The first thing that struck me as odd was the fact that there were no street lights on the high way in Assam, this makes the roads look eerie, the dense foliage of the place did not help matters either. There being no street lights were a novelty that made me see the huge number of fire flies in the dark, and much later when i got used to the place the fire flies made the nights spent alone ....waiting for the tea workers to stop their din ...seem magical...Assam is so beautifull but so abused by the government and its own people and is lost in a war for an ideal that the insurgents themselves have forgotten.........
That the situation was bad was brought home by the fact that the DGM moved around with a van full of body guards dressed as black cats armed with light machine guns. I used to find the guards a bit scary because the minute you saw them, it was an indication that an important person was around making the person needing protection more vulnerable to attack. Of course this is my point of view, but the tea companies knew they had to give enough protection to executives as many used to get kidnapped for ransom. Yes i do believe many of the wars being fought at the state level in India has come down to a case of mere extortion and the cause the rebellion was started in, has been forgotten.
I was allowed to go for a walk in the estate only if any of the other executives wives were going for a walk. The main reason being over and above insurgents there is a constant threat from wild animals roaming around freely. This was such a culture shock for a person going from Maharashtra, because the police force in that state were very good, and i grew up taking law and order and my safety for granted in my adopted state of Maharashtra.
Every year all important national days such as Republic day and Independence day were days the wives would be worried for the lives of their husbands and their children. Invariably there would be some group coming to the estate asking for some money or it would be the order to buy petrol and diesel from a particular pump. Now Assam is a state with many rivers and a lot of coal mines, it has the distinction of being the place with the first oil refinery in the world but it has major energy supply problems. The estates spent a huge amount of money buying diesel and petrol for running the generators, trucks and tractors etc on the estate.
Quite a few top officials used to get kidnapped and huge sums of money used to change hands as the poor management of these tea companies had no other alternative. Then there were also stories about managers being killed by angry mobs. The workers could not understand that the managers were representatives of the owners and used to get very angry when for some reason the bonus they were to get during Diwali (an important festival of lights) time was reduced by any percentage.
Two stories will always remain with me one was of a dashing Punjabi manager who was very strict and efficient.This hardworking person met a horrendous end as he was practically mauled to death by an angry mob of workers who bore him grudges.
The second was even more spine chilling ....one year during bonus time when the amount being given out was reduced by a particular company, the workers of the estate went to the twin bungalow where the Manager and his assistant were staying and dragged them out of their respective houses locked their wives and children, made a pyre with the furniture from the bungalow and burnt both those innocent people to death right in front of their wives. Later someone said both the women developed mental disorders.
Tea is manufactured from 11pm at night till around 3am and the factory assistant's bungalow is always very near the factory, the worst such bungalow i lived in was in Mohokuti estate. The factory was very near the house and in the cold of the night the noise of the machines and the din of the workers used to make me think that there was a fight going on. One usually gets used to the noise and the fact that the keys of the company came to the house everyday in winters which was the off season. I somehow never could sleep well, with that noise on and most days i would spend time till the noise stopped, reading the newspaper or doing crosswords puzzles.
The newspaper became such a necessity for me and i used to read it so well that i taught myself editing in that process, of course there was no cable television nor the telephone or access to the internet, even as late as 2003 in the tea estates in Assam. The radio played Hindi Bollywood numbers for an hour in the mornings only, so the newspaper, became my ally and my window to the world. I also was hosting company guests and family at the bungalow all the time. There were very few days when i was not catering to guests.
One fine day i saw a Sten gun waved into my face and that day i decided that life in this state is no good but i also realised i have the instincts of a psychic :) ......we were going to Jorhat from Moran, the estate was located near Moran town. This was the place which helped me decide i do not want to raise my children up in Assam because this is a place where they would never learn what it is to be born free and to not have fear stalking you at every turn. Moran is the birthplace of the Assam insurgent movement!!!!!!!!!
On that day when we were driving down to Jorhat, in Moran town i to told my husband to buy me sweet pan. He parked the car on the curb and went to small shop selling cigarettes and pan leaving the keys in the car.
A second after that a black Scorpio van came hurtling down the road from the opposite direction and tried to go on to the foot path next to where our car was parked. Our car was barring their way and somehow that was agitating the driver, i also noticed a man standing on the side board of the Scorpio. I do not know why, but my first reaction after seeing that car was to take the keys out of the ignition in the most gentle of ways and the next thing i did was.... lay my baby boy down on my lap. Children are so quick to pick up the vibes of their parents, he too became quiet and still, in the mean time the man standing on the side board of the black Scorpio came to our vehicle, i need a nano second to see the Sten gun in his hand and put on my mask to avoid any expressions.
He told me in Hindi to move the car, he just needed a split second to gauge the fact that i was non Assamese and from the tea community because of the maid and a male domestic help sitting behind me. I told him in the most dead pan tones that my husband had the keys, at this he got even more agitated and barked out at the male domestic help to get the owner of the car. The poor guy went running at top speed, the man with the gun went beserk and reached inside the car and started blaring the horn and kept his hand on the horn without removing it. I so amazed myself with the nonchalance with which i sat through the entire drama he was putting up. In the mean time the driver of the Scorpio manged to get the car off the footpath they had got onto, reversed the car and thankfully the man with the gun went running to get into the car. A little later just before my husband came back i saw a police van go in full speed in the direction of the black Scorpio and it made me smile ......
In Sibsagar a town near Moran i remember seeing a huge three storey building belonging to one of the supremo's of one of the insurgent groups in Assam and i remember thinking .....is this the facade the leader of an insurgent group wants to portray to the youth of this state?????? is this how you lure young children away from the paths of industry, growth and the economy of your state????? is this how you leave young women widowed and mother's abandoned in their old age?????? Is this how you gang rape your state you misguided lost souls??? how can you hide your thieving ways in the name of rebellion for a cause of Free Assam and more opportunities for the Assamese!!!!!!!!!!
when one of your ways ....is killing your own people in the name of the Cause!!!!
I was used to hosting people who came to help with the maintenance of the tea factory machinery or help with other maintenance work. This is because there are no hotels in the area of the tea estate and it is the duty of each wife living on the estate to maintain the bungalow as a three star hotel, at least that is what my husband drilled into my head day in and day out!!!!!!!
One day we were hosting a young engineer who had been trained in Kirloskar Cummins a famous firm from Pune. Anyone who had any connection to Pune was always special and as we were having breakfast, i heard the gates being opened and a vehicle drive in. My immediate concern was how many more people to cater to, but these guests were different and so was the treatment they were getting from the bungalow servants. They trooped into the sitting room even before i could see them and i realised something was wrong when i saw the expression on the bearer's face as he came to the dinning room. Yes they were another tribe we had to get used to .....the surrendered insurgents!!!!!!!!!!
They had just come to give my husband the notification that they had bought the petrol pump near the estate.I admired these people for coming back to the main stream but i would notice many got killed in the fights between the insurgents and themselves (the surrendered insurgents).
The government of Assam used to give a sum of INR 2 lakhs and a gun to each insurgent who surrendered. Many of the surrendered youth used to open small restaurants and the people who visited these joints knew who the owners were. Sometimes innocent customers would get killed in the crossfire between these two warring factions viz the insurgents and the ones who had surrendered.
There was no way any one staying in Assam could know for a fact that when shootouts could happen or where. Once a driver told us a story about the wife of a factory assistant manager who was working in the same company as my husband. This particular lady had a habit of going to the tea planter's club in Moran for a swim sometimes and one day as usual she told the driver to go to the club while returning from somewhere, but last minute her child had some problem and they went back home.
It was her lucky day because she would have either lost her life or something worse would have happened to her, had she gone to the club.
There was a shoot out between the insurgents and the surrendered insurgents in the club that afternoon!!!!!
One of the first few things i was shown after reaching Assam was the bullet marks in the Borsola club where the insurgents had attacked, some of the people had got injured and an executive who was born and brought up in Mumbai later told us about how he ended up in hospital for so long due to an injury he got in the cross fire.
The worst scene i endured in my entire stay in Assam was in the winter of 2003 while we were staying on Mohokutie tea estate. I was around 5 months pregnant and my older child was 2 and a half years old and the company my husband was working decided to cut the bonus payment that year. This news put fear into my mind considering the already difficult time i was dealing with. The day of the bonus payment was an ominous one and the whole area of the factory was full of workers, and even though they were not shouting like they did at night, the din of their talk was scary. Once lunch was over and it was time for my husband to go to the factory, he told me that he is going to lock my son and me in the house, i was to not let any of the bungalow help inside nor was i to leave the bungalow even if someone bought news of his death. I so wished there was a phone in the house for me to talk to someone and share my fears. Nothing of that sort happened and so i sat in the verandah and did crossword puzzles. After some time the din started getting to me as there was a huge uproar in the factory, and i feared the worst. It was nearly dinner time when the noise level came down and i felt relieved that nothing untoward happened. It was a relief to see the manager's car leave for his bungalow and it was a sign that all is well.
Even as recently as last month a tea estate owner and his wife were hacked to death by tea workers......
There is a threat to life in so many occupations and yet people do take up such jobs, but how many people world wide know as to what goes on in tea estates in many parts of the world.
I will now shift focus to some other parts of the world ..... i lived in Annamalais for 10months, one of the most virgin and therefore beautifull hill stations in South India. The minute one reaches the place after 41 hair pin bends you know you are in a very special place.
Here too life is not very secure, the tea estates are situated in a wild life sanctuary and the threat is from wild animals. I do not blame the Elephants and Bisons or Panthers or packs of Wild Dogs or the Snakes. It was their habitat and man took over the place and forgot to tell them about it ....or rather the means of communication between man and the animal kingdom have not been developed.
Every time we went for a party to Cinnamon Grove near Valparai town, we women used to hope and pray that we do not meet any elephants or bisons.
The tea estates in Darjeeling have to deal with labour unrest and some other problems. Tea estates in Sri Lanka too had their problems along with the problems the country was facing, similar is the case of estates in some parts of Africa.
Therefore i say that every time you drink tea do give a thought to the tea planter and his wife who brave such difficult conditions to give you your cup of cheer. Another fact being that the children can never be with their parents as most estates are in remote regions and hence planters children are mostly in boarding schools.
The tea planter's wife is an institution in her own right, many tea companies in India do pay the wife for her contribution in running the estate, as many companies have a policy where the planters wives help with welfare activities and running of the creche for worker's children. These women have to be good in interior designing, cooking, planning parties from the estate to the district level, have to be excellent hostesses, be an excellent man manager because most bungalows have a minimum of 10 domestic help, emergency aid giver, agriculturist because all bungalows come with a huge kitchen garden and lawn and flower beds etc and so much more.
I salute your tribe all ye Planters and hope your lot has better conditions in the years to come.
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