Guests were very special in the gardens. There were no guest houses
or hotels, so whoever came, stayed with you. Official guests stayed with the
General or Group Manager, Manager or Assistant Manager, depending on who they
were in terms of their rank or significance for the Company. Your guests stayed
with you or sometimes with your friends, depending on what was happening in
your life at the time. We played host to a friend’s grandmother, another friend’s
heavily pregnant wife as he had to travel urgently and to several others. In the
plantations we treated each other as members of our family. We stood behind
each other, no question about it. I have written here about a few of the
guests. We had many more. Too many to name here. So, if you visited us and are
not mentioned in this article, please know that you are remembered though I have
not mentioned you here.
Guests were very special firstly, because they were few and far
between and because they came from the ‘outside’ world and brought news of what
was happening there. Remember I am talking about the period 1983-93. The time
before almost everything we know and take for granted today. This was
pre-Google, Apple, mobile phones, even TV. Where there was TV, it was
Doordarshan. Cable TV didn’t exist in the plantations. In 1985 we saw the first
color TV. We had VCRs and VCPs (Video Cassette Recorders and Players) which
coupled with the color TV, provided home entertainment to those who were
interested in it. Electric typewriters were state-of-the-art and what sat on
your lap was not a computer. Cyclostyle was the copying system. Faxes and Xerox
machines were still in the distant future. Guests therefore came with real
news, even if a few days old; thanks to the time it took for them to get to
where we were, high in the mountains and deep in the forest. For those of us in
the Anamallais that was close to the truth, because we lived in the middle of
the Indira Gandhi National Park on the top of the Anamallai Hills; tea
surrounded by thick rainforest, reached after traversing the Aliyar Ghat road
with forty hairpin bends. Home to hundreds of species of mammals, birds and
reptiles.
My first guests were
Mr. Hasanuddin Ahmed and his wife Anees Fatima (Husnara Aunty), my mother’s
cousins. I was delighted to receive them. I was living in No. 18 bungalow; the
name given to Assistant Manager’s bungalow in Sheikalmudi Estate, Lower
Division which was in Field No. 18. They visited me in 1983, less than 6 months
after I had joined planting and I was delighted as they were my favorite uncle
and aunt and I was honored that they had come to visit. Bastian, my butler and
cook, who you have heard about earlier, put on a great culinary show and
everyone was very impressed. One afternoon, after a cup of tea, Hasan Uncle and
I were strolling down the path from the bungalow to the main road, when Hasan
Uncle told me to explain the whole tea manufacturing process to him. I was very
enthusiastic about it as I had just learnt it myself a couple of weeks earlier
and I promptly launched into my narrative. “We pluck the top shoots, two leaves
and the vegetative bud’, I said. “That is taken to the factory and put into
Withering Troughs and air is blown over and through the leaf bed in the trough
which removes some of the moisture to make the leaf flaccid. Without withering, they would shatter and crumble
when rolled. Then the leaves are put into Rollers in which by an
action akin to rubbing tobacco between your palms, tea leaves are rolled to
break cell walls and express the juice which coats the small rolled pieces that
break off in this process. Rolling is where the process of developing flavor starts.
After rolling, the leaves are laid out for several hours, allowing oxidation to
take place. This is called Fermentation, though it has nothing to do with
fermenting as there is no sugar or production of alcohol as happens in a
natural fermentation process. Oxidation is the process in which the oxygen in
the air interacts with the now-exposed enzymes in the leaf, turning it a
reddish-brown color and changing the chemical composition. The duration of this
process depends on the style of tea being produced and the ambient conditions
at the time. The final step is to stop the oxidation which is done by what is
called Firing. This is done by putting the output from the Rollers into
perforated trays and heated air is passed over the trough to dry them to below
3% moisture content which stops the oxidation process and makes the tea black.
Good, even drying and low residual moisture enables the tea to keep well, which
is necessary for shipping. The tea is packed in plywood boxes lined with paper
and film and sealed, ready for shipping.” I stopped to take a breath.
Hasan Uncle listened
with great seriousness and attention and said, “You seem to have learnt this
all very well. Tell me, what happens if you simply boil green tea leaves?” I
was stumped. I didn’t know. But what struck me more than the fact that I didn’t
know the answer to his question was that the question had not occurred to me.
There I was, working in a tea garden, living in a bungalow surrounded by tea
fields and didn’t have the imagination to ask myself a simple question like
that. This I what formal education does to one, I guess. Of course, we plucked
two or three shoots and boiled them to produce a very ‘green’ chlorophyllic decoction
that was hardly drinkable. The point of course was not what it tasted like, but
whether I’d had the curiosity to ask the question. Big lesson in my life about
the importance of asking the unasked and questioning the ‘accepted’ rule. Hasan
Uncle and Husnara Aunty spent a few very enjoyable days with me and left behind
memories which are fresh to this day. And I ask questions that nobody thinks
of.
While I was the Manager
of Lower Sheikalmudi Estate, we got a call to say that the Wrigleys were coming
to visit. This was William Wrigley III and William Wrigley IV, the owners of
Wrigley Company, the largest chewing gum (Wrigley’s gum) company in the world. On
April 28, 2008, Mars announced that it would acquire Wrigley for approximately
$23 billion. The Wrigleys were staying with the Group Manager of the
Sheikalmudi Group, Mr. S. M. Taher. The managers and assistants from the other estates
were invited to dinner to Sheikalmudi bungalow. At the dinner, I suggested that
the two Wrigleys, father and son, may like to go down to the Parambikulam Dam
through our cardamom plantation in Murugalli. There would be a good chance of
seeing bison (Indian Gaur), Malabar Squirrel, Great Malabar Hornbill, Barking Deer
and who knows what else. Anamallais and Sheikalmudi in particular, especially that
part of it which borders the Parambikulam backwaters, is teeming with wildlife.
The plan was to go the next day, late in the afternoon for a swim in the lake
and then drive back after dark through the cardamom plantation so that we would
have a chance to see some Gaur and other wildlife. It was a nice, dry afternoon
and so I had no apprehensions taking the jeep, which didn’t have four-wheel
drive, down to the lakeside. Taher bhai drove them down and we all met at
Murugalli Bazar and went down to the lakeside.
Parambikulam from Murugalli
If you walked down the river for a couple of
kilometers you would come to the Parambikulam Dam backwaters into which this
river flowed. I had built another pool there at the bottom of a waterfall,
thanks to a stream that flowed through Murugalli Estate. We used to keep a boat
in the dam to go fishing on the lake. There was a thickly wooded island in the
lake about half a kilometer from the shore on which one could go and spend the
whole day, swimming and lazing in the shade, a very welcome occupation, free
from all stress. The only sounds that you would hear would be the wailing call
of the Rufus Backed Hawk Eagle and the Fishing Eagle. In the evenings, the
Jungle Fowl called the hour. If you stayed beyond sunset, the only danger was
that you could encounter bison (Gaur) as you walked home. That encounter was
not something to look forward to as I discovered one day. Mercifully, I was
walking softly, and the wind was in my face, so the Gaur was as startled as I
was. He snorted, spun on his heel, and vanished, crashing through the
undergrowth. I was very fortunate.
Everything went
according to plan and we swam, ate sandwiches and drank coffee. Raman took the rowboat
and Wrigley Jr. to the island in the middle of the lake but returned rather
suddenly and very wisely as they found some feral buffaloes which were lying in
the water on the other side of the island. These can be very dangerous, and Raman
who went as the guide and boatman, insisted that they return. That was a very wise
thing to do because we weren’t planning on explaining how we were one Wrigley
short when we got back. We watched the sun extinguish itself in the waters of
the lake and then when it got dark, we packed our stuff into the jeep and started
back. Suddenly it started to rain. In this part of the world, it doesn’t leave
you in any doubt, when it rains. It pours. That day, it did with a vengeance. The
road quickly became slush and the jeep started skidding. We decided to wait for
a bit to see if the rain would ease off. But though we waited for half an hour,
nothing happened. We started off once again but realized that we couldn’t all ride
in the jeep as the gradient of the road was steep and it was extremely slippery.
We all got off and pushed, while Taher bhai drove. It took us over an hour of
pushing and driving, to get back to Murugalli Bazar. As the jeep went skidding
up the road, it threw up liquid mud in showers. As a result, all of us
including our two illustrious guests, were covered with mud from head to toe. But
all that I could see was two sets of the brightest teeth this side of the Atlantic.
The Wrigleys were great sports and I guess we, all of us had a very good time. Not
the way you usually treat billionaires. But these were two very happy billionaires
with a strange story to tell.
One day a friend called
to say, that a friend of his was visiting India, and could she visit us as she
wanted to see a tea garden. Of course, we agreed and sent the car to pick her
up from the airport in Coimbatore. Along came Elizabeth Sidney. Elizabeth owned
a consulting firm in London, called Mantra Consulting (pronounced Man-tra) and
was also a member and office bearer of the Liberal Democratic Party. Elizabeth
became a lifelong friend until her death at the age of 86, in 2011.
Elizabeth arrived in
the evening as the drive up the Aliyar Ghat from Coimbatore and then across the
Anamallais to Lower Sheikalmudi was a full-day affair. At that time, we had
another dear friend staying with us, Maaji, Manjit Singh’s grandmother. Manjit
was the Manager of Pannimedu Estate of Tata Tea and they had a lockout, so he
and his wife Devika went to stay at the Coimbatore Club. But his grandmother came
to stay with us. We were very fond of her and she called my wife, ‘Puttar’ (my
daughter) and we loved having her with us. Such were the times, when our
friends were more than just ‘friends’. Maaji spoke only Punjabi and Elizabeth
spoke only English, but they got along famously and had conversations in two
completely different languages, much to our amazement. Elizabeth was a wonderfully
warm person and we became very good friends and stayed with her in her
Islington townhouse twice when we were in London.
The next day I took
Elizabeth around the estate to show her tea cultivation and manufacture. She
was fascinated that the vast majority of workers were women and she had
animated conversations with some of the workers, with me translating from Tamil
into English and back. That evening, I suggested that my wife and I with Elizabeth,
spend the night in my machan on Manjaparai and see what animals would come to
the waterhole. Manjaparai is the flat
rock which forms a small flat plateau at the top of the hill, and through which
flows a small perennial stream. It is called Majaparai (Yellow Rock) thanks to yellow
lichens which cling to it and give it that color. In the summer the sparse
grass that sprouts in the monsoon, quickly turns yellow and so the name is
justified. I’d had a machan (platform) built on a tree at the edge of the
forest overlooking the stream, which empties into a small pool and then goes
down the slope into the forest. I had cleared a small pathway to get to the
machan tree, but without disturbing the area or its animals. The machan was built
in a big fork about three-quarters of the way up the tree at a height of about
twenty feet from the ground. It was quite substantial and could comfortably
seat four people. From my bungalow to the base of the hill on the top of which
the machan was, it was about four kilometers over rough estate roads. Therefore,
to make it easy for the ladies and not have them walk the entire distance and
then climb the hill (assuming that they would have even agreed to do it), I decided
to take them up on a Massey-Ferguson tractor to the base of Manjaparai and walk
up the rest of the way. The tractor ride was not the most comfortable, but the novelty
of it would hopefully override the discomfort. My wife was not very impressed
but for Elizabeth, everything we were doing was a ‘first time in my life’, experience.
I drove the tractor with the ladies on either side.
Manjaparai view
We reached the top, still in one piece and having taken a breather,
started up the track leading to the top of the rock. Given that we had the
ladies with us, I had sent out a scout, one of my Ramans, to check the pathway
and to clear it of any Stinging Nettles (Anaimarti – One which drives away
elephants) bushes leaning across the path. His job was also to ensure that the
jungle was elephant free. Elephants in the Anamallais are dangerous as they
raid vegetable gardens and get driven off by the garden owners beating drums or
setting off firecrackers. Elephants hate loud noises and run away but in a foul
temper. Not the best frame of mind if you happen to meet them. You always need
to be careful of elephants in the Anamallais, thanks to this human-animal
conflict. Once we had the all-clear from Raman, we proceeded upwards. We
reached the top in time to see the fabulous sunsets that are the prize of climbing
Manjaparai. We had some coffee and omelets rolled into parathas and with a coat
of lemon pickle, which Bastian had given us as our dinner and then climbed the tree
into the machan. As we settled down…Let me tell you this part of the story as
my wife recalls it. “Yawar told Elizabeth and me that we were going with him to
his machan on Manjaparai. I asked him if it would be cold. He said, ‘Not too
much.’ We left on the tractor with him driving and me hanging on one side for
dear life being tossed up and down on the rough field roads. Elizabeth was on the
other side in the same predicament but seemed to love it. We reached the top of
the road in one piece and got off the tractor and started climbing the hill to
the top. The view from Manjaparai, of the sun setting, was spectacular and well
worth the trouble of getting there.
We had a snack and got up into the tree. I am not much of a tree climber,
but Raman and his partner had thoughtfully got a ladder which we climbed and scrambled
the last few feet to the machan. The ladder was pulled up after us and stashed among
the branches above us. Dusk started to fall. Yawar told us to be completely
silent and as motionless as possible. He told us that animals see motion before
anything else. If you don’t move and your body outline is broken up by our
surroundings, you are invisible. Especially as you are sitting high above, you
are out of the normal perspective of most animals. The only joker in the pack
is the wind. If it blows in your face it means that animals can’t smell you.
But it is behind you, then animals will know you are there and will leave. As it
started to get dark, a smart wind started coming up the hill in our face. That was
good, but it was getting cold. I saw Elizabeth pulling out a sweater from her
substantial handbag. Then she pulled out a shawl and wrapped herself in it and
sat there, snug as a bug in a rug. Yawar was wearing his waterproof raincoat,
which was felt lined and very warm. But there I was in a light sweater because Yawar
told me it wouldn’t be so cold. As the night wore on, I got colder and colder
and my teeth were chattering so loudly that I am sure that is the reason we didn’t
see any animals that night.
Eventually it got so cold that I simply couldn’t sit in the machan and
we all got down onto the rock below and Raman lighted a fire and put on the
teapot. The fire was a lifesaver and I can’t tell you how good it felt. There was
no question of seeing any animals after the fire had been lighted, but who
cares? I was finally warm and out of my misery and that is all I cared about. We
sat through the rest of the night, drinking black tea, sweetened with jaggery
and listening to the sounds of the forest, which by then had also quietened
down. There was the occasional Nightjar which buzzed his call from time to
time, but not much else. I told you that the sunset from Manjaparai was spectacular.
That was because I had not seen the sunrise. Now I can’t decide which was
better. Thankfully I don’t have to pick. I had seen both.”
How do you know if it is sunrise or sunset?
Elizabeth came again when we were in New Ambadi Estate. The Manager’s
bungalow had been built by a previous manager called Watts Carter who was one
of the best planners and executors of civil works that I have known. His work was
his signature and legacy and it was truly remarkable. Rainwater collection
tanks that ensured a year-long supply of water in a place were the dry season
was 7-8 months long. Beautifully graded and banked roads. Contour planted
fields with terraces and water conservation works that ensured that the rubber didn’t
suffer in the dry season. This time Elizabeth brought her friend, Margaret Tabor,
from Braintree, Essex. Margaret was a delightful lady with lots of interesting
stories about her own travels. Margaret lived in her family manor house; we
stayed with her once; on a two- thousand-acre estate in Essex where she raised Pheasants
and had annual Pheasant shoots. She told us that her main clients were Japanese.
We got a call one day from Ms. Brewty, the Secretary to our General
Manager, Mr. N. K. Rawlley. She said, “Mr. Baig, Mr. Rawlley asked me to inform
you that there are two ladies from London who are company guests and are staying
in Iyerpadi at the guest house. They would like to see some forest area. Could
you please help with this?” Forest and me? Of course, I was delighted to help. Next
day the ladies arrived in the company jeep and my wife and I met them at the
Uralikkal checkpost. Of the two ladies, one was rather large and remarkably
well-endowed. The other one looked like she was the counterpoint to the first
one, rather like being on Social Security.
We
left our car and we all went down the short windy road to the Manamboli Dam. That
drive is very productive in terms of wildlife sightings and sure enough we saw
Malabar squirrels, Lion-tailed Macaques, and a Barking deer which crossed the road
exactly at the place I expected it to……I am convinced that it did this for a
living. We stopped for a short break at the bottom of the concrete-surfaced
road which ended at the Power Generation House. There was some flow over the sluice
gates of the dam, and it was very relaxing to listen to the sound of flowing
water. Then we started down the unpaved
forest road to Topslip. This road runs along the Manamboli river. As we rounded
a bend, I recalled an incident when my dearest friend Berty and I were fishing
at the foot of the rapids on the other side of the dam. We would
stand in rapidly flowing water in Manamboli below the sluice gates and cast for
Mahseer while drinking in the atmosphere of the jungle. Not a sound except from
the river or from a bird celebrating its life.
Lion-tailed Macaque
One day
we were fishing in our usual spot, when one of the fish we had caught
disappeared. “Dai Baig Dorai, you can’t tie a bloody fish properly
man!!” yelled my dear friend. We had each caught a good sized mahseer. His
was still there. Mine had disappeared. What gave the game away was that the
line looked like it had been bitten through. Just then I heard the
whistles….two otters talking to one another, no doubt with evil intentions on
Berty’s fish. I called out to him in a low voice, “Yedo, noke awaday”
and I pointed to the otters. Berty laughed so much that he almost fell into the
water. “What the bloody hell, so this is the bugger who stole our fish!!!
Man, what do you expect? We go into their home and steal their fish, so they
decide to freeload on our effort.” What memories!! But my friend is gone.
So would have the otters. Nothing lives that long in the forest. Only I am
alive to tell the tale and to remember my friend and to live once again that
one magical day, this time on behalf of both of us.
On this
road, one thing to watch out for, was elephants. It was a narrow road with very
thick, almost impenetrable forest on one side the river on the other. Not the
best place to come face to face with elephants. Mercifully, elephants are wiser
than we are and when they hear a vehicle coming their way, they move off into
the jungle and you won’t even see them. We didn’t meet any until we got to the
Forest Department’s elephant camp. This was where they kept their elephants
used for logging and other forest related activity. We took a break for coffee
and our standard omelet/paratha snack and looked around the camp. The head mahawat
(elephant caretaker) met us and explained what they did in the camp. I asked
him if he would be kind enough to give a short ride on one of the elephants to
our guests. There was a huge, very black bull elephant which was tethered at
one end of the line. I asked the mahawat if we could ride him.
The mahawat didn’t look very happy about this but agreed and went off to get a couple of gunny sacks. He got the elephant to kneel and climbed up on his knee and holding his ear, he pulled himself up on his neck. Then he asked me to climb on. I did the same and settled astride behind him. Not easy at all as elephants have a very prominent backbone with protruding vertebrae. When you sit astride, you are in imminent danger of doing permanent damage to your ability to continue your line of descendants. That is why when you ride elephants in our wildlife reserves, they saddle them with very thick mattresses or have a howda in which you sit much like sitting on a sofa. But we were in a working camp. They didn’t have these luxuries. The mahawat was sitting on the neck, where the vertebrae don’t protrude and he has his gunny sack cushion under him. But the ‘passenger’ was on his own. The mahawat called out his order and the elephant stood up. If you have ever seen an elephant standing up from a kneeling position, you will know what happens. It is as close to being on the bow of a ship in a storm as you are likely to be on dry land. I knew what was coming and braced myself and remained atop the huge animal without mishap. The mahawat took us for a short walk-around in the forest and we returned to the camp.
Next was the turn of our guests. The Social Security one declined the opportunity but the well-endowed one was keen to go. She tried to climb up on the elephant’s knee as if it was a staircase and slipped. The mahawat, spontaneously reached to take her hand to save the British Empire from an ignominious landing in the dirt almost unseating himself in the process. Eventually the lady managed to get astride the neck of the elephant. The expression on her face when she sat there, spoke volumes of what she must have encountered, but some things can’t be spoken aloud and so she suffered in silence. Then the mahawat shouted his order to the elephant and the animal lurched forward to get up. The lady fell forward on top of the mahawat and as the elephant lurched backwards straightening his forelegs, she was thrown back and grabbed the mahawat in a bear hug. The man disappeared into the British Empire, overwhelmed but not without a plaintive cry for help, “Ayyaaaaaa!!” The elephant took them for another short ride in the forest and then returned and we had a repeat performance of lurching, grabbing and plaintive cry. A memory that refuses to go away. The elephant, however, was not amused. It started rumbling and the mahawat told us that he didn’t want to chance another ride. Elephants are very patient and tolerant but are never really domesticated. They have an uneasy relationship of cooperation with humans, which can break if you push their patience beyond their tolerance. I understood the mahawat’s reluctance and agreed. Such was our entertainment in the plantations. Each day was a surprise and welcome.
One day in 1990/91, Mr. Rawlley called me and said, “Yawar, you are
getting a visitor, Mr. Mark Bostock from Colombo. He is British and lives
between England and Colombo where he used to be the Chairman of John Keells. He
is a very interesting person and someone you can learn a lot from.” Before I go
on, here is a link to an article about Mark Bostock in ‘The Island’, from
Colombo. http://island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=154197
In Ambadi there was no guest house so he stayed with us like all our guests. The question was food, because all the English people we know, eat little or no chillies, while South Indian food tends to be hot. In Ambadi we had an excellent cook, Perumal, who made the best Upma, Dosai and Idlies in the world, but had nothing Western in his repertoire. My wife decided that she would make a classic English Roast Lamb, with mashed potatoes, boiled vegetables and gravy. You can hardly get more British than that. We didn’t want the man to get the runs the day he arrived because the food was too hot. I love Roast Lamb and agreed wholeheartedly. Mark duly arrived, driven in from Trivandrum, looking very red and sweaty, as we didn’t have an air-conditioned car at that time. He told me, “Please call me Mark”, when I welcomed him as Mr. Bostock. So, Mark he was. After he had showered, we sat down to dinner. The Roast Lamb was spectacular, and I loved it. Mark also started with enthusiasm but gradually slowed down. I noticed this and asked, “Mark, is everything alright? Can I get you something?”
He said, “I don’t want to be impolite, but do you have any pickle?”
My eyebrows shot up in astonishment. “There is pickle, but it is
very hot”, I said.
“Yes, can I have it please?” The pickle was brought. I was blood
red, made of mangoes marinated in fire and was totally delicious if you liked
to have the top of your head raising up periodically to let out the steam from your
boiling brains. I gingerly slid the bottle towards Mark, debating whether I should
get him to sign an Indemnity Declaration absolving me of responsibility for his
expiry in flames after consuming the pickle. But to my great astonishment, he
took a huge helping of it and ate it with the roast mutton (no injury intended to
British sentiments or honor) with great relish. He apologized to my wife and
said, “The roast is delicious, but you see, I am from Ceylon. I need chilly in
my food.” So, there he would be, at lunch and dinner, eating pickles of various
kinds, his face the color of the pickle but thoroughly enjoying himself. He was
not ‘from Ceylon’, but had lived there for so long that his palate was totally
Sri Lankan.
Next morning, I took Mark on a tour of the estate and factory. As
we walked in the rubber drying sheds in which crêpe rubber sheets are dried, Mark
said to me, “If there was a way to dry these evenly in controlled conditions,
that would give us much better prices.” Having come to Ambadi from tea, I spontaneously
said, “I think if we get a couple of withering fans from one of our tea factories
and install them at one end of this shed, that will do the trick. He turned and
looked at me intently and said, “What the hell! That sounds like a very good
idea. I wonder why nobody ever thought of that before?” As soon as we got back
to the office, I asked for three withering fans which arrived in due course.
These are low RPM fans with large blades that can be used to blow or draw air without
causing too much turbulence. You want the air to move over the crêpe rubber
sheets without blowing them about. We installed the fans and changed the way rubber
is processed.
Mr. Mark Bostock visited us several times between 1990 and 1993
when I was the Manager of New Ambadi Estate. What impressed me very much about
him was how inquisitive and open to learning he was. We would go for rides in
our boat on the lake that bordered the estate. He would accompany me every day
when I went on my rounds of the estate and greatly appreciated the rapport that
I had with the workers and unions. He understood Tamil, so he had a good idea
of what was happening when he was witness to any interactions. Though he had
retired in 1986, having built a conglomerate, John Keells, in Sri Lanka, there
was not a grain of arrogance or even formality in him. He was easy going, very
friendly, open to all new ideas, full of questions and would listen very
carefully to the answers. We would spend the days in the estate and factory and
the evenings, talking about anything under the moon, that came to mind. Like
Nickoo said, I learnt a lot from Mark, but the best thing out of all that was the
value of an open mind and the willingness to learn from anyone. I can safely say
that I have never come across anyone as open to learning as Mark Bostock. I
wish I had more time with him. I was very sorry to learn that in 2000 he died in
Sri Lanka, in a freak accident as the rafters under his chair collapsed and he crashed
through to the stone floor below. He didn’t survive the injuries. As the song
goes:
Those
were the days my friend We thought they’d never end We’d sing and dance forever and a day We’d live the life we choose We’d fight and never lose For we were young and sure to have our way
The plantation years were not all about work and
unions. They were a time of great fun and fulfillment; of wonderful friendships
and personal growth. During these years I was able to be in the rain forests of
the Western Ghats and see in their natural habitat, animals that it had always
been my desire to see. I have always had an abiding interest in ecology with
specific reference to mammals and birds and their habitat. What better place to
indulge that than the Indira Gandhi National Park inside which I lived for the
7 years that I lived in the Anamallais. My interest in ecology and wildlife was
encouraged by my dear friends and mentors, Nawab Nazir Yar Jung and Capt. Nadir
Tyabji. I was brought up on stories of encounters with animals in the
Anamallais, which Nawabsaab used to tell us in graphic and wonderful detail. He
was a born storyteller and listening to him, I could smell the forest and hear
the sound of the cicadas and listen with close attention for the telltale crack
of a twig which announces the approach of a big animal.
I have been very fortunate to have friends who
were much older and far more accomplished than myself. As a result, I learnt a
lot from all of them. In fact, I used to make it a habit after meeting any of
these people to take stock of what I learnt new that day. This focus on
learning has been a lifelong habit of mine which I have been very fortunate to
inculcate. The credit for that goes to my father, who one day when I had
finished reading some trashy novel, asked me, “So what did you learn from
that?” I thought about it and decided that it had been a total waste of time
and since then started asking myself that question every so often. In those
days we had no TV and soap and opera were two different words. So, the
temptation to send the brain into a suspended animation mode and sit with a
vacant expression in front of the Electronic Income Reducer (my name for the
TV) was not there. There was, however, more time for trashy friendships and
wasting time in useless conversation. Asking myself what I had learned was an
excellent tool to ensure that I did not waste time. Much later in life, I
learnt and now teach the techniques of Investment – Impact Analysis and how to
apply this to maximize the benefits of time. But all my life I have used this
tool even when I did not know its fancy name.
Role models are a very important part of growing
up. I was very fortunate in that I had some of the best. It is a matter of
pride for me that most of them, if not all, were the result of my own effort.
In some cases, I was introduced to them by my father or someone else. But then
I took it upon myself to be in touch with them and develop the relationship. I
found that older people respond very positively to youngsters who are genuinely
interested in learning. Consequently, I got a lot of face time with people who
were twenty to thirty years my seniors. It is not that every one of these
relationships was always positive and that I always gained something. Some
people said things that were destructive, the memory of which remains with me
to this day. What I am proud of though, is the way in which I took what was
said to me, as a challenge to disprove the statement. And Alhamdulillah, I
always succeeded. It was not that these people, my mentors, were perfect. They
were people and people are not perfect. But I taught myself never to criticize
them either directly or indirectly but to learn from their behavior what to do
and what not to do myself. That way the relationship remained intact and I
continued to gain, no matter what they did or didn’t do.
Lion-tailed Macaque (Yal-Tee-Yam)
The Anamallai Hills are home to the Lion-tailed Macaque (called Yal-Tee-Yam – LTM), an endangered species of primate that is found only in these forests. The Anamallais are famous for the elephants that they are named after (Tamil: Anai – elephant, Malai – Hills). Ever since my arrival in the Anamallais I was most keen to see wild elephants. And I got my chance just 5 days after I reported at Sheikalmudi Estate. This first sighting was almost the last sighting, not of elephants but of anything at all. Let me tell you the story in sequence.
I was brand new on the plantations and had just
got my new Jawa motorcycle, a source of great delight for me. It was late
afternoon when the phone rang in the Sheikalmudi Estate office and it was Mr.
Raza Husain on the line. Raza bhai was the manager of Lower Sheikalmudi Estate
of which one day I would become the manager. LSM borders the reserve forest, a
part of the wildlife sanctuary and national park that the Anamallais is located
in. “Do you want to see elephants?” he asked me. That was like asking me, “Do
you want a million dollars?” Of course, I wanted to see elephants. I had been
dreaming about seeing elephants in the Anamallais. And imagine a chance to see
them just 5 days after arriving in the Anamallais. I leapt on my Jawa and off I
went to Raza bhai’s estate. Raza bhai asked me to meet him in the Candura
Division where he was waiting for me.
Candura contour planted tea
Candura is a tea division that is surrounded by
the jungle. One of the roads leading to it passes through a thick patch of
forest in which I had some close encounters with bison (Gaur) a few years later.
But that is another story. The tea in Candura is planted on the contour and it
is a very beautiful sight. In the middle of Candura are the Labor Lines where
the Candura workers live. These quarters each had a small vegetable garden with
some banana plants. Elephants love bananas. So periodically they would raid the
gardens. The owners would raise a hue and cry and beat drums or let off firecrackers
to drive the elephants away. The elephants would then retreat in a foul mood
into a small, heavily wooded canyon that was adjacent to the quarters. This was
the usual sequence of events and this is what had happened on that fateful day
just before my arrival on the scene.
When I
arrived Raza bhai met me on the road just below the Labor Lines. His little son
Mustafa was with him sitting on the petrol tank of his bike. It was past 5.00
pm and the sun sets very quickly in this part of the world. Mustafa was getting
nervous at the idea of going to see elephants so Raza bhai said to me, “I will
give you a guide and you can go see the elephants. I will wait for you to
return here. It will get dark very soon and then you won’t be able to see anything
so hurry.” I readily agreed. Anything to realize my lifelong dream to see
elephants in the wild. Raza bhai called a man by the name of Karpusamy who was
to be my guide. Karpusamy spoke only Tamil. At that time, the only Tamil word I
knew was ‘Tamil’. So even though Karpusamy was to guide me, what emerged was a
lot of inspired gestures and guessing. It was later that I learnt to speak
Tamil fluently, in three months.
As it was getting dark, we were in a hurry and
with Karpusamy in the lead, we set off along the road, which circled the
ravine, looking down into the ravine with great concentration as that is where
the elephants were supposed to be. Once in a while we would hear the sound of
some breaking branches, so we knew that the herd was still there. I can’t
describe for you my own excitement. I could hardly breathe. We left my
motorcycle by the side of the road and I had the presence of mind to push it
into the tea between some bushes in one of the plucking lanes in case the
elephants decided to take this road back into the forest. I didn’t want them to
give their attention to my motorcycle. Neither me nor the bike would survive
that. As it turned out, that was a very wise decision.
I was very anxious to get to where the elephants
were, so that I could get my first glimpse of an Asian Elephant in the wild.
This had been a lifelong dream of mine and I was in the right place for it – a
place named after them – Anamallai – Hills of the Elephants. The topography of
where we were walking was very much like the Labor Lines except that now we had
tea on one side and the ravine on the other. The road itself had a sharp,
almost vertical embankment about six to seven feet high above which was close
planted tea.
It is at times like this, often faced with the
prospect of great danger that we live most intensely. That is why people seek
thrills; the adrenalin gives them a high and they need a fix again and again. I
was aware of every sight, sound, and smell as I walked. This is a safety
measure also apart from enhancing the pleasure of the experience because in
such a situation where you are likely to meet an animal which is potentially
dangerous, you’d better have all your wits about you.
As we walked along looking down into the ravine
hoping to get a glimpse of the elephant herd, we could hear them moving about
occasionally, breaking a branch, or shaking a tree to drop its fruit. As we
neared a bend on the road, the cicadas fell silent and all sounds from the
ravine stopped. The forest became completely silent as if waiting for something
to happen. And then something happened. I suddenly heard an explosive sound
like a tyre burst. This is the warning sound that an elephant makes just before
he is ready to launch a charge. I looked up in shocked surprise and what did I
see? Not more than fifty to seventy meters ahead of us, bang in the middle of
the road was the herd bull. He had come up on the road when he probably
realized that we were coming close to his family. And his intentions were not
honorable at all. It takes longer to narrate this incident than what happened
that day.
It seemed like a split second and in any case
could not have been more than a second or two. The elephant made the alarm
warning sound. Karpusamy and I looked up simultaneously, shocked out of our
wits to see this huge bull elephant standing so close ahead. Karpusamy
screamed, “Dorai!!” and spun around and ran back towards me. The elephant
trumpeted and charged. You must hear the trumpet of an angry elephant to know
what fear is. It is a scream. It is a loud scream. The volume of sound is all
that can be expected from that great body. And it turns the knees to jelly
instantly. A charging elephant moves at 50 miles per hour. With a stride of 12
feet at a go, it did not take long for that elephant to cover the distance from
where he was to where we were.
As for myself, the next thing I remember is that I
was sitting under some tea bushes up on top of the vertical embankment. No sign
of Karpusamy. I don’t remember running or jumping or anything else. Just that I
was out of reach of the elephant and very frightened but safe. The elephant was
enraged that he did not get me and vented his anger on the embankment below
where I was sitting. He dug up the embankment with his tusks and threw up mud
all over the place. Meanwhile, the cows came up from the ravine and calmed him
down and eventually the whole family moved away towards the forest.
I simply sat there, frozen both with fright in the
gathering dark as the cold forest night closed in, wondering how on earth I had
managed to get up on the embankment without touching a thing. I know I can’t
leap seven feet high. The wall was vertical. And yet there I was sitting safely
out of reach of the elephant. This is a mystery that I have tried to solve many
times to no avail. Many times, after that evening I went to the site of this
incident and actually measured the wall. It was seven feet tall. I looked to
see if there were any handholds or footholds that I could have made use of.
There were none. Yet there I was on top. Maybe it is true that fear lends wings
to the feet. As it is true that when your time has not come, you can’t die. And
die, I would have, very quickly and thoroughly, if that elephant had caught me
that evening. For a couple of days after that, I used to wake up in the night
in a cold sweat with the angry trumpet of the elephant ringing in my ears.
Mercifully, that memory has worn off, but the memory of the entire incident is
still vivid in my mind.
And what about Karpusamy, you ask. Well, he did
the only thing that he could have done. He took a flying leap into the depths
of the ravine. He just ran and leapt off the edge into the abyss. It must have
been about fifty feet to the bottom, but like in my case, it was not his time. So,
he landed on the top of a tree. Bruised, but not hurt gravely at all. Once all
the excitement had died down, he climbed down to the bottom and walked back to
the Labor Lines. That is what I also did once I got my senses together and ensured
that the elephants had indeed left the place. It had gotten quite dark by then
and I did not have so much as a torch with me. But once I climbed down from the
embankment, I was on the road and all that was necessary was to keep walking on
the circular road till I got to the Labor Line. The biggest challenge was to
keep walking in the dark even though I was seeing elephants in every shadow. My
childhood training in the forests of Adilabad came very handy. I could
recognize sights and smells and knew at least cognitively that there was no
real danger anymore. Controlling my heartbeat was another matter.
Our friends waiting for us at the Labor Lines had
an exciting time of it as well. They could not see what was happening as there
were a lot of trees between them and us. But they heard the angry trumpeting of
the elephant and all the commotion he made. Then they saw the herd move out.
And they did not see either Karpusamy or myself. So, they came to the only
conclusion that anyone would have –I had just ended the shortest career in tea
planting that anyone had ever had. Since both of us did not get back to them
for a couple of hours, by the time we arrived, there was much sadness and
apprehension. So, the welcome that I received was the biggest that I have ever
had. I was hugged and made much of. And people wanted to hear the story in
total detail of how I escaped the elephant. My stock went up very high, because
being India and the plantations, my escape was seen by some as a sign of my high
spiritual status where I had actually performed a miracle to save my skin and
some ‘thing’ had transported me out of reach of the elephant. As for myself,
thing or no thing, I was jolly glad I’d seen wild elephants and lived to tell
the tale. Little did I know, this would not be the last I would need to escape
a charging bull elephant – the second incident being on a different continent.
The biggest learning for me in this entire
incident was the difference between theory and practice. I knew from all my
reading and talking to experts that even if you get to the stage where you are
facing an elephant which snorts in warning, all you need to do is to start
moving back slowly. Not run. Not make any noise. Just move back slowly.
Continue to face the animal but keep moving away and increase the ‘trigger
distance,’ which can precipitate the charge. Now, does this work in practice?
Who knows? What I did and what you will also probably do if you are ever in
such a situation, is to turn around and run like hell. Knowing fully well that
a person has as much chance of outrunning a charging elephant as they have of
outrunning an express train. And that unlike an express train, this one is not
bound by the railway track. But then there is a force that protects that is
more powerful than the elephant, which will pick you up by the scruff of your
neck and put you high above harm’s way. So, theory is good. But practical life
sometimes plays tricks with theory.
Another big learning was the need to take risk if
you want to make your dreams come true. Certainly, there is the importance of
preparation and contingency planning, but in the end, there must be that leap
of faith. With this comes the excitement of the win. It is the absence of
guarantees that makes the win so thrilling. If there are guarantees, if safety
is taken to a level where risk is eliminated completely, then there is no
thrill of winning. This does not mean that we disregard safety or take
unsecured risks. It just means that there comes a time when you need to act. At
that time, you may be working with incomplete data, with incomplete resources,
with incomplete plans. But you need to act. And then as you move forward you
will find that what you need comes to you from sources you could not imagine.
Barbara Winters says: “When you come to the end of the light of
all that you know and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown,
faith is knowing that one of two things will happen; there will be something
firm to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.”
It was 1968 and I was 13 years old, in Grade (we called it Class) 8 in the Hyderabad Public School. If you left the school from its main gate and walked over the bridge across the stream which flowed full and freely in those days (not the trickle of sewage and toxic chemicals today) and on which we used to sometimes canoe, you came to the Begumpet Railway Station. This was at the bottom of the garden of a very graceful British Country Mansion, except that it was in Begumpet and not in England. Be that as it may, it would have been totally at home in the Shires of England. It was called Vilayat Manzil. It had a huge wooden gate about 8 feet tall and wide enough to take a Four-in-hand or perhaps an elephant or two. Not surprising as this was the house of Nawab Wali ud Dowla, the Prime Minister of Hyderabad State. The son of the man who built Falaknuma Palace, Nawab Vicar ul Mulk, who was also a Prime Minister of Hyderabad State in his time. That is where Nawab Nazir Yar Jung Bahadur , son of Nawab Wali ud Dowla, lived . By the time I met him, his father had passed away (he died in Madina in 1935) but his mother (Ameerunnisa Begum) and younger brother, Nawab Bashir Yar Jung lived in Vilayat Manzil. His older brother, Nawab Habib Jung, also a good friend, lived nearby in his own house, built in another part of the garden that surrounded Vilayat Manzil. A beautiful Spanish style Hacienda with an open central courtyard. Nawab Habib Jung Bahadur wrote the very first reference letter for me when I had applied to Harrisons & Crossfield Limited (Harrisons Malayalam) in 1979. I recall two things in it. He wrote, “He is excellent in saddle seat equitation and always shows respect where respect is due.” Habib Jung had horses and I used to ride them with his son Mohammed and he fine-tuned both our riding style.
Nawab Nazir Yar Jung , Ghulam Hyder and Nawab Habib Jung
As
you came through the gate, you were on a circular driveway which curved past
two large water tanks with marble fountains with carved lions. Even then water
was getting scarce and so I never saw those fountains functioning, but the sculptures
were striking. This is where I met Nawab Nazir Yar Jung first. I had heard of
him as a dog breeder, trainer and judge. He was a prominent member of the
Kennel Club of India (KCI) and a highly respected judge in dogs shows all over
the world. I had the privilege of accompanying him to several dog shows and can
still see him racing around the ring with his German Shepherds or in the field
trails of his Labradors. I was very keen on owning one of the dogs from his kennel,
the famous Paigah Kennels but to my great surprise and disappointment the price
was Rs. 500 for a puppy. In 1968 that was more money that I could have dreamt
of. So, I never bought a puppy. Nawab Saab however, took a liking to me and allowed
me to spend time with him in caring for his dogs. This rather unlikely
friendship grew, and in time he treated me like his own son. At that time, he
used to have more than one hundred dogs in his kennels. It was a sight to see. I
didn’t get a puppy at that time (later I got several) but I got the friendship
of Nawab Saab, which was a priceless gift. He became my mentor, teacher and
father figure.
My
keenness for tea planting also came from listening to stories of plantations –
the Anamallais in particular from Nawab Nazir Yar Jung. Nawab Saab had been a planter
with Brooke Bond Tea Company (Tea Estates India) and was on Monica Estate (SenguthaparaiDivision).
Another
very dear friend and mentor, Mr. K. Ahmedullah wrote this piece about Nawab Nazir
Yar Jung which gives an insight into his planting life, which he never mentioned
in the more than 50 years of our friendship. He talked about his hunting in
Grass Hills and Highwavys, the exploits of his dogs and about his tracker
friend called Kali, who he mentioned with great affection. But he never mentioned
anything about his planting career. Being a planter myself, I can appreciate what
Mr. Ahmedullah writes. Here it is:
NYJ was an authority on dog breeding,
training, and was often a judge of international dog shows. It is a pity that
this was not mentioned in the item that carried the news of his passing away.
The news only harped on his Paigah connection, Jung title and so on. NYJ was
on Monica Estate, Anamallais, reporting to Raghava Menon, just before he quit
planting. As you know, Monica was a prestige posting, being the flag ship
Estate of M/s Tea Estates of India, of Brooke Bond.
It so happened that I was moved to Monica as assistant manager, immediately after NYJ resigned. Soon thereafter Raghava Menon was promoted as Group Manager in addition to his holding charge of Monica. He continued to reside in Monica Estate. I was asked to look after the operations of the entire estate to allow Raghava Menon to look after his additional duty, but I remained an assistant manager! That is when I took charge of Senguthaparai, which was looked after by NYJ.
And that is when I discovered that NYJ had planted the most advanced 100 hectares of coffee selections from Kenya. Not only that but he had created a most advanced system of curing and pulping the coffee harvest, using gravity as the driving force, from a stream which flowed on Senguthaparai. That coffee commanded a premium at the Auctions.
I thought I should put this on record as not many are aware of the talents this man had. NYJ was a decent, pious man, who never harmed anyone. IN FACT HIS GENEROSITY IS A LEGEND ON THE PLANTATIONS WHERE HE WORKED. He died with the KALEMA on his lips, which is the best possible reward The Almighty bestows on those who walk in HIS WAY .
Some asides:
NYJ never entered the Anamallais
Club! Siasp Kothavala, Doon School contact, was his close friend and just a few
others, whom he entertained lavishly. He had about 20 dogs and a donkey,
which was used to carry meat daily from Valparai town for his dogs!
The famous donkey
I got all this information from
Raghava Menon, who had a high opinion of NYJ and from Siasp and his wife
Zarine , who were good friends of ours.
Like most of my friends at that time, Nawab Saab was about twenty years my senior. I think I benefited a great deal from being friends with older people as I learnt from their experience and my equation was always as a learner and they had something to teach. Nawab Saab was an exception in that he had a variety of life experience that I have seldom found anywhere. He would not only tell stories but would draw lessons from them which I found very useful and applied in my life many years later. He was a Judo Brown belt, a pilot in the Royal Air Force, polo player and dressage expert, a crack shot with a rifle and shotgun, a woodsman who taught me to love the forest and how to take care of myself in it. He was a swimmer trained as a lifeguard. He was a planter, manager and a role model par excellence.
Nawab Saab and I
The
thing I remember about Nawab Nazir Yar Jung above all else is his storytelling.
Storytelling is an art. Not everyone can tell a good story. Nawab Saab was a
master of this art. Listening to him I remember being transported to the misty
slopes of Grass Hills, waiting in the cold of the dawn for the Nilgiri Thar to
present the opportunity for a good shot as they came out on the crags to take
the sun. I recalled these descriptions when I went to Grass Hills more than 25
years after him and felt that I had been there before. So vivid and detailed
were his descriptions.
I
remember feeling a hollow dropping sensation in the pit of my stomach as I
listened to him tell the story about how he was charged by a wounded Bison
(Gaur) and how his Airedale Terrier saved the day by drawing the animal away
towards it, allowing Nawab Saab to get the killing shot. But the dog, whose
name was Khan, went over the cliff with the bison and died. Nawab Saab would
have tears in his eyes when he told this story. I remember all the tips he gave
me about survival in the jungles and about woodcraft, all of which I have tried
and found to be superb. Every tip he gave me, be it about planting, or hunting,
or safety or human psychology, was true.
The
key to a good story is detail. Detail is what fills color into the outline.
Detail is what helps you to see what the storyteller has seen. I can vouch for
the fact that I could see the mist rise from the forest in the dawn as the sun
rose. I could smell the rank smell of elephant urine which announces their
presence in the forest. I could hear the rumblings of their stomachs and the low
deep hum by which they communicate. And many years later when I had the
privilege to walk in the same path that Nawab Nazir Yar Jung walked, I knew
that I had been there before. I had walked those paths in spirit, listening to
the narrative of a master storyteller and today I walked them myself and found
the story to be true in every respect. I knew the smells, the sights and the
feelings. Nawab Saab walked in spirit beside me and it felt good to know that.
Nawab Nazir Yar Jung with one of his dogs at a dog show – photo courtesy Munir Salahuddin (his son)
Nawab
Nazir Yar Jung was an international expert on dogs and was invited to judge dog
shows around the world. With him, I learned to train dogs for various activities,
from tracking to retrieving to guarding. Dogs are amazing creatures. One must
live with them and train them to know this. I spent many years right through
school and college doing this. Nawab Saab was at that time training a dog squad
for Thengakal Estate in Vandiperiyar, Kerala, which had perennial problems with
theft. More about that later. I worked with him training Dobermans, German
Shepherds, and Labradors for tracking and guard/attack work. Nawab Saab was a
strict disciplinarian and didn’t allow even his own cousin who was on our team
to call him anything other than Sir or Nawab Saab. He disliked people calling
him ‘Uncle’. He used to say, ‘I have nephews and don’t need any more. You can
call me Nawab Saab or Sir.’ This, however, didn’t reduce the warmth and
friendship with which he treated us. We would start very early in the morning
and work right through the day till it got very hot. Then we would stand down
and give the dogs a bath and feed them and we would all rest. Then in the
night, once it got dark, we would start the training once again.
From
Nawab Nazir Yar Jung, I learnt the importance of commitment to quality. He
never once used the word, but he never accepted anything but the best. Be it in
breeding dogs or in their training, or in training horses. Attention to detail
and insisting on the best. He was an expert in Judo and that also added to the
quality of what he taught us. He taught us many self-defense techniques using
our bare hands or ordinary objects of everyday use that are always at hand and
can be converted into weapons to defend yourself and make the attacker think
twice about attacking you. Martial arts training is more about training the
mind than about the body. Martial arts is about living with awareness, studying
your opponent, discovering his weakness, and exploiting it to your advantage.
It is also about building your opponent a bridge of gold to retreat over – as
Sun-Tzu calls it. But to do that you have to conquer your ego before conquering
your enemy. The worst enemy is an overindulged ego.
In
the years that I spent with Nawab Saab I learnt that when you work with animals
your own sensitivity and communication improves. Your language is useless as
the animal is only responding to sound, facial expression and signal. So the
importance of being absolutely precise not only in what you say, but in how you
say it and being aware of your body language when you are giving that command
are essential to get the instant obedience that only a dog can give you. Dogs
are so incredibly sensitive that they will pick up your facial expression or
the way you hold your hand when you give a command. And the next time you don’t
give it in that exact way, the animal gets confused. It is always essential to
be extremely self-aware to be a good trainer. I realized that training dogs was
equally if not more about training myself in how to communicate effectively. It
was hands-on experiential learning in being intensely aware of myself, my posture,
facial expression, tone of voice, mood, and overall disposition. I learnt all
this training dogs, but over the decades since then this helped me in
communication, public speaking, negotiating, and coaching people across three
continents. I thank Nawab Nazir Yar Jung for teaching me these lessons and I know
that he was pleased with me.
Dogs
anticipate you to such an extent that to see a highly trained dog and his
handler at work is to witness magic. That is what we saw when we saw Nawab Saab
working with his dogs. The dog seemed to be doing everything on its own whereas
he was doing nothing without his handler’s command. But the commands are so
subtle that they are invisible to all but the trained eye that knows what to
look for. There is a wonderful program on British Television which shows
sheepdog trials. You see this handler standing a long way off in the field
directing his Border Collie (the favorite breed for these trails) entirely by
hand signals. The dog goes to the flock, cuts out precisely the number of sheep
that he is ordered to cut out, and drives them into the pen all on its own by
responding to signals that are invisible to us.
We
had for our own trainer, the best in the world. A man who had trained
everything from sheep dogs to tracking dogs, gun dogs, hunting dogs, and guard
dogs. And we learnt from him. I hope we learnt well. To test how well we had
trained the dogs to track, we would stand on one side of a wall that bordered a
large area of scrub vegetation. Then we would give our dog a ball which he
would hold in his mouth and smell. Then we would command him to sit and stay
and throw the ball as far as we could over the wall into the forest. The dog
would vibrate with excitement, yearning to go for the ball. We would count to
ten and then say, “Get!” And off he would go. A big Doberman would clear a six-foot
wall without so much as touching it. A Labrador would scramble over it. And
then a few minutes later, back it would come over the wall with the ball in its
mouth, circle the handler, and sit on his right. Then on command it would drop
the ball and take the piece of dry meat that the handler would give him as his
reward. How can I describe the excitement of testing your skill in the
performance of your animal? The lesson learnt – you stand or fall by how your
trainee performs – as important a lesson in corporate leadership as in training
animals. A good coach after all is not the one who has the greatest knowledge,
but the one whose team wins.
The
biggest learning for me in these early years was the realization that no matter
what you do, it is only worth doing if you aim at being the best in the world
at it. And to be the best, it is essential to be passionate about what you do.
I sincerely believe that it is impossible to excel in something that you do
only halfheartedly or because you are forced to. It is impossible to be the
best in the world in anything that you are not passionate about because you
will never put in the heroic effort that is needed for you to succeed. Another
realization was that when you are doing something that you are passionate
about, you never get tired or stressed out. You are always fresh and full of
energy and those around you also feel this. Passion is essential because it is
the only thing which makes the heroic effort seem worthy of the goal. Only the
passionate never compromise because compromise is the cancer which kills from
within. Passion is infectious; so is compromise. Stress occurs when we do things we don’t
really enjoy.
My
learning is that if you are in a situation where you find yourself doing
something that you have no passion for, then it is essential to do one of two
things: Either kindle a passion for this activity by learning more about it and
seeing how it is valuable, or leave and find something that you do feel
passionate about. It makes no sense to do something that you have no love for. Happiness
is the result of doing something that is worthwhile, and which adds value and
not of how much money you make or what rank you have. Interestingly, it is when
the work feels worthless that people get overly concerned about titles, money,
and perquisites. That is why I tell my clients who talk about compensation as
an issue in people retention, “Money problems are not money problems, even when
they are money problems.” Most people
complain about the compensation when they are uninspired about their work. The
biggest proof of this are the many people in missionary and charitable
activities who work all hours for next to nothing and are very happy doing
their jobs. Happiness is therefore more about intangible rewards than about the
tangible ones. That’s why I say, ‘If it can’t make you cry, it can’t make you
work.’
Training
dogs was a huge learning in human psychology. I learnt the importance of taking
a stand and then remaining firmly on it without giving in to the pressure to
change. I learnt that dogs and people will test your limits to see how firm you
are. Once they test the boundaries and find that they can’t be pushed away,
they accept them. Firmness and consistency are critical. There is nothing more
debilitating than a leader who is ambivalent. I learnt the value of physical
courage and how, if you stand with courage, you lend courage to those around
you. I learnt the value of leading from the front and that there is only one
leadership position – in the front – which is why those who follow are called
‘followers.’ What kind of a leader is it who has no followers? I learnt the
value of quiet companionship – there is nothing more relaxing than sitting on a
hillside with your dog beside you, watching the world go by. With Nawab Saab,
you didn’t chatter. If you had something useful to say, you said it; if you had
a question, you asked; otherwise you kept your mouth shut. The value of silence
was appreciated. Without silence inside your head and heart and outside in
terms of speaking, you can’t introspect or reflect. Silence has great value. We
didn’t have intrusive gadgets to disturb our peace and so we valued silence. In
the forest, silence also helps you to know who else is around. Knowledge that can
be critical to survival and enjoyment of your experience.
Nawab
Saab taught us to pay attention to the dogs and their highly developed
faculties which warn of danger long before you would have been aware of it. This
is where his storytelling really came into his own. Every lesson had a set of
circumstances that it had been drawn from and that added value and meaning to
it. This was not merely theory but hard-earned life experience that we were
learning from. From my dogs, I learnt the value of unconditional love and
complete trust in someone. When my dog got injured during training, I would
order him to lie down and would then clean his wounds with hydrogen peroxide
and stitch him up without anesthesia. The dog would lie there, sometimes
whimpering in pain but never moving and never protesting or trying to harm me
in any way. He trusted me completely and knew that what I was doing was for his
good. There is nobody happier than a dog at seeing his master – no matter how
ugly or dirty, poor or hungry, unfashionable or square his master may be. To
the dog, his master is the best, most lovable, reliable, remarkable, and trustworthy
human being in the world. And that has nothing to do with whether in fact this
is true or not. The dog doesn’t care. Whatever the master may be to the rest of
the world, to his dog he is the best in the world. And that is the secret of a
great friendship and a great marriage. What you believe about someone and
demonstrate in your dealing with them, is what they rise to embody. That is why
they say, ‘Treat a man as if he is the best that he can be, and he becomes
that.’ Many years later I dealt with some of the most intractable and obnoxious
union leaders with great politeness, treating them as if they were heads of
state and all their nastiness went away and I didn’t have to suffer any of it.
People used to be surprised and asked me how I did it. I never let on the
secret – that my dogs taught me this lesson. Some readers may not take kindly
to being compared to dogs – but believe me, there is nothing more honorable in
terms of friendship and loyalty. This is what Nawab Saab taught us and we
learned these lessons well, very enjoyably and lived to realize their value
throughout our lives.
As I
mentioned earlier, Nawab Saab was requested to train a dog squad for Thengakal Estate
in Vandiperiyar, Kerala. I don’t know if you have been inside a cardamom estate.
Almost 30 years after this story, I raised and planted cardamom in the Anamallais
and recalled those days when we were in that estate in Vandiperiyar. We trained
the dogs in Vilayat Manzil and in the lands behind Yusuf Tekri in Towli Chowki.
Today there isn’t an inch of vacant land in that place. In the early 70’s it
was miles of barren land with scrub bushes, some Sitaphal (Custard Apple – Annona
squamosa), some Lantana (Lantana camara), a sprinkling of Neem (Azadirachta indica), one or
two Peepul (Ficus Religiosa) and an occasional Banyan (Ficus Benghalensis). We would
load up the dogs in Khaja Nawab’s jeep and drive to Yusuf Tekri and then spend
the day training the dogs. Since these dogs were being trained as trackers and
guard dogs, the training was very intense. For tracking, we used Labradors whose
sense of smell is more developed and keener than the other breeds we had. For
guard/attack work, we used Dobermans and German Shepherds. But all dogs were
taught everything as well, as a backup even though we used them, whenever possible,
separately for these jobs.
It was
fascinating to see how these different breeds worked. For a Doberman everything
was a competition. The dog would get stressed out, angry and would bust his gut
to do his best. A Labrador on the other hand took it all as a game and thoroughly
enjoyed himself. He was playing and having fun, whether he was following a
scent track or attacking an intruder and dragging him to the ground. Temperament
has a big effect on the trainability and steadiness of dogs and humans under stressful
conditions. Nawab Saab’s training technique was based on gaining the trust of the
animal and persuading him to work. Nawab Saab never used force or punishment
which was very commonly used by other trainers. The result was that Nawab Saab’s
dogs worked much better than anyone else’s. The only catch was that training
took longer than it would have taken if you simply beat the dog to a pulp and
then forced him to obey. Our dogs were our friends and beating one was
unthinkable. The other thing was the knowledge that success and failure was
really ours, the trainer’s. Not the dog’s. If the dog didn’t perform, it was I
who needed to look at my training technique, treatment of the dog, consistency
of command and it was I who needed to work harder. ‘Failing’ the dog or
punishing it was meaningless because the dog’s performance was a non-negotiable
goal. Every dog was trainable and if it didn’t get trained, it was I who was at
fault. Nobody needed to point that out to me. I knew it. I held myself accountable
for it and I succeeded or failed by this standard.
Cut
to our schooling technique today. Who passes or fails? Teacher or child? Who must
really pass or fail? What would happen if we changed that to what really should
happen and if teacher’s salaries were docked if children failed and they got a
bonus if they excelled? Same thing for the corporate world. Companies succeed
or fail because of what decision makers do. Not workers. But who gets laid off?
Responsibility must lie where it belongs and those responsible must get the
credit or pay the price. Not someone else, whose only fault was that they
obeyed orders. Once again, sorry about the comparison, but it is precisely this
ability to take learnings from one situation and apply them to a totally
unrelated situation that distinguishes human learning from animal learning.
That is what I learnt and that is how I learnt it. And that is why I say that I
owe so much of my learning to the very unusual childhood and youth that I had
and to mentors like Nawab Nazir Yar Jung, Uncle Rama and Aunty Mohini.
To return
to our story, we finished our training and took the train with our dogs, to
Cochin. The dogs were in the Brake Van at the end of the train. Every few
stations, we would run to the back, unleash the dogs and take them out on the platform
to stretch their legs and greet telephone poles. Then give them some water and
back inside the Brake Van and we would run back to our compartment. Eventually
we reached Cochin where the estate transport met us and we drove for another
six hours to get to the estate to meet the Manager, Mr. Rudy Bosen.
Mr.
Bosen very kindly invited Nawab Saab, me and Khaja Nawab to stay with him, and
his wife, Dorothy made some wonderful chocolate ice cream for us for dessert after
a lovely dinner. The estate had a big problem with theft as cardamom is a very
valuable spice and easy to steal. A cardamom plantation is extremely dense and
very easy to hide in. Thieves would come into the estate across the boundary at
night, with sickles and jute bags and simply cut the ripe bunches of cardamom
and take them away. To catch them in the dark was completely impossible. That
is why Rudy Bosen thought of using dogs and contacted Nawab Saab for help. The dilemma
was, how do you publicize the fact that now there are guard dogs which can
catch thieves. The challenge was to have the dogs merely as an effective
deterrent. Rudy Bosen didn’t really want anyone getting chewed up by a dog because
in Kerala that would likely cause a bigger problem than the theft.
Nawab
Saab had a unique idea. He asked Mr. Bosen to invite all union leaders and whoever
wanted to come from the village to the estate to a dog show and competition at
the end of which they would be given a sumptuous meal and could win cash prizes.
People came in large numbers with great enthusiasm because there is nothing
much to do in the plantations and any kind of entertainment draws big crowds.
When everyone had settled down on the Muster ground under the marquee Nawab
Saab, through an interpreter asked for volunteers to take part in the
competition. He then picked six of the likeliest looking men. He told them to
go and hide anywhere they wanted to, in the plantation. But before they went
off, he took some item of clothing from each of them. He told them that he would
give them half an hour to go and hide and then the dogs would find them. Meanwhile
we put on a show of attack training which looks very ferocious indeed. For that
also we took volunteers, dressed them up in protective clothing and then the dogs
took them down. For a grown man, who thinks that he is strong, armed with a
knife or stick, to have a dog taking him down in one smooth lethal attack, is
very unnerving. That is what our objective was; to put the fear of the dogs in
the minds of the people and any potential thieves.
Once
this demo was over, we got the tracking dogs out and gave them the clothing to
get a good sniff of and sent them into the plantation. The dogs disappeared in
a jiffy. There was initially some rustling of leaves. Then total silence. We
waited with bated breath as this was the final test of the pudding. If the dogs
missed even one man, our reputation would be shot. We were literally putting
our honor on the line. Then suddenly there was a scream. We ran into the
plantation following the calling of the dog. The tracking dogs had been trained
to ‘speak’. They would bark at regular intervals of a couple of seconds and would
continue for as long as it took for the handler to get to it. Bow-wow-wow-wow
and on, it would go. That told us that the dog had ‘treed’ the quarry or had pinned
him down and the sound would guide us to the animal. The long and short of it
was that we caught every single one of the men. Then we all came out of the jungle
to where everyone was waiting to see what had happened. The men looked very sheepish
and down in the mouth that they had not won the Rs. 1000 reward for the one who
could escape the dog. In the 1970’s Rs. 1000 was big money. Mr. Bosen was a smart
man. He still gave them consolation prizes for participating and then we all
had lunch with the union leaders and all competitors. The result of this was
that theft stopped on this estate as if someone had shut off a switch. The dogs
had such an effect on the psyche of the people that nobody wanted to take a
chance of meeting a dog in the dark of the night. As Sun Tzu says, ‘The wise
general never fights a battle. He wins without fighting.’ I have yet to see a ‘general’
as wise as Nawab Nazir Yar Jung.
“Dorai,
we are all your children. May God bless you and keep you well, Dorai. Tomorrow
I will show you the tea that you planted. Hundreds of people have a livelihood
because of that tea. It is the rule in the estate that the pluckers take your
name first before they start plucking that tea. It is called Baig Dorai Thotam
(garden). Your name will never be forgotten as long as that tea remains,
Dorai.”
I was in
Lower Sheikalmudi Estate, in 2007, twenty years since I had been there last, as
the Manager. Now I was visiting my old haunts, living my dream of enjoying the
Anamallais without worrying about YPH (Yield per hectare) or tea prices. We
arrived one evening and stayed in the Manager’s bungalow where we had lived,
and which was now a guest house; of sorts. It still had the same curtains that
we had installed twenty years ago, and you could tell. But nostalgia is a cure
for many things and so we loved spending a couple of nights in our old home without
worrying about how run down it looked.
View while climbing Manjaparai
The next
day we took a picnic lunch (flat masala omlettes, rolled in rotis with some
pickle on the side) and walked up the hill to Manjaparai. Once we climbed down
the hill from the bungalow, the climb is about four to five kilometers; never
very steep but always rising. As you continue upwards, it can get quite taxing
on a body used to sitting in chairs more than anything else. As you climb up
out of the tea, you enter first the scrub jungle, very thick with all kinds of
shrubbery including some very potent stinging nettles called Anaimarti. All my
old memories came flooding back. My two friends, Raman & Raman, who worked
on the estate and were my companions on my hikes and built hides for me to
watch wildlife, were thrilled that I could still recognize the plants. Raman
the younger cut a stout stick for me which is something that I used to like to
keep as a climbing aid. Today I needed it more than simply wanting it. We
walked through a path that Raman cut in the undergrowth with his pruning knife.
As I walked, I remembered that this was the habitat of the Hamadryad or King
Cobra (Ophiophagus
hannah) which is an endangered species. Interestingly though
it has ‘cobra’ in its name, it is not a cobra and is the only member of its
genus. It is the longest poisonous snake in the world and can grow to as long
as 18-19 feet. This snake preys on other snakes, is extremely fast but shy and
so you are unlikely to see it unless you stumble on its nest. King cobras are the only species
of snake to build nests for their young, which they guard ferociously. Nesting
females may attack without provocation. When it
is angry it rears up one third of its body which makes it as tall as a man and
so the snake can actually look you in the eye. That can be terrifying to say
the least. The Hamadryad has an enormous amount of venom, enough to kill twenty
people or one elephant. But as I said, it is shy and so you hardly ever have
any instances of people being bitten by them. The venom is neurotoxic and depending
on the quantity injected into you, can kill in minutes.
Raman & Raman and I
We came
out of the brush eventually, having been bitten liberally by elephant ticks
(the price to pay for climbing to Manjaparai) on to the base of the rock called
Manjaparai (Yellow Rock) because of the color of a lichen that grows on this
rock. There is a small stream that flows through a slight depression in it and
at one point forms a shallow pool. This is the drinking pool that Sambhar and
Gaur come to drink in. When we reached there that afternoon, we also found some
old elephant dung strewn around the pool, but no fresh sign of any elephant.
Walking up the hill, we surprised a basking cobra (Naga Naga) and then startled
a Sambar doe that was resting in a thicket. She exploded out of the bush and
galloped down a slope that was so steep that I would have hesitated to walk
down it too fast. It was in the tree that grew out of the rock near the pool, that
I’d had a platform (machan) constructed to watch animals from. I would pick a
full-moon night with clear skies to sit in my machan. A clear night is much colder,
but the full moon gives enough light to see without a torch. Nights on this
platform were very cold but the sight of the sunset and its rising next morning
was well worth the discomfort of the cold.
I would get up into the tree early so as not to disturb any game. One of the Ramans would sit up with me. The other one would see us to the place and leave and return early the following morning to collect us. It was not safe to stay on the ground during the night unless you had a fire. But the fire would drive all the game away and so we had this arrangement. Let me tell you about the sounds of the forest you would hear if you were to sit with me on the machan. The first call as the sun went down was always the jungle fowl going up to roost. First the cocks would crow – kakkaak, kaa kak?? – with a question mark at the end.Then the hens would sometimes cackle as they flew up to their roosts. There were no peacocks in the Anamallais in the 1980’s as it was too wet for them. But when I returned there in 2007, I saw peacocks. This shows that in the twenty years that I had been away, rainfall had reduced enough for peacocks to migrate up the mountain range from the plains and start living there. Not a good sign at all, the decline in rainfall. It will be interesting to check the meteorological data.
Once
they settled in, the nightjars would start flitting on silent wings, catching nocturnal
insects in flight as they came out of their hiding places. It is a fascinating
sight to watch the nightjars as they took their interceptor flights. The
nightjars sit in an open place (on a small rock or in the middle of the path)
and make their characteristic call chut-chut-chut-churrrrrrrrrrrr. They repeat
this call endlessly, sitting absolutely still but watching the world very
closely. As soon as the nightjar sees a poor unsuspecting insect going about
its business, it simply erupts into the air and the world insect population is
reduced by one. 100% kill rate. Amazing birds.
Spotted Owlets
Then
there would be silence for a while as the jungle settled for the night. As the
first light of the moon started to strengthen, a pair of Spotted Owlets would
come out of their roosting places, where they had been hiding both from the sun
as well as from the crows who harass them mercilessly if they see them in the
open. They hunt in pairs. They fly out onto the flat branch that was their take
off perch, one followed by the other. They would sit there for a while and talk
to each other, perhaps discussing strategy. They are the most demonstrative birds
that I have seen and to see them cuddling up to and nuzzling each other is extremely
endearing. Then he would glide away in one direction and she in another. You must
see an owl in flight to understand the meaning of grace. Suddenly you hear the
dhank-dhank of the Sambar. This is the alarm call telling the other tenants of
the jungle that one of the two big cats that live in this forest, the tiger and
the leopard, is around. The Sambar is the most reliable of the sentinels and
call only when they see these predators. Chital (none in these forests) also
call and so do Barking Deer (plenty in the Anamallais). But both tend to be
very skittish and will call on seeing many other things including shadows. Being
on everyone’s dinner menu, does something to your perspective.
Another
one whose alarm call must be taken seriously is the Langur; in this case the
Nilgiri Langur and not the Grey Langur of the plains. They always have a sentinel
watching from the highest perch that he can find, always on the lookout for big
cats. But at night, the Langur are among the first to go to the treetops where
they spend the night, safely out of harm’s way. Langur are at the top of the
leopard’s dietary preference and so no wonder they prefer to be where the
leopard is not subjected to any temptation. The Sambhar has fallen silent. This
means that he can no longer see the tiger or leopard.
Indian Gaur, Munnar in winter. See the frost on the grass.
Then as
you look at the deep shadows, one of the shadows moves and comes out into the
open which is illuminated brightly by the moon. You can see the shine of the
black coat and the white socks. You hear the snort as the bull clears his nose.
The Gaur are here. As he gives the all-clear the cows and calves come out and
all of them move to the shallow pool to drink. There is not enough water for
all of them to drink together so they will remain there for as long as it takes
for the pool to keep filling as they keep emptying it.
The
presence of one herbivore is a sign to the others that the situation is safe.
It is essential of course for us to keep silent, breathing softly and staying
completely still. It is amazing how highly developed the senses of animals are,
whose life literally depends on this. Make the slightest movement or sound and
they vanish as if they had never been there. Raman seems carved in stone. I
recall all my early childhood training in jungle craft and silently thank Uncle
Rama and Nawab Nazir Yar Jung for teaching me to take care of myself and to
reconstruct the story of the forest from the signs. Nobody could have had or
wished for better teachers. Nawabsab spent many years in the Anamallais as a
tea planter and he was my inspiration to join planting. A decision that I have
always been very pleased about. Thanks to my decade long career as a planter, I
learnt many valuable skills and life lessons and had the privilege of collecting
some of the most beautiful memories and friends of my life. Raman and I sit in
complete silence and watch the animals which are less than twenty meters away.
I had
put out blocks of rock salt (salt licks) and some of the animals move away
towards the salt lick and eventually even sit down to chew the cud around the
salt lick. I have seen Sambar pick their way between resting gaur to get to the
salt, all in perfect harmony with each other. As the night passes, we can hear
elephants feeding in the forest bordering Manjaparai but that night they decide
not to come out into the open. The night is now almost completely silent. All
the grazing and hunting has been done. Now the whole world is resting. The time
is 3 am according to the glow of my watch dial. The night is very, very cold. A
breeze has started which blows unhindered up the slope of Manjaparai. The bison
(gaur) herd has moved off back into the forest. There is nothing in sight.
Raman and I are both shivering with our teeth chattering. We silently decide to
descend onto the rock and light a fire. The firewood has already been collected
the previous evening and is at the foot of the tree. We get down to the rock
and Raman sets about creating a very nice and bright bonfire. To enjoy a fire
truly one must first be at freezing point. Then you light the fire and sit in
front of it and toast yourself. That is bliss.
Of
course it destroys your night vision and if you have to suddenly turn and look
into the darkness you are completely blind, but then in our case there is
nothing to see in the darkness and so we both sit before the fire, wrapped in
our blankets and talk of various matters grave enough to be spoken of at 3 am.
It is amazing how people who we may dismiss as illiterate and uneducated (not
that I ever did that), make observations, reflect upon them, and form educated
opinions. A favorite topic with most Indians is politics and the antics of
politicians. We are a very politically savvy people. We understand our
politicians like nobody else. But what beats me is how we always manage to
elect such puerile ones. Like the joke goes, ‘What happens when a politician
drowns in the river?’ ‘It is called pollution.’ ‘What happens when they all
drown?’ ‘It is called a solution.’
Raman
and I would discuss the reasons for corruption in our system. Our people, the
vast majority of them are good, simple, and have sincere hearts that have
learned to become helpless. Every conversation ends with the same refrain, ‘Ah!
But what can we do?’ The reality is that if anything can be done, it is only we
who can do it. But this remains an elusive concept. Having put that to rest, we
would watch the fire and simply sit in companionable silence, waiting for dawn.
Raman proves that he is made of gold by pulling out a flask with piping hot tea
and he and I share the tea and wait for the night to pass.
Gradually
our talk runs out and we doze in spells. The fire starts to go down and every
once in a while, either Raman or I put another log into it. Time passes. We see
the owls that had left the previous evening, return to their perch and they
have a long conversation recounting tales of the hunt. I have no idea whose
story was more impressive, but both seem to have a lot to talk about. The sky
is now starting to lighten. There is a strange blue light and I feel as if I am
looking at the world from the bottom of the ocean. Then an orange tinge starts
at the very bottom of the horizon and gradually grows upwards as if a fire has
been started and is strengthening. And indeed, it has.
The
final payoff of our trip is at hand. The sun is starting to rise. The sky
catches fire. The flames rise higher. And then the top curve of the ball of
fire appears on the horizon and rises rapidly upwards. The light is now strong.
A new day has been born and I am fortunate enough to witness it. What price can
I place on this privilege? All it took is a little discomfort of sitting half
the night on the top of a tree. I thank Allahﷻ for
showing me His creation.
The
new day starts with the Nilgiri Whistling Thrush (Whistling Schoolboy bird) and
his liquid melody which he changes at will. We had a nesting pair in the Golden
Showers creeper in our veranda. I used to whistle back, and he would respond.
If I stopped, he would whistle and wait for me to reply. I have no idea what I was
saying in his language, but whatever it was, he seemed to like it. I can’t
describe the joy of beginning every day with that to start me off. On
Manjaparai, I can hear the Yal-Tee-Yams (LTM – Lion-tailed Macaque – Macaca
silenus) announcing that the new day is here. Then as the light strengthens, Jungle
Fowl descend from the trees and the cocks call out their challenge; kak kaak, kaa kak?? – with a question mark at the
end. You don’t normally hear the alarm calls of Sambar or Barking Deer at this time
because the hunters have already hunted and are now resting after their meal.
Langur call, just the communication calls.
You may hear
the elephant herd, if you are downwind of them. First you will smell them. Then
the squeal of the youngsters, feeling their oats early in the morning, usually
butting each other and testing their strength while the matriarch leads them to
the river to drink and bathe. As they walk, you can hear branches breaking as
they feed, stomach rumbles, the low frequency call of the matriarch (you feel the
vibration more than hear it) as she gives some instruction to her family. Even
a trumpet occasionally. Just a honk of the horn. Not the scream of rage as an
elephant thunders down on you at fifty miles an hour with the intention of wiping
you off the face of the earth. That happenedto me once, a week after I joined
as a brand-new Assistant Manager, but I managed to escape. The memory however is still fresh and lives
with me. You can’t hear the hyper-low frequency calls which travel over a hundred
miles, by which herds widely apart, communicate with one another. What do they
say?
Then the
wind shifts and their super sensitive sense, gets a whiff of you. Suddenly there
is total silence. You hear nothing. No branches snapping, no squealing, no rumbles,
no trumpeting. Not a dry twig will snap under a foot which has a sole like a
truck tyre bearing a weight of four tons, but which can tread as softly as a feather
when it wants to. If you could see them, you would see ears fanning for sounds,
trunks raised, taking in sniffs of air and blowing them into the mouth to taste
it. Their eyesight is not great but their hearing and smell more than makes up
for that. Add to that a memory that is legendary and the fact that they are in
familiar surroundings and know every patch of forest. Who knows what other
senses they bring to bear to decide whether you present a threat or not? Before
you realize it, the herd has gone, like the mist in the early morning. One
minute they were there, and the next, there is only your memory of an encounter
that will stay with you all your life.
Grey Hornbill feeding his mate who is sealed inside the nest in the tree hollow Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka
As the
daylight strengthens, birds come alive. They gather at their favorite trees to
feed on berries, and on insects which get flushed by the berry eaters or to
scratch in the dirt at the bottom of the tree for worms, beetles and caterpillars.
Insects have a hard time in life, though they are so critical to everyone else’s
survival. If you stand quietly and watch, you can see the tree divided into zones
in which different species of birds operate. The most popular trees for birds, in
this forest on the Western Ghats is the Banyan (Ficus Benghalensis), especially
when it is in fruit. The tree itself is excellent nesting habitat for birds.
Owls and Parakeets live in its hollows. Hornbills use those hollows to make
their nests. Black Eagles, Changeable Hawk-eagles and other raptors make nests
in the topmost branches. Imperial Pigeons, Green Pigeons, Ring-necked and other
doves, crows, and many others, nest in the Banyan. This is a very productive
tree to watch if you want to photograph birds. All this activity is accompanied
by an absolute cacophony of sound with all the birds talking to one another at
the top of their voices. No birdsong as such. This is feeding time and they are
in a frenzy.
Changeable Hawk-eagle juvenile Yala National Park, Sri Lanka
We often
like to talk about the peace of the forest. That is a myth. The forest is a
place of intense activity where to survive you need senses honed to perfection,
total physical fitness, lightning reflexes and total awareness. The price of carelessness
is hunger or death. And all this, every waking, living day and night of your
life. No overweight animals in the forest and no pot bellies. The only exception
are elephants, who thanks to their size and lifestyle of living together in
family groups taking care of one another, can afford to relax. Life in the forest
is all about survival. Whether you are a bird, reptile, mammal, amphibian or
fish, it is all about survival. You must do one of two things and for some, you
must do both; find food and prevent yourself from becoming food. Add to that
finding mates, building nests, raising young and all the while protecting them
and yourself from others who need to kill you to raise their own young and you
have a very lethal and non-peaceful environment. But one in which you feel
alive constantly. No time for depression, boredom or anxiety – all very human
ailments.
To
survive in the forest, you must be able to read it like you read a book.
Observe signs, know what they mean and know what to do when you see them. Some
you will see, some you hear, some you smell and to all you pay attention very
carefully. You must know that you are also generating signs, most of the time unconsciously.
And while you are not the natural food for anyone, you can get yourself into
trouble if by your behavior you are seen as a threat, especially to the young
of someone else. This is almost the only reason that people get injured, bitten
or even killed in the forest. The solution is to learn woodcraft. If you know
how to behave in a forest, you can be safe and enjoy yourself in one that is
inhabited by all the potentially dangerous species you can think of. I am
speaking of Indian and Sri Lankan forests. African forests are somewhat different
in this respect. I have walked, camped, even slept in riverbeds in forests in India,
inhabited by tigers, leopards, gaur, wild dogs, elephants and of course snakes
and here I am writing about it all. That is because I learnt what to do and
have a lot of respect for those whose territory, I am in.
African
forests are different primarily because of lions. African lions are very different
from Indian tigers and leopards and are addicted to junk food. I believe, so
also are African leopards and Spotted Hyenas. So, sleeping in riverbeds in Africa
is not what I would advise. I wouldn’t advise that in India or Sri Lanka either
as a matter of course, but as I said, if you needed to, you could do that here.
But in Africa, if you find yourself in such a situation, where there is a possibility
of lions in the vicinity, find yourself a tall tree and climb it as far up as
you can get. Think of yourself as a bag of potato chips or a bar of chocolate
if you like. You get the message? Having said that, there are unfenced resorts
in wildlife parks where you can camp and as long as you are inside your tent or
in your car, you are safe. But if you need to go in the night, because when you
gotta go you gotta go, it presents interesting possibilities. Not my idea of a
holiday for sure.
To return
to our story, it was as if I was watching a flashback movie. As I sat on the
rock, eating my egg roll I remembered all these things as vividly as if I were
watching it happen all over again. Twenty years had passed. The gaur I saw are
all gone. So are the Langur. Their offspring have taken their place. Raman is
there with me, but his hair is now jet black with hair dye. My beard is a
salt-pepper shade with far more salt than pepper. There is change, but the rock
is timeless. So is the forest. Ever changing of course, but strangely, still
the same. Not often is one privileged to go back in time. I finished my meal
and lay down on the rock close to the stream to sleep for a while. Raman &
Raman moved away to either ends of the open space to take up watch positions.
We are old friends and companions. Nothing needs to be said. Each knows what he
should do. I can hear the small stream gurgling as I drift off into the best
sleep that I have had in a very long time.
Sunset in the Anamallais, Lower Sheikalmudi Estate
I woke
up as the sun started its final journey to America. Only if it set here could
the Americans have another day. So, we can’t delay it, can we? We gathered our
things and started off back home, this time on a new track past the tea that I
had planted 20 years ago. Today I was very eager to see what had become of it.
Once again, we descended into the dark thickness of the undergrowth at the
bottom of Manjaparai, now a little apprehensive as we can see fresh sign of
elephant. We walk in single file with Raman in the lead and me at the rear with
our friends who are new to this environment in the middle. We walk silently.
Everyone has been given instructions about what to do if we come across
elephants. But nothing as exciting as that happens and we emerge into what has
become known as Baig Dorai Thotam (Baig Dorai’s Garden – the name that
the pluckers gave it). I looked at it with tears in my eyes. It was the most
beautiful sight that I had seen in a long time.
Baig Dorai Thotam – the tea I planted in Lower Sheikalmudi Estate in 1987, as seen in 2007
The tea
has been extremely well looked after. They had done a height reduction prune to
it and it is now back in plucking. Flat as a table, deep green maintenance
foliage with light green plucking shoots standing proud and tall. Someone
obviously has done an extremely fine job here. I was delighted that I had
decided to come here and visit after so long.
We
climbed up on another rock on the border of the tea overlooking the thick
evergreen rain forest that the Anamallais are famous for. There is a single
Spathodia in full bloom in the middle of the sea of green, the flame red color
of the flowers standing out like a bonfire. I can see why it is called the
Flame of the Forest. We sit in silence and watch the sun rise somewhere else.
As the night descends, I thank Allahﷻ once
again for giving me this opportunity to come back and see the result of my work
and meet my old friends. I feel privileged and honored.
The Crossley engine was iconic
and as much a part of a tea garden as a tea bush. Crossley engineers trained
local men with an aptitude for mechanical tinkering who became Blacksmiths’ and
were a legend. Most of them had had no formal education to speak of. All they had
was the interest to learn, curiosity and dexterity and were very creative. They
attempted anything and succeeded where highly trained mechanical engineers would
be stumped. I put this down to what our formal education does to the mind,
where our creativity is severely curtailed within the imaginary boundaries of what
‘can’ and ‘can’t’ be done. Those who are not mentally conditioned in this way,
try all sorts of new ways with great success because nobody told them what ‘can’t’
be done.
One of my favorite stories about
how creative people without a formal education can be is as follows. When
I took over Lower Sheikalmudi Estate as the Manager, one of the things that I
concentrated on was to make the land more productive. I took a three-pronged
approach. We dug trenches in the swamps to drain the water and planted cardamom
on the ridges between the trenches and planted pepper on the shade trees – Grevillea
Robusta (Silver Oak). We filled in (planted tea) all vacant patches and tea
field boundaries. And we reclaimed all big vegetable gardens which had become
more commercial than personal and had encroached into our tea fields. The
incident I want to mention here had to do with an infilling area in the LSM
Upper Division. This was a large bare hilltop which was about ten acres in
extent, which we planted with clonal cuttings. Since the area was completely
bare and open, I was very concerned about the survival of the cuttings as we
were going into the dry weather.
There
was no water on site to irrigate the plants. If we dug a well in the swamp at
the bottom of the hill, we would have to install a diesel pump because there
was no electricity there, then put in a pipeline and build a tank on top of the
hill. Only then would we be able to irrigate this plot. An expensive
proposition to say the least. We were taking all other moisture conservation
measures; mulching the plants, digging lock and spill trenches and filling them
with coconut husk to retain whatever moisture that occasional rain and daily
dew fall would yield. But I knew that these would not be enough when the summer
set in and we would probably have heavy casualties if we couldn’t irrigate the
plants. One day I was standing on the hilltop with Mr. Govindraj, my Field
Officer, and we were talking about the problems of irrigation and how important
it was for the successful survival of these plants. There were a few workers
around us, digging trenches. As we were speaking, one of them, Shashi, said to
me, ‘Dorai, if you permit me, I can bring water here to this hilltop.’ Mr.
Govindraj’s instant reflex reaction was, ‘Hey! Keep quiet and do your work.
Don’t interrupt the Manager when he is speaking.’ Such were those days.
I
immediately stopped Govindraj and said to the man, ‘Tell me how you will do it?’
Shashi
said, ‘Dorai, I want two helpers for two days, permission to cut bamboo in our
reserve forest, and two or three empty diesel barrels (they have a capacity of
two-hundred liters). Give me this and I will get water here from that stream
over there,’ and he pointed to the stream in the ravine near the forest
boundary. The stream was at least three kilometers away as the crow flies in a
small ravine abutting the forest. If the crow walked it was much further. I was
very intrigued. He wouldn’t explain any more when I asked him. I instructed
Govindraj to give him what he asked as I wanted to see what he would do.
About
a week later he came to meet me in the Muster and asked me to go to see what he
had made. I was astounded to see what he had done. He had cut mature bamboo and
punched through the nodal septa to create a pipe. Then he had rigged up a
siphon system using the diesel barrels to lift the water from one level to
another and had water from the stream flowing out of the end of the bamboo pipe
into a small tank in the middle of the tea infilling area. It was a system that
cost next to nothing to build, needed neither power nor manual attention to
run, and was made by a man whose job was manual labor. In effect we had a
hydraulic engineer in our midst who had never gone to college, could barely
read and write, usually dug holes in the ground or did other such unedifying
jobs, and his knowledge was hidden because nobody bothered to ask him. If I had
also followed suit and allowed my Field Officer to shut him up, we would have
unnecessarily spent a fortune to do something that one of our own workers did
for us, free of cost. I invited our General Manager to visit the estate and see
what he had done, and we took photographs and gave him a gift. Everyone all
around was delighted but none so much as myself for the life lesson I learnt.
With Shashi on my right in the tea nursery – 2010
I
later promoted Shashi to Supervisor and put him in charge of our tea nursery as
he was very smart and had a lot of good ideas. I used to listen to him
carefully and we did many an interesting thing as a result of his ideas. People
close to the job know the most about it, if only managers will listen. And it’s
all free. He did a brilliant job with the nursery and several years later after
I had left, I understand that he was promoted to the Staff grade. As they say,
‘you can’t keep a good man down.’
Our Blacksmiths kept machinery
which should have legitimately been given a decent burial in the 19th century,
alive and kicking – generating electricity, running pumps, factories and
what-have-you. Amazing work, mostly unsung but hugely appreciated by those who
benefited from it. These ‘Blacksmiths’ were able to keep not only the Crossley
engines running but handled anything that moved with equal confidence and
aplomb. This included tractors without generators or starters, motorcycles with
temperamental carburetors and even the Peria Dorai’s (PD) car. All passed
through the hands of the Estate Blacksmith and lived to tell the tale. They
were also artists with the lathe machine. All CTC factories have lathe machines
to sharpen CTC rollers. On these machines were made all kinds of knickknacks,
tools and what-have-you, as required or desired – sometimes the difference between
the two being non-existent.
Thangavelu – trying to look serious
I had a blacksmith on my estate,
Lower Sheikalmudi, called Thangavelu. His trademark was his smile, showing huge
gaps of missing teeth but bright and shining like the rising sun, no matter
what time of the day or night you called him. The other thing about him was
that no matter when you saw him, he always looked like he had been freshly
dipped in a drum of lube oil. I used to tell him that if I cut him, oil and not
blood would flow. Which got a huge laugh as my reward. Thangavelu was an
absolute wizard with his hands. He’s had no education to speak of and so his
creativity and initiative were intact. He did things with bits of wire, soap,
wire mesh and coconut fiber which kept machines turning in an emergency until
we could get the right part or consumable that had given up the ghost. He once
made me a pruning knife with a truck spring blade and put a handle on it
encased in staghorn (from a discarded Sambar horn picked up in the forest),
secured with copper bands. It was a thing of real beauty and I carried it with
pride for a number of years.
One day when I had been
transferred to Paralai Estate, I gave it to one of my pruning workers to
sharpen. Then I left to inspect some plucking and then went to the office in
the afternoon. While I was in the office, some workers came running and said
that Forest Department officers had come and arrested several of our workers
from the pruning field and taken them off to Pollachi. I was astonished until I
learnt that while they had been pruning, a Barking Deer got flushed out from
under some unpruned tea. The deer ran for its life but one of the workers threw
his knife which brought it down and before anyone could think, other workers
had butchered it. I was furious at them for having killed a poor animal which
apart from the kindness angle was also illegal. This whole thing was reported
to the Forest Range Officer who came and arrested the workers and hauled them
off to the Police Station in Pollachi. The workers who came to me, said that
they had been locked up and had not had anything to eat and their families were
distraught.
I drove down to Pollachi and met
the Range Officer and the Superintendent of Police. I arranged for the workers
in the lockup to be fed. Then I persuaded the officers to drop the case against
them as they had done their deed without any thought, almost as a reflex. It
took a lot of talking and the fact that I knew the officers concerned and had a
good relationship with them. What also helped was the fact that I had driven
all the way down from the Anamallais for these workers, which was not usual and
so everyone was very impressed, and the case was dropped, and the workers
released. The only casualty, apart from the poor Barking Deer (which
incidentally made a nice meal for the Forest Department and Police guys) was my
pruning knife. It had been ceased by the Range Officer, who fell in love with
it and when I went to meet him, it was on his table. He asked me if I would be
kind enough to allow him to keep it. With my workers’ freedom in his hands, I
had hardly any choice. So, I bid it farewell. Thangavelu never got around to
making me another one though we talked about it many times.
As
was the custom of the plantations when any Assistant Manager got married and returned
with his wife, there was a round of parties to meet the couple. So also, in our
case and since I was the Secretary of the Anamallai Club, I had more than my
fair share of friends and so we had a party to go to every night. The parties were formal suit and tie affairs
and the hostess would go to great lengths to cook special dishes in honor of
the guests and at the end the couple would be given a gift. In a place where
social relationships were very important, these parties were not simply for
entertainment. They were rites of passage and thresholds of entry from
bachelorhood to married status, which gave you a higher level of status and
respect. They also had ‘snob value’ associated with who invited you and who
didn’t. I didn’t bother with that at all, but then again, I was invited by everyone,
so it didn’t matter. The parties were also a good way to introduce the new
bride to a way of life that was foreign to her and helped her to make contacts
with senior ladies and others more experienced in this lifestyle, which could
be challenging for someone born and brought up in the city. Most people who go
to tea gardens for a holiday in good weather don’t realize the difficulty of
that environment for those who must live there all year round.
I
have written about how my estate workers welcomed us when we returned to the
estate. https://yawarbaig.com/wherearetheleaders/see-with-their-eyes/ The beauty of planting life was that it
was like being in a family. You had your bickering, sometimes it could be trying.
But always there was mutual affection and traditions to uphold and the proper
etiquette in all things. And most importantly, in an emergency, everyone stood
by you.
These
dinner parties in our honor were so frequent that my wife could recognize a
road only in the dark. The parties, enjoyable though they were and were a good
way to meet friends who lived too far to visit frequently, could be very taxing
as they tended to go on very late. We were expected to put in an appearance at
the morning muster on the estate at 6:00 am no matter when we returned. The
night of Mayura Factory inauguration (the day that started at 2:00 am), we had
been invited to dinner at the home of our dear friends, Prema and Ricky
Muthanna in Mudis. Ricky was the General Manager of BBTC and we were honored to
be invited to their home.
As it
happened, there was no time even for a short snooze in the afternoon thanks to
the inauguration and to top it all, my car was once again in hospital. I didn’t
fancy the idea of going all the way to Mudis (about thirty km on serpentine
estate roads, decorated with potholes) on my motorcycle. I asked Mr. AVG Menon if
I could borrow car, a brand new Hindustan Ambassador which had arrived just
that week, for the evening and he graciously agreed.
We
set off at about 7:00 pm as the dinner was for 8:00 pm. I was exhausted as I
had been awake for 48 hours with about 2 hours of sleep, but we set off, Samina
and I, on this long drive. We arrived at Prema and Ricky’s house to a very warm
welcome. Samina and Prema became friends instantly and have remained friends
all these years. Ricky and Prema’s home was a delight, very tastefully
decorated and one of the iconic bungalows in the Anamallais. It was the only
bungalow to my knowledge which had a central courtyard with a veranda all
around it and so it had a garden inside and outside. Prema had called a lot of
people in our honor and the house was full of our friends and some others who I
knew by name but was meeting for the first time.
All
plantation parties (except in my house) started with drinks, which the men
consumed in large quantities while the women sipped soft drinks and discussed
matters of great import. As I was not one for the spiritual experience, I would
take my orange juice or fresh lime soda and chat with whoever was still on
mother earth. But as many left for higher altitudes in proportion to the fuel
inside them, I would usually take myself off into a corner and contemplate the
world. That day I was so sleepy and tired that my eyes were self-shutting
unable to withstand the weight of my eyelids, while the party was in full
swing. I was clearly out of it. Prema saw me in that state and said to Samina
and me, ‘Yawar looks like he is going to drop. Let me give you dinner so that
you can eat and leave. I have no idea when these men will eat, and you look
like you won’t last too long.’ I agreed wholeheartedly and we ate, said our
farewells quietly and left.
Even
up to that point I had my faculties still intact. You had to be alert when
driving in the Anamallais, both on account of the road conditions as well as
the possibility of coming upon a herd of elephants or gaur around a bend. That
night was mercifully elephant free and we reached Lower Sheikalmudi Estate
without incident. As I took the final turn on the road leading up to our
bungalow (the ‘Tennis Court Bungalow’), I relaxed and that was my undoing. The
next thing I knew, there was a crash and the car came to an abrupt halt. I was
shocked back into awareness and realized that I had driven off the road. The
left front wheel of the car was hanging off the side of the road in midair with
the front fender resting against a tea bush, which was the reason we didn’t go
all the way down into the ravine. The chassis was resting on the roadbed.
Samina and I were shocked. It was 2:00 am and there we were.
I
realized that this was not a good situation because the car didn’t belong to
me. It was Mr. Menon’s car and a new one to boot. It was therefore my
responsibility to get out of this situation. It didn’t even occur to me that I
could leave the car where it was until morning and then get assistance to take
it out of its predicament. I had crashed it and it was up to me to get it out.
And I had to do it right away; it was not even a matter to think about. As it
was, the car was directly below a stairway that led up to our house. I told
Samina to walk up to the house so that she would be safely home. Then I went in
search of a tractor to pull the car out. I knew that the leaf transport
tractors – Massey Ferguson – used to be parked near Mayura Factory, about 2 kilometers
from where I was. Our roads had no streetlights and it was a dark night. The
tea fields were home to wild boar and other friendly species, not to mention
several species of snakes, but none of them was my boss while Mr. AVG Menon
was. I hiked off in search of a tractor. On the way I called my good friend,
mechanic Thangavelu, because there was no way that I could pull the car out
alone. Both of us got to where the tractors were parked and selected the one we
wanted.
None
of the tractors had self-starters and used to be parked on an incline so that
you could roll down and start the engine. And they had no lights; I never
understood why. Working in starlight, I got into the driver’s seat, rolled
down, and started the tractor. Now we needed a tow rope. Thangavelu recalled
that the telephone company people had been working on a line passing through
one of our fields and had left a coil of telephone wire there. So off we went,
with Thangavelu standing on a plank behind me, holding the seat as I drove the
tractor. We picked up the coil of wire and drove back to where the car was;
hooked up the wire to the chassis at the back and pulled the car back on the
road. When I examined the damage, I saw that the tea bush had taken the shock
and except for a small side indicator light, nothing was broken. That was a big
relief to put it mildly. Thangavelu then took the tractor back to its parking
spot and I drove home at 3:30 am.
I
still recall the first thing that AVG asked me when I told him that we’d had an
accident in his new car. He said, ‘I hope you and Samina are alright?’ I told
him that we were fine but that his new car had been inaugurated with a broken
indicator light. He was amused and laughed it off and said, ‘That can be fixed.
I am happy that nothing happened to you both.’ That is why we used to call him A
Very Good Menon.
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