 
Tale of a Tea Planter

Jim Glendinning

Copyright 1990 Jim Glendinning

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TALE OF A TEA PLANTER

Part One

Young and having experience in none but the most simple of life's affairs, I sailed from Liverpool docks in the early spring on 1949 on a 21 day voyage to Bombay, unaware of the kind of life I was to lead and how destiny was to lead me beyond the dense growth of Indian tea plantations, through rebellion, romance and working as a cowman on an English farm. With the unimpressed gaze of youth, I surveyed this drab ship as she slowly progressed towards the Atlantic seas.

I forget her name, but she was an Anchor Line vessel of some 12,000 tons, and carried 100 passengers, besides cargo. She was one class, unlike the P & O vessels, which had two classes and were much bigger. The tea company, who were now my employers, had to find a birth for me quickly and took a cancellation. That the cancellation was an excellent single cabin on the top deck, with a window, which was a great asset. I remember whilst travelling down the Suez Canal thinking, it was hot! But the heat was nothing compared to the stifling, humid and even hotter weather in the Indian Ocean. At the tender age of twenty, it was all quite an adventure.

This journey was my first real experience of luxury. From the age of seven when I went to preparatory school, followed by senior school and conscription into the army, I had known no luxury. Like many others, life until then had been spent being bullied from pillar to post. My evenings on the ship were spent enjoying the cool and relief from the high temperature of the daytime, watching the bows of the ship cut through the calm ocean water, spilling waves onto her sides.

Many of us became friends and would wander down to Smokey Joe's bar at 4am, where, in the corner of the huge dining room the night steward would serve us cool beer. No one seemed to sleep much at night, and, even in my lovely cabin with the window open, it was too hot to sleep until almost exhausted by good food, beer, boredom and little physical activity, I faded into fitful sleep only to find my bedclothes uncomfortable as perspiration dampened them. At dinner we all wore dinner jackets, and the ladies wore evening dresses. There were four of us at the table to which I was allocated. The seating arrangements aboard ship were complex. All pretty and single girls somehow found themselves sitting next to one of the ship's officers. The four of us at our table, and where we had breakfast, lunch and dinner, were an odd assortment. It also turned out to be an amusing quartet. The leader was a man called Armstrong. He was middle-aged, Irish and something to do with insurance. He had a great sense of humour, and spent long hours at the bar. The senior member of our group was always called Colonel. He was in fact in cosmetics, he drank pink gin at very regular intervals, and always wore white gym shoes, even with his dinner jacket in the evenings. He looked odd. He was an overbearing eccentric, and also very deaf. Nevertheless he was a man of great character and had many stories to tell most of them boring.

Three weeks aboard ship doing nothing is a long time. There was no mail, and neither newspapers nor telephone. The first few days at sea and across the Bay of Biscay was the time for quiet reading and, if one's stomach was strong enough, good eating. Slowly and as the ship slipped through the Straits of Gibraltar, previously unseen faces appeared from behind shut cabin doors as the main dining room and reception lounge lost their empty look. It was about then that the Captain of the ship would give his first cocktail party and everything cheered up. The married couples would continue in their normal and upright fashion. However a sort of mini war would be waged against the ship's young officers who were trying to pinch the single girls. It was quite carefree providing one did not allow one's feelings to be carried away. It might well be asked as to how the time was passed? Once the ship had reached the Suez Canal serious thought of sleeping at night in the stuffy cabins was a thing of the past. One danced and drank till very late at night and then drifted down to Smokey Joe's for fresh sandwiches and cold beer. There one would put the world to rights and later try to sleep in one's cabin, whilst the crew started to hose and scrub the decks at dawn. Most of us seemed to miss breakfast, but a steward would take round coffee and toast at 11.30 am on the veranda deck, by which time the swimming pool had been filled and was in full use. Adjoining it was the most excellent bar with cold lager. I always seemed to arrive for second sitting for meals, which were quite excellent. In the afternoons one had two hours serious siesta in a chaise longue on the top deck. The ship's headway kept one cool, and allowed a peaceful spell to gather one's strength for the night ahead.

Armstrong and the Colonel were the last down to dinner, by which time the former had a slight flush on his cheeks, and the latter was worse on his legs than usual. On one occasion, our table steward gave each of us the menu for dinner, Armstrong and the Colonel, who had been enjoying each other's company in the bar for a considerable time, were both very late for dinner and neither quite sober. In the menu for that particular evening, and amongst other choices for entree was Welsh rarebit. Armstrong peered at the menu at length, took off his spectacles and asked the Colonel if he knew the definition of Welsh rarebit. The Colonel replied "I can't hear you". By the time Armstrong had finally managed to make his question clear, half the dining guests around our table had put down their knives and forks. The answer came loud and clear and which was "a virgin in Cardiff". Everyone hurriedly continued eating. The third man at our table was a quiet abstemious Bengali. He and I were slightly struggling to keep up with Armstrong and the Colonel, particularly at dinner.

After three weeks at sea we arrived at Bombay and were driven to the Taj Mahal Hotel. On our departure from the railhead one day later, railway porters staggered through relatives saying goodbye amid the platform vendors selling whatever, and with much effort placed an enormous block of ice onto the floor of our compartment. This was their effort towards air-conditioning, and it melted slowly as we went along. By the time we reached Calcutta some hours later, we were four inches deep in water. I remember the trip and our stops and the most excellent curries that were brought to our compartment. My memories of Calcutta are few. I went shopping and, because of the list my company had given me, I wasted the last of my money on a thick plinth khaki to pi. I hope that Calcutta has been cleaned up a little. Rats and dirt were the city's great problem. I remember once watching the head of a huge rat peep out between the feet of a lady dressed in a long white shimmering evening gown. The hostess was entertaining the night club revellers during the cabaret at Princes Night Club in Chorine Street.

The story that goes with the Taj Mahal Hotel, where most sea travellers stayed, was that the architect built this vast edifice inadvertently the wrong way round, and then committed suicide. It was certainly a magnificent building. The huge marble veranda looked out to the harbour into which all the passenger liners steamed. Many were the broken hearts that were to later view a ship's departure. The hotel was huge and luxurious, but like all hotels had little soul and was a place of transit. Away from the protection of its opulence lay squalid streets with heat, flies, noise and persistent beggars who never took "no" for an answer. What worried me most of all as a young newcomer to this vast oriental continent, was the cruelty almost unwittingly inflicted on the animals, and in particular the horses that drew the light carriages which would play in competition with the taxis. One could see all the ribs of the undernourished horses and none of them were quite sound. Heavy use of the whip seemed to be the only way of persuading the animal to keep up his shambling effort of a trot. There were also rickshaws which were pedalled by thin, hard-pressed young men. These latter never worried me; it was the horses between shafts which was where my heart went out to. Life aboard the passenger liner from which we. Had just disembarked seemed a long way from all these horrible scenes, and return to the orderly serenity of life aboard ship. It is said that travel broadens the mind. Certainly this was true in my case.

I was amazed by the incredible noise at every railway station. Families seemed to settle on a platform not for a day, but for a week and more. Out came the cooking pots and fuel of a sort was soon acquired. The latter could be dried cattle dung. This may have kept the mosquito population at bay, but also added to the plentiful smells. The noise, the colour, and the crowds dominated the railways. In the spring and summer one could add the heat to these three dimensions. There remains memory of the overpowering aroma of spicy foods being cooked, and the vendors selling their wares, which were usually food of some description. It seemed that there was usually a train in the station that let off enormous hisses of steam to try and contribute to the heat and noise factor. It was an interesting exercise to see just how many travellers could actually be carried on one passenger train. The men or boys that could not fit into the compartments either went on top of the railway carriages, or clung to the sides. The daily newspapers once reported an incident, where a new twenty mile stretch of railway line was opened, but without the carriage top travellers realising that, incorporated on this new line was a low tunnel. Fifty carriage-top travellers were swept to their death. To any brief visitor to India, and why wants just to feel and sense this country, then a short spell in the local bazaar or railway station will suffice. The visitor will return to the peace, quiet and cool of his or her hotel bedroom, quite exhausted.

Once-more we were ferried to the railway station, this time from the Grand Hotel, Chowringee Street, where we had been staying after leaving the Taj Mahal Hotel. At the station we were escorted by the travel agents who helped us avoid giving money to endless beggars, and tripping over a huge local population who seemed to camp and cook on the platform. Eventually we left Calcutta by train and headed for Jalpaiguri at the foothills of the Himalayas. It was a thirty six hour journey which involved going through several parts of Pakistan. Our final destination was Siliguri which was a very busy up-country railway station, within reasonable distance of Darjeeling. Siliguri was a dreadful place; it was only 700 feet above sea level, so was very hot, and filthy dirty. We were met in Siliguri by the Tea Company Superintendent's driver in a large station wagon. The driver was thin, quiet and efficient.

I had by this time acquired a fellow traveller, who had been on the ship and we had rather learnt to avoid him. He was also a new boy, but older than myself, and he called himself Captain Brown. He had joined a drinking group at sea and there had been trouble over the payment of his bar bills. The main two things I remember about him was his party trick which was to bite a chunk out of his glass, chew it, and swallow it, this he did most evenings. The other point about him was his excellent grasp of the language, indeed, the ex-army men spoke the language fluently.

The tea company I worked for owned eleven tea estates, and central office was administered locally by the superintendent, Laurence Tocher, and his accountant. This was not the usual practice, but it worked well. My first weekend was spent with Tocher and his wife Nora. Tocher was a blunt Scotsman, and a most efficient man. From the most junior recruit to the most senior manager we were all scared of him.

The following Monday morning the same driver took me twenty miles to where I was to spend the next four and a half years of my life. My meeting with the Baintgoorie Tea estate manager requires description. As we were driving through the estate my driver suddenly swerved and stopped. It transpired that we were at a leaf weighing shed, and there stood my manager. He was dressed in khaki which included a safari type jacket, shorts and knee high stockings. His vehicle was a very old Austin, complete with a driver whose job was to crank the starting handle when it was time to move on.

Hardwick, or Wick, as was his nickname had a fiery temper, and a very strong character. He was the sort of person whose entrance into a room was always noticed. He was married to a charming girl Isabel, and they had two young sons. Isabel really became a second mother to me over those four and a half years. We shook hands and I said "Good morning Sir". "We have no Sirs in tea and call me Hardwick" he replied. He walked over to the Superintendent's station wagon and supposedly told the driver to take my baggage to the assistant's bungalow and then go home. In the background were two horses and their attendants. Wick returned from talking to the driver to ask if I could ride a horse, and receiving the right answer he signalled one of the horses up and told me to get on it. We set off in the heat of the May mid-day sun, on the two horses across the plains of West Bengal, Wick in front of me, followed by the pony attendants who were on foot. The tea estate was divided by a fierce river which, even in the dry spell, was still spilling water quite swiftly from the Himalayas, which rose high behind us. Across it was a very adequate bridge. Built on steel stilts, it was one of the main aspects of the Chaity division, of which later I was to take charge. Wick explained that we would cross the river here. What he did not explain was that my horse hated water. Anyway we survived the ordeal.

The assistant's bungalow was poor. It was full of bats and the fellow assistant, with whom I was to share it was still recovering from shell shock, having been a Royal Air Force bomb aimer over Germany in Halifax bombers. He was fine until he had two drinks and then became a real nuisance. Before my arrival he had fallen foul of Wick. Jock when sober was terrified of Wick, but after a couple of drinks forgot his fear. He was supposed to be the engineer assistant and did not last long.

Jock was typical of a man brought from the UK and permanently out of his depth. The only big difference was his age and experience of life. He should really have been perfectly well able to have coped with the fairly hum drum existence of a young assistant in tea growing. This was not to be the case. His bungalow exemplified his shortcomings. The head servant, who was both loyal and simple, did his best. Jock just did not care that there was almost no food, the bats had taken over, and his mosquito net was so riddled with holes, that it was quite useless. The bats took full advantage of the tenant's lethargic attitude. At dusk those that could not be bothered to fight their way into the attic, perched on the framework of the mosquito net, and looked down on Jock in their vast numbers as he slept. The smell of bats in that establishment was dreadful. Wick should really have stepped in and done something. Wick had his likes and dislikes. Jock did little to contribute to the running of this biggish and unwieldy tea estate. When years later I was to become manager of the same estate, my feelings were similar. Anyone that tried to contribute received help, but the negative ones could make shift as best they could. Jock loved a party of any description. His best time was spring, when there would be many marriages in the labour quarters. Jock would beat the drums and drink whatever was on offer until he passed out, which was when he was carried back to his bed. The labour always were kind and sympathetic to Jock. They seemed to understand his problems.

Our local dub which I was to visit almost as soon as I arrived, was at that time also deserted. Fellow tea assistants were sitting in their bungalows, quietly licking their wounds, from heavy bar bills they were unable to pay, and which were overdue. Mal dub was dreary at its very best, and even Wick who was club manager, failed to raise its morale to very great heights. There was polo, tennis and billiards, and of course a huge long bar, it was interesting to note this bar in future years. The Scots stood in one group, the English in another, the Bengalis were with their own people and the Sikhs were in their party. 1ust before the war, the Dooars Polo team, which was our district, sent their polo ponies to Calcutta. They returned having won the World Cup, having beaten, in the finals, The Maharajah of 1aipur and his team. The planter's team captain told me that Wick was included in the team because of his polo and his excellence in the social scene. He was actually spare man, but of great value because he seemed to know everyone, and everyone seemed to know him. There are few men that I have admired and indeed looked up to. They were all arrogant and with great personalities, Wick was one of them. By the time of my arrival polo was on the down-hill.

Polo is one of the most expensive games to become involved in. Wick was correct when he advised me to continue somehow. Whilst the standard at that stage was not high, it was nevertheless cheap. Polo has very strict rules, and is described by the magazine Punch as "a game played the other side of the field". The really high goal matches, played on lovely grounds on beautiful days, remain the most enjoyable in my memory. However low goal polo will never be a real spectator drawer. It's for the enthusiasts who love every minute of the game, and the schooling of the ponies. The Duke of Edinburgh has been heard to say that polo was quite the finest game of all, but it was a nuisance that it involved horses. One understood exactly what he meant, and even in my little world of low goal polo, it was frustrating to find one's best pony lame, and always just before the big match.

I was told by Wick to wear what I could find, and he would collect me from the assistant's bungalow for practice chukkas, which were really enjoyed. The other players were mostly managers, and their polo ponies travelled miles to enjoy what was later realised as fairly low standard games. Everyone was most friendly. Isabel went the other side of the Club to play tennis, and we returned to the estate four miles away to change for the evening. Wick had a huge Chevrolet, a car of great luxury, and whilst seated on the back seat it was noted that instead of Wicks two ponies and attendants, hacking slowly back home, there appeared to be four ponies with additional staff. This was queried, and the reply was "those are yours in loan and I've just arranged it". This was a little naughty of Wick, because he knew that on my meagre salary it was pushing it. The horses were all kept at the managers stables and subsidised. A junior assistant was in fact allowed a 'pony allowance' of 250 rupees a month- £18, and a car allowance of the same amount. The only way out of money problem was to take a note to the tea estate shop, who sold everything, and would make an interest free loan. Our shopkeeper next to the factory was called Ramdas Ram, and half the estate work force, from assistant downwards were in his debt. He held great sway, and was a man of influence. He slept on a mattress in his shop with his head close to his safe, where all the payment were made. Years later I had a labour force working on Sunday, and because Wick was not around had to borrow from Ramdas to pay off the labour. Ramdas said "Bhot bimari, Sahib" (I feel ill). Next day it was discovered that Ramdas had in fact contracted small pox. I panicked and drove to a central medical officer, and was later severely ticked off by Wick for taking panic action.

I took twelve months to settle in and be of use as assistant manager. Wick put me in charge of the Chaity Division, which had 500 acres of tea and roughly the same number of labour. The language barrier had to be broken. Days were spent without speaking much English. Eventually I learnt, but until then it was all very difficult.

The English tea companies at the end of the nineteen forties seemed mostly based in Mincing Lane, London, with forwarding agents in Netaji Subhas Road (or Clive Street, before Independence) in Calcutta. Recruitment of managers was from England and Scotland. To bring a young man to what was to him a completely new and isolated world, meant many misfits. This shortly altered. Under a new set of guide lines insisted upon by the Indian Government we gradually changed to Indian Management for recruits. This brought many differences to the social scene and club life within the planting community. The Indian boys married young, and the club life did not really attract them. As they were excellent at sport, the evenings spent at the club bar were not for them. Thus and latterly, life for a bachelor came that little lonelier. As a senior single person in this society, one became almost a social outcast. The junior ladies, whether European or Indian, made this point quite clear. They neither liked, understood nor trusted bachelors. But there were exceptions.

One is always left wondering concerning the success of arranged marriages, which is the custom in India. The big objection may be the financial stress caused to the unfortunate parents of, say four daughters. I think each daughter was married off on the system a big sister first and little sister last. This was hard on the youngest, particularly if the senior girl was not that beautiful. By the time it came for the youngest to have her chance, there was probably little money left from this expensive dowry system. Age and boredom could be there in the walled privacy of the surrounds of the middle class Indian girl. Other than this, there remains much to be said for the arranged marriages. Parents are often wiser than their children. The cast system remains quite beyond one, except that I learnt its deep implications and was most careful to appreciate all its underlying factors. Generally speaking, if as an Indian, one was born to low caste parents, then the future would always remain bleak. If an Indian of Brahmin caste was born male, then the child's outlook was quite rosy. It all seems a little unfair, but criticism must not be fairly levelled in a system which is not fully understood. One of the London directors once told me that the least attractive feature he found on his brief visits to West Bengal, was the huge difference between the very rich and the very poor. I remain very wary of finding fault anywhere and too frequently. It is so easy to do. To your horse's faults be ever so blind. To his good points be ever so kind.

After the first year Wick moved me into the Second Assistant's bungalow, which was a great relief. There was my own little world of five servants, two ponies and a constant shortage of money. The work was very hard and I enjoyed it. The monsoon months were the most difficult, and indeed when we were most busy. Baintgoorie Tea Estate was 700 feet above sea level, and the plains of The Dooars, as our district is known, was pan flat. The Himalayas stood in the background, and in the cold weather months Kitchinjunga, which is the second highest mountain in the world, stood snow-capped, and one almost felt one could put a hand out to touch its icy slopes.

In the summer the freshness of the morning by 9 o'clock had almost gone and the full glare of the sun was quickly to stale the atmosphere. From June to October Baintgoorie's rainfall would exceed 120 inches. It was too hot for a mac or jacket, one could watch the steam from the plains rise as the rain stopped and the sun came out. Everyone used umbrellas. There was rarely a wind with the rain, and the huge drops of water fell straight onto one's brolly and bounced off. The labour force would stick the handles of their umbrellas in their waist bands. This gave protection against the rain and the sun. The umbrella was a most vital piece of equipment to the labour force in the monsoon. We would stock them, sell them cheaply to the labour, and allow advances to buy them when there was a case of hardship. We also issued them with waterproof waistbands and plucking baskets which they somehow strapped on their backs.

Dusk and the evenings should have come as a welcome relief from the heat of the day, but insects and in particular the mosquito spoilt that little bonus. One slept under a huge mosquito net in the wet weather months, with the ceiling fan inside the net, ticking away on No. 2. If for any reason the fan stopped, one was awake in a second. All our factories carried a big set of wet chloride batteries, and these made life bearable when the factory wheels were not turning. They only had a life span of eight years and were much treasured and tended.

The enormous river Teesta that flowed in huge cascades of icy water from the hills, had to be crossed to reach the three main towns of West Bengal: Jalpaiguri, Siliguri and above them Darjeeling. This involved a big bridge which had been built into the hills, where it was said there were better foundations. Thus one drove round the rock face with cliff tops on the right, and an unfenced precipice on the left. A friend who was heading for Darjeeling was rounding these bends when the track rod fell off his car's steering. The front wheels were now without direction from the steering wheel, and could make their own choice whether to go left over the precipice, or right in to the Cliffside. The wheels decoded on the right decision. He wired the whole thing back on and continued on his way. Halfway up the long climb to Darjeeling he met Wick and Isabel who were on the descent. Their car was stationary and Wick was standing with the car's roof rack over his head, and prior to hurling it into the steep valley below. It transpired that every time he braked, the roof-rack and suitcase on top came sliding off scratching the bonnet of his highly polished car. As they went on these trips one had to drive against the Nepali hill truck drivers. They were quite something and drove these small trucks as though every second counted. They also had the odd trick of keeping the hydraulic braking system slightly spongy. Thus it needed at least two taps on the foot brake for the system to operate. These small trucks were often overloaded, and as there was always bad blood between the Bengali and the Nepali, every now and then this sparked off rows. In latter days this was the cause of a difficult situation. Several managers had sneaked up in company transport to Darjeeling for the week-end, and became stuck up there. There had been a knifing incident between a Bengali student and a Nepali bus conductor in an argument over a bus fare. The road down was closed. One could chance it, but windscreens were being smashed. We gave our drivers money and told them to return with the company pick-ups when the dispute was settled. It was decided to hire hill ponies to half way down and then catch the hill train down to Siliguri and get some sort of transport from there. The problem was that the hirers of the ponies in Darjeeling knew of our predicament. The morning was wasted in bartering. We did not actually want to buy the ponies, but just to hire them for one half day.

During my second or third year at Baintgoorie I was suffering from a grumbling appendix. Finally and because I was not at all well, a message was sent to our tea estate doctor. This qualified man was of course Bengali, his grasp of English was adequate, but one had to stick to Basic English, and this in my ignorance nearly cost me my life. His visit to the bedside told him little, the symptoms were described, and I said "Doctor I've been sick". This meant little to him, and he was too polite to query the comment. However as he retraced his steps down the stairs he turned and said "Sir, have you vomited recently?" Within hours I was driven from the plains of the Dooars to Darjeeling which stands at 7,500ft and the route was criss-crossed all the way up by the railway. Two men sat in front of the railway engine, and when the wheels started to skid on the severe incline, it was their job to throw sand and grit onto the railway line. It was often foggy and misty on the road upwards, which had the railway lying across it at very regular intervals, and the trip took much concentration on the driver's part. In Darjeeling there was the Planters Club, and next to it, and indeed adjoining was the Planters Nursing Home. I think there were six bedrooms, and most of the inmates had dysentery of one form or another. Colonel Davidson was the doctor/surgeon in charge. He was a charming man and I was by chance at school with his son. He visited my bedside each day for three days, by which time I was restless, and he was persuaded to operate.

"Well old boy, afoul say so, we will have a look tomorrow at llama, however because you are so tall, do you mind walking to the operating table?" This was agreed upon and next day I walked to a sort of cubicle and was asked by the nurses to lie down on the operating table. Colonel Davidson came in through the door and said "Glendinning, it's our coffee break, we will start things in ten minutes". The whole place was most relaxed and there was a crowd of married ladies in and out of the nursing home, who were most generous and quite prepared to organise trips to Labong race track on Wednesday and Saturday. Labong stood at approximately 8000 ft. and was known as the highest race course and the most crooked in the world. There was a member's enclosure and ladies may have worn hats and gloves. The jockeys on their entry to the saddling up enclosure resembled the biggest set of minute rogues that one would go a long way to avoid meeting. One in particular was remembered. He had only one eye. The horses were local bred hill ponies, and the track was small, circular, with gravel and cinders. The Tibetians would attend, they were heavy gamblers, it was all good fun, and indeed was the remnants of the British Raj.

There were three planter brothers called Emmet, who seemed to rule the social side of Darjeeling, and described themselves as Emmets in the foreground, and the Himalayas in the background. I never really liked Darjeeling and never felt well up there. It was something to do with the rarefied air, and the elevation. I prefer the plains. The one exception was Kalimpong which used to be described as the Gateway to Tibet.

The Darjeeling planters always considered themselves a cut above their fellow compatriots sweltering some 7000 ft. below them in the heat of the Dooars. It is difficult to understand why they should have set themselves in this lofty frame of mind. Many of their estates were in financial difficulty. They could make lovely tea, but not much of it, and their production costs were slowly to make their exotic produce no longer viable. We on the other hand could pump out the tea, even if the quality left much to be desired. The Dooars fielded a cricket team, of which I was a member, and we played Darjeeling in a two day match every May. I seem to remember we usually lost. Years later my late wife Sally and self were at Fontwell Races in England, when we heard a loud voiced man shouting to his wife and saying look there's young Glendinning. Sally thought it rather impertinent and gave one of the Emmets brothers, whose voice it was, rather a curt reply to introductions. This particular Emmet was the number one of the three brothers. He seemed on this occasion to be reduced in size, and his slightly shabby general purpose rain coat described his present difference to his previous possibly rather arrogant past. In fairness both he and his wife seemed fairly well content in their retirement. It is easy to be critical but one rather gained the impression that the Darjeeling planters had never quite grown up. Their cousins at the bottom of the hill were not quite the same. The heat and the dust had knocked some sense into them. Wick told me that these were no Sirs in tea. This was not quite correct. All assistants in Darjeeling called their managers Sir, and there was much bowing and scraping.

Kalimpong stands at 4,500 ft. and a dirt track takes one to it. I acquired a girlfriend in Kalimpong called Peggy, she helped run the Kalimpong Hotel, which was very basic, and owned by Annie who was a tremendous character. It was a cheap and cheerful halfway house that allowed one to escape from the heat of the plains, but without going so high to Darjeeling, which for me was too high. Many week-ends were spent there, brief as they were, and arduous as they were with the bad road conditions. We would hire hill ponies first thing on Sunday morning and spend the day trekking miles along the foothills of the mountains. I remember the wild flowers, the corn plete isolation and the mule trains from Tibet. The lead mule was always highly decorated with fancy ribbons in his mane and a huge bell round his chest. There were always many mules in each train. At the end of the rein was the muleteer; the only way to greet them was to make welcoming gestures with one's hands, and then stick one's tongue right out. This was their way of saying hello and he always responded with a wave, huge grin, and with his tongue right out. The Tibetans carry their money in the heel of their boots. Their way of life caused much arthritis because of the lack of vegetables. They also smelt. Kalimpong was a lovely place, and I gather now is difficult to reach because of its close vicinity to Tibet, and the political complications. The cold weather months from November to March were lovely, and made up so much for the difficult time of April to October.

After two years as assistant garden manager I realised that all I needed was a car. My late Uncle Paul left me £500 when I was twenty years old. He was a lovely man and worked at Hatfields for De Havilland's. He always drove a tiny open Austin which he changed regularly for £5. On Coronation Day he painted the vehicle red, white and blue. His great trick was to come over from Hatfield in his Pussmoth plane, and do the most incredible aerobatics over our patch of land at Northchurch, Berkhamstead. We all adored Uncle Paul, and my poor mother took a long time to recover from his premature death from tuberculosis at the end of the war in 1945.

I saw fit to request my bank manager at Lloyds Bank, Bridgewater, to remit £250 of my precious legacy to Lloyds Bank, Chouringhee Street, Calcutta.

The lovely division of 600 acres of Chaity, at its very extremity was, from the bungalow, at least two miles away. In the early afternoons it was too much to expect the ponies and saith (groom boy) to turn out in the monsoon months either in pouring wet, or that ghastly humid heat which sapped one's energy, to attend leafweighments and general supervision. Anyway here I struck gold and acquired my beautiful first motor car from planters that were retiring. It was known locally as the yellow peril and was a 1934 four cylinder Ford sedan. I loved that car, as indeed did my pani wallah, Nandoo. He was the general factotum around the assistant's bungalow and had a natural bent towards mechanics. Nandoo kept that car going for years for me, it had little in the way of brakes; lights like glow worms, and had to be cranked with the starting handle before we were mobile. The joy and comfort that this car gave me, is never forgotten. Life drifted along. Nandoo made some internal modifications to the car, we never took it to Darjeeling, but it did make trips to Kalimpong which stood half as high and had only a dirt road leading to it. He acquired a length of internal household electricity flex, and a plastic bell push. He wired the whole contraption to the passenger seat and was now in charge of the horn, which he blew at every corner and allowed me to keep both hands on the steering wheel. There were also times when the front wheels almost started to rub the very solid mudguards, Nandoo would dismantle the transverse front spring, hump it up to the factory area and persuade someone to bend the thing a bit, or put in another leaf. At least we were not bothered about shock absorbers not working. This model did not have any.

Kalimpong was so different from anything at Baintgoorie that the difficult drive into the hills into the Himalayas did little to dissuade Nandoo and myself. The former would spend Friday, trying to tighten down the wire brakes, which were very inadequate, trying to secure the exhaust system which had a habit of falling off, and arranging the horn system that allowed myself two hands to steer, and all my strength to push on the foot brake which gave minor response. Nandoo was paid little extra for these expeditions. He somehow acquired a four gallon (ex-WD) jerry can, and would manage to have this filled with petrol on Friday evenings from the factory stores. This helped our travelling expenses. He took blankets with him and slept in Kalimpong in the back of the car and had some arrangement with the hotel cook, who fed him. The fact that he managed to make these arrangements was unusual. Nandoo was of high caste, but originated from South India. All the servants at the hotel were Nepali. Peggy was part Nepali and part English. I remember she had big ears and was thin and quite dark, and a happy person. She later went to train as a nurse in England. I suppose Annie paid her fare. Annie and her sister were both unmarried and middle-aged. One ran the hotel and the other the Arts and Crafts Centre in Kalimpong. The latter made many beautiful things. Quite the best seller was their lovely soft huge hankies, and on which they would print the name of any would be recipient. These were most in favour in England and used in times of a heavy cold. They were large and soft.

The life of an assistant was a fairly healthy one. One's emoluments did not allow for high living. The club bar bill had to be controlled quite strictly and I have always preferred a pipe to cigarettes. Now neither are popular with the medical profession. Possibly a pipe is considered the lesser of two evils. From the manager downwards, every worker within the estate was supposed to have one palludrin tablet a week. In the case of the management staff, mepacrine could be taken as an alternative. The estate junior doctor would make the labour take their pill at weekly intervals, and usually during leaf weighments. The labour were against these pills. They were in fact issued to prevent malaria. I suspect that the labour had some idea it was some form of family planning. Once they had an idea like this going, it was hopeless. There would always be pills scattered over the mud floor of the leaf weighment sheds after our doctor had done his best in malaria control. I found that palludrin did not agree with me and changed to mepacrine. The trouble with the latter was that if one overdid their intake, one's skin turned yellow. Because this happened, I saw fit to reduce the amounts and then shortly after acquired the only bout of malaria that was to lay me very low. The Central Medical Officer of our area came at once to visit me and took charge of my diet and apparently gave the staff a good talking to. At my bedside he warned me that I would feel like dying. And might even want to die. I had malaria and with it a temperature of up to 104, and I would soon be better. He was correct in his prognosis. He had seen it all before.

Slowly the language was learnt and my usefulness increased. I became due for another estate within the company group, but, for some reason I stayed and this was fine. Perhaps one should have moved to learn more about other aspects and viewpoints. Administration was one of the big items, with a large resident labour force there was much to do. Under the umbrella of the Indian Tea Association we supplied our labour force with a pro rata rice supply every two weeks. Providing that the labour had completed ten days work within the two week period, they received a decent amount of rice at very cheap rates. We sometimes had much difficulty in obtaining adequate supplies and were forced to supplement their allocation with atta or milo. This was the cause of some discontent until suddenly it was discovered that excellent alcohol could be brewed from it. The labour were paid on a monthly basis, except during the tea harvest months from April to November, when they received 'double pice'. This was the extra money for picking a certain weight of tea leaves, and was paid weekly. The ratio of tea leaves to tea was five to one and we were not allowed by the company to make more than 10% of dust which was sold in Calcutta. The rest went in tea chests to London. I still look at all tea chests that one uses for packing, hoping to see Baintgoorie of Bagracote stencilled on them, and never have. At the height of the picking season the factory would hardly stop. It was one of the garden assistant's jobs to take a night shift in the factory, helping the Bengali factory clerks to keep an eye on things. One trick that needed watching was for the men on the tea drying machines to stoke up the boilers with a massive bank of coal and sneak off for a sleep. This would cause tea to be burnt by too high temperatures and then as the fire died down, to come out soggy instead of crisp.

Our social life relied heavily on having transport to visit fellow assistants from adjoining tea estates, and to attend the club twice a week. I scored well because my funny old square car, about which friends were rather rude, was always a runner. Theirs very frequently were not. Spares were difficult and money tight. We were really not well paid and all awaited the day of becoming manager. This was rather a case of waiting for dead men's shoes. Retirement age was fifty five years and some hardly became manager before they were forced to retire. In my case I did six years as an assistant and six years as a manager. We played tennis, a bit of polo, the latter fading through lack of ponies and lack of interest, amongst mostly the Scotsmen who never much took to the expense of being involved. Golf we played on Sundays.

In the cold weather months six of us would take it in turns to have a curry lunch and supply a bottle of gin. On Wednesdays, again only in the cold weather, the Chaity division had their own little bazaar. This involved something like todays sales on undeveloped building sites. The vendors would spread their wares on a sheet, and much time was spent in bartering for the goods which were mostly vegetables. There was also gambling with dice, snakes and ladders, and also a type of house. Instead of an ice cream van, there was a pan wallah who sold beetle nut that stained the teeth to bright red. The labour, like all Indians, had lovely teeth which they brushed each morning and maybe evenings, with a piece of stick. Also my labour had their little bazaar, and the big item of the afternoon was cock fighting. I became involved and employed my pan wallah's brother as my trainer. He was very successful and many were the birds that reached my dining table. They were rather tough.

Wick's wife Isabel looked after me like a second mother, and was just that. She lives alone now in Scotland close to her two sons. We always kept in touch. My only and most generous present on my twenty first birthday were six polo sticks that Wick and Isabel gave me. In the cold weather months girls would sometimes come and stay with married planters, and were called "the fishing fleet". I can only remember two of them, whose nick names were push me Audrey and Arctic Annie. It was a happy carefree time, with plenty of supervisory work and without too much responsibility. The monsoon months could have become a nuisance, but we were kept too busy to allow this to annoy one.

Push me Audrey acquired her name because after a late night at the club, she was being driven home by the boyfriend of the moment, he had a large open touring type car with a weak battery. His fellow friends refused to help, and there was much heckling. He was eventually reduced to shouting "Audrey, push me". These girls were after bigger fish than junior assistants with little money. Isabel and Wick did in fact have a single girl to stay. She was the daughter of a planter from Darjeeling and loved her stay in Baintgoorie, riding the horses. She was soon whisked away by neighbouring bachelors, and later married one of them. These visiting single girls did certainly brighten up club life in the cold weather months. We had a cinema show on Saturdays, which was always preceded by the National Anthem, to which everyone stood to attention.

One of the most critical aspects for an assistant was to somehow keep one's transport on the road. Many of them were bad at this and suffered accordingly. It was an isolated life style, but with a car or jeep one could at least get around. The junior assistants were much more at risk than the senior assistants, who were paid better. I was of course spoilt in having Wick and Isabel in the background. One signed for everything on what were called chitties, which were in fact nasty little bits of paper that had to be accounted for at the end of the month. At the bar one signed a chit, at breakfast one signed a chit for bread and milk. The cook had to receive cash each Sunday to buy the week's groceries. One could obtain petrol on a chit, and cash on a chit. I followed Wick's advice and went fairly frequently to Ramdas Ram with my IOU chit. After four and a half years work at Baintgoorie my debts at this shop had grown alarmingly. Wick had a quiet word with Ramdas, and I was told not to worry, but to pay them back eventually. Not all managers were as kind as this. It was not in the interests of Ramdas to quarrel with the management, and all loans were interest free, but of course had to be eventually repaid. Senior assistants and managers were on a commission pay basis. It only took one good year to sort out these outstanding.

The servants were paid on a monthly basis. For an assistant this was not too bad, a head bearer (servant) and cook. The gardener and sweeper boy were paid direct from the office, otherwise I doubt if they would ever have been paid. In my case there remained the groom for the ponies, their grass cutters and the corn bill. The local mem sahibs would cluck their tongues and the saying went that I kept my horse's fat and myself very thin. My entire wardrobe could have been packed into a suit case. The only bulky items were my dinner jacket, worn once a year, and thick suit which was never worn until my return home on leave. Perhaps it is only as one grows older that one starts to look after clothes! Anyway Ramdas Ram was still in charge of that shop years later when I was to leave Baintgoorie finally. He never changed, always kept a low profile, and in his way was a great asset. He was part of India.

One of our company's sub-divisions was a completely isolated division, within the hills of the Himalayas. My good friend Tony was the assistant, whose bungalow was at the top of a very steep hill. Built on a plateau and surrounded by tea. The only way up was by foot or pony. Tony seemed very happy up there, and on his promotion, the company made a mistake and sent an assistant who had married rather a glamorous girl. Tocher was to tell me later of a most embarrassing occasion when our London office sent out a senior director to visit the young bride who ran over to greet them and burst into tears. She had received no visitors since her arrival. Their car had problems and she was reduced to playing cards with the servants to keep herself occupied.

There was one further memory of those early days, needless to say it happened in the middle of the monsoon months and when one's spirits were low. I had spent the previous evening in a most unusual fruitless occupation of trying to balance my income against expenditure. Wick drove round the Chaity division every day and I asked him his opinion on my predicament, which was spending more than one was earning. One solution was to sell one of my two ponies. Good old Wick became most excited, his advice was just to go deeper in debt and stop behaving stupidly. He told me that his debts as a senior assistant just before the war, were such that he reckoned he would spend the rest of his career repaying them. The biggest and only saddler in Calcutta did in fact write a very polite letter reminding Wick of his outstanding. Wick replied that at the beginning of every month he screwed all the bills up and put them in a top hat. The first two he picked out were paid. Wick received a polite reply, with agreement to this arrangement.

My first home leave after nearly five years finally came. As the train from Southampton steamed into Victoria Station, my parents, brothers and sisters were there to meet me. My dear mother had organised it. My young brother shouted from the platform to the railway carriage that I was wearing the same suit that I had left in. This was indeed true. My father bought me a ford Anglia and my mother and stepfather allowed me to stable two horses within their precincts in the depths of Somerset. The long suffering parents seemed happy to accept my way of life on a short term basis. The Somerset farmer friends took me in with their usual kindness. My bachelor farmer friend must be mentioned. Edward was quite splendid and my home leave passed quickly.

On the return to Calcutta I reported to the forwarding agents to learn the bad news, I had been drafted to Danguar Jhar Tea Estate. It was isolated and with a really difficult left wing labour force. It was however the big money spinner within our company. This was the only unhappy time of the twelve years in India. Sufficient to say that in hindsight I had ideas above my station. The Superintendent sent me to this rather unpleasant and isolated tea estate to bring me down to size, and also to learn. In this he succeeded. The labour force was majority communist and there had been previously an incident when the manager had been beaten up and left for dead. He did in fact survive, and always walked with a limp. I was made to work long hours, with no one to talk to. The only outlets were some shikari. On Sundays in the cold weather, children who were too young for politics would collect around the compound of my bungalow early in the morning, and we all went snipe shooting. We walked the harvested rice fields within the estate and in line. Two small boys stood close to me, and when I started to sink in that still quite wet land, one relieved me of my gun, and I rested my hands on their shoulders. My dear dog came too, and we all of us had a lovely time. Breakfast on Monday and possibly Tuesday was grilled snipe and eaten with fingers.

There was one incident during the twelve months at Danguar Jhar which still remains in my memory. The manager was advised that because it was in the Spring heat when tempers flare, the division in my charge had short cut their work, refused to repair what was considered was required, therefore I had cut their extra bonus for not completing their morning task properly. Probably it was wrong to have done this, and what did it matter anyway? There were repercussions. The Bengali clerk, who was most excellent, and I, would drive to this division in my elderly and faded red jeep, where the labour of that division received their weekly bonus money every Tuesday afternoon. Payment started and quickly turned into a dangerous farce. The men, when their names were called, took their money with their right, but returned it with their left hand on to the bonnet. The clerk was by this time quite reasonably rather scared. We decided, in English, to stop payment and to collect the unwanted money, and then sat there, by which time we were surrounded by angry faces, who just stood; neither chanting admonishments nor talking amongst themselves. This particular labour force had been well trained, and knew its job in intimidating the management. Eventually the manager arrived in the Company Land Rover. The problem was explained, we received and immediate reply which was to pay them the extra. I never forgave the manager. I had lost prestige, or 'caste' as it was called.

There were many amusing incidents at Danguar Jhar, but not within the tea estate itself, with its hidebound indoctrinated labour force of communists. The environment was quite different, and we were surrounded by real village life, who were close to the poverty line, but indeed, and true to the Bengali custom, were always hospitable and kind. On one occasion I remember on my way back after a weekend away from ghastly Danguar Jhar, I took a short cut through the forest and lost myself. There is nothing less inviting at night than a forest. The poor red jeep continued to run along the forest tracks, eventually, and to my huge relief we came upon an Indian owned tea estate. One of their rules was that there was a visitor's bungalow always available. I explained my problem to the night watchman, he welcomed me, served a curry supper and gave me early morning tea at 5am next morning. He was not in the least worried that I had no money with which to reward him.

All my Bengali friends from those days I remember as kind and friendly. To go from Danguar Jhar north to where my friends lived and to where my heart really belonged, involved the crossing of the River Teesta. This was only possible during the cold weather and the jeep and I were hauled over on a raft. "Ghat whallas" used huge bamboo canes as a means of propelling this cumbersome craft across to the other side and fighting the current. The return trip at night was more difficult, one would arrive at the edge of this vast river and see the camp fire of the ghat wallahs on the other side and shout "come and fetch me". There would be a lengthy pause and then the answer came floating over "who are you?" When they realised that it was the Chota Sahib at Danguar Jhar, they would, in their own time, pole their way over. Not because they liked me, but because at least they knew they would be paid. There was one golden rule that still stays, and remains-a habit which I still cannot break. Over the years w~ were entertained by Bengali landowners to curries and every sort of kindness, in the wilds of West Bengal. One never thanked the host, this was beggars talk. To this day I remember to say "what a lovely meal and how I enjoyed the evening", but never to say thank you. On one trip across the River Teesta during the cold weather and at a weekend's leave, my driver and self- ran into a huge moving fair on their way to Bihar, to an annual horse and animal sale that was to take place shortly. We weaved our way through this entourage. In the middle were hill ponies. I saw one that really looked right. It transpired that he was an entire, stood thirteen hands, and like all those ponies, had plenty of bone, and was young.

We stopped the leader and spent a long spell in achieving what we both thought was a fair price. I forget now the details but the head man of the pony section and myself eventually struck a bargain. He was to wait our return two days later, when he would be paid for his horse. Such was the faith in the British sahib and his honesty, and without any exchange of money, the pony and his rider retraced their steps and the horse was paid for two days later. The pony was a great success. There is an old saying that there is a right way of doing things; the wrong way of doing things, and their way of doing things. This describes this dear pony. One had to ride very long, to stop the horse one leant forward, and to push him on one leant backwards. I found a starving villager to look after him, and here again lies another rather sad incident. The man was quite happy to work for very little and brought with him his wife. Later, and on my transfer, the pony and this man followed some fifty miles. By this time his wife had blossomed out on better food and living conditions. This was eventually the cause of their separation. The pony I sold to one of our Indian assistants, who dearly loved it.

Donald Mackenzie told me of an incident at that very estate. He was much liked by all the labour because of his excellence with a gun and rifle. His dog Sam was the talk of the estate. Sam was a vicious half bred Alsatian and brilliant in beating out wild boar on the Sunday shikari. The shikari lorry would enter the assistant's compound early on a Sunday morning to collect Sam, who leapt onto the back of the vehicle. Donald and the rest followed in the Land Rovers. At the end of the day the meat was proportioned most carefully. Sam was always allowed his full ration. He was I gather the most nasty of dogs. On one occasion the office night watchman saw Sam on the prowl, and threw stones at him to send him back. The dog attacked the watchman by the throat and nearly killed him. This could easily have caused a major conflict with the labour force, but they saw fit to ignore the incident. Sam meant more to them than any night watchman. The dog spent much of Monday in the veterinary unit in Jalpaiguri four miles away, being patched up from the previous day's activities in the jungle and driving out wild boar. It was the sweeper boy's job to walk Sam on a lead, to have his wounds dressed and return. One evening, the sweeper boy (who was in fact a man of fifty years) and the dog never returned. It transpired that the animal on their return journey sank under the shade of a banyan tree and refused to move. Everytime he was asked to continue their journey he threatened to attack the sweeper boy. The pair reached home at 1Opm that Monday evening.

Donald apparently decided that as garden assistant on a low pay, his only hope of freeing himself from debt was to take out a free loan from the company and buy a new Land Rover. Within weeks of this precious new acquisition, he sank the vehicle one evening in the sand banks on the approaches of the river Teesta, in search ofbig game. All that was left of the vehicle was the tip of the windscreen. The rest was buried in sand. Donald was very popular and the next morning fifty men of the factory labour climbed aboard an estate lorry, lifted the new Land Rover out of the sand, placed it on the lorry and all returned. Donald's faithful driver spent the next two weeks stripping the vehicle out, and all at the end was well.

With much relief a letter finally arrived from the Superintendent's office, and via the manager of Danguar Jhar Tea Estate, that Glendinning was to move to Zurrantee in complete reverse style to Danguar Jhar. Both estates were good money making establishments, but run in very different fashion. There could not have been two estates run in more contrasting style. Bill at Zurrantee had his method. This did not comply with any particular lines as laid down by our company or the Indian Tea Association. Tocher was clever enough to see Bill's way. Bill had been separated from his wife, who re-married the manager of Danguar Jhar. Thus there were these added complications. Bill always turned out better than average profits within the company. He short cut his labours' pay, but because everyone loved Bill, no one seemed to mind much. His transport was at the beck and call of seemingly any head persons within the estate. The pickup and Lorries were in a sad and overworked condition. Bill never used the company transport provided. It was in any case quite useless for his particular needs. His bungalow stood in the foot of the Himalayas. Above it was the main section of tea, and below was the factory, offices and assistant's bungalow and south section. Below this was the river and the forest. One could sit on the veranda and view this southern aspect in peace and quietness. Zurrantee's manager's bungalow was the most beautiful set place in which I have ever lived.

A four wheel drive vehicle was needed to reach the bungalow in the wet months. Bill had quite a new jeep, but as it had lost its top on a return trip from Chulsa Club, he would drive in the rain with one hand on the steering wheel, and the other holding an umbrella. This always caused amusement to the labour force. The departure from that dreadful Danguar Jhar was one of my happiest days. The groom boy was given money and asked to take my pony to Zurrantee which probably took him four days. The faithful head servant, and who could not wait to return to country nearer Nepali homeland, packed all the gear into the new grey jeep which had just been acquired. The day of our departure was a beautiful autumn morning. With the windscreen down, hood down and with my Nepali bearer in his white uniform and black cap, sitting bolt upright we swept past the Danguar office far too fast, leaving a trail of dust behind, and never to return. Possibly one of the advantages of being still comparatively young, and a bachelor, one can adapt to a change of life style quickly and easily. Bill was a quiet man and spoke little. I was his guest in his beautiful bungalow for four lovely months. In the cold weather there was more time for leisure. On one occasion Bill walked into my bedroom early in the morning, and which was not his wont. It transpired that his jeep was missing from the garage and he could not find the safe keys. We found both his vehicle and the safe keys not too far away. The clerks at Zurrantee told me that on one occasion a previous manager had lost the keys to the office safe, inside which, depending on the time of the month, was probably up to £90,000.00 or its equivalent in rupees.

Every estate carried within its factory precincts a master carpenter, and for some reason it was always a Chinaman, and they were without fail always nick-named John. John was sent for and had the problem explained to him. He did not say much, they never did, but disappeared to his workshop and very quickly returned with a bunch of keys, with which he opened the safe. It transpired that he had had them for years. Bill Milne's return was delayed by nearly two months. His ship was cruising through the Mediterranean and heading for the Suez Canal, when the Suez crisis blew up. They were forced to turn round, steam back through the Straits of Gibraltar, re-fuel and then go around the Cape. He said the trip turned into a nightmare as all the fellow passengers were bored and there was endless friction during the latter part of the voyage. He finally appeared and we were all delighted to see him again. He took charge of his lovely estate, his most pleasant clerical staff and friendly labour force, and I departed for the big challenge.

PART TWO

I had been offered another Acting Manager job, with a view to permanent management of dear old Baintgoorie Tea Estate. Thus came the really big challenge of our little world. Wick and Isabel had left for their retirement some eighteen months previously. Law and order were on the decline and the acting manager had not been able to hold together a difficult situation. Our company within the· company contained two estates, Bagracote and Baintgoorie. Donald and I took charge of these two estates at roughly the same time. Donald had the bigger estate with the most difficult labour problems. In my turn, my beloved Baintgoorie had a minority and aggressive Communist labour element, and I remember my first evening in the manager's bungalow being forced to listen to chants "kill the manager and burn his transport" up and down the lane below the compound, hedged by bougainvillea in all its deep blue glory. This was not a pleasant welcome, and soon developed into a war of nerves between myself and the minor factor of reds. They always wore red hats. Anyway, because several years had been spent as an assistant, I knew the labour and they knew me, and this factor was to hold me in great stead over the most difficult first year as acting manager. I was virtually the only bachelor holding a manager's job within the company and this may have helped in that the staff and labour force realised that if it went wrong, and I was dismissed by the company, there was only myself to support. As foreigners, we were always advised most strongly not to tangle in politics, and at this time the Congress Party ruled. There was however an unruly element of communists, whose violent behaviour made life difficult for management on many estates. Once control had been lost and one had given way to their demands, then life for the manager could turn to misery. Baintgoorie was slipping that way. The labour force were mostly Congress Party. In fact they had no real interest in politics. They were fortunate in that there was plenty of spare land besides the tea bushes, on which they planted rice, grew vegetables and grazed cattle. They were by nature a slightly indolent lot, and on my arrival in the cold weather months of 1958, great pressure was being put on them by a very active and aggressive minority communist party. By ill luck my support team were of little help. They consisted of one factory assistant, one garden assistant and my head clerk. These were the three key men. Tocher had already advised me that my two assistants were quite useless and he would not be renewing their three year contracts. "Your factory assistant is pin headed and only of use on the football field". The garden assistant again, to quote Tocher "would make an excellent car salesman, but he made a lousy planter". Tocher did not mince his words. Martin Hawes who was the local Head Office accountant drove the twenty miles from his offices to warn me that my Head Clerk Ghosal was not up to his job and pressure was being exerted to get rid of him. So much for my support group, and I suddenly felt lonely.

Very shortly war was declared on the communist minority group on Baintgoorie by the estate management. This was a dangerous game to play. We were not allowed to meddle in the country's affairs, and even if the company had condoned my actions, the matter would have been taken out of their hands. Had the local leaders of the communist party in the nearby bazaar been able to prove my actions, I could well have been whisked home in a hurry by the Indian Tea Association. The manager was supplied by the company with a large Ford pick-up with a hand gear change and long bench type front seat. John Chinaman was sent for and did a neat conversion and in secrecy to the front seat. This allowed a hidden place for my twelve bore shot gun, and which was then always loaded by my head servant and placed in the vehicle with my driver's knowledge, but no-one else's. I still used the horses sometimes for work, but was safe on them. At night I slept with the loaded gun under my bed, and my dear yellow Labrador with me in the bedroom. There were several very unfair ways of making life difficult for this bunch of some one hundred men, who always wore red hats at work. That is, they did to start with. However, anyone wearing a red hat was found to have done his work all wrong. Hours were wasted at this game, they were in the minority and we knew it was safe. Shortly the red caps decreased. There were however, a hard core element, very dedicated to their cause and difficult to handle. They never gave up. Their head man was called Mangroo, who had a secretary, and we knew that until we were rid of these two men there would be no peace. It was difficult to dismiss a worker. One could send them three warning letters for different offences and then sack him, but not before one went before a tribunal in Jalpaiguri some fifty miles away. Mangroo was frankly a little rat of a man with sly eyes, and a sort of sea lawyer knowledge of his rights. He was also very dedicated to his cause. He had a lowly position on the tea estate, and went out most evenings to walk the four miles to Mal bazaar to receive further instructions as to how to make my life more difficult. The climate in Madrid has been described as nine months of winter and spring and three months of hell. The climate likewise in West Bengal had a most unpleasant April and May and again a difficult part June, until the monsoon broke. If there was going to be serious trouble, be certain that the problems would arise during those months. Our time came in May 1959. My two head men who supervised the running of the two divisions of tea, and under the direction of the assistants, reported to my office. They were very worried and the fact that they came together was in itself most unusual. Birshoo Chaprassi was the older man, and with a life time's experience behind him. He was however of lower caste than the other head man, Somai, who was younger, but of a higher caste. These two never got on and were never or rarely seen together. I sat up in my chair behind my sparse manager's desk, requested my assistants to find somewhere else to go for five minutes, and shut the door between the office and the Bengali clerks and said "yes well?" There was silence as they gazed around the bare walls of my office, then at their bare feet, and then finally at each other. Age and not caste on this occasion took precedence, and it was Birshoo who burst forth with "Sahib there may be riots here tomorrow. The communist party have called a one day strike and the Congress have said there is to be no strike". I had known that there would be a crunch day eventually. The question was how to deal with it. The leaf position on the tea bushes was such that one almost welcomed an extra day of paying no one and not picking the leaf would have saved the company £2,000 in wage bills and done no harm. I requested my head man in most polite Hindi to return a little later whilst we gave the matter thought. The office boy fetched the head lorry driver. We had five or six Lorries to carry the leaf in the picking months, in our tea chests to the local railhead, and fetch back coal. They were all good and each vehicle carried two lads to help with the loading and unloading. They were an excellent team. We also had tractors and trailers, but they were too slow for what was needed. The trouble area was mostly the Chaity division, where indeed Mangroo lived. The labour lines were so situated that I realised that if one could not ferry the loyal workers in by lorry, they would never break the picket lines that would be set up. Thus much depended on the reactions of the transport team, whose welfare I was risking. The head driver was always polite and quiet and held the team of Lorries together with great efficiency. He drove the newest lorry, which was a blue 1950 Chevrolet, which was quite the best of the dreary fleet. As the problem was explained we watched his eyes light up, "Sahib let's have a go". Thus he was requested to find my two head men, and indeed all the head men to have a 'panchayt' (a sort of meeting) and to return to tell us the plans. It was a big game really, but there was much at stake.

The next step was to find the sergeant of the local police station at Malbazaar. Malbazaar had a railway station, a petrol filling station, shops, and a mechanics workshop where the Lorries seem to spend much of their time. On Sundays there was a big market. This was attended by all and sundry including the local tea estates. The privileged came by estate lorries, who included the Bengali clerks, one lorry per tea estate, and one's head clerk, and the head factory clerk and their wives had the privileged position of the drivers cab, and the rest were in the back of the lorry, which included most of the clerical staff in their immaculate dhotis with their wives, also in white and with their heads well covered in purdah. The balance in the back included the sahib's bawarchis (cooks and hangers on) and anyone who could scrounge a lift. The bazaar Sunday lorry was always crammed to capacity. It was worse on the return trip because in that sort of climate everything was bought alive and killed when needed. Thus the lorry returned with goats and chickens etc., and, worse, the driver may have had a few drinks. It was a happy event. The less fortunate went by foot. The man strode out ahead and the ladies struggled behind as best they could with the week's shopping. This was four miles there and back. Everyone always wore bright clean clothes and took seemingly great pleasure from their weekly outings.

The Daroga Babu Sergeant had under his control six constables, and no transport. The Sergeant was known as the Daroga Babu. He was a fat little man and always smartly turned out. The police station was a corrugated and wood building, built on stilts and situated in the most important part of this small village of Malbazaar. The police station had a big and pleasant well-kept compound. He had his instructions, which were not to be involved if possible with the English managed tea estates and their labour force. At the same time the estates were a major factor in the revenue for this province. We were levied a huge sum for every load of tea chests that were sent to England and this must have contributed much to the welfare of West Bengal. This was understood by the Bengalis, who were not stupid.

Normally I drove the estate vehicle which had Baintgoorie Tea Estate written in white on the door sides, against a dark green background. It was big and powerful and in those days elegant and used much petrol. However, on this occasion we stopped off at my bungalow and I changed from khaki shorts to khaki long trousers and a shirt with long sleeves. I could have worn a tie but it was just too hot. The driver drove to the police station; we swept in and halted. The driver made the most of our arrival and helped me out of the vehicle. Like South America, it is not how you do it, it is the way that you do it. The Daroga Babu Sergeant made one wait for what he thought was a reasonable amount of time, walked into the heat of the main room with his swagger stick under his arm, and shouted to an orderly to fetch a chair opposite to his desk. He waived me into the seat without saying anything. The Daroga Babu Sergeant was an exception, he was not very bright, his English was moderate and we happened to know he was heavy handed with the rum bottle in the evenings. He considered us to be over paid and arrogant. He arranged his papers around his desk, peered intently at them and said "Yes what do you want?" I explained briefly, slowly and carefully that we would like to send transport to his police station early next morning. I requested him to allow his police to patrol the roads in the vehicle next morning as we expected trouble between the Communists and the Congress party within Baintgoorie Tea Estate. A sly look appeared on his rotund face and he beamed and was almost jovial "Sorry but quite impossible" was his reply. We have language riots in Assam and all spare staff have been drafted north. I did not believe him and did not care either. It was from both sides a very satisfactory meeting. The Daroga Babu did not want to be involved and had found a way out. In our turn, it saved us one of the valuable Lorries, and should the constables have come, they would have been useless. Their orders were to be as negative as possible. On the return the head lorry driver was waiting at the gate of the bungalow compound, squatting on his haunches smoking a berri. He salaamed quietly and said "tomorrow is organised". I thanked him and went to my bungalow to await the outcome of the following day.

At 5am, the fleet of five Lorries were heard spluttering their way past the road that ran parallel to the bungalow compound. This was a most unusual event. The labour force were good once they were on their feet, but early mornings was their weak link. The servant on this occasion put as was his wont the loaded shot gun in the recess of its hiding place under the seat, and added a box of cartridges. The box had No. 8 written on the side. Those cartridges were used for snipe shooting, but have a great spreading tendency. I had no wish to murder anyone in my beloved Baintgoorie, except possibly Mangroo and his. Secretary. The pick-up driver, who indeed was in knowledge of what the day was all about, reported and we set off with the driver at the wheel. My Chaity division were peacefully plucking the rather sparse crop of leaves on section 13. This was well before their normal time of arrival. The lorry drivers had done their job and ferried them through with no trouble to the Chaity division. We reversed to see how the South division were coping on section 12. Here we met problems. In the grass entrance to this particular section of tea stood roughly 200 men and 300 women, with their rumals (sort of canvas cloths for the collection of the tea leaves) the assistant Ghosh with an embarrassed expression on his face, and Somai Chaprassi looking likewise. In the middle there had been erected on a high bamboo stake the Communist Party flag. Beneath it were umbrellas, tables etc. The driver stopped and we changed seats. Then, and with much relish, we rammed the company vehicle at the whole contraption. There was a fearful crunch of bamboo and umbrella and a general scattering of people. The assistant and Chaprassi were then able to take control, and the men came forward followed by the women, and the plucking leaf started on section 12.

This all sounded simple stuff. Chaity sections of tea were not as good as the South division and one section of the labour force was more powerful that the other; also Mangroo and his secretary lived within the Chaity division and they would never forgive their loss of prestige in not causing a day strike at Baintgoorie. The driver took charge of the vehicle once more. We were retracing our tracks to the Chaity division and were close to collision with a vehicle coming the other way. Danny driver was breathless with excitement and ran to tell us that the labour force had been chased out of their work area on the Chaity division and that a riotous mob were heading our way. We told him to push off quickly and lose himself and his lorry. Danny gave me just time to grab my loaded gun and box of cartridges and jump into the back of the pick-up. The driver remained at the steering wheel. Within a very short time the riotous mob swung round the corner. There were perhaps a hundred of them. They were armed with everything one can think of, sticks, stones, arrows and they were bent on trouble. An instant decision was made to protect the driver, who had been led into this most difficult situation. I jumped from the platform of the vehicle and ran to its bonnet, held the gun under my arm and shouted "rocco" (stop). The brave boys at the back were heard saying "take no notice". It was straight mob warfare. The assailants at the front of this motley gang when they saw the gun shouted back to their brave leaders at the rear, "Look out; the Sahib has a gun". Everything stopped and we all waited. This was their great chance. They, the minority left wing party had said since my return to the estate "kill the manager and burn his transport". There it was all waiting for them. The great worry was the pick-up driver, who I could not see because he was behind. The bonnet of the vehicle, and I just hoped he would not run for it. He could never have been blamed, but had he left the vehicle and the protection of the gun, I feared for his life. A few stones whistled our way. "Anymore stones and I will fire" I shouted, "now turn round and cross the Chaity Bridge and stay there". Very slowly the mob backed off. The driver drove and I held my gun at the ready on the top of the pick-up, it was all very dramatic but was perhaps the turning point. There were of course repercussions. The unruly mob did as they were told and appeared terrified of the young manager and indeed his gun. The mob crossed the bridge. The vehicle we parked in the centre. I shouted at the mob that they could re-cross the bridge after 2pm. If they tried to cross before then, I would shoot them, and I meant it. My poor driver, who seemed to have entered into the spirit of this wild day, was despatched to fetch me some breakfast and get himself something. The head servant who was Nepali and did not want to miss out on the happenings, shortly arrived on a bike with a carrier on the back, with breakfast. He was dressed in immaculate white with his normal black cap and served breakfast on the top of the pick-up. In the meantime the other side of the bridge had not gone into complete retreat. They struck camp, re-erected the communist party flag on a high bamboo pole and started their chant of "free India, kill the manager and burn his vehicle". Breakfast was eaten and developments awaited. Sure enough and within the hour the Communist Party Land Rover arrived with their leader, who went into consultation with the mob, and after lengthy discussions, one Communist Bengali was seen to be walking across this long bridge. I let him come within firing range of my 12 bore gun and shouted in English "Stop". He continued to waddle across this long bridge shouting "I want to talk to you", I raised my gun and told him in my best English "Come any further you bastard and I will shoot". He ran for it, returned to his Land Rover and departed. There would be dreadful further trouble, but we had won, so to speak, like Horatio, the major and most important conflict. Everything returned to normal except that we seemed to have regained more control.

The estate soon became very busy with the advent of the monsoon, bringing with it a huge flush of leaf. The tea bushes were supposed to be forty inches high and many sections of the tea were well above this, which made it difficult for the pickers- or puckers as they were called. We had very high rates of absenteeism just when one wanted a maximum turn out. Also the factory had problems. The main engine was hopelessly underpowered and the generator engine was forever breaking down. The excellent factory staff coped somehow. They were used to it. The factory ran night and day, and still could not quite keep up. It was my good fortune that the superintendent Laurence Tocher had returned to Scotland on home leave. He left behind him several acting managers who received regular advice from the directors in London. The Directors' main theme was that quality was what mattered. We had met the junior director in London who was writing the endless short, curt notes which were forwarded via the superintendent's office during Tocher's absence by Martin, the accountant. It was decided not to take any notice, and when these letters arrived I would remove them because the Bengali factory clerical staff, who were excellent, would worry. It was one of those big crop years and the tea bushes at Baintgoorie during the height of the tea picking season just kept growing leaf from June to October, which is the height of the harvest season. The factory had real problems. It was worked in those days by ninety men who did a shift system. The main problems were the tea drying machines, which were inadequate, but worst of all was the main engine. This was a diesel Crossley Twin of 70 h.p. Our chief engineer told us that we needed an engine of 110 h.p. Thus we were struggling just too even make the tea, pack it into tea chests and ship it out from the local railway head to Calcutta to go by sea and reach London some two months later. At night the electric lights were kept to a minimum to prevent the generators taking too much power. One would see the dark coloured labour flittering around almost like ghosts in this dim lit work place. On occasions the main shaft that ran through the length of the factory would be seen to be revolving even more slowly and the lights turn from dim to glow worms. A huge shout would go up, "Bhutti Bajou" (turn off the lights). Everyone then worked in blackness. Quite frequently the previous day's green leaf was still waiting to be put through the factory at mid-day next day, by which time it was heating and wilting.

One of the assistants reckoned that he might be able to help. Because the main engine was so overworked it kept bursting its brass fuel pipes. These had to be repaired some twenty miles away. We carried spares, but because these fuel pipes were breaking so frequently, there were real problems. The stand by engine was a very old steam engine and was fairly useless. It took at least four hours to obtain steam from the boiler, and when it did go, the main belt broke frequently. John Chinaman who was young, risked his neck many times keeping this stand-by going. One assistant had contacts at Calcutta Airport, and reckoned that the hydraulic brake system on the Dakota aircraft had the same type of pipe as our fuel pipes, except they were made from alloy and would be much stronger. He went off with a sample of what we needed, caught the plane from the nearest grass air strip some twenty miles away and returned two days later with these precious fuel pipes which were a great help. The factory wheels at Baintgoorie continued to revolve one way or another. The men and the supervisory staff were excellent, and almost seemed to enjoy the challenge. However under these conditions it was quite impossible to improve quality.

There were two alternatives. At the height of the season each section of tea which was usually sixty acres, needed picking every seven to eight days. Should the estate labour not be able to keep up, one had to resort to sending out some thirty men to skim off the tops and thus wasting all that precious green leaf. We decided to risk things and if the plucking round went beyond twelve days, then something had to be done. The pluckers of the leaf were quite happy because they were earning good extra money and the factory labour were on permanent overtime. At the end of that year in 1958, Baintgoorie had made a huge crop of very moderate tea. Most of the other managers within the group had produced less tea but of better quality. Really it was all a gamble, in fact there was, in the latter part of the year, a big increase in prices in Mincing Lane. Baintgoorie was able to show a small profit, together with Danguar Jhar and Zurrantee. The rest were all in the red. The Superintendent returned in the autumn. He had guessed what we had been up to and was not amused. Hours were spent in the factory trying to improve things on his inspection days. However, little could be said, and I became a full blown manager, which meant much better pay. Everyone had their weakness and making decent quality tea at Baintgoorie remained mine. The particular area had been described as a place for making "bread and butter" tea. Perhaps this problem has been rectified, certainly I failed in this particular sphere, but not without trying. We would have tea tasting assemblies within the group of managers. Poor Baintgoorie always seemed well down the line.

In the meantime the Chaity Bridge episode was going through legal channels. Perhaps Chaity Bridge should be described in more detail. Most bridges across rivers were built at basic low level dimensions, of wood uprights and wood cross members. Not so Chaity Bridge, which was quite the opposite. It was built on huge cast iron poles and banked heavily on both sides. The bridge stood high above the River Chaity. It was narrow and leaf Lorries had to take care. The labour always told me that it had been built by the "Pugla Sahib". They meant the mad sahib, who indeed was not mad, and to his credit realised what could happen and what did happen during my stay at Baintgoorie, when we had really bad floods in later years that took almost every bridge with it as water poured from the Himalayas. It was a two month period of great stress. The tea chests piled up, and rice for the labour was a great worry. We could still pay the labour thanks to the elephant who is quite magnificent in this sort of situation, and indeed saved many lives. They crossed the river Teesta in flood and with the bridge half down, to enable managers to collect the wages from the main bank at Jalpaiguri and return. Elephants love water, and in later years on shoots with Donald Mackenzie after wild boar and using elephants, I would view the scene with great amusement. At a difficult river crossing the shikaris were ferried across by boat. This left the elephants to make their way over as best they could. There would be a tremendous trumpeting and bellowing, and swearing from the mahout, who was the rider of the leading elephant. The elephants did not mind the water, but were petrified of being bogged down in the sand before their entry into the river. Once in, all one could see were periscopes which were the top of their trunks, and the chest and head of their mahouts. They somehow knew that their mahout had to be kept just above water, and elephants are strong swimmers. I have also seen them as they struggled ashore, take up a huge mouthful of water, raise their trunks and give their mahouts a real drenching. This they did for their own amusement.

Police and state enquiries into the Chaity Bridge affair continued. Our activities on that day had been reported to everyone from Pandit Nehru, the Premier of India, downwards. The Communist Party wrote pages and pages on the subject and always ended with a request for my eviction from the country. Eventually a letter from the Chief of Police for our district arrived requesting a meeting. The matter would of course have been very serious, had not the police refused my request for assistance the day previous to the incident. This senior officer duly arrived and took details of my shot gun license, and a statement, and then departed. He also visited the local police station, with whom I suspect he was not too pleased. We heard no more of the matter. Mangroo remained a nuisance, but not to nearly the extent as previously. The good news we had those first few winter months was that the directors had agreed to a new engine for the main motive power, to be despatched immediately. This huge shiny diesel twin took everything in its stride, and never changed its tune when asked to take maximum load. We all stood and gazed at it in great admiration.

Tocher taught this manager what he wanted out of their estates. This was simply to make money for the company, whilst at the same time to improve the properties. The tea bushes and the manufacture of the leaf came first. Figures were most important, and some of the critical ones remain with me. Perhaps in our case the most difficult ratio to keep under control was the ratio between the working labour force and the acreage of the tea within the estate. Baintgoorie was supposed to work to a ratio of 1.1 person to one acre of tea. We also employed some sixty children, but who were not included in the figures. They only worked in the mornings and mostly tended to the young tea with their shade trees. Our lot at Baintgoorie could always be heard miles away, some of them were really very young but they all seemed to enjoy themselves under the control of the supervisors.

When they were older and stronger they became part of the labour force, who really were not paid that well either. However work at Baintgoorie was most popular. It included the right to a house and which was made of bamboo and thatch and repaired annually in the off season months. They received an allocation of firewood and two weeks holiday a year. Also at Baintgoorie there was much spare land which the labour force made full use of. The Indian Tea Association had a very well laid out and strict set of rules for code of conduct for all the tea states. These rules obviously had to be followed by both management and labour.

Thus Baintgoorie became far too popular. In Wick's day this problem of too many people after too few jobs was never so acute. The answer may be that just after the war malaria control was in its infancy and not really understood. Thus infant mortality was high. But with a better standard of living and understanding of malaria, the number of resident labour force rose rapidly. It was most difficult to keep the numbers of the work force to within this figure of 1.llabour to every acre of tea. The afternoons at the manager's office, and particularly in the cold weather months, never varied. There were always people hanging around, and they mostly wanted the same thing, which was work, and they nearly always were turned away empty handed. The most difficult argument that came up regularly was "my son was born on this estate, and now you refuse him work". We were forced, as a sort of ploy to keep a list of applicants which poor Dhar Babu had the dubious pleasure of running. The list became longer and longer. There was also much competition to become a clerk on the tea estates. Martin Hawes, the upcountry accountant had charge of this department, and when a vacancy arose, he would interview the applicants. He was quite amusing with his stories. The potential clerks were nearly always Bengali and needed a good understanding of the English language, both verbal and in writing, and were usually asked to write a short essay on why they wanted to join tea. Martin was always dubious of an essay which has the answer of enjoying the fresh air and country life. He preferred the straight answer which was that the salary was quite good and the prospects were safe and included an index linked pension. The clerks were paid from the accountant's office, and were like the management staff, in that on promotion they could be moved from one estate to another within the group. They were always excellent and very loyal. Wick's head clerk whose name was Mukherjee took snuff. After a bad morning with the figures, he became covered with the stuff. His white long shirt and dhoti were in a dreadful state. At lunch time his long suffering wife would make him change into a fresh set of clothes. He was moved several times over the years. On one occasion I was with a fellow assistant who Mukherjee had not seen for some time, and who had in the meantime put on considerable weight. We met Mukherjee on the office veranda and he looked down his specs, laughed and turned towards Tony and said "Sir you are taking too much fat". This is rather how they talked. There were probably ten clerks at Baintgoorie's office and a further three in the factory. They had their individual concrete bungalows within the factory and office compound, with electricity from the factory, and a well within their walled gardens. The two estate doctors had their houses within the hospital compound. These men were vital to the running of the tea estate, a fact that I was to learn the hard way. The head clerk who took over from Mukherjee had ideas of his own, which were to feather his nest as quickly as possible. To do this it required the co-operation of the manager and I did not fall for it. Not because I make myself out to be virtuous, and a particularly honest man, but I was not prepared to slither down that particular slippery slope. There were quite enough problems anyway. Ghosal finally and with great confidence came up with a scheme, and received the reply that this was stealing. "Sir" he replied, "stealing from the company is not stealing. You are young and single, but one day you will regret your decision". From that day on he sat back and sulked.

Baintgoorie's figures were always late and often wrong, and we were stuck with him for the next six years. In fact as a bachelor I was quite well paid, although Indian taxation was very high. The salary enabled the saving of £100 a month, which was sent direct to England. On top of which was the company's Provident Fund, and 2.5% of the annual gross profits. My savings enabled the purchase of a small dairy farm, with some help from my father in later years. It was very much frowned on to visit the clerk's bungalows. Their ladies were in strict purdah. Repairs and problems were organised by the head factory clerk and any intrusion into their little kingdom would have been tactless. Each clerk had one servant and we allowed this staff weekly visits with their families to the local cinema in one of the state Lorries. They also all attended Mal bazaar on their weekly shopping sprees on Sundays. These clerks lived with their families in a quiet and rather isolated life style, and, except for Ghosal, they appeared happy with their lot, and kept a fairly low profile. Perhaps the exception of the rule was the three factory clerks, Tocher considered the head factory clerk to be too old and not very competent. This was a complete contrast to my feelings and Tocher went quiet. In fact this man carried the support of the factory labour, who were right behind him. The second clerk was absolutely excellent, and the other I cannot remember. If one considers that at night one of them had to be on duty, and by day they were responsible for everything including the factory labour's wages, despatch of tea chests, collection of coal, sorting out regular breakdowns and paying the men, these three clerks were kept occupied. They were always polite and understanding, but could give any labourer a severe reprimand if it was needed. They were also popular. Only on one occasion was there trouble within the factory and needless to say this occurred in the heat of the following May. Everything was dry and parched, and tempers tended to fray. The incident was caused by the management's rather brash insistence that Baintgoorie labour must report in the mornings at a reasonable time. One of the lorry drivers had reported late and was sent home, and this sparked off a row. In fairness to them, it was my fault. The men left one man in charge of the main engine and walked out to the empty firewood shed dose to the factory which provided shade from the fierce sun. All the machines were left running within the factory and with no one in sight. The factory clerical staff and we managed to shut everything off, and the main engine was stopped by the one remaining attendant out of a gang of some forty five people. I went across to the firewood shed and indeed followed the old army rule which was if in doubt in defence, attack. They all stood there quietly not saying much. It was explained that I had important meetings to attend and would return at 2pm, to meet the head men. They were also told that they had acted wrongly in leaving the machines unmanned. The rest of the morning was spent in the local forest and well away from Baintgoorie until tempers had cooled. At the allotted time, at the office compound the head factory labour supervisor was there to greet me. The labour force within the factory and during my absence in the forest had not seen fit to gather more strength from the big numbers from Chaity or South division. This was a straight conflict between management and the factory staff. We agreed that there were faults on both sides. The final request was that could the factory men finish that day's manufacture and receive their wages for the day? By which time the leaf was completely ruined. We said "Yes, of course". Any further trouble was never to be repeated.

To revert to the second problem, which was ratio of green leaf to made tea; the answer was really much simpler. The labour knew every trick, and it was the assistant's task to try to stop the business of loading the plucking baskets with shoes etc. In very wet times it was difficult to keep to the figure. Cost per pound of tea was another crucial figure and the superintendents special delight.

Fortune changed from that difficult first year. The new main engine took away much of the worry in running the factory. The labour force continued to behave in a sensible manner and during the next few years excellent assistants were sent to Baintgoorie. Some were Scots, some English, some Bengali and some Punjabi. There were however two terrible tragedies. Poor Bob Murdock was killed in a car crash, and Murray Sergerson was killed by a wild elephant. They were two top assistants. They were both buried in the Christian cemetery and were placed in the coffins by the estate doctor. The coffins were made by John Chinaman. It was a terrible time on both occasions. They were young men, too young to die and so far from their families. All the tea planting fraternity attended their funerals. They were sad days that left a great blemish on the mostly happy days during my time as a bachelor tea planter, and I somehow felt responsible for their sad and instant deaths. Perhaps I should have been married and settled and offered more to these young men?

Tocher remained a great help. He visited the estate every three months. He would send a letter requesting stable room for his horse, which was ridden the twenty miles by his groom the previous day. The first inspection day was always good, and the estate was inspected on horseback, but with frequent stops to go by foot, and lasted long hours. Tocher would unbend a little: It transpired that on his arrival as a new boy in tea, he was bursting with enthusiasm to get on with the job. He was met by his manager, who staggered down the stairs of the manager's bungalow, and who was very drunk. He received this advice "Laddie, if you find that drinking interferes with your working, then stop working". Tocher eventually was posted to Baintgoorie, where he contracted Black Water Fever, which was a killer. It was caused by malaria and followed by huge doses of quinine to try to reduce the fever. Many young men were sent to tea from good families in those early days. The normal reason was that they had done something really awful within England or Scotland, and that they had best cool their heels whilst the dust settled, in some place far away. Their parents sent most of them to a premature death. Malaria it was that killed them and the Christian graveyard at Jalpaiguri told its tale. The small chapel is in the midst of a prevalent Hindu and Muslim community, and even in my days at Danguar Jhar we still had regular Sunday evening services. The Bengali Christian community sat of the left side of the aisle, and the Anglo Indians and Europeans sat on the right. There was someone on a piano to help with the hymns and which was played by a Bengali. The trouble was that the left side of the church sang much more slowly than the right side, and we were often a line apart. The graveyard remained a sad relic from the past. It was rather overgrown, and many of the grave stones bent half over backwards. The tiny Christian community did their best to hold things together. On the other hand was the Roman Catholic faith. They were much stronger. Indeed at Baintgoorie I could use a threat of "behave yourself, or I will speak to the Padre Sahib". The labour was of course much in the minority. I would however receive regular letters from the Italian padre at Mal requesting a bed for the night so that he could take an early morning service next morning. He always added that if this was inconvenient he could spend the night with the Roman Catholic head man within the estate. The padre concerned always arrived on his motor bike and was a good influence. He was actually rather a hot head and when years previously he learnt that the manager of Danguar Jhar had been beaten up and left for dead, he acted swiftly. He went down on his motor bike some fifty miles away, with a can of petrol on the back. He then summoned his small community together and told them to make their minds up. They could either be Christian or Communist, but not both. He tipped the petrol over the thatch and bamboo church and set fire to it. He was shortly afterwards arrested by the police for arson. Tocher, because he was young and strong, survived Black Water Fever, and at last was able to struggle downstairs to the sitting room, and the company of the two other assistants where he viewed, on the veranda, a strange wooden object and asked what it was. It transpired that this was his coffin, and which his fellow assistants, on his recovery had forgotten to have removed.

The directors in London had written that Tocher's post was to be terminated and he was to return to England. Because the man so loved tea and his job, he begged them to re-consider the decision. A way round this problem was found, and because Danguar Jhar Tea Estate was isolated within the group of the company's estates, it had no reported problems of Black Water Fever. Tocher was sent there on the understanding that he was never to move from there. He set about the place and turned it into the biggest money making estate within the company. Shortly after the war he was made Company superintendent. I suspect that London office never really appreciated this man to his full. Tocher was a self-made man, and London were perhaps a little prissy. However, there was little option, he had produced year after year most brilliant results. The second day of Tocher's annual quarterly visit was never so good. Much time was spent in Ghosal's office doing figures, which were usually wrong, and inspecting the factory. The head clerk within the factory was excellent, but one sight of the Superintendent was enough to make him fall apart. He dithered about in hopeless confusion and left me with a tough time in defending him. His cause wasn't helped by the standard of tea that Baintgoorie exported, which always seemed to be below average.

Tocher's succession to the throne of Superintendent was full of thorns. Most of the managers had been through the war in the Far East and were relaxing. Their assistants were very young and lacking in experience. Tocher pulled the whole shaky lot together and the company made money. It is always easy to laugh at the British in India, but when one considers what was achieved in North East India, credit must be given where it is due. Tea estates were carved out of jungle and Assam, Cachar and the Dooars were all riddled with mosquito. It took brave men in London and Calcutta to finance these projects in such faraway places. A tea bush takes five years to reach maturity, and has a productive life span of some seventy years. Left to its own devices, it will grow to forty feet high. The East India Company based in Calcutta at first used to pirate tea seed from China. Tea was later found to be growing in the wild in the North regions of Upper Assam and monkeys were trained to pick the seed. Later each company had its own seed harries. Seed was picked in the late autumn, and planted into nurseries, where it was watered and weeded by the old ladies of the estate, then transplanted into the field at one year old. After that the children kept the weeds down, and in three years it was just paying its way. I gather now that most of the replanting is based on the clonal system. One can select the best tea bushes both for spread, quantity of produce and quality, and breed from them.

Every cold weather Baintgoorie uprooted some forty acres of old tea. This task was always done by the men, and needed careful supervision to make sure that the roots were removed properly. It was a popular job because of the firewood aspect. Each man had to uproot so many bushes for his day's pay. During the first cold weather months and after the difficult summer proceeding it, the management decided to take one more gamble. Mangroo was once more being a nuisance. He had a much reduced gang of followers, but still seemed bent on trouble. Rumours reached me, and we decided to act. Thus we decided to put all the men on this particular job, instead of the normal fifty. The overseers sounded a little surprised, but were too polite to comment. Thus next day some three hundred and fifty men arrived most willingly, and armed with hoes, knives etc., got stuck into something that they enjoyed. Needless to say in amongst the men who were working in a very concentrated area, was Mangroo. I went on my own in the pick-up, and suspect the labour had guessed that there was to be a further conflict between the management and communist. The head supervisor was requested to ask Mangroo to leave his work and to come and speak to the manager who was standing by his vehicle. The supervisor returned to advice and with much embarrassment, that Mangroo had refused. We had overstepped the mark. The position was not certain. The area was surrounded by men with adequate implements in their hands to kill if they so wanted. In hindsight it was very stupid and unnecessary to have taken this rather silly risk. However, it was a calculated chance, and most of us were rather tired of Mangroo and his minority gang. I strolled over towards the man. By this time all had gone quiet, and the noise of axes, hoes and shouting ceased. The three hundred and fifty men looked with much interest and waited. The only one working was Mangroo, who was digging away with his hoe and with his eyes firmly on the ground close to his work. He was asked why he had not seen fit to follow the instructions of the supervisor and come to see me. To this he gave no reply. It was explained to him that the company paid me good money to run this estate and he would do as he was told. Mangroo and I were in fact in a corner. The majority of the men labour force were in view and hearing point, and the old theme of prestige or caste was once more at trial. Mangroo stopped work, and with his shifty brown eyes and foxy face grinned at me. Violence is rarely the correct way to solve a problem; however on this occasion it was resorted to. The incident was regrettable, dangerous but maybe justified? Mangroo was picked up by his white shirt and his face slapped, which made his nose bleed. No-one moved, no voice spoke, and on my return to my bungalow, and to this day, I remember washing the blood off my hands in the bathroom, and with trembling fingers changing my clothes.

Not long after, Mangroo made his great mistake, and we were able to evict him from Baintgoorie. We had sent him a warning letter because of some minor offence he was supposed to have committed, and he refused to accept it, and which was posted by acknowledgement due. This he again refused, but this time the local postmaster had written 'refused to accept'. We had to go to tribunal, but we won the case and were thus able to be rid of the wretched man. Shortly afterwards his secretary ran away with a local girl.

The labour had two big religious holidays per year, and like the rest oldie, celebrated each of these with a three day holiday. Possibly Baintgoorie used to rather overdo these festive occasions. One was the Kali Puha and the other the Durga Puha. Kali was the festival of lights. Every householder burnt candles on his windows and doorways. The foothills of the Himalayas were a mass of tiny lights, and quite beautiful. The Durga Puha involved throwing coloured water with dyes that never could be washed out, over each other. The fact that the men, and indeed girls, had saved up for months to buy new bright coloured clothes and saris, buy rice beer, meat and vegetables, made little difference on the big day. All the new clothes would be completely ruined. I'm afraid that in Baintgoorie's case there were three days of very heavy drinking involved. Afterwards we had the difficult task of sorting out the cases of grievous bodily harm and witchcraft. The side effects from that rice beer really knocked the labour badly. They would be half squint eyed for a day, and would drag themselves around looking far from happy. There would be embarrassed fathers standing around the veranda area of the offices on one foot and then the other. The story would be always the same. The son had run away with another girl, and usually of the wrong caste, and to fetch him home? We always gave the advance and said little. It was not the time for pompous platitudes. We never quite knew what happened to the girls and saw fit not to enquire.

The few Church of England resident labour seemed sadly out of touch with the young clergyman who lived some miles away. He once came to request my attendance at a wedding within the estate. The boy I did not know, but the girl everyone knew. She was the only prostitute amongst Baintgoorie's two thousand residential labour force. I certainly could not attend, nor indeed advise the padre of the predicament. Even with this large resident labour force, but after numerous years at Baintgoorie, one had a feeling on the general pulse and could sense when perhaps a problem was brewing before it boiled over. The labour did not seem to mind the odd swear up from the management. What they hated and almost feared was continuous nagging. They also knew that when the management or they fell out of line and there was a problem, it was quickly and quietly resolved by the management and head men of the labour. Except for the Communists, none of us really wanted trouble. We were really quite content with our lot, and when one looked around our boundaries to the local farmers and villagers, it would have taken anyone but a fool to realise who had the better standard of life, and a safer future. The tea plantations in North East India were one of the main contributing factors to West Bengal and Assam. I assume they still are. I think tea, jute and rice are the big money spinners for this vast area.

After a difficult start we could relax a little. One of the really weak points in management was that between June and September the turnout of numbers was too thin. From October onwards and when they were least needed, there were too many. The assistants struck on a good idea. Baintgoorie was a straggly place and contained some two thousand two hundred acres, only half of which was under tea. The remainder consisted of thatch harries used for thatching the labour lines, huge bamboo harries again used for house repairs, and many other needs. The bamboo were much plundered by the labour force, who, apart from sneaking in and taking the bamboo canes, would also steal the shoots to put in their curries in the Spring. Also there were quite large tracts of land which they used for grazing their cattle and their wretched goats. I learnt to hate goats because of the damage they could do. There was also, however, probably five hundred acres of paddy fields where rice was grown, and sub-divided into plots. Each plot was 'bonded' with earth. This little extra was a huge bonus to Baintgoorie, and few other estates had all this spare land, and in many ways it created problems for the management. The labour force, with their cattle, paddy fields and often large vegetable gardens, had a useful secondary enterprise.

This caused their late arrival for work, and their absence during the wet weather, and when we most needed every body to harvest the leaf. Thus it was decided in January to send one hard worked assistant and the head men to reallocate the rice field plots, on a work basis ratio in the afternoons. The work ratio was taken from June to November and the clerks worked out a sensible figure. Sickness was included, but only provided that the patients had reported ill during the previous season, and our estate doctor kept the records. I wondered what would happen and explained to the head men that these rice fields belonged to the company, who were much more interested in the regular workers. It transpired that the scheme, although no-one would admit it, was a popular move. Over the years, much of the best paddy land had finished into the hands of the spiv boys, who had not the power to stop the change. For example, one day watchman had to guard part of the Chaity division from buffalo and cattle trespass. He was most moderate at his job, and brewed illicit rice wine on the side to sell to the labour force. On one occasion a messenger reached the office to say that one of the tractors had been in an accident at Chaity Bridge. He was told to fetch the driver. What no-one saw fit to say was that the driver, who was drunk, had turned the whole tractor and trailer over on the approach to the bridge. To my embarrassment they brought him over by stretcher from the hospital. When the man recovered he received a severe lecture and was given his job back, because he had an excellent record. Enquiries traced the source of the problem to this Chaity watchman. When re-allocation of the paddy was started, we discovered that this rather inefficient negative person had managed to acquire nearly three acres of prime paddy land, which was all taken from him. Another problem on this straggly big tea estate was access from the labour quarters to the sections of tea. Some of the women pickers waded waist high through tiny brooks swollen with water. That cold weather we built more foot bridges. The River Chaity remained a problem and several children who chanced a short cut were nearly drowned. Indeed I tried the same on one occasion with a pony recently acquired. She turned me upside down in the middle of the river. Birshoo Chaprassi happened to see the incident and next day gave me a ticking off for taking silly risks.

Another problem we saw fit to tackle was leprosy. Within the resident labour force there numbered some fifty of our inhabitants, who created a social problem, which we set out to cure. They all worked as best they could and spent most of their time repairing the pot holes on the estate roads. The trouble was that they lived within the labour force and collected their wages from our main office. This we determined to stop, and here we ran into a problem. The answer we received was that they would agree only if in answer to my request that we set up a "leper Dura" (colony) which would include all their relatives. I sought out Dhar Babu. He and I had known each other for many years, and he was the field clerk of Baintgoorie's Chaity division. The labour force liked Dhar and he understood their problems. He carried some influence, and was much underestimated in his position of low paid clerk. Dhar said at once, "let them take their relatives", and this we did. Chaity had some waste land at one end of its extremity and here we built a village in one big square, with the drinking well in the middle.

Our last problem and which was never really cured, was the late turn out in the mornings. This problem was peculiar to Baintgoorie. In hindsight, we should have left this most difficult problem alone for a while. However we thought then that everything had to be put right all at once, and here made a mistake. The first move was to tell my two assistants during the cold weather months, to have breakfast at 7am, and to remain at work until all the labour had finished their tasks. I added that I would follow the same procedure. The clerks in the factory and supervisory staff blew the factory hooter at half hour intervals from 6.30am, onwards and up to 7 .30am, which was when we would turn the late ones back. The latter did not work and was the cause of problems. Without fail the last to arrive were the "Nanny Mais", women with children in arms. We provided a sort of crèche on the work area, where the babies were tended. These ladies, if we tried to turn them back for their late arrival were not short of a reply. The standard answer was that your house is full of servants and that you are too mean to get married. In fact being the only bachelor manager amongst our eleven estates was never an advantage. The women on the estate never approved, and indeed the mem sahibs, both senior and junior never liked it.

On one occasion and nine years later the senior director and his wife came for a visit around all eleven estates. Mrs Parkhouse on her arrival to stay took the bull by the horns. She said that she was tired with making small talk on the verandas of the bungalows all day; and could she come with us during the inspection? Mrs Parkhouse, I think enjoyed her brief stay. She did however later manage unwittingly to put her foot in it by praising my garden in front of the wives of neighbouring planters. The front of my bungalow had the most magnificent bougainvillea hedge stretching up some thirty yards. Its width and height resembled the equivalent to our beech hedge. The hedge however was always covered in deep purple. The old malli (gardener) must have been very well taught by previous burra memsahibs. In front of the bougainvillea in the cold weather he would have the most beautiful stand of huge bright yellow dahlias, and in front of them he planted pink annuals. The effect was quite magnificent. Even I can remember and never forget the frontage to the bungalow, which was built on stilts and contained twenty three servants, which included the grooms. We were far too busy and ignorant to take much heed of the garden and gave the old boy a completely free hand. He made good money on the side selling vegetables round the back of the premises. The rest of the other ten company managers compounds were managed in great earnest by the senior married ladies, who were not amused at hearing from the senior director's wife what a beautiful compound Mr Glen dinning kept. One evening at the club later that year, I was collared by a very senior lady within the company and asked whether I realised that to grow dahlias was very common!

The mem sahibs could be divided into two categories. Those that tried to bring England or Scotland with them, and those that did not. The latter made the best of everything, and the home comforts available. I was soon to learn who the givers were and who were the moaners. Launa invited me most Sundays for lunch, which consisted of a delicious curry in the surrounds of her immaculate home. Betty was another most generous hostess. Both women were quite different in every respect, except one. They had left the Western way of life behind them. One could argue that the planters wives lead very restricted and frankly rather a dull life style. There was no doubt that some made the best of it, and some made the worst. Many of the ladies would not even bother to make much effort to learn the Hindi language that one spoke up there. On the other hand, many who did learn to speak were very good with the servants, and kept hospitable bungalows. Married planters faced many difficult decisions. The lady of the house had eventually to decide whether to take the children back and set up home in England or Scotland, or to stay with their husbands and put the children into boarding school during term time, and with relatives or foster parents in the holidays. Children would hardly recognise their parents after a length of sometimes nearly four years. The companies were not that helpful on these problems. Indeed before the last war, all tea companies decreed that no assistant was allowed to marry.

One cannot bring England to India, and likewise one cannot bring India to England. Most planters up to the mid-1950s did their full stint and: retired from tea with their nest egg in the nature of their Provident Fund, their life's savings, and a small annual pension. They were then aged fifty five years, and the sun and the heat had taken its toll. Many of them tried to bring India back with them. They found the winters cold, money on the tight side and life difficult to make into a happy retirement. One could argue that retirement in any form brings with it problems. The man from India had to adapt his change from a mini Maharaja to a very nondescript person, living like many others in a bungalow in Worthing. He collected his newspaper in the morning, took the dog for a walk every day, and the car out twice a week to enable his wife to go shopping. In the evenings there was the television. The ladies survived better. They would meet acquaintances at shops, for coffee, maybe join the Women's Institute and the Conservative Club. Perhaps they became keen cooks and made marmalade? It must have been in some ways pleasant to take complete charge of their house and kitchen. The fact that it was much smaller would not have worried them like it did the men. If the latter could find an occupation, then they would shake themselves out of this lethargic attitude, but if they did not, the future held little in store for them. The tea planter was not that well paid, but once he became a manager, and providing the labour force was behaving reasonably, it was quite a relaxed way of life. One typical example of behaviour bordering on meanness in our company, and which was certainly no worse than any of the others, was given of all people by Tocher. He was always most on the side of the company, and himself a very frugal man, the superintendent was allocated a three month home leave fairly frequently to allow him to discuss problems and policies with the London based directors. Tocher returned one May from London, had a really difficult flight, and then acquired shingles. He did mention to me that if perhaps the directors had seen fit to send him out first class as against economy class, this might have been avoided. There were ways of feathering one's own nest, particularly in the case of the larger tea estates which included both Bagraocote and Baintgoorie. However Ghosal's doctrine that "stealing from the company was not stealing", was not generally followed. A manager could bend the rules a little, should he so wish. On one occasion an excellent assistant was transferred from Bagracote to Baintgoorie. He did not complain after a month that this transfer was costing him money. Something was arranged to everyone's satisfaction, and both assistants received payment in lieu of one extra servant. This was not strictly legal, and the second clerk arranged it without bothering to advise the Superintendent, his accountant or Ghosal. Management were really not supposed to give loans or help out in times of hardship. Frankly we did within reason what we liked. The labour were aware of this and thought twice of running afoul of the management, in that it could cost them later on. Just a few rupees in time of need meant so much to them. Before help was handed out the individuals work record from June to October was checked. This gave a fair insight into the character of the applicant.

Local annual leave, and how to spend it, was always a problem. It is still most regretted that the opportunity to see more oldie was never taken. One holiday was in fact on the coast of Orissa in a hotel which faced on to the sea in the Bay of West Bengal, and some three hundred miles south of Calcutta. The English girlfriend and I went by train from Calcutta, and this in itself was quite an adventure. At the local station we went by taxi to this simple and delightful small hotel, situated almost on the beach. The swimming was quite magnificent. There was a huge surf and the only way to the calm beyond them, was to dive through three or four enormous waves. I am not a strong swimmer, and it took me all my time, together with a few frights. The girlfriend paddled on the sea shore. One of the rules of our hotel was that no guests were to swim without the attendance of swim boys. The reason for this was the swift current or undertow. We employed two young Christian lads who were around from 7am to 7pm, and charged thirty pence each per day, and who seemed very happy with the arrangement. Because of the heat and weather in that tropical climate, one would often wake at dawn, make a cup of tea and watch the sun rise. One morning the view from the hotel room was spoilt by a gang of fishermen heading for their boats. The last member dropped his trousers and did whatever just by the umbrellas of the hotel, where we sunbathed. I jumped up, ran down the beach, caught the man and let him have it, in my best Hindi. Later that evening we strolled down the beach to a crowded area of people to view the day's fishing catch, and to where the boats were returning. We stood in the background and watched, by which time there was a large crowd, some fishermen and many buyers for the fresh fish. Suddenly a whisper went through the gathering, and girlfriend and self were surrounded. One of the fishermen was dragged to the centre opposite myself and I was requested very politely by everyone to please hit this man who had annoyed me. They were very disappointed when I refused.

The rest of my local leaves were spent during March, when times on the estate were quiet, on shikari. Donald would arrange the whole huge affair. His wife Betty and our mutual friend Durga would organise the camp site, which was in the middle of nowhere. To buy a box of matches would have taken ten miles down a dirt road. As one can imagine, this affair took some organising. Donald somehow acquired some twenty elephants. The lorry transport from Bagracote, Baintgoorie and Zurrantee was well and completely illegally used, mostly for carrying firewood. The army, I think, lent us tents. To make this big enterprise viable, we invited Americans from the Diplomatic Corps and from the Information Services, to come as paying guests. It was all quite a party. The game was wild boar. It was also quite a clever trick on the part on the three managers of these estates. The labour loved it, and took their annual leave at the time of the shoot. They would stand in line at my office awaiting a ticket on to one of the two Lorries which were to thrash their way down through dust and heat into the camp site, which was near to the river and shikari camp. It was surrounded by huge tropical grass standing ten foot high. In March and towards the end of the dry weather, it was just possible to penetrate. Because of the heat of mid-day, one either beat through these areas at dawn, or late afternoon. The evenings were still fairly cool and we could have a huge camp fire. We had in the elephant lines one particularly useless chickenhearted huge tusker. The mahout always turned him out smartly. With his red trimmings on his back, he looked quite magnificent. His trouble was that as soon as he saw a wild pig, he would raise his trunk and roar, and then gallop off in the other direction. We found a use for this hopeless animal. He would feed the fire during the evening, and many were the clicks of American camera lenses.

The guns were on elephant and the beaters on foot. It was all fine providing we were able to shoot sufficient pig to keep everyone fed. The Americans loved every minute of it. Durga, who helped Betty with this vast complex of tents, visitors, beaters and indeed elephants, and all in the middle of nowhere, must be described. Durga was a devout Hindu, but there it all stopped. After that he was a law unto himself, but did carry sway in the politics of West Bengal. He loved the planting community, and they in their turn loved him. He set up a petrol filling station in Siliguri, and called it 'T & I' this was short for Thou and I. He put in charge Wallace who was a tiny, much married Anglo Indian and English. Wallace provided cups of sweet tea with Rosa Rum under the counter. Durga built a basic house on stilts nearby, but did go to the extravagance of incorporating within its precincts two lavatories. One was Indian style, and the other English. Durga and Wallace eventually ran into problems. There was too much of Thou and not enough of I. Clients were filling up with petrol and slow in paying. Durga was a great ambassador and carefree. I once spent a week in the hills organised by Durga. We shot pheasant every day, and lived completely on Indian food cooked by him. We had paraffin lamps in the evenings and a four wheel drive vehicle to obtain supplies. It was a very happy week.

One of the least attractive memories of India was her snakes. The majority were harmless, but there remained just a few species that were dangerous. None of the latter was particularly aggressive or numerous, but for all that, they were there. One taught oneself never to go charging into dark places without a rattle round first. We at Baintgoorie had slightly more than our fair share. One of our neighbours went by the good Indian name of New Glencoe Tea Estate. In fact all the labour and locals called it by a quite different designate of Sankani. This apparently when translated means the home to the Bandit Krite. This snake was usually three to four feet long, and coloured in outstanding and rather fearsome stripes of yellow and black. It kept itself to itself, was supposed to eat other snakes, which was perhaps quite a good thing. However it was so poisonous that our hospitals carried no antidote for its bite or sting, and one was left with five minutes to sort out the affairs of a lifetime. We had also pythons, but they mostly kept to the forests. They were really quite harmless unless they had anchored their tails round a tree and were waiting for game to pass their way. They would strike, then hold on and gradually, and possibly after many hours, even days, finally subdue their prey and then swallow it. Perhaps it may have taken the next few weeks for this bloated and almost immobilised snake to digest what he had consumed. The worst snake around was the cobra. If in doubt he would raise his head and strike. The little ones were more dangerous because they were small, but their venom was equally as strong as their big brothers. Overall, snakes were not a problem. One just learnt to always wear shoes, to try and remember to carry a stick and to act sensibly.

One could wonder concerning homesickness and perhaps the hankering of life that one had left behind. In fact the young English and Scots girls married to assistant managers often were both lonely and bored. Their bungalows were fairly basic and their husbands salary only just adequate. They would arrive from England and Scotland all bright and beautiful in the cold weather months, but after one or two monsoons their rosy complexion would turn to a more yellow hue. There would often be a frown on their forehead, and a pinched look around their lips. The early sparkle of the happy bride was on the decline. This was by no means always the case, but it did happen too frequently. The Indian girls were much better at coping with the daytime isolation. They inter visited between bungalows and played a lot of bridge. I only ever had one married couple at Baintgoorie, Sunil Chakra arty who was a fairly plump easy natured, hardworking Bengali, had his wedding organised. He made one or two visits to Calcutta and then took his annual leave and came back with a sweet little bride who was very happy at Baintgoorie. It was a pleasure to see the young couple so content. One thing that Danguar Jhar did was to widen one's view point. There were many Bengalis of wealth and wisdom who were friendly with the management at Danguar Jhar. The Bengali is a kind person and took great interest into the needs of these Scottish and English assistant bachelors living in their isolation in the very basic quarters. Bengalis do not touch alcohol, but any of our friends were quite happy to join in the fun after a day's shooting at Jalpaiguri, and sip fresh lemon juice and discuss the day's events.

Many of the Indian shikaris were experienced and could be relied on if things went wrong. My favourite was Bhai Babu. Bhai I think was his nickname and means brother. He owned a furniture making shop in Jalpaiguri and a small farm just outside. Everyone knew Bhai and Bhai knew everybody. He drove a very old Rover of which he was both fond and proud. I remember it was a dark green. If it started to give minor problems it was his understanding of mechanics that his was a quality English car, and it had been taught to put its own problems right. I used to often drive out to Bhai's farm and whilst I never met his wife, her presence in the background was there. With a flutter of a curtain one knew that she had left the veranda and was organising the servants to bring out sweetmeats and sweet tea. Bhai would advise at length on why Pakistan was wrong, and Hindustan was right. His favourite theme was always that the former made tanks, and the latter made butter. The very simplicity of the life style of middle class Bengali left its indelible mark, which was never in later years to quite alter. One cannot just live in the Far East for twelve years without a little of it rubbing off somewhere. In many ways Bhai asked out of life the same as my West Country farmer friends in Somerset, and to spell this theme out very simply, it meant a life that is enjoyed and understood. On one occasion we asked Bhai to join us in a Sunday shoot; we could keep in touch through a most inadequate phone service. Bhai replied that he was really busy on the farm with the rice harvest. I imagined him heaving sacks of rice into his stores. I decided at the next opportunity to check it out. I found him fishing in his pond by his farm house. I laughed as he explained he had to keep a close eye on things. In fact the usual arrangement between landlord and workers was the "adda addi" system. The landlord fed his men throughout the year, and they received half the crop. I suspect that this system had many loopholes, and was a bad one. Not all landlords were as honest and generous as Bhai. Several years later he was sleeping at this very farm and with the women folk safely in the furniture shop in Jalpaiguri, when a bunch of looting dacoits (armed robbers) crept in and killed poor Bhai and everyone else on the farm as they slept.

The company of eleven estates had in fact much to thank Donald for, and indeed his father who was also a planter. The company I suspect would be the last to admit it. Son grows up like father. Both were huge men, wild and heavy drinkers. Tocher was short of experienced managers just after the war, and arranged that Donald's father, or Burra Mac as he was called, who was due for retirement, should come in on a short term basis. Tocher was always amused by Burra Mac. They were similar people. On one occasion he was waiting on the manager's veranda at Bagracote where Burra Mac was doing his acting manager, prior to departure and retirement. Mrs Mac walked in and Tocher asked after her husband's health and received the answer that he still ate like a horse and drank like a fish. This amused the Superintendent. Bagracote had a difficult labour force. Mac was master of them. On one occasion a bunch of men were waiting to demand from burra Mac extra money, because some of the logs they had to transport on buffalo carts were so big. Mac took one look and replied "clear off and get on with the job, when I was a young man my private parts were bigger!" The labour accepted this vulgar talk and went away laughing. Donald told me that for a very few years he was working as junior assistant at Danguar Jhar, and his father was taking short term acting manager jobs within the company. In one trip Donald was invited to dinner by his father on a Saturday night. Mrs Mac was not there, and the other guest was a neighbouring manager whose wife was in Scotland. On his son's and guest arrival' big Mac requested from his servants three unopened bottles of whisky, and on their presentation unscrewed the three tops, threw them over the veranda fence into the pouring wet grass below, and said one bottle each and then we will have dinner. Burra Mac should have known better. Later that year Donald received a letter via the manager of Danguar Jhar, that the superintendent requested his presence in his office at 9am, on a certain Monday morning. This involved being poled across the river Teesta and a fifty mile drive. Donald duly reported at the stipulated time and found Tocher immersed in paperwork in his office. Donald was left standing for a considerable time, and without the offer to be seated. Eventually Tocher looked up and said "Ah it's you Mackenzie". He put down his pen and then proceeded to haul Donald over the coals, advised him to reduce his drinking, and "now get out and get straight back to work". Tocher knew his job and could handle both father and son. It was never quite the same after Tocher retired, he was a sort of demon God that the managers both loved and feared. He did achieve results. Donald remained a great ambassador. Everyone loved Donald, whether he was Indian, English or Scottish. With the former he remained quite brilliant, he could speak their language, understood their minds, and with Betty's help was a supreme asset in those post India Independence days.

After Independence and the Pakistan, Hindus tan separation in 1947, everyone was feeling their way. In our little world of tea planting, the old stagers and senior managers were to be shown not to be at their best. They remained with their attitudes of days gone by. It was not until the post war recruits started to take senior positions that the delicate but most important relationship between Indian and English began to really improve. Our area of the Dooars held three hundred UK owned estates. Amongst the top of these, one must mention three estates, all miles apart and run by very different people. To quote an example at the lower end of the scale; for some reason it was imperative that contact was made at the far end of Eastern Dooars to Freddie Stroud. I had at that time an engineer assistant and with whom I was not too friendly. We just did not relish each other's society. Anyway he was sent with a driver and the pickup on a very long trip to see Freddie and sort whatever problem out. He returned full of the joys of spring. Freddie had wined and dined him, and the assistant and self were much friendlier afterwards. Freddie was later given the OBE. There were also Donald and Tony. Their wives would welcome everyone. These establishments became well known, and whilst none of these planters returned home rich men, at least they and their wives had the satisfaction of knowing that they had contributed much to their little kingdom, and helped both Indian and English through a difficult time by their warmness in their welcome.

Once one allows memories to invade, some of which go back forty years, there remains the vexing question of whether or not it was all worthwhile? Those twelve years in India might have been better spent in Surrey, Sussex or Somerset? Establishing one into a respectful member of the local society, with tennis or cricket at the nearby clubs in the summer, and an afternoon's eagling in the winter. In the evenings when it was warm, one would sit on the terrace, and when it was cold then sit by the fire. India is a huge country and one somehow had to be larger than life to cope with her and all her problems. The implicit faith that the Indian gave to an Englishman's bond, was of huge significance. The Indian may not have always found the way of the English easy to follow, but it was understood by all that with all his faults, the word of the Sahib meant everything. The American was not understood. A friend of mine working on the Burma Road at the end of the war, heard two Indian spays talking. Suddenly one said, here comes a Sahib with an American. This was not meant as an insult, it was just that the Indian and the American had not at that time learnt to understand each other. The best route still remains business as the easiest way of breaking through social customs and culture style. Let the politicians do their thing, let the army do their thing, but above both are the business people. The latter wish to make money and will make contacts, break barriers and not allow petty difficulties of creed and culture to stop them.

Keeping up one's image could become tiring. There were certain ways a tea estate manager could behave and there were also ways in which he should not behave. A manager who had the habit of niggling, was thought to be mean and was at heart a coward, had little hope of solving labour problems together in times of difficulties. On one occasion at 8 o'clock in the morning the mothers with infants and who were always last, were being cajoled to hurry up, when two men came racing down the main lorry track. They had their heads down, were running flat out and said or shouted nothing as they went. The labour overseers soon saw the problem. The two men were being chased by a swarm of bees. All the leaf pluckers were warned to duck down amongst the tea bushes and to keep a low profile. Everyone ran in all directions and disappeared out of sight, except the nanny mais (ladies with babies) who were so busy wrapping up their babies faces that they failed to follow the instructions and were still standing helplessly in the tea section footpath, when the swarm of angry bees struck. This left the wretched manager in a difficult position. All I wanted was to run and hide into the thickest of the tea bushes, instead dignity forced me to remain standing behind the nanny mais, sticking out like a sore thumb in my white shirt. All hell broke loose, and some of the girls with their babies were badly stung and had to be escorted to the estate hospital for treatment. Those bees never saw fit to sting me. I wondered afterwards whether that swarm of bees had been disturbed by those two men who had dark skin, which was why they saw fit to leave me alone.

The Indian Tea Association realised just after the war that they urgently needed an air supply lift from Calcutta to the Dooars and that particular tea area which contained some three hundred estates, with head offices in Calcutta and London. The roads from one to the other were not reliable, particularly in the monsoon months.

Thus contractors were employed and Jam Air was the name of the company. They certainly did not jam too much of India's air. The company consisted of a most relaxed officer in Calcutta, two Dakota aircraft, and a third that they could hire when there were problems. There was usually one flight each day which departed from Dum Dum airport at 5am each morning. The reason for the early start was because it was the coolest time of the day, and apparently in these conditions aircraft use less fuel on take-off. The Dooars had several grass strips with hangers to hold the supplies. The distance between Calcutta and these air strips was about 350 miles, and took the Dakotas one and a half to two hours. The pilots were English and their crews Bengali. The chief pilot was called Blake, or Shaky Blake as he was known. The second pilot was Johnny Leyland and who had real problems. The air crew vehicle had always standing orders to collect the early morning flight crew from Princes Night Club in Chowringhee Street. Johnny was sometimes so drunk that the attending men who were loading the plane had to help him up the steep ladder into the pilot's cockpit. Johnny used to tap into the emergency oxygen supply behind the seat to sober up. The planes carried part cargo and part passengers. The short hops from one grass strip to another in the pouring rain in the monsoon were something to be remembered, with Johnny in charge. The windscreen wipers could barely cope. The cockpit had no smoking notices written in many places, and Johnny had a cigarette permanently between his lips. In front of him was an opened tin of fifty Players; he would with shaky hand delve into this tin to fetch out another cigarette at regular intervals. Donald had the big sister estate to Baintgoorie twenty miles away. Bagracote had on its out division an air strip. Donald and Johnny were great friends and the former's driver had standing instructions to collect Johnny from the air strip in the jeep to take him to the manager's bungalow. There they had a few beers, whilst the plane was re-loaded. On one occasion they over did things. Johnny decided that if the plane was double loaded it would save much flying time and allow more time to discuss life on Donald's veranda. The jeep was summoned and off they went to alter the plane's schedule. Johnny walked over to the staff and told them to double load it. There was an argument, but he was chief pilot and in charge of the aircraft. Donald and Johnny returned for another beer, and the jeep driver was advised to report back when the aircraft was ready. Donald went as passenger. He said they clipped the top of a bamboo clump on take-off, and landed on the air strip the other end of the Dooars with a terrible thump. Jam Air never had a crash.

Years after I left Baintgoorie, my sister-in-law went on a world trip, and stayed with Donald and visited Baintgoorie. She described it as large, rather dull, very flat and without much character. She went in it in fact at the worst time, at the end of the cold weather months, also very briefly. I remember being rather hurt by her description. This was my home for many years. Baintgoorie did in fact have character, but one had to delve more deeply than a quick flip round in a jeep. The river Chaity was one of its main aspects. One pony really loved that river. If time permitted his saddle was removed, and the reins with him, eagerly looking for a deep sandy spot where he would roll and roll. The dog would be in with him. The dog was one of my greatest regrets, and the lesson was learnt never to become too attached. One reason why not nearly enough advantage was taken of local annual two week leaves, was the dog. She just would not eat in my absence. When the weather was quite impossible in May and June; one would stagger up from the half to one hour siesta to be met by the dog who wagged its tail, and explained in her language that it was so hot that she would wait downstairs for the return of the pickup. She was always there waiting.

One could call Baintgoorie desolate. It did not have half the charm of Zurrantee, but had twice the character of Danguar Jhar. Anyway it was my home and I loved the place. Many of the labour I knew well. The women never really took to me. They could not understand why I was not married. I had adequate funds, a well-cared for dwelling and no de pen dents. They thought this was wrong. The men were much easier, and I had many friends within the labour. We kept a petty cash for difficult cases of hardship. It was quite illegal, but allowed one to slip a few rupees to, unusually, some old lady who was on the bread line. This spare cash came from the sale of rice sacks from Ramdas Ram. The Superintendent after Tocher stopped this little racket. He was I suppose correct, but it made it more difficult to help out to some needy isolated case in the future. The labour had a lovely expression for nagging, they called it scuts scuts. Nothing more annoyed them than the manager or his assistants who were for ever on scuts scuts. Baintgoorie's labour force was for live and let live.

It was a lonely life as manager. For one thing the future was far from certain, and to change ones' life style so completely in young middle age, made us planters worry. Single women, either Indian or European were not for entertaining within a bachelor's establishment. To illustrate the point, after returning from home leave in later days, the new Superintendent was to make this point quite clear. I was never on quite such understanding terms with our new Superintendent. After Tocher's retirement I did not quite trust him. Unlike Tocher, whose track record was brilliant, this man, who had run a decent estate within the company, had never shown much profit. He was also scared of labour. After a prolonged inspection, it was brought to my notice that the engineer assistant had within the company's property, one Anglo Indian girlfriend, one full grown leopard, and one half grown tiger. Jack also had a mongoose which was a perfect nuisance, and with a passion for fried eggs. Jack lost his breakfast many times. The tiger would hear the servant running the water for his master's evening bath, then race up the steps and plunge straight in. Jack never cured him of this trick. Both the leopard and the tiger had been reared from cubs and were quite tame. In Jack's absence at work they were attached to a long wire rope, along which they could run up and down. The leopard had a habit of roaming at night and the odd goat's foot, all that remained of one of his conquests, could sometimes be found in the engineer assistant's bungalow compound. Jack should really have known better. The animal had lost its fear of man and resorted to raiding the labour lines for dogs, goats or chickens. Jack was due on home leave and begged me to keep the leopard. This I was not willing to do. I let Jack depart for Scotland and then arranged for it to be housed elsewhere. The tiger was sold to New York zoo, and which became a major attraction. The girlfriend returned to Calcutta, what happened to the mongoose is forgotten.

During one cold weather spell it was decided that the 'wire room' upstairs, where I sat in the monsoon months, looked gloomy. The mosquito proof wire panels had dark varnished frames and needed brightening up. The factory clerical staff sent down to the bungalow a painter, and we chose a quite nice looking dove grey paint. This painter spent at least two months doing the most immaculate job. I was very busy at the time and forgot all about the room, and indeed the painter. To my horror I found that the paint was not dove grey but bright blue, and had to live with this for the following monsoons. I hate blue of any description.

Christmas Day was an official working day. It was the custom of the local shop-keepers and contractors to bring gifts to the bungalow. These consisted mostly of Scotch whisky, nuts and oranges. They were most welcome, except in the case of Haripodda who was the Bengali carpenter. My children still have prints framed by Haripodda, who had at least six children and was very much on the breadline. He would arrive in person with great salaaming and with a bottle of Carews Rum which we knew had cost him at least twenty rupees, and which he could ill afford, unlike the others who did well out of Baintgoorie.

One night I awoke to hear what sounded like the sawing of wood from the adjoining labour lines. I put my head under the bed, found the shot gun, crept out on to the veranda and shone my torch. There lay, stretched out and upright, a very large leopard. He was purring very loudly. My saith on his evening rounds once found a leopard crouched on the division of the two pony stalls, waiting to strike. Ever since then we had to light a paraffin lamp each evening to discourage them. Their favourite diet was goats and dogs. Every now and then they would create chaos within the tea sections. Someone would shout bagh bagh, and with it followed a complete stampede. The manager and local shikari were sent for and the latter requires description. He was without fail a ne' er do well with a bad reputation, but respected for his sharp eyes and cool nerves. The poor manager was expected to trail behind this individual; bending low and peering through the dense tea bushes.

The West Bengal tiger was quite a different animal. He was one of nature's gentlemen. To actually see him was quite awe inspiring. He kept himself to himself and very rarely strayed across the river, which divided section one of the South Division from the forest. On one occasion this happened, the usual performance followed. Leopards are one thing, but tigers were quite another. Luckily at the time of the incident both the assistants were around, and could not wait to have a go. We were met by Somai (Munchi) the head man of the South Division with a grin on his face. The man had beaten the tiger back across the river out of the tea section. He stood in the river bed offering a perfect shot to the two boys. "Sahib they would never have shot him, the points of their weapons were wavering in fear", such was the magnificence of the tiger in his own habitat.

The last remaining incident in this particular river bed was the drunken wild elephants who lived in the forest the other side of the river on the South Division, and were never seen. It transpired that some of the hill people would brew wine beer within the safety of the forest and well away from the custom and excise officers. It was made in forty five gallon drums, and this small herd must have stumbled across the drums and drunk the contents. They were certainly very much the worse for wear when we saw them. They came into the river bed to cool their heads, with much bawling and swinging and belaying of their trunks. On one occasion the favourite forest department elephant, Belinda, that Donald used to borrow, was involved in a shooting accident. I was sent as a sort of ambassador to see how Belinda was faring. The veterinary surgeon had just completed the operation and Belinda was handed a bottle of Carew Rum. This she took in her trunk and poured it straight down her throat. I loved those female elephants who were much more docile in temperament than the male ones. They always seemed more reliable and staunch than their big brothers. The forest Department once sent a young elephant of twenty years to join their department at Jalpaiguri, where there were already some ten working animals. What they forgot was that his mother, who had not seen him for years, was stationed there. She welcomed her long lost son and made it clear to the mahouts that he was to be tethered in the elephant lines next to her. At feed time she shovelled all her rations to her son, and ate nothing for days. They later had to move him on, and it was all so sad. Tragedies and elephants seem to go hand in hand, and later Murray, a senior Scots assistant, was drafted for the cold weather months to Baintgoorie where his experience and competence was most welcome. Murray was a fervent game hunter, and spent much spare time in the forests. One evening at dusk his luck ran out. Male elephants at certain times discreet from their eyes and trunks and are most bad tempered, and in some pain. On Murray's way back to the jeep they came face to face with a huge tusker, who should never have been there. Elephants one never saw. He stood flapping his ears. Murray was carrying a double barrelled rifle, which was loaded. The elephant charged and he and the shikari ran for it. The reason that no shot was fired was that elephant were of course strictly preserved and no one is allowed in the forest after dark. In these forests there was hardly any twilight. It went from light to night in a very few minutes. Murray fell over a log on the edge of the grass road and the elephant was upon him. Elephants kill by kneeling on their victims. The shikari ran to the nearest bazaar where he recognised a Baintgoorie lorry. The clerical staff were in the cinema, and hurriedly returned. Two tractors and trailers were hitched up and a band of volunteers gathered from the adjoining lines close to the factory compound. They carried with them gongs and every means of making noise and were given every available torch from the shop of Ramdas Ram. We set out in the trailers, crossed the river at the South Division boundary. The gate to the entrance to the forest was locked and barred, but one of the boys on the trailer who was friendly with the gatekeeper ran to his house and explained our predicament. They both quickly returned and the gate was opened. The shikari, who was in a state of shock, his teeth were chattering, became confused as to which road to take. Eventually he pulled himself together and as we rounded a corner said that this was the spot where it had all happened. The fifty men started to make a huge noise and we lit all the torches in our possession. We went very lowly in line abreast and making a terrific din. Suddenly there was a shout "the Sahib is here!" Murray lay just in his khaki shorts, with no shirt on his back and even without his shoes and socks. His loaded gun lay close by him. The elephant in his anger had played with poor Murray and tossed him about with his trunk. He had stripped branches off trees and made a sort of trampled clearing. We then crept home with poor Murray with a blanket over him. The Forest Department will not declare an elephant rogue, and for one to be destroyed it required more evidence than we could give. It later transpired, and this was years after my departure from tea, that it had been almost certainly the work of the Langra Hutti (lame elephant). He was always known to be around and lame and was seen perhaps more that he should have been. Maybe he was in pain! He was easily recognised within the forest because of his odd gait. The story always went that he was hit by a train in one of the adjacent forests. This elephant was finally declared, years later, a rogue, and was destroyed. We grieved Murray's death deeply, and the reply from his widowed mother to a letter that took a sleepless night to compose, did little to help. The brief airmail lettercard just said "please dispose of Murray's possessions, I do not want them, all I wish for is my son back". To make matters worse he was almost due his home leave and she was counting the days to his return.

Shortly before Murray's death we had suffered the loss, through accident, of another senior first class Senior Assistant.

I began to feel that wherever I went I created distress. Life suddenly lost its charm and we went through the day's work with little enthusiasm. It was a job and kept the wolf from the door. Sometimes in the evenings my feelings were to the devil with. India and all its tragedies. Life here was short and cruel, it was a long way from my home and I needed a shoulder to weep on; it took a long time to return to normal and indeed the death of those two splendid young men made me wish for something different, nearer home and with less pressure. The feeling of guilt still prevailed. Was it all worth it! Perhaps if I had been married to a girl something similar to Isabel, these two boys would have refrained from wild club nights and dangerous trips into the forest. Sleep was difficult and my temper short. The labour in their most extraordinary way understood my grief. Briefly the huge interest in the running of Baintgoorie had gone. I found an American girlfriend in Calcutta and took every excuse to take leave of absence from the estate. Tragedies leave scars, which heal slowly. It took a long time for this scar to heal, and my interest vanished in shooting in any form. I reverted to my ponies and would ride them more and more within the estate, and indeed beyond the boundaries. In the evenings the phone in the bungalow was taken off the hook. There was no cause to talk to anyone. My superintendent could trace me in the morning at the office should he so wish. The servants looked at me with a different expression in their eyes. Finally my Superintendent realised that there were problems. Nothing actually said, but Tocher was no fool and indeed was always sympathetic when there were problems. At the end of a long inspection which lasted two days he said, "Well laddie there's nothing wrong with the estate except the manager who is due a home leave".

I returned for five months to my dear mother and stepfather in Somerset, and mixed with all those kind and generous farming fraternity and recovered. The left wing minority had taken advantage of the acting manager to create minor disturbances and on my return there were tales of trouble from the assistants. Wick had held command by his very personality. The labour also understood that the new permanent manager was a figure to be reckoned with and everything rapidly returned to normal in its semi efficient way. This must have been in 1958. Pressure was on all British estates towards Indianisation. I realised my job, much as I liked it, would not last forever. On my leave I became engaged to a veterinary student who made no bones about the future. Sally was not prepared to give up seven years slog to qualify just to grow flowers in the manager's bungalow compound at Baintgoorie. She went to Washington DC on a postgraduate course and told me to make my mind up. My days in India were over. The beautiful English countryside was to be the stage upon which the next part of my life was to be set.
