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!!!

The watchman who lucked it out

I plead innocence to the fact that my rambles are all over the place with my stories taking a huge leap forward from one decade to the next and then rewinding all the way back to the past. The guilty one is my brain which simply refuses to function chronologically. Bottom line being that while in my last tale I had fast forwarded to Sri Lanka and the year 2000, with this one it’s all the way back to 1977 when I had been transferred across the valley from Panniar to Surianalle to be under the watchful eye of the larger than life (speaking both literally and figuratively) personae of Clyde Nigel Mansell Lawrence Esq.

My bungalow in Surianalle was on Gundumallai (the mountain of the rock) division, perched up and literally clinging on to the very steep gradient on which some half-wit idiot way back in the past had chosen to build himself a dwelling.  Over the years the howling wind having taken its toll, the roof of the bungalow was constantly on the move, hopping up and down like a yo-yo on a very short thread. But for the fact that the corrugated tin roof was held down by very thick steel hawsers criss-crossing over the top with the ends embedded in concrete blocks on all four sides of the building holding it down on terra firma, the bungalow would have ended up literally blowing its top long before I became the occupant! It was thanks to that added protection, that all night long I was witness to a never ending ding-dong battle. The attack would be initiated by howling wind lifting the roof up a couple of millimetres, after which the stay-wires would counter-attack straining to get the roof back to its pre “attempt-to-take-off” position. One lived with the imminent possibility that some day the wind would come out the winner! The bottom line being that it had been decided by the powers that be that at some point of time, before the roof ended up being ripped off from its moorings, a much needed repair job would have to be undertaken.

That decision came to the fore in the year I found myself in Gundumallai.

Coincidentally or rather deviously planned in that manner by Clyde, he took the decision to have my roof repaired during the time he would be away from the estate on his three month long overseas furlough, which extended leave the expat Superintends were allowed every five years. Devious because, in parallel to the work in my bungalow, he decided to have the flooring of his bungalow upgraded by having the red-oxide coated concrete floor in the bungalow sitting and dining rooms replaced with wooden parquet tiles.

The two repair contract having been awarded and assigned, the crafty Clyde very ‘kindly’ ‘suggested’ to me that since it would be inconvenient for me to be living in Gundumallai while the roof work was in progress, that I should move down to the Superintendents bungalow for the three months that Winnie and he would be away on furlough. As a postscript to the ‘suggestion’ he followed up with “Since you’re going to be living in the bungalow you could also oversee the parquet tile flooring work to ensure that it’s being done properly”.

And so it was that, albeit temporarily, I found myself in the sprawling 8 bedroom PD bungalow which was in the middle of a 5 acre compound. The garden in front was a riot of colours, while the ‘backyard’ of the bungalow was an honest to goodness arboretum complete with a perennial stream flowing through it. While difficult to even imagine, made one wonder whether Clyde & Winnie, hand in hand, went for romantic walks in their private forest. The huge plus point to being the glorified watchman was that I was being attended to by a proper butler with food being dished out by a trained cook who, unlike the lost soul I had to bear up with in my bungalow, actually knew his job. Roasts, scones, cakes, pies, the guy could churn them all out. The long and short of it being that I, a two bit Sinna Dorai temporarily employed as a bloody glorified on-site construction supervisor tasked with keeping a hawks eye on the bosses floor being laid out, was living the good life.

While I was in my rather expansive temporary lodgings, I received a letter from Kitty, my girlfriend of 7 long years since our college days and later my wife, that her parents were planning a trip to Madras to spend some time with friends of theirs and that they had suggested that since they where going to be in the south, they were keen to come across to Munnar to meet me. While unstated, it was obvious that the visit was being made so that the parents could suss out their ‘may be’ son-in-law and to establish what in hell was it that the fellow was doing tucked away in some remote god-forsaken hole which no one up north had any clue about. I was informed that the family would be taking a train from Madras to Madurai and that could I arrange to pick them up from the Madurai railway station on the day they were to get there. The letter also told me that there would be four of them, Kitty accompanied by her parents and her younger sister. There being no way that I could possibly ferry the gang up on my trusty bike, on the day in question I borrowed Lalit Thusu’s (the senior assistant on the estate) Ambassador so as to chauffeur the family up to Surianalle.

While no one has ever shared this in-laws family secret with me, I’ll always maintain that it was my ‘status’ (established by “you should see the bungalow he lives in!”) that literally bowled over my father in law. I’m almost certain, had the gentleman arrived in Surianalle when I was in my actual ‘hanging on to the hillside for dear life’ abode up on Gundumallai, that he would have turned up his nose, laughing at my suggestion that I marry his daughter.

One week and eight bedrooms to frolic around in, post a fancy dinner with all the trappings thrown in, once we had tucked her parents into bed in their allotted bedroom, Kitty and I managed to keep ourselves rather busy.

All too soon the three months wound down, bringing my glorified watchman stint to an end with me handing back the bungalow, complete with a gleaming new parquet flooring, back to its rightful occupant. Having been patted on the back for a job well done, I found myself back in my ‘eagles aerie’ in which, regardless of the repairs having been carried out to it, for the rest of the two years that I was there, the roof continued to keep me awake with its laboured heaving and sighing all night long!

A newly minted ‘Executive’

Once again turning the clock all the back to 1977, that being the second of my two year stint on Panniar Estate in the High Ranges.

It was another one of those very wet, windy and extremely cold days which in the High Ranges being about par for the course, one simply took in ones stride. Having completed the perfunctory bit of paperwork one was required to take care of every morning, I was just stepping out of the muster shed when the tapal man from Abid’s office came down to tell me that the Periya Dorrai wanted to see me in his office and that could I go across to meet him as soon as possible. Kick-starting my trusty bike, within the short distance from the muster shed to the main office by the time I stepped into the bosses office I was already a sodden mess wet all the way down to my underclothes, a condition planters simply accepted as being a way of life – another par for the course.

Back in the day we planters were an easily satisfied bunch of folk, by and large comfortable with the pittance we received as a salary on the back of which, with the company making sure that we at least had the required two pennies to rub together, we just about managed to keep body and soul intact. Being rather constricted by the ‘generous’ pay-check, bulk of which in any case ended up in the coffers of the High Range Club and the fact that in those days choices in terms of clothing and footwear were severely limited, on the estate our standard attire was frugal at best. My regular ‘uniform’ used to be a very well worn shirt, almost always one with a frayed collar, and a pair of exhausted looking shorts which any self-respecting beggar would have turned his nose up to. More often than not the shirt and shorts were hidden away from view with a knee length khaki canvas raincoat which, on the rare occasion when it was not in use, would be draped across the petrol tank of the bike ready at hand to be donned at short notice. This particular vesture could easily have passed off as an artists canvas, covered as it was with a plethora of some rather interesting blotches, streaks and stains of grease / petrol / muck and what not liberally splattered all over. At the time of this particular tale, two years of usage with this raincoat having been my constant companion through thick and thin, had elevated this ‘artists canvas’ to the level of an intriguing art masterpiece which even the New York gallery of Modern Art would have paid handsomely to get its grubby hands on, a la Picasso!

Completing my daily workplace uniform, on my head there was always a ‘used to be khaki’ flop hat exhibiting the same level of ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude as the other clothes which had all seen better days, while at the other end was footwear which a scarecrow would have been ashamed to be seen in. During the ‘70s and ‘80s the only half decent footwear we could lay our hands on, equal to the rough usage of trudging through leach infested fields, used to be a pair of Bata Hunter boots. Passably basic shoes which, whenever a new pair was bought and through the first half of their somewhat limited life span of a couple of months, looked fairly decent with the canvas uppers of a bright olive green which in short time would fade away to a dirty muddy hue. By which time with the frayed rubber toe cap starting to show signs of age and beginning to peel off along the edges, the Bata Hunters would give the appearance of some flotsam which had been washed up on some godforsaken beach from some old ship wreck.

This tangential meander lays the foundation for what followed on that day.

In response to my ‘Good morning Sir’, Abid advised me that the new Assistant who had been expected on Panniar had arrived on the estate by cab on the previous evening and that could I go across to his bungalow to pick him up and bring him to the office. To me that was most welcome news since I had been eagerly looking forward to the fellows arrival. Anticipation which simply translated into me finally having someone junior to me on the estate, a greenhorn whom I could impress with the little I had learnt about tea in my two years.

Riding into the gentleman’s bungalow porch dripping wet, I kept my bike idling, waiting for junior to make his appearance. Which he did a couple of minutes later leaving me so totally gobsmacked that I almost lost my balance and all but toppled off my bike!

The youngster who now stood before me with a quizzical look on his face was dressed in a well ironed grey suit ending in a pair of smart polished black shoes and who, in his hand, was carrying a briefcase! All that was missing for this ‘estate misfit’ to fill in a slot in a bank in the city of London was a bowler hat and a neatly rolled brolly. Could anyone blame me for my taking an immediate disliking of the poor sod.
“Yes?!”
“The boss has asked me to pick you up and drop you off to his office”
”Its raining”
“Yes, it is”
“But I’m an executive”
“And what the bloody hell do you think I am? Now please just get on to the bike”

The totally befuddled hapless soul having got on to the pillion, with my nastiness coming to the fore, I literally took off from the porch and enroute to the main office made it a point to drive through every puddle and every pile of slush on the road, which there was always plenty of. Ten minutes later I delivered the by now totally dishevelled, mud splattered, wet as a hen and badly shaken up “executive” to Abid’s office, curtly pointed him in the direction of the door and rode off.

It was around noon that I saw Abid riding up to where I was pottering around in one of the fields. Pushing my way through the bushes I came down to the road to meet the boss.
“What did you say to that new guy?”
“Nothing in particular, Sir. I just picked him up and dropped him off to your office”
“I don’t understand it, he just walked into my office looking very unhappy and after wishing me, his next sentence was that he wanted to resign and that could I get him a cab to take him back to Cochin – very strange”

Ever tried to fit a square peg in a round hole??

A BOARing encounter

A number of my recent blogs having veered away from being strictly tea-centric, with this one I’ve decided to make amends by rewinding and turning the clock back all the way to 1977 when I was still an Assistant Superintendent with Malayalam Plantations, doing my two bits on Panniar estate under the tutelage of my father-figure boss – Abid Khan.

Panniar, on account of the estate being a 250 Hectare estate, was a single Assistant billet.  The upshot being that for any social interaction I was totally dependent upon Abid & Shamim.  I hasten to add that while I was always welcome in their bungalow and spent many an evening with them playing badminton and scrabble, there was no getting away from the fact that one can’t really let one’s hair down in the bosses house.  The High Range Club besides the fact that it was an hour and a half away from Panniar which, on week days was about as full of beans as the proverbial Dodo, come the weekend would suddenly spring back to life.  The upshot being that for the planting fraternity of the district, the club ended up being only the weekend getaway.

It being de rigueur that a somewhat high spirited youngster is required to let off a bit of steam every now and then and can’t just keep waiting for the weekend to do so, quite often during midweek post evening muster I’d hop on to my bike for the one hour ride across the valley to Surianalle which, being a large property, had four Assistant Superintendents at the beck and call of the formidable  Clyde Lawrence.  Getting into Surianalle by around 1900 Hrs, the usual form was that we’d ‘mess around’ till well past midnight when I’d head back to Panniar to catch a couple of hours of sleep before heading down for the morning muster at the crack of dawn.

Branching off from the main road, the approach road leading into Surianalle was a three KM mud road cutting through a forest.  Mud roads being prone to wear and tear and since it was the only access into the estate, on a regular basis estate workers would be employed to blind the road {which word the British Dictionary defines as “sand or grit spread over a road surface to fill up cracks“} the only difference from that description being that in this particular case it was not sand but the more economical and easily available loose soil which was liberally broadcast over the road surface.  A job which made the road fairly smooth when it was dry, but should it rain (which was ALL the time) that same surface, though bereft of any snow, could have easily been mistaken for a beautiful ski slope.  Being bad enough on a four wheeled vehicle, on the bike it was a treacherous run all the way along that three KM stretch with the tyres not getting any purchase on the surface and the bike simply sliding along with the rider kicking on either side to keep the bike upright.

On one of my many ‘need to blow off some steam’ forays, heading back to Panniar at the usual unearthly hour through the thick mist which conditions was simply par for the course, concentrating on keeping my bike from sliding off the edge, as I turned a corner in the faint light of my headlamp I could just about make out that there was a huge passel of wild boars literally spread around all across the middle of the road with the stragglers and fringe elements of the extended family spilling off on to both sides.    Instinctively I did what one should never do on the sort of surface I was on – I pressed down hard on my brake pedal. With the wheels locked, the bike immediately took on a mind of its own sliding broadside with me kicking my legs on both sides trying my best to keep the damn thing from landing on its side and me ending up on my backside in the muck, or more likely be faced with a much more serious outcome.  While I have no idea how that happened, what I do know is that my ungainly efforts ended with me coming to a sliding halt on a bike which was still vertical and with me astride my trusty steed.

It was only when I came to that sliding halt that I realized that during the time I had been doing my bike boogie gyrating all over the place, that the boars having quickly evacuated the middle had scattered to end up populating either side of the road.  What also became apparent, alarmingly so, in the next couple of seconds was that in doing their disbanding, most of the adults had all run across to one side of the road while all the excitable piglets enmasse, each with his/her tail up in the air like an antenna, had scampered off in diametrically the opposite direction.  And here was I bang smack in the middle of what was apparently a majorly extended family, straddling a machine which had decided to die on me.

What also became painfully apparent in the next instant was that big humongous ugly hogs do not appreciate being separated from their squealing progeny.  I have no idea whether it was the Mum, Dad or possibly even an uncle but all I do know is that one of that ménage, probably having decided that the youngsters needed to be rescued from this interloper to their party, came thundering down the slope straight at me.  In that split second before I was hit broadside by that filthy missile, I instinctively lifted up my leg which, had I not managed to do, would have definitely been mangled beyond recognition.  The upshot being that in the very next instant I found myself on my arse with my bike, prone on its side, lying between me and a very angry behemoth glaring at me through beady eyes and pawing the ground in a fit of temper.

If you were to ask me to relate how I did it, I’d have no answer.  All I do know is that keeping the bike as a buffer between me and the boar, I lifted it up to a vertical position, hopped on and with a trembling leg kicked the starter lever.  Must have had a guardian angel hovering over my head because the engine roared into life with the first kick.  Before one could say ‘bobs your uncle’ without so much as a backward glance I was away like a bullet out of a pistol, skiing across that last kilometer of the slope before I hit the main road. 

I finally arrived at my bungalow badly shaken up, disheveled and totally plastered in a mixture of glutinous mud blended with (I suspect) generous helpings of stinky pig dung.  Having put the bike on its stand a quick inspection told me that my friend, when it crashed into my bike knocking me over, the impact must have been on the foot rest behind the gear lever.  Obvious because, on inspection next morning, I found that the foot rest had snapped off, leaving behind only the small cast iron stump which it had been attached to.  Didn’t take much imagination for it to sink in that had my leg not shot up when I was assaulted, I would have spent the rest of my life hobbling around with one foot missing from my anatomy!

Regardless, come Wednesday of the very next week, I was back in Surianalle.

Have no qualms admitting that I have always been incorrigible!