the pet tigress

this is a real life incident that happened on a tea estate in assam, where many a planter will be able to share many such real life episodes. this is true because even my husband had come across young tiger cubs in the forest surrounding the first estate he had joined in dhekiajulie. i too have sighted many a wild animal during my 6yr stay on various tea estates, in south india and the north east of india.
once a young tea planter found an abandoned tiger cub when he was on a round of the tea estate. the managers in charge of the field(tea estate) have to keep taking rounds of the estate to check on plucking of tea leaves, stray cattle, encroaching wild animals etc. though i always felt it is we humans who encroached on the natural habitat of the animals. life on an estate is never dull as there is something unusual happening all the time and of course in assam the insurgency added an element of fear too.
the young planter looked for the mother of the cub and took it home as he could find no trace of the mother, neither did he find any other siblings of the small cub. he did this as there are packs of wild dogs moving around and they are vicious. i once saw these dogs and they gave me an eerie feeling even though i was in a jeep.
the planter let the cub have free reign of his house and instructed the bungalow help to feed the cub at regular intervals. every evening when he came home, he would play a bit with the cub, and pet and kiss it's forehead.
this became a daily routine and with time the cub would wait at the upper floor window. many tea bungalows are built on stilts, so he would climb up the stairs and go pet the cub which was growing up fast. this unusual pet of this planter was the talk of many parties and gatherings, so people kept getting updates on the cute antics of the cub.
soon a day came when the cub became a mature tigress, the bungalow help were a little worried about the food and the tigress now. soon it started to go out into the jungle for days on end, but when ever the planter saw the tigress, he would never fail to pet it like he used to. once when he saw the tigress after a gap of a few days, he was happy to sight it and went and pet it like always, though he found it a bit strange to see it on the ground in the porch. he went up to the verandah upstairs.... and got the shock of his life..... there was a tigress sitting in its usual spot......and for the first time he was scared and i guess the animal too sensed his fear and strange withdrawal. that was the last time the tigress was sighted by the young planter.
it is difficult to distinguish at a quick glance if it is a tigress or a tiger ....specially if they are seated, and so the planter got confused as to whether he had petted his pet or had he pet a fully grown male tiger!!!!! the saving grace being animals never kill unless hungry and i always wondered at why the tigress never came back after that incident. did it know it was time to move on? or did it sense the fear in its human friend for the first time? ....questions that will never be answered,
i too used to go for walks on the estate in assam but it was irritating that i was never allowed to go alone for my walks, unless i did it without informing anyone. if i asked my husband permission he would insist i take the maid along. i loved to go for walks alone and did so sometimes as the estate we were staying on was so beautifull, the manager had planted wild flowers all along the estate near the tea bushes. some of the other executives kept telling me about sighting a tiger, but i used to think they were joking or pulling my leg as a lot of that too went on, specially because i was from the city and had never experienced rural life ever before. i stopped going for walks the day the manager sent a warning to all the people on the estate, of having sighted a tiger on the estate...... how i missed my walks from then on !!!!    

a big humble and heartfelt THANK YOU to all those who visit my blog and take the time and effort to read my words :) love to all of you!!!!!!!

i wish to thank all of you who come and read my blog, spl for the time you give my posts.

it is very encouraging indeed to see the number of hits i get for each article.


THANK YOU :) AND LOTS OF LOVE AND BEST WISHES TO EACH ONE OF YOU ...FOR ALL YOUR ENDEAVOURS :)

snake in the plantain's shadow .... how i nearly mistook a snake for a string of the plaintain stem

all the tea estate bungalows i lived in, had a huge kitchen garden. the ones in assam had a rich diversity in what one could get as trees growing in the kitchen garden. the last estate i lived on had a coconut palm, mulberry tree, litchi tree, a tree bearing oranges, plantain, mango tree, jack fruit tree, jambul tree, pineapple bushes and guava trees in the front yard bordering the flower beds next to the bamboo hedge. the hedges in assam were of bamboo grown in close proximity to each other and it made for a great hedge. the back yard also had a lot of sweet potatoes creepers i had asked the gardener to plant.
every once in a while... in season we would get to eat home grown fruit from the garden. i learnt new techniques of agriculture, such as having a light fire burnt under the fruit trees in the blossoming season.this was to ensure that smoking the tree would guard against worm infestation in the fruit blossoms. sometimes we would have a large crowd of chattering monkeys paying us a visit ....i would run indoors with my one year old as soon as i heard them if i was out in the garden and watch them from the safety of the grilled and netted verandah.    
litchis were my favourite fruit, and i gorged on them when in season, sometimes i had accidents in farming like once i planted spinach seeds and got poppy flowers, another time it turned out to be parsley. once in a while i also had a bumper crop of broccoli, beans and cabbage. agriculture is a very rewarding activity to engage in when living on the tea estates.it substituted very well for lack of and inability to have a professional career. the wonderfull green cover also helped me forget the mayhem we lived with in assam.
so as usual when i saw a bunch of bananas nearly ripe in the back yard. i told the gardener to cut the bunch and get it home.after he brought it inside the house i made him keep it in the dining room floor. after he left i decided to check on the bunch, as my baby was sleeping and i had some spare time. i nearly touched the bunch of bananas and i thought ...oh there is some string from the plantain plant caught in the bunch. i stooped to pull it out but some gut instinct made me stop short of touching it and i decided to call the gardener back into the house. i told him to cut the string up and pull it out .....but when i went to show him the string on the plantain bunch.......surprise surprise the thing had disappeared!!!!!!!
yikes.... my instincts told me it had to be a snake and now i was petrified......that the snake had crawled out into the house....!!!!!!!!! first thing i went and locked the bedroom door to ensure it did not crawl in there, next i told the gardener to sprinkle a disinfectant all around the house and outside .......but nothing.... no snake anywhere in the big house....so the gardener had a bright idea to check the plantain bunch with a long stick...he so casually carried the plantain bunch out to the lawn.......i was so petrified of what a big risk he was taking.........and i kept calling out to him to stop poking around .....from the verandah.....soon there was a small yell from the gardener.... and i saw a light brown snake with black spots or stripes on it as it sped away across the lawn into the flower plants next to the lawn ......i was so happy to see the snake go away from the house .....end of the search for the snake in the house ....
but i can never eat bananas without thinking of snakes....and how i would have got bitten by one.... if my instincts had not warned me ........     

The day the cow mooed, there was a thunderstorm and i thought my world was coming to an end.......

this is a snap of himboos partially hidden by a bush .....and baby himboos running around the lawn

Being city bred and used to buying milk in packets or bottles, the only time i had seen a cow up close was the Jersey ones my granny had in Kerala. I had no clue about the ways of farm animals least of all cows, nothing had prepared me for a life on the tea estate. Till i had a baby i used to either buy milk from a boy selling milk on the estate or mostly used milk powder as that was a safer option any day, people in India resort to all kinds of practices to increase the milk yield of cows......
When i was in Pune for the delivery of my first child ....my husband kept telling me he would buy a cow, as otherwise it would be difficult with a small baby and preparing nutritious food, which required milk as an ingredient. I kept pleading with him to not buy a cow as i could not imagine looking after one. A senior executive on the estate got posted to Mohokutie Tea Estate as the manager of that estate, and he gifted my husband a cow before he left for Mohokutie T.E....Just before coming to Pune to take baby and me to Assam, we too got posted to Mohokutie Tea.Estate from Digultarang T.E and my husband was to take up the post of factory in-charge at the Mohokutie factory.
I was petrified to think of owing a cow but a bit excited too .... my baby was 9months old and lisping words...he called cows himboos and so we named the cow Himboos ....she was very beautifull and a nut brown in colour and quite thin..... she gave around one liter of milk a day..... and i ensured the grass the gardeners fed her was of good quality. We were in the Digultarang TE for only a few days after reaching Assam, and i was busy packing up the large amount of breakable stuff we had accumulated in the 4 years we were living on tea estates. Once my husband was away in the factory at night as was the usual practice, and there was a thunderstorm looming and soon after the rain started, the cow started to moo and how !!!!!!
I was so scared because i thought that there was something seriously wrong with the cow mooing and thunderstorm happening at the same time. I had heard of how animals react to natural calamities, and was sure something terrible was about to happen ....so i called the watchman and told him to check on Himboos the cow. He had the most bored expression on his face for being made to go out in the rain and that upset me and i thought how callous this man is !!!!!
Assam is a state that has frequent earthquakes and so i was really worried about baby and me and my husband and the estate too ..... The watchman came back and said all is well with the cow, i was also scared of any snakes in the cowshed.....after hearing him, i was still worried and so took my baby in his pram and went and stood in the corner of the room as i was asked to do, in case of an earthquake. I felt a bit foolish after a bit, but stood there till my husband came home. He laughed the whole matter off and thankfully the cow stopped mooing.
This entire episode happened again in Mohokutie and i decided to go and talk to the mangers wife and ask her about a veterinary doctor too. There in the manger's bungalow i met the labour welfare officer's wife who was just leaving as i entered but waited to hear what i had to say...... and all three of us had a hearty laugh ... i, at myself and they both.... at my ignorance.
The cow was mooing because she was on heat and there was no danger of any earthquake or any such jazz, i had never ever dealt with some thing of this sort in the town i grew up in. The amount i laughed that day and from then on every time the cow mooed i would laugh..... but the fall out of keeping a cow is that i went off drinking milk and  when ever i drank milk........ i stuck to powder milk .... no emotions on seeing powder milk !!!!!!!!!!!  :)
22/4/13
Sadly this story does not have a happy ending, after a few months Himboos gave birth to a female calf and instead of using Himboos, as a cow for providing milk i made her our pet and let the calf drink the milk.Every night i ensured the gardeners did not tie the mother and child separately. Initially in Mohokutie i did let the gardener milk Himboos and we used the milk, but it is so painfull to see a cow being milked that i made them stop the practice all together. Baby Himboos as we named the calf was also a uniform nut brown and very beautifull, i made sure they had the best of grass to eat. Workers coming to the bungalow have to be handled with kid gloves or one could never tell when they would play hookey or just stop coming to work for no rhyme or reason..... so once both the gardeners decided to play hookey, on a day i had given the maids and cook a holiday ...... after a house party where all three had worked extra.

I still remember feeling so scared to go check on Himboos and her baby, i dread snakes and so slowly went to the cowshed and checked on them. I realised to my horror that the grass was over !!!!! oh dear what a tragedy .....i gave them some leftover rice and the peels of vegetables and some bananas.....but i was sure they were hungry and i was so upset as to how to feed the cows grass!!!!! Suddenly i had a Eureka moment .....i decided to tie both mother and daughter in the front lawn !!!!!!!! i knew my husband would burst a blood vessel when he came and saw this ...but i just did not want the cows to start mooing ......leading the cows one at a time from the cowshed to the front lawn was such a brave thing for me to do ....i was never so scared of a pet EVER!!!!! but i somehow managed to tie them to a solid post and let them graze on the lawn.... after my husband came home, he sent word to some workers to get grass and the cows were tied back in the backyard.  

In 2003 i realised Himboos needed to be mated and the practice on the estate was to send the cow to one of the staff's cow shed, because he owned a prize bull .....when i first heard of this method of doing things i was so taken aback!!! but i dared not laugh at the gardener telling me this, in a no nonsense manner as the most normal thing to get done....i realsied town folks have no clue about how life in the rural areas is sooooooooo different !!!! The icing on the cake being, one has to pay the staff a sum of Rs 200.... only.... if the cow gets pregnant !!!!! So i sent Himboos to the staff's cow shed for some time and then one fine day, the gardener told me that it was time for me to send Rs 200.... across to the said staff's house.

In January 2004 i left for Pune, for the delivery of my second child and i knew, i would never go back to Assam, as we had filed our papers to emigrate to Canada. I was tired of living with insurgency and wanted to move out of India itself, i was keen on going to New Zealand as i never wanted to set my eyes on another snake, but my husband wanted to go to Canada. I kept reminding the gardener to feed and take care of Himboos and baby Himboos, specially cleaning the cement floor of the cowshed lest she slip on the cow-dung etc. After my husband came for the delivery of my second child and before he went back to Assam, i drilled it into him, to return the pregnant Himboos and her calf to the Manager. He kept saying they would feel bad as Himboos was a gift from them to us, but i said it is better that she go to someone who will take care of her and had the means to do so. The Manager's bungalow had a huge cowshed and they kept quite a few cows, so 2 more would not have added to the burden.

He kept dilly dallying and in the meantime Himboos gave birth to another calf. Every Sunday when he would drive to town to call me in Pune, i would remind him of giving Himboos back, and sadly my worst fears came true..... the gardeners became slack as there was no one to keep a check on them..... and one stormy night my beautifull Himboos slipped on the slippery floor of her cowshed and broke her back ......how much pain the poor thing must have undergone .....how she must have bellowed and mooed in pain .....the vet came and put her to sleep the next day.....both her calves were finally sent to the Manager's bungalow ..... that is the sad ending to the story of my Himboos ......every time i think of her end...... i am moved to tears to think of the pain the poor thing must have endured in her last hours....... and i was not there for her .......  

The people who use scare tactics and bombs ....falsely believe they will rule the world ........

After reading about and seeing the media coverage of the Boston episode, i started to think about the different countries that face such situations. Some face it sporadically, some more often and some on a daily basis.The people who resort to such scare tactics to get across their point, whatever the issue are the biggest cowardly criminals.The issues they wish to highlight or the goals they want to achieve become soaked in the blood of innocents. This has a boomerang effect as people stop listening to murders who may or may not have a strong agenda. Nothing justifies the killing of innocent people who have nothing to do with the wrongs that have been done to group going around bombing places.
In insurgent activity that i saw first hand and those i read about in the news papers, the fact that amazes me most is that the people revolting .....resort to killing their own people .....people belonging to their own state and country!! and the question i have is who finally benefits from this..... and those who kill are human too and do they not mourn the death of a loved one ......
This is depicted so beautifully in the movie made on Kasab(the boy who was hung for the Mumbai Mayhem) ....specially the scene in which Kasab is asked by the inspector asking him to identify the bodies of his friends ....and the intense dialogue that follows, a dialogue that is applicable to all insurgents irrespective of the agenda and cause they are fighting for ....... when you kill innocents, do you think of the pain their loved ones go through ......it is the same as the pain you go through when your loved ones are killed.......... 
On the tea estates in Assam, every year the tea bushes were pruned in rotation, that is some area of the estate used to pruned.
Recently i saw a post that made me think of pruning on the tea estates and how it really happened on two levels.....the actual one on the plants and the second pruning happened at the worker level.....the insurgents used to brain wash the workers from using the free services being provided by the management of the tea companies. Some of the workers instead of sending their children to the school provided by the management would make their children work on the estates. Sometimes with girls one could understand that the parent was worried about the safety of the child left alone at home. The workers would not use the medical help provided most of the time, the only thing they really availed of was the rations being provided by the company and the fuel wood.
The point i want to make is the insurgents used the workers for their own gain and in doing so ''pruned them for life'', stunted their growth  and kept them at the level they wanted by brainwashing them and making them anti management. In the event of  workers turning against the management and murdering some of the managers in cold blood, here too the insurgents benefited because they got away scot-free....... the means justified the ends in their eyes.......but i believe some day the second generation of these insurgents will pay the price for the crimes of these insurgents...... and this is a universal truth .... when people of any community take to arms to get their point across........ it is the future generations that will pay a price ............ and wonder why they are so MYOPIC to not see this truth ..........    

FB and the 'Like Button'

I joined FB after i quit teaching in a private college i was working for, my students were always talking of posting messages i had for the absent ones on FB. I used to wonder as to what kind of a system it was, the kids i taught were always telling me to join but i had no time or inclination for such networking. One gets attached to students one teaches and i joined FB soon after i handed in my resignation in that pvt college. It is a wonderfull way to connect to people, find old long lost friends and sometimes just play games like my two sons do.
After joining i started to explore as to what, and how the system worked and that was the first time i saw the 'power of a like' to put it in a way. The Like button has so many hues to it ......it has a cultural context, social context, age based difference in usage, i also wonder if a country wise research has been done on the percentage of people using the like button, sometimes it can also be used sarcastically or can it ?????  

Finally I am an Indian !!!!!!!!!

I am so happy that i can finally introduce myself as an Indian!!! all the years i was growing up in Indian, i was of South Indian parentage so a Mallu (a colloquial way of addressing a Keralite!!). I grew up in Maharashtra ...and there not a month that goes by, without me thanking my lucky stars for having been born in Pune. Such a peace full city, where a girl is not mauled on the roads and i grew up taking peace and law and order for granted. Then i met my husband in college and it was a big change for my parents and me, because i was going to go and settle in Assam a north eastern state. Now there too i was a mallu and though i learnt the language and food and other cultural practices of the region, i was an outsider for all practical purposes.
I used to crave for an India where we did not have stupid divides on the basis on language and caste or region we grew up in .....alas that was never to be !!!!!!!!
Life changed so much when i shifted to Bahrain ....when i was meeting people from countries other than India ...i could finally introduce myself as an Indian!!!!!!!! I should admit that all the people from India and that is me included, are so conditioned to asking each other as to where one is from, it is such a conversation starter for Indians. We tend to judge people on the basis of the state we belong to, and use that as a starting point of our conversation and to form an opinion on what each of us thinks of the other. Sometimes this leads to a prejudiced opinion being formed in the minds of people.
Many a time I am asked if i belong to Goa based on the non accented English i speak. In Assam when i spoke non accented Hindi, i would get people giving me confused stares and it used to make me smile. The sad part was when it comes to working, the fact that i am born and brought up in Maharashtra did not matter. I was a south Indian and labelled as such, the fact that i can not read or write my mother tongue was of no consequence. No one even cared for or asked me as to which state in India I identified with? no one  ever thought that to be of any importance.
India is a very unique country with such vast language,customs and cultural differences....but we Indians fail to rise above petty things and see the whole picture at times. In the metros it is not so apparent, i have also seen this disregard for ones identity in very remote areas too. When i was working as a research assistant in Pune i used to travel to remote areas of Nashik, and when interacting people there, i did notice that people are very simple and straight forward in their dealings with us city folk. They never tired to find out if i belonged to their state or no, i was accepted on face value of the NGO i was associated with and accepted as  human being .....no questions asked or me being probed to find out my roots so to speak of......
I do have to admit it is only when dealing with people of other nationalities, does one really introduce oneself  as an Indian and no further questions asked Period!!! ....... Whew Finally !!!!!! and i like that a lot sometimes .....yes i do ......