Teatime for the Firefly (15 page)

The store was dim and shuttered and smelled of new leather and shoe polish. A radio blared out soulful film music. We spied a shiny baldpate behind a pile of shoe boxes on the counter. The salesman was napping. No customers came at siesta time. He lay with his head on his hands, a small drool of spittle strung from his open mouth down to the countertop. The pages of his receipt book rippled gently with his soft snoring.

Manik rapped the counter with his knuckles, causing the poor man to scramble to his feet in such a terrible hurry that he upset the shoe boxes, sending them clattering to the floor.

“Oh—
sir
!” he said, pop-eyed, wiping his mouth and patting his hair, which sat like an oily horseshoe around his head.

Manik walked over, tapped the display glass and pointed to a hefty pair of canvas boots in the showroom window. “For madam,” he said.

The salesman babbled. “Most certainly, sir—what size?”

“What’s your shoe size?” Manik said, turning to me.

“Five and a half, I think,” I replied, wondering what was going on.

The salesman beamed sweetly, giving me the full tilt of his oily charm. “Excellent choice, madam,” he said and picked up a dainty white ladies’ slipper from the display case next to the canvas boot. “This is our very latest
Manjula
design.” He reverently held up the slipper in both hands for us to admire. It looked like a dove about to take flight.

“No, no,” said Manik, tapping the glass, “I am talking about the boot. That khaki one with laces.”

“For you, sir?” said the salesman, looking a little puzzled.

“For madam. Please hurry. We don’t have all day.”

Surely Manik was joking. He was pointing at a canvas boot that looked belligerent and battleworthy. It was ankle-high with an industrious sole and laces sturdy enough to hitch a cow to a fencepost.

The salesman was still muttering in confusion as he came around to measure my foot. The smallest size the boot came in was still two sizes too large.

“We’ll take it,” Manik said.

“Manik, this is crazy!” I exclaimed. “How can I wear
these
? Besides, they don’t even fit me.”

“Layla, trust me, you won’t regret it. Please, for my sake. You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to. At least they are there if you need them.”

“Need them for what? Where are we going? To war?”

“Yes, comrade,” said Manik.

“O-ho-ho!” laughed the oily salesman.

I glared at him. I did not want to create a scene arguing with Manik, so I let it go.

That completed the purchase. A pair of combat boots, two sizes too big, plus two pairs of army socks. One to wear and one to stuff inside the toe. I was beginning to think my husband was a lunatic. But Manik looked pleased.

“All done,” he said cheerfully. “Now I am going to take my lovely bride home to Aynakhal.”

* * *

Manik drove rakishly, his body tilted, one elbow out the window with just three fingers on the steering wheel. His eyes flitted over the landscape, and the wind ripped through his hair. His foot never eased off the pedal as he dodged potholes with the grace and aplomb of a bullfighter. The farther we drove, the more relaxed he became. He breathed deeply; he hummed and turned occasionally to gaze at me with wonderment and joy, like a small boy admiring his prized marble.

We drove into the open countryside on narrow
bandh
roads, built on embankments that sloped down to rice fields. We passed through a small Assamese village, a small huddle of green surrounded by the striped expanse of plowed rice fields. Each village had a cluster of sleepy mud houses with low-fringed thatched roofs hemmed in by lopsided fences. Pendulous gourds clung to the thatched roofs. Creepers and elephant-eared taro, banana and areca palms grew abundantly in handkerchief-size plots. Tiny ponds winked gold and emerald-green in the flitting sun where ducks wagged their bottoms among purple water hyacinths. Slim-waisted Assamese women dressed in the traditional three-piece
mekhela
-
sador
, with orchids in their hair, swayed down narrow paths with mud pitchers balanced on tilted hips.

Manik leaned on his horn to overtake an unweildy vehicle that rattled and coughed diesel fumes. It looked like a ramshackle army truck converted into a village bus with sides of flattened tin all patched up together. As we passed I got a glimpse of its motley occupants: toothless old men, snot-nosed babies and village women with baskets of cauliflower and papaya. The sides of the bus were streaked with red
paan
spit.

“
Bustee
bus,” Manik said. “It’s the only means of transport for villagers. Mariani is the last stop, then the bus turns around and heads back to Silchar.”

“So how do people get from Mariani to Aynakhal?” I asked. “It’s still ten, fifteen miles from Mariani, isn’t it?”

“Local people don’t have any need to go to the tea gardens,” Manik said. “Or if they do, they use private transport. Or they cycle or walk. And that, too, through some pretty treacherous and unpredictable jungle roads.” He gave me a mock-stern look. “It’s not very easy to run off, if that’s what you are thinking.”

The rice fields were thinning and we drove through a tall teak forest humming with cicadas. Dense forested hills loomed ahead, gray-green and mysterious. We were entering tea country, Manik said.

A large truck approached us, billowing a cloud of red dust. The driver pulled over and waited for us to pass. He lifted his hand in a salaam. The truck had CHULSA T.E. stenciled on its side.

“Chulsa Tea Estate is Alasdair’s garden,” Manik said. “It is owned by McNeil & Smith, a big tea company like Jardines.”

“How did you know you’d like being a tea planter?” I asked. “Did you know much about the tea job or the lifestyle before you joined?”

Manik smiled wryly. “I had not a clue. I decided to find out.”

“You gave up the civil-service job without knowing anything? Wasn’t that a risk?”

“I don’t see how else I could have married you.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

His thumb caressed my cheek. “Surely you know, Layla, I did it for you?” he said softly.

I was baffled. “Did what for me? Take up the tea job?”

“I made up my mind to marry you the first time I saw you, Layla. How could I forget? Beautiful Layla in that golden rain.” His eyes lingered on my face. “I had to derail my engagement to Kona to get to you. The big question was, would you choose to live in the tea gardens with me. It was a calculated risk.”

“You broke up your engagement deliberately...for me?”

“A brilliant move, if I may say so myself. The strategic plan was to shunt one bogie off the rails and get the other bogie on. Some careful track manipulation was required. It would have been a tragedy if the Layla bogie derailed, as well.”

It was not flattering to be viewed as a railway bogie to be shunted on and off a track. I felt a small wave of resentment.

“Your grandfather would not have approved if I openly broke off my engagement to Kona to marry you. The Rai Bahadur may be broad-minded but he is also an honorable man. I had to make it look like a natural turn of events. The tea job came along. This was my chance. I had to bide my time and hope Kona ran off and you didn’t. A little risky, but it worked out, didn’t it?”

I sat there feeling a little stunned. Was it deceit or ingenuity? I wondered. Manik had diabolically engineered his fate and mine. It was a bold and risky move, and nobody had caught on, including me. But the stealth and cunning with which he had pulled it off made me uncomfortable. I wondered what else would he engineer to his advantage without me knowing? I tried not to think about it, but the old knot began to appear in my stomach. There was a comfort in not knowing too much, I decided. I almost wished Manik had not told me everything. It made me think differently about him, somehow.

CHAPTER 18

How can I ever forget my first sight of a tea plantation?

It came upon me like a breathless surprise. The tangled beauty of the Assam countryside parted to reveal waves upon waves of undulating green. So pristine, so serenely beautiful my senses were shaken.

Tea gardens stretched finger to finger across the bounteous plains of Assam. Quaint names sprang up on billboards like musical chimes, mysterious and evocative.
Bogapani
(White Water),
Hatigarh
(Elephant House),
Kothalgoori
(Jackfruit Root),
Rangamati
(Red Earth). Some tea gardens looked spruced and prosperous, others a little derelict.

“Such curious names,” I said, mouthing them softly.

“Tea-garden names are enigmatic,” Manik agreed. “They sound vague and random but they have some grounding in the local geography or history of the place. They are very similar to English village names that way.” He laughed. “There’s a tea garden called
Bandookmara
, which means ‘shot by the gun,’ and the one next to Aynakhal is
Negriting
—‘slave girl hill.’ Who knows how those names originated? I am sure there are interesting stories behind them.”

I thought Aynakhal was the prettiest name of all.
Mirror Lake.

In some areas, the tea plantation tumbled down to the very edge of the road. Each tea bush was pruned to a wineglass shape. Sunlight played with the young leaf tips, igniting them in dazzling shades of chartreuse and gold, and the top of the plantation glowed like splintered glass.

Manik slowed to a tortoise crawl and meandered across the road, steering with his elbows.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” he murmured softly.

I could only nod.

“That’s how I felt when I first saw you, Layla,” he said in a caressing voice that made me flush.

“Why are the bushes planted in triangles instead of rows?” I said a little too abruptly.

“Elephants,” said Manik. “See how the triangular sections create a zigzag path? It’s designed to protect the tea pluckers so they can run away from wild elephants. Elephants can’t run through a zigzag path. Humans can.”

“You mean to say wild elephants come into the tea plantation?”

“It’s very common,” said Manik. He pointed to the coconut-size droppings on the road. “That’s fresh dung. This is the exact spot where the herd crosses to go to the river on the other side. You often see them at dawn or dusk.”

He pulled over to the side of the road. The brakes squeaked as the jeep rolled to a stop. Manik draped his arms over the steering wheel, and gazed at me. All I could hear was the ticktick of the dying engine.

“Don’t you think we’ve made enough small talk, Layla?” he said softly. A smile played on his lips, but his eyes were serious. “We are married now.”

He got out of the car, walked over to the passenger’s side, opened the door and pulled me into his arms. His warm lips found the hollow between my collarbones, traveled up my neck, my ears and sought my lips. My head began to reel. All the colors collided around me, in torrents of green and shards of sun.

I became dimly aware of the sound of approaching voices. I pulled away. “Manik, someone is coming,” I said, trying to gather together my sari.

“Dammit,” Manik muttered, pushing back his glasses. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the jeep looking glum. We watched a group of women approach, walking down the road in a single file. They balanced piles of firewood on their heads and turned their heads to stare at us like a pack of gazelles as they passed. They were ebony-skinned, bony people, with tattooed arms, flat noses and high cheekbones: tribal looking. Their colorful saris were worn knee-length, wrapped as a single cloth around their bosoms. The younger ones had their hair oiled and pulled tightly into conical buns to the sides of their heads. On their hands and feet they wore thick pewter bangles shaped like cauldron handles. Small infants strapped to their mothers’ backs bounced along.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Tea pluckers,” said Manik, still sulking.

I stared after them. They were primitive and rawboned women with wide-planted feet and the swaying gait of people used to carrying heavy loads. I had never seen people like them.

“They are Adivasi tribals from Bihar and Orissa,” Manik explained. “They belong to the untouchable caste. Tea gardens employ them as contract labor. Tea pluckers are only women. Notice the height of the tea bushes? The plucking table is pruned exactly to three feet for their convenience.”

Another line of women came into view, followed by another. It seemed a whole convoy of romance-wreckers were headed our way.

“I don’t suppose we will be left alone here,” Manik grumbled. He helped me back into the car then walked around, climbed into the driver’s seat and started the jeep.

“How many tea pluckers does Aynakhal employ?” I asked as we pulled back onto the road. Judging by the average size of a tea garden, there sure seemed a lot of tea to be plucked.

“We have around twelve hundred tea pluckers,” said Manik. “Aynakhal is one of the bigger gardens. We make top-grade premium Orthodox Assam tea.” The pride in his voice was palpable.

I remembered the tea Manik had left on the veranda table the day he had come to propose. The tea was robust, full-bodied and aromatic. Like my husband, I thought, and trembled, remembering his lips on mine.

“What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking—” I hesitated “—that you are, well, quite an attractive man.”

“Thank God,” said Manik, with an exaggerated sigh of relief. “After all my repeated brush-offs, I was getting seriously worried.”

* * *

A single-gauge railway track appeared out of nowhere and ran parallel to the road. We passed tiny tea stalls. Bunches of finger-size bananas hung from ropes, and jars of colorful biscuits sat on shelves. Men leaned on bicycles or sat on benches under a mango tree, smoking bidis and drinking out of foggy glasses. Mangy pariah dogs scratched and snapped halfheartedly at flies. More houses started popping up, followed by sidings, sheds and small factories. We passed trucks and bullock carts laden with market produce: banana, pineapple and sugarcane. A stench of dried fish hung in the air.

“We are getting close to Mariani,” Manik said.

“Is it a small town?”

“It’s more like a fishing village, really. But Mariani is a very important railway junction for the tea district. The rails bring in the coal to fire our generators to run the factory and also carry back our tea to Guahati, from where it goes by steamer to Calcutta.”

The train signal turned red and a bell clanged as we approached a railway crossing. A boom gate dropped slowly in front of us. It had a big, round painted STOP sign with skull and crossbones and DANGER printed across it, but people continued to saunter across the railway track. A shrill whistle sounded, and a steam locomotive came gushing around the corner with a fierce clanking of pistons and big whooshes of smoke. The driver in the cab had a thin, careworn face and wore a khaki cap. He had a red rag around his neck. Several long, open trolleys piled high with coal and covered bogies all painted a deep rusty-brown clanked rhythmically past us. BENGAL-ASSAM RAILWAY was stenciled on the sides.

“Are there any passenger trains?” I asked.

“Only once a week,” Manik said. “The passenger service is not very reliable.”

The bell clanged again and the boom gate lifted. There was a tidal clash of humanity as people tried to cross over from both sides at the same time. Cyclists shrilled, bullock carts ambled and a whole melee of people with baskets on their heads or slung across their shoulders pushed, shoved and yelled. Truck and car horns blared loudly, adding to the din.

There was just one arterial road running through Mariani, with lopsided shops on both sides leaning on one another. One shop was exactly like the next, selling anything and everything from balls of twine to mounds of dried chilies, lumps of tamarind, small toys, rubber slippers and handmade soap shaped like cannonballs. Shopkeepers sat cross-legged on gunnysacks, jiggled their legs, chewed
paan
and swatted flies.

Driving through Mariani was like driving through a bubble of humanity. It was there suddenly and, just as suddenly, gone. We passed through the smell of rotting timber; a large plywood factory, with ASSAM WOODWORKS painted on the roof, loomed up ahead. A tractor pulled into the gated entrance with a long trailer piled with logs.

“Assam Woodworks supplies plywood for the tea gardens,” Manik said. “Our garden carpenters make the tea chests.”

He was suddenly distracted by a black Morris Minor parked near a small whitewashed house. The hood was up. It appeared to have had a breakdown.

We pulled up alongside.

“Hussain!” Manik yelled, and a man in a khaki uniform, presumably the driver of the car, scrambled out of a tea hut and, seeing Manik, gave a brisk salaam.

“Kitna deree?”
How long?
Manik asked in Hindi.

“Dus minut, saab.” Ten minutes.

I was puzzled. “Is he having engine trouble?”

“No, no,” said Manik, giving me a small lopsided smile. “There is nothing wrong with the car. The driver is waiting for Larry. Larry is visiting Auntie’s.”

“Larry Baker’s aunt lives
here
?” I asked incredulously. The white house looked very modest.

“Larry is visiting the Sisters of Mercy.”

“This is a church?”

“Depends how you define a place of worship.”

I listened in stunned silence as Manik explained that Larry Baker was in some sort of house of ill repute doing his business while the driver pretended to have a breakdown waiting for him. Manik made it sound as if it was all very normal. I could not believe my ears.

I learned Auntie was an Anglo-Indian madam, who kept tea planters supplied with an assortment of whores. What was even more shocking was this indiscretion was condoned, even encouraged by the tea companies who believed the “Sisters of Mercy” played a vital role in helping young assistants survive their forced bachelorhood.

The question choked in my throat but I had to ask. “Do you...? Have you...?” Words failed me.

“Yes,” said Manik carefully, before I could even complete my sentence. “My colleagues initiated me into the planter’s life—with, well, all its perks.”

I was not prepared to hear what I’d just heard. Yet, what did I expect? Judging from his kissing expertise, Manik Deb was no blushing virgin—that much I could tell. Besides, he had lived on his own for a long time in England, and I doubt whether he spent all that time drinking tea and playing croquet. I still found it unbearable to imagine him with another woman. Let alone a
whore
.

“But why?” I asked, feeling hurt and baffled. I sounded childish, but I could not help it.

Manik glanced at me. He was silent for a moment. “For the same reason people play cards,” he said slowly. “To pass the time. To stay sane. What can I say, Layla? There’s not much to do around here. Planters are starved for amusement. If not for the Sisters of Mercy, we would have gone mad and shot ourselves. One thing is for sure—you won’t find a sex-starved bachelor in the tea gardens.”

I could not believe his casual tone. So, I thought bitterly, for Manik Deb I was just another card to shuffle into his deck.

He must have read my thoughts.

“Don’t worry, darling,” he said. “I don’t take my commitments lightly.”

“How do I know that?”

“Sweetheart,” he said gently, “nobody smokes a bidi when they have a fine cigar. Now I have you...”

But I no longer felt like a fine cigar. I was not even sure if I could light up for Manik Deb after hearing all this. What alarmed me was the inequality of our sexual experience. Here was my husband, who had batted balls with champions, and I had not even figured out my own equipment. The old knot appeared in my stomach.

“Do all tea planters go to Auntie’s?” Surely there were a few honorable men who pined in celibacy for their one true love.

“Or they have OPs...their concubines.”

“Like Jamina?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, Alasdair got Jamina from Auntie’s.”

Got
Jamina from Auntie’s!
Why, Jamina sounded like a puppy.

That made Alasdair one more rotten pea in the pod, I thought bitterly. So much for royalty and fine breeding. I was beginning to feel hopelessly depressed.

“Here is something you must understand, Layla. Planters have to stay sane under the most trying situations. It is lonely in the tea garden—the work is grueling—there are very few diversions. Assistants are forced to remain bachelors for three years. Then even when they are officially allowed to get married, it is hard to find a wife who will agree to come and live in the jungle.”

“What made you think I was different?”

“I know you are.”

“You hardly know me,” I retorted archly.

“I would like to, if you let me.” Manik held out his upturned palm. I did not realize I had pulled my hand away and clenched my fists in my lap.

We drove in silence. I looked out my window hoping Manik would not notice the tears that brimmed in my eyes.
Stare into the wind, Layla
, I told myself.
Hopefully your tears will fly off like little birds, and he won’t see them.

* * *

The Koilapani River cut a gash a quarter mile wide across the road. A narrow suspension bridge straddled the two banks like a giant centipede. The bridge creaked on its girders and swung from side to side as the jeep lumbered across. The sluggish streams below meandered around mammoth rocks that stuck out like elephants’ feet in the parched riverbed, cracked and pitted like a wasteland.

“You should see this river in the monsoons,” said Manik, breaking the silence. “It swells and sometimes rips that bridge in two. Then Aynakhal is completely cut off. We’d be lost without Rupali, I tell you.”

I thought for a moment he was talking about a Sister of Mercy. But Rupali, thankfully, turned out to be the resident elephant of Aynakhal. There were three elephants: Rupali, Moti and Tara, Manik said. All females. Tara was now retired. Rupali and Moti were indispensable as tractors. They hauled lumber, chased game with shikaris on their backs and served as a mobile bridge for emergencies during the floods.