Teatime for the Firefly. Shona Patel

I am unhappy.

      Most evenings I go hunting with Alasdair Carruthers. He is a Scottish fellow and Assistant Manager at Chulsa Tea Estate, the neighboring garden just cross the Koilapani River. He is a crack shot and is teaching yours truly the rudiments of shikar. I must admit he has me hooked. We have an excellent selection of wild game and plenty of opportunity to practice. It’s Greener Pigeon season. Good eating bird. I bought myself a blunderbuss (an old 12-bore Belgium shotgun), which, to my exasperation, seems to jam at the most inopportune moments. But this is the best that I can afford right now.

      I hope you enjoy the small book of Tagore’s poems I picked up for you in Calcutta. I have fond memories of our time together.

      Best wishes,

      Manik Deb

      

      

      I lay in bed imagining Manik tramping through a jungle armed with his blunderbuss—a rusty old musket, in my imagination. The thickets rustled with dangerous game and flocks of greener pigeons took to the skies. I felt his keen sense of excitement and heard the joy in his voice. Manik Deb did not sound like a coward hiding in the jungle: he sounded like a koel set free.

      CHAPTER 10

      That October I started training as an assistant teacher under Miss Rose in Dadamoshai’s school. In the afternoons I gave private tuition to students at home. One day just as the girls were getting ready to leave, I saw an army type of jeep pull up and park under the mango tree outside our gate. A European gentleman unlatched the gate and held it open gallantly like a doorman as the three little girls giggled past him. He then closed the gate and walked toward the house.

      He was a stocky man with a craggy weathered face and the kindest blue eyes.

      “Is this number eight Rai Bahadur Road?” he asked with a shy smile. He spoke in a rich brogue.

      “Yes,” I said, wondering who he was.

      “I have a letter for Layla Roy from Manik Deb in Aynakhal,” said the man. “My name is Alasdair Carruthers.”

      Alasdair Carruthers, Manik’s hunting partner!

      The letter had a postage stamp. Alasdair explained that Manik had asked him to post the letter in Silchar, but it was quicker for him to drop it off. He saw Rai Bahadur Road on the address and realized it was the very same road he took to go to the village across the river—which was where he was headed.

      The village across the river, how very odd, I thought. No white person ever went there. It was a rather desperate section of the town, inhabited by poor Muslim fishermen and accessible only by boat. I wondered if Alasdair knew that.

      Apparently he did.

      “Somebody will come by boat to meet me on this bank,” he said. “This fine road looks like it was designed for a bridge, y’ken, but it stops abruptly at the river. I have always wondered about it.”

      “There were plans for a bridge. It just never got built,” I said. “Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr. Carruthers?”

      “Aye, that would be lovely, thank you.” There was so much I wanted to ask him. He had breathed the same air as Manik Deb!

      But Alasdair spoke in generalities when it came to Manik Deb, describing him in his brogue as a “guid chap” who had a keen nose for shikar and was shaping up to be a fine planter. Aynakhal, he said, was one of Jardine Henley’s most profitable and premium tea gardens in the Mariani district.

      “You will be the Chotamemsahib of Aynakhal,” said Alasdair.

      “What do you mean?” I asked.

      “The assistant’s wife is called the Chotamemsahib, y’ken. Manik is counting the days when he can be married to you.”

      “Well...” This was terribly awkward and I wondered how to put it. “I am not Manik’s fiancée. We are just friends.”

      “But he told me he was engaged...?”

      “He still is, as far as I know.”

      “I beg your pardon—I do apologize!” Alasdair exclaimed, flustered. “Manik never told me a thing. Of course he didn’t expect me to meet you in person. He only asked me to drop off the letter at the post office.”

      “That’s quite understandable,” I said and decided to change the subject. “Please tell me more about the tea gardens.”

      The term tea gardens, I realized, was misleading. They were not small tea farms as I had fondly imagined, but large-scale, sophisticated plantations, averaging 600 to 3,000 acres, some with over 1,500 residents, most of whom were coolies, or tea pluckers. Besides the tea-growing area itself, each plantation was a fully self-contained entity. It had its own tea-processing factory, forestland, rice fields, water and power supply, brickworks, housing and medical facilities. They were like mini townships and run like autonomous entities under the helm of the General Manager. Assam, I learned, had over 700 tea gardens dotting the river valley and most of them were located far beyond the reaches of civilization.

      “Strange why such a large-scale industry was set up in such inhospitable terrain,” I mused.

      “Aye,” said Alasdair. “It is not quite so incomprehensible, if you think about it.” He was stuffing sprigs of tobacco from a round, flat tin into the bowl of his curved Dunhill pipe. “You see, the tea plant, this particular variety, is very fussy. It will not grow anywhere else.”

      Alasdair explained that the shy and reclusive Camellia assamica grew where it wanted, not where it was planted. Any attempts to relocate the plant outside its natural habitat caused it to wilt and die. Even transporting the seeds affected germination. This plant simply refused to budge.

      “So, if tea could not be brought to civilization, civilization had to be brought to tea. The mountain to Muhammad, so to speak, aye?” Alasdair said. There was something utterly likable about Alasdair: he had the well-worn solidity and comfort of aged mahogany. “We British want to shape everything in the world to fit us, don’t we? Aye, but only a fool tries to tame Assam. The harder we try to change the land, the more it will change us. Assam has untamed the white man and made junglees out of us.”

      Did I detect a hint of cynicism? Alasdair Carruthers was a curious man. I had never heard anyone speak so disparagingly of his own kind.

      “What made you become a tea planter?” I asked.

      Alasdair shot me a glance. He flicked open a gold lighter and drew in the flame to his pipe. Then he clipped the lighter shut. I noticed a crested emblem of a C etched on top.

      “It’s a long story,” he said, pulling thoughtfully on his pipe. “Some would say I ran away.”

      “From what?”

      “Tyranny.” Alasdair smiled deeply and his eyes crinkled. He did not elaborate.

      The more Alasdair talked about tea planters, I got the impression that “running away” to join tea plantations was more the norm than the exception. Planters were an odd medley of characters, and many sounded as though they were absconding from something or the other: Brits ran away from the gloomy weather of their homeland, soldiers ran away to forget their war demons, Alasdair was running away from tyranny and Manik from his arranged marriage. Tea gardens were the perfect place to shut out the world, and ferreting somebody out of those malaria-ridden jungles was as difficult as extricating a flea from a warthog.

      Manik Deb was a canny fellow. He knew what he was doing.

      * * *

      After Alasdair left I tore open Manik’s letter.

      

      

      Aynakhal T.E.

      14th October 1943 6:15 a.m.

      Dear Layla,

      I must have read your letter