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Literary Review
MEMOIRS
A half-full cup
VIJAY NAMBISAN
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Davidar’s is a strictly top-down view of life in the plantations.
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Tea & Me: A Memoir of Planting Life, E.S.J. Davidar, EastWest Books, p.215, Rs. 200.
When a journalist has lived for seven years in the plantation districts — as I have — he is bound to have had thrust upon him some dozen or two volumes of planting memoirs. These are always named “Two Leaves and a Bud” or R
20;Misty Valleys”; they are full of remarkable anecdote, and usually badly written. That Mr. Davidar’s is far more engaging than those generally encountered is no surprise to anyone who has read his shorter pieces in this and other journals.
His chief merit is a lack of pompousness. Chief executives in tea companies founded by the British are often stuffed shirts. Davidar rose, in just 16 years, from being the first Indian officer hired by his (sterling) company, to its General Manager. Certainly he must have been very competent. His all-round competence is reflected in his writing: There are few wasted words.
Davidar also has the virtue (rare among Indian writers) of being able to tell a joke about himself. The story of being shot in the backside in his Army days is a good instance, and there are many such. He tells of the mistakes he made as an estate manager, indeed, in much broader detail than he narrates his successes — which we must infer from his steady promotion.
To one not familiar with planting literature, this book is a delightful read. It is full of wildlife, from wild tigers to tame deer; it relates the history of tea; it has exotic characters; it speaks of a colonial lifestyle most Indians think has forever passed; and it is replete with funny stories. To an insider, its great value will lie in its account of Davidar’s relations with the white managers and the Board in London, and the politics within the company. It’s a good thing those days are over.
Colonial hangover
But are they? I was always only an observer of the plantations, but when I first moved there in late 1998 I was appalled by the colonial hangover that persisted in a free India. (The crash in prices since has led to a stern remaking of most companies.) There was a strict division of castes — management, staff, and labour — and the three did not mix. Managers were called dorai (lord) and had servants to pull off their boots. Davidar has a strictly top-down view; he sees the labour unions only as nuisances. As it happens, I have also lived, though not on the plantations, in the Peeramedu area (near Thekkady) where he worked. I know what the unions in Kerala can be like. But I have also heard and read of a time, before 1947, before the unions, when the “wenches” who plucked tea were meat for the Britishers’ beds (Davidar only casually refers to this) and workers considered recalcitrant were tied to a frame and flogged. Estates minted their own money so that workers — bonded labour, really — could not run back to their villages in the plains of Tamil Nadu. Wouldn’t you rather have unions?
Other experiences
I’m surprised Davidar says in his Epilogue that his search “for other titles that might have been written by working planters like [himself]… was largely futile”. I’d have thought he’d have been embarrassed by the riches. Books by planters are to be found in any planting library, and they are not all by Britons as Davidar’s Select Bibliography suggests. May I recommend, besides Red Tea, a lightly fictionalised document of planting from the workers’ point of view in the years before 1947, by a retired doctor of the (then) Finlay Group in the Anamallais? Or I can refer Davidar to Dr. Thangavelu, resident of Chennai, son of a labourer in the same Group, who rose to be Professor of Pathology at Trivandrum Medical College and is a renowned expert on community medicine? I’m sure they’d round off his “search” nicely.
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