My Childhood In the Tea Gardens

It is really after a long time that I am writing again. And what better way to start writing than to write about the days which have long gone by. I am writing about my childhood in a tea garden in the Darjeeling foothills. I shall write about the few things which I remember the most.

The first thing that comes to mind are the fireflies. In those days there was no electricity in and around the quarters where we lived and every night the surroundings would get filled up with thousands of fireflies as if nature had set fire on the pitch dark night. They were in the garden, in the kitchen, in the verandah, in the bedroom, in the tea plantations - they were everywhere, wherever you looked at. I had read a short story in my childhood in which a Scandinavian scholar from the land of the Aurora Borealis had been mesmerized by the beauty of the thousands of fireflies and had compared it with the beauty of the Aurora. Hard to believe but it was really that beautiful.

There were the blazing fireflies in the night and there were the beautiful butterflies in the day. I still remember that our garden would be full of scores of colorful butterflies : red and green, yellow and black, pink, violet and what other colors I know not. They would fly from flower to flower, they would dance with the wind, fly alone and sometimes fly in pairs. As if a child had used his wildest imaginations and used all the colors that there were and there would ever be in the most beautiful canvas you could ever imagine. I know not how many lazy summer noons I have spent looking at and chasing the butterflies across the beautiful garden which my father had planted.

And there were the Westerlies, also called the Kalbaisakhi which are very common in those parts. They are the deadly storms that have become the folklore in Bengal. Every year during summertime, the sky would become pitch black in the afternoon and the monster would unravel itself upon the mortals. It would come from the western horizon and blow away any and everything that would come in its way. Nobody would dare to go outdoors. Shops would close, business stopped and life at a standstill. Then there would be a heavy deluge of torrential rain which would wash away the scorching heat of the Indian summer, soak the dried up earth to render it fertile and make the farmers smile and thank the heavens.

Nature had blessed the place with all the beauty in the world. And the people were very simple. The workers of the tea gardens were tribals from the Chhotanagpur who had been brought to the region by the British planters more than a hundred years ago. They were the sons of the soil. They would happilly work through the day with the assurance that the tea company would provide them and there families with two meals a day and the guarantee of a job for their children. They would nurture the tea bushes, apply pesticides, water them and pluck the "two leaves and a bud" that would go to the factory to be brewed into some of the world's finest teas to be sold to the rich people from the cities.

There was a man called Birbal. In our typical Bengali accent we used to call him Bir-ball as in football. I had never known the man by face and had only heard the name. I used to think that he must be some kind of a football covered in a hanky. I have got no idea why I had such an impression. When the man died and the funeral procession was going past our house, I had run to the verandah to have a glimpse of the man who was Bir-ball. I was really hoping to see a football covered by a hanky. However, I do not remember how it had felt when I could find no football in the procession.

Then there was Budhua. He was a bright young fellow and everybody used to love him. He used to play cricket with us. One day we woke up in the morning to find out that Budhua had hung himself in his bedroom. Joy Da, a lad from next door, went to his hut and brought the news that Budhua was sitting in a chair with the noose tightened against his neck. People doubted murder. But nothing could be proved. It was my first encounter with the brutality of life.

These mishaps happened sometimes. But most of the times my childhood was a funfilled joyride from start to end. Everything looked bright and sunny. No worries of the future, no responsibilities for the present and no pain from the past. Gone are those days but the fond memories are still cherished and fills my heart with joy even to this date.