Assume a dosage of 124gm for a particular field.
  • A sample of 124gm of urea was weighed on an ancient and wobbling weighing scale which was used for determining the weight of postal articles.
  • That ‘oh so accurate’ 124gm would be spooned into a dry coconut shell with the level of the contents on the inside of the shell being marked with a pencil.
  • The shell above the marked line would be shaved off with a knife so that the supposedly 124gm was flush with the rim.
  • That lovely prototype was then handed over to the estate carpenter with instructions that he produce at least a hundred coconut shells of exactly the same size.
  • By nature coconut shells are simply not homogenous in terms of thickness, shape or depth and with the carpenter simply hacking away to produce a hundred clones, it does not take much imagination to understand what the carpenter would plonk in front of me.

So now we raise the curtain on Act III, the climax of this lovely comedy of errors:

On the day of application a hundred or so workers, usually all male for this particular work, would be lined up with each facing a row of tea bushes.  Each worker was ‘armed’ with an ‘assumed’ 124gm measure.  Tying together the ends of an empty fertilizer sack, the workers would make a sort of sling bag which they would hang from their shoulders.  The urea spread out on canvas bulking sheets would be shovelled into these sling bags.

When ordered to start with depositing the contents of a coconut shell measure to each bush, the line would advance forward much like a Roman legion setting forth to subdue Astrix and the Gauls. 

Just past just that first bush in the row, that painstakingly engineered coconut shell measure would be simply shoved into the sling bag and left there, while fistfuls of urea being scooped out would nonchalantly be liberally broadcast as the troop advanced forward.

What a bloody parody, fooling ourselves into believing that we were working with ‘oh so accurate’ proper systems.  When in fact we just just mulled along, keeping the wheels moving.  But then, as my good friend Shakespeare would say – What a mulling around was there!!!

Thumbing a ride

This particular yarn being spun around those lovely days in Assam in the ’80s, for this one I’m giving my friends in the south a respite and letting them off the hook.

Regardless of whether he be in North India or down South, the very job required, no, demanded that the Tea planter be a hardy soul.  One who was expected to and had to work hard (bloody hard) and who could then also let his hair down, all the way down till it figuratively reached ones toes.  If I were to break up that statement into its two parts:

The former bit would read thus: Besides loads of other unimaginable shit, the job entailed bearing up with a boss who always seemed to have a finger deep in where it hurts most, labour with whom one was always walking a thin line which separated unquestioning loyalty from insanity, incessant rain accompanied by overbearing humidity which hung over one like a permanent damp blanket and, as the icing on that lovely cake, leeches sucking enough blood out of one that it was a wonder that we didn’t all die of anaemia. 

The latter part of the statement above added up to us being at the very doorstep of the most wonderful outdoor life, a lovely bunch of friends, a great club life and some (at times) rather serious drinking.  In that particular department we had quite a few stalwarts, each one a serious candidate for a gold medal should elbow exercises ever be included as a sport in the Olympics.

There being a long snaking queue of contenders for that medal, in our circle of colleagues and friends, the unquestioned star performer was a Mr Ajay Shukla.  A good worker, great sportsman and one who could in one single evening end up peering through the neck all the way into the base of an empty bottle which, when the evening started, would have been a bottle with an unbroken sealed lid!! 

At the other and somewhat extreme end of the spectrum to the hardy planters were folk who, while they would eventually end up having fancy titles in their respective corporate hierarchy, at the start of their career and in a short time after finding their feet in their jobs in the Calcutta head office, would be sent up to Assam by their respective organisations to learn something about the product which was to become their bread & butter and to get a first hand feel of what ‘tea planting’ actually entailed.  These gentlemen were, in corporate tea parlance, somewhat dismissively shrugged off by the rather unexciting title of being called a ‘box wallah’.  Why and how these wet behind the ear gentleman, who had been pushed into the deep end for a limited two/three year temporary posting in one of their companies estates, were spoken of as being a “box wallah” has always remained a mystery, a term which not one of us had ever been able to figure out.

Most of the box wallah ilk were of the irritating, corporate nose up in the air snooty variety who, under the mistaken impression that they were a notch above, would simply refuse to make an effort to integrate themselves with the planting community.  In a pleasant departure from what was almost the norm, Macneil & Magor decided to send up a gentleman who was actually human and came across as a decent bloke.  Smo Dass, who continues to be a friend to this day was at that point of time a fresh recruit with his company.  After his induction in their Calcutta office his company had bundled him off to Assam for what effectively was a three year exile.  Smo’s temporary Assam posting was on Keyhung Estate which was located in Tingrai district.

The very same district in which, on Balijan a Warren Tea Estate, our star performer Ajay Shukla was an assistant.

The star cast having been introduced and the stage having been set we now move on to the main feature.

All planters clubs in Assam would host an annual club meet over some weekend, when planters from all the other clubs within driving distance (drivable distance having a different connotation to what is generally accepted as being normal for most) would gravitate towards the host club for an evening get together which was one of the many occasion when the planters hair was let down with a seriousness of purpose.

On the cusp of the Doom Dooma Club meet, one evening our two stars, both single men, happened to be sitting next to each other at the bar of the Tingrai Club.  Ajay at that point of time was a bachelor.  Star number two Smo, whose wife Lily was a working girl in Calcutta, was a grass widower.  Not keen to drive to and from the Doom Dooma late at night, Smo asked whether he could hop a ride with Ajay, which request was readily accepted without a moments hesitation.

Come the Saturday evening, Smo all spruced up in his party frock was picked up from his bungalow by eightish and in short time found himself in the Doom Dooma Club.  Having entered the Cub together, once in, both went their own ways with Smo leaving his counterpart to his own shenanigans.  The tale from here on is a first person account related to me by Smo, so I take that at face value, recounting only what has been shared with me from the horse’s mouth.

Well past two o’clock and wanting to get back to Keyhung, Smo finally managed to pry Ajay away from the bar, sit him behind the wheel and himself hop into the passenger seat.   With Ajay’s Ambassador just a mite short of take-of speed, in next to no time Some was deposited at this front door.  Having thanked and seen Ajay off, the ‘box wallah’ quickly hopped into his bed and passed out in a trice. 

Ajay having this uncanny ability of being able to go to sleep anywhere was known to have, many times in the past on the drive back to his bungalow after his tryst with the bottle, simply parked his car anywhere alongside the road, dropped off to sleep to wake up an hour or so later to carry on driving as though nothing had happened.  On this particular occasion the gentleman got as far as the driveway to the Keyhung bungalow before turning off the ignition and heading off into lullaby land.  An hour or so later, the bungalow watchman who would probably have just woken up from his beauty sleep, on a round of the bungalow, spotted a car parked on the driveway.  Peering in and seeing a sahib slumped over the steering wheel, the guy banged on the window.  The thumping having jolted Ajay from his slumber, without a second thought he gunned the engine back to life, turned his car around 180 deg and drove straight back into the Keyhung bungalow porch where he proceeded to, without a break and at full volume, toot his horn!

The incessant blaring having woken him up rather rudely, rushing out to the front door to check on the noise, Smo found a rather determined looking Mr Shukla with his hand hard down on the horn button.  To Smo’s shouted out question that what did he want, Ajay’s somewhat bleary response was “I’ve come to drop off Shmooo”.  Totally surprised and taken aback on learning that he had dropped off his passenger more than an hour ago, with not another word exchanged and in the blink of an eye the car roared back into life and drove off down the driveway.

Which left the somewhat shaken up ‘box wallah’ with only task, which was to instruct his watchman that “when Sahib drives out, lock the gate and if you see that he has again gone to sleep on the driveway you are NOT to wake him up and under no circumstances to open the gate”!

What Smo has never shared with me is whether he ever again requested Ajay for a lift!!

Skipped heartbeats

With this one I’m back to my Mistry Sahib tenure in Dhoedaam.  This one dates to 1986 by which season, having been toiling almost single headedly managing that huge factory for four whole years, I was constantly under immense work  pressure.  Pressure which heightened the simmering feud I had ongoing with my boss Bahadur Singh.  The tension regularly popping up on to the surface, leading to bad blood and an almost daily dose of bickering between the two of us with me, obviously getting the short end of the stick.

The machinery in that mammoth factory was mostly powered by a massive marine (Yes, you read that right – MARINE) prime mover by way of a very complex arrangement of shafts, counter-shafts and pulleys all driven by that one eight cylinder monster of an engine, a QVD8 manufactured by Crossley Engineers of Manchester.  Thanks to my friend Denys Shortt’s initiative of clubbing together folk related to tea with the Tea History Collection and Koi-Hai in which a couple of my yarns were reproduced, I received a mail from out of the blue from Alan Lane, a gentleman in the UK who by a very happy coincidence, it turned out was actually involved in the installation of this engine in Dhoedaam in late 1964 and who has shared some wonderful details with me.

Back in the day when these marine engines were first brought in from England and adapted to powering tea factories, instead of the intended purpose of powering sea-going vessels, one can’t even begin to imagine just how difficult the transportation of these massive blocks of metal to land-locked tea estates would have been.  When Ronnie Asirwatham, a senior SL planter and I were involved in the Rookwood factory (a yarn which succeeds the present one) we came across some very interesting old sepia photographs of the VERY MUCH SMALLER marine engine being hauled up to Rookwood Estate high up above Kandy in the ’40s.  The photograph is of the fully assembled almost tiny engine in one wooden crate being transported on a cart made of solid wood having solid wooden wheels being lugged up the slope by a pair of elephants.  In another photograph which has been chewed up by silver fish and is lost forever, on a steeper gradient the elephants are being helped along by possibly 60 or so workers milling around the cart adding their two bits to the efforts of the two mastodons straining at the load.

While that was in Ceylon and was back in the 40s, Alan has shared with me that the installation of the Dhoedaam Crossley in 1964 was an exercise of a very different type with the engine arriving on the estate on many lorries in CKD form with all components (crank base with installed crankshaft, crankcase/cylinder block, pistons and this MASSIVE 8′ diameter flywheel ) being pieced together and assembled in situ.  After three months of toil when the last bolt was in place, ahead of this magnificent piece of engineering being test run, it was preceded by the de-rigueur big puja followed by the usual bada khana (read that as binge drinking).

After that meandering ramble on a long detour, now back to my story.   

A massive factory translates into huge inflows of the raw material, freshly harvested leaf from the fields.  In Assam the natural cycle of the flushing of the bushes builds up in the latter half of the year, peaking around end August with the bushes going mad for all of two months till about mid October which is when they heave a sigh of relief and, much like a person on a treadmill, begin to tone down the pace before folding up for the season by mid December.  My yarn dates to mid September of that year when the daily factory intake used to be in the region of 120 THOUSAND Kgs of green leaf, to wade through which the factory would run non-stop 24×7 for those endless days.  Under all that pressure and practically sleepless nights our nerves would be frayed and tempers would be not just short but running amok. 

During that heavy flushing period while I, as the Mistry Sahib, was expected to be on duty 24 hours a day, the engine driver (Barooah, a dedicated soul) along with two of his assistants, so as to be on hand at all times attending to the heart of the factory, used to abandon their homes and would bed down in the engine room itself while all other support staff were on call round the clock.

My abode, a chang bungalow, separated by a road in between, overlooked the factory compound fencing and was all of 500 meters from the  engine room in which the Crossley would be chugging away endlessly.  The very heavy and constant thump-thump-thump heartbeat of the engine, having become a part of our lives, was in fact a rather comforting sound, actually helping the kids get a good night’s sleep.  Should this monster be turned off for applying some grease or for replacement of any snapped belt, the ensuing silence was definitely eerie and, for me, a heart-stopping period till such time as the engine would be restarted and the bunglow would also begin to vibrate in resonance with that prime mover.

Every restart of the prime mover was a ceremony in itself and conducted with much fanfare by Barooah lording over the proceedings.  First the gigantic flywheel would be turned on its axis using a massive crow-bar till such time as two holes on the flywheel would come into alignment to a pre-determined position which was marked on the body.  That done, Barooah would wave both his arms most dramatically, shooing everyone away from the monster before opening the stop-cock for the burst of compressed air to rush into the chamber for the pistons to, one by one, pick up momentum, huffing and puffing till the beat fell into a comforting and regular rhythm.

It was a dawn on a day towards the end of September of that year, when I had leaf stacked up in my withering troughs to more than twice the capacity of the troughs.  The factory, as is the norm in Assam, having started at midnight, I had walked across to my bungalow to grab a quick bite and a shower when the engine suddenly fell silent. Within 15 minutes I had Barooah’s helper run across to break the news to me that the prime mover had broken down.  Mid-meal, dropping whatever it was that was just about to find its way into my mouth, I sprinted back to the engine room following Mr Helper to find Barooah almost in tears blurting out that in his opinion the unthinkable had happened and that the main bearing of the crank shaft had seized.  If there was any bigger disaster that could befall at just that time, it escaped all of us.  With my head-fitter (Niranjan Singh) also having rushed in, leaving the two of them to start doing whatever was necessary to get us operational again, I hopped on to my bike to ride across to the bosses office to let him know that disaster had struck.  The most helpful advice from him, after I had broken the news was “it’s your baby so whatever be the problem, you sort it out”!  Seething with anger I rushed back to the engine room to find Barooah and Niranjan already busy putting their full weight behind the heavy spanner, loosening the massive bolts which held the engine together.

That was the start of three days with five of us (Barooah, his two assistants, Niranjan and I) stepping out of the engine room only when either of us needed to use the loo.  Sustenance being in the form of an endless flow of tea and biscuits from the factory tasting room and food being sent in for all five from my bungalow.  In those three day, the head of the engine was stripped open, the thick bi-metal bearing which had been the cause of the break-down being taken off the crank, being ground back to required dimensions with a scrapper and emery paper and then the whole thingamajig being carefully re-assembled, one component at a time.

In all those three days there was no let up in the endless flow of tractors bringing in baskets overflowing with leaf which, since the troughs were already piled up way beyond capacity, was being dumped along the walkways between the troughs and eventually all over the landing platform where the tractors were usually unloaded.  With green leaf piled up in massive heaps and generating heat, a lot of it was fast turning red and oxidising with the rancid smell of rotting leaf building up.

Almost 72 hours from the time when the monster had stopped breathing, with all five of us literally soaked in grease and oil and with our hearts in our mouths, we were waved back by Barooah who went through his start-up ceremony of releasing the compressed air into the chamber.  I know it was not my imagination that each one us in the engine room were drawing in our respective breaths in consonance with the huffing and puffing of the prime mover.  As soon as the engine took on a regular beat, the clutch was released to set the drive belts and the shaft moving so that in next to no time Dhoedaam factory reverted to being a hive of activity.

Thanking my companions of three endless days and sending each one of them home to grab some sleep I hopped on to my bike to ride across to Bahadur’s bungalow.  Being told by the watchman that ‘burra sahib was still not up’ I insisted that he be woken up.  Looking somewhat dishevelled and coming out on to his verandah and likely noticing that I was plastered head to toe in gooey black grease, without waiting for a question to be asked I rather curtly advised my boss that I had the factory back on track, tossed the bunch of factory keys up to him, and told him that he was unlikely to see me for the next 24 hours at least because I was heading off home to have a hot shower, followed by a hot meal after which I was going to hit my bed and stay in it for as long as I could.  Which is exactly what I did!

In hindsight what at that time what was a very loud “F***s”, is now a lovely memory.  Yup!  It most certainly was the night(s) to remember!!

The Ghoul of Rajah Ali

On my transfer to Rajah Ali, this being the mistry sahib’s abode, I was allocated the chang bungalow which was all of a stone’s throw away from the factory.  The bungalow which at some point of time way back in the dark ages must have been a lovely structure had, it was apparent, seen better days.  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.

Bottom line being that Kitty, our little Madhav and I were in the chang bungalow for all of two months before we moved to the more stable and habitable plinth bungalow.

Chang bungalows are built on a wooden platform raised about eight feet off the ground with the entire structure resting on a series of wooden pillars.  It follows that the flooring of all such bungalows is also all made of timber which, since these were all old structures, was just about hanging in there.  With the floor of this particular 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.

Being positioned on a box like raised platform and obviously an add-on during a major overhaul of the bungalow, the w/c in the master bathroom but for the fact that it was in the loo, could have been passed off as the throne of the lord of the manor.  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.

After having taken that diversion…………….

Well before we’d moved to Rajah Ali we had been told by all and sundry that the chang bungalow we were going to be living in was haunted.  While every old estate bungalow was in some way linked to some ghostly tale, the one we were to be moving into was the one which topped the list and was always spoken about with a tinge of awe in the relater’s (more often than not this being one of the ladies) voice.  With age my sense of cynicism about almost everything having also grown, it was no different back in the day so that I would simply shrug off all the horror tales as a load of hogwash.  Kitty Khanna however was another kettle of fish altogether.  Being extremely gullible and receptive to believing almost anything, folk took sadistically ghoulish pleasure feeding her with all sorts of implausible gory tales about the Rajah Ali chang bungalow with the details becoming more and more horrific with each repeat.  The upshot being that by the time we actually set foot in that bungalow, my wife was already a bundle of nerves always clutching Madhav to herself as though he was, at any moment, liable to be plucked off from her side to end up with either his head or his feet facing the other way.  This being only one of the many idiotic and implausible possibilities she had been fed with, all of which she readily believed, and which she had shared with me as being the most likely gruesome fate which was awaiting our family in the supposedly haunted house.

Factories in Assam start the ‘days’ work at midnight with the mistry sahib being required to be in attendance till such time as the first batch of tea would come tumbling out of the dryer from which a sample would be drawn and infused to satisfy oneself that all the manufacturing parameters set up for that session were spot-on.  This meant that one usually managed to get back to the bungalow sometime around five or six in the morning for a short nap, a shower and breakfast before heading back to the slave labour camp just short of eight.  Eight O’clock being sacrosanct since that was the hour at which the artisans and other general workers reported for duty.

While heading out at midnight, so as not to disturb Madhav or Kitty at the unearthly hour in the morning when I’d come back to the bungalow, I would lock the bedroom door from outside so that whatever be the time I came in, I could simply sneak in.  Perfect plan which never really worked because regardless of whatever time it be, on opening the door I’d find a wide-eyed and terrified Kitty sitting on the centre of the bed with her arms protectively wrapped around Madhav who would literally be pinned down in her lap.  That this irrational behaviour irritated me no end would be an understatement.

My questioning her, night after night as to why she would 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.

About three weeks into our Rajah Ali stay, 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.

About ten minutes later, sure enough!  There it was!  A soft thud being repeated at irregular intervals.  My response to Kitty’s “See!  I told you!!” was that here had to be some logical explanation for this strange and obviously unnatural sound.

Walking out of the door I made my way across the creaking floorboards, down the even louder creaking staircase to find our night chowkidar, a strapping Nepali boy, with a football at his feet which, every time it bounced back to him was despatched with a well directed kick to the wall of the downstairs store room.  The cracks and the damage on the plaster which was visible around the target area made it obvious that this particular section of the wall had been accosted regularly over an extended period of time.

Being hauled up to explain what the bloody hell he was up to, our friend Mr Bahadur had the simplest of explanations, “I find it very difficult to stay awake all night long doing nothing.  If I go to sleep and you find out, I’ll get bollocked.  So I’ve found this method to keep myself from nodding off!”  How could I possibly argue with that earthy logic?

Going back up to explain to Kitty that her ghost was a bloody football, the illogical response I got was that I simply did not understand the ways of the ‘other’ world!

Two whole months of merry hell and 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!