Mirror
Magazine Techno
page by Harendra Alwis
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| Seasons
of mist Life in a tea-estate could be fun, could be lonely, could be boring. It could mean hardwork like growing vegetables in your backyard, or using your imagination to find out ways to kill time on a Poya day, in a house which is out of reach of all television signals and has a phone that is forever “dead”. A glimpse into the journal of a mountain-dweller reveals fragments of life amidst the mist, the rain, the sudden bursts of brilliant sunshine and the unbearable cold. A
bag full of beans If one begins early in the morning, one could see the sunlight, still in its infant stages, flicker through the beanstalks and draw cartoons on the withering leaves. Picking the right bean is not easy. Some are too tender. Some overripe. The latter is plucked any way, even though the Mudalali might refuse them later. The best are the ones in which the shape of the beans inside is visible through the green skin. It is important to scrutinize each creeper from the ground to the top, from head to toe, so as not to miss a single ripe bean. There are three of us. Myself. Appu the butler. And the Thotakaran, who being deaf is named after Prof. Calculus (shortened to Cally) of the Tintin cartoons. Appu keeps accusing Cally of picking the tender ones in high decibels. Cally keeps grinning and refuses to hear. As the tender beans weigh less, Appu is worried that plucking them would mean a loss to us and a profit to the Mudalali. Sucking my sore thumb now and then, for beanstalks are strong to break, I recall how the three of us had ploughed the field and planted the seeds together. How we had waited for rain, and how on almost every evening that we had watered the entire field with three leaking buckets, it had rained during the night. The weather gods had teased us. But they had been kind as well. We had nothing to complain about our harvest. Within the first few weeks we had recovered the cost and from then on all was profit. Bean picking has now become a ritual conducted almost everyday. Appu would take the two bags of beans to the Mudalali at the junction. On some days he would get late and I would muse with Cally if he had been waylaid by highwaymen who had robbed him of our bean-profits. These profits rarely increased to more than two hundred rupees a day. But this is more than enough. Considering how many enjoy them. Ourselves, the butterflies and the parrots. The
fowl with four legs Del is what we call the tower we see often enough from our bungalow, which belongs to the Telecom and which is almost always “out”. It is a white iron structure in the distance during the daytime. At night, a bright red light. Last Poya day, when the del was out and the television could show only a mass of black dots, we decided to go explore this all important del tower of Bambarakelle. The distance, as the crow would have told us would not have been less than ten kilometres. But on the CD 200 motorbike, on a road which twisted and turned like an earthworm in a freshly ploughed field, it took more than an hour. There were mostly tea bushes around us; tea bushes, wild chrysanthemums, giant ferns and kitul trees whose flowers reminded me of Bob Marley’s hair. The threatening clouds overhead did nothing to improve the atmosphere. The road stretched on. Now and then we saw a tea field covered in white specks - the tea pluckers. From the road, only the white polythene bags on their backs were visible. “There it is, it is not far,” we assured each other as we kept turning our heads to look at the tower and tried to pretend we were not fooling our selves. Finally, when, after having climbed ever so many feet, we lost sight of it we knew we had reached our destination. We parked the bike near the brown gate, but did not think we would be able to enter the compound cordoned off from the neglected tea fields by the barbed wire fence. Yet to our surprise the gate wielded to a gentle touch. A thin footpath was visible through the weeds. The security hut was empty. The whole place spoke of desolation. Gingerly we made our way towards the main building. The newly painted walls and the sealed windows with A/C machines underneath them showed that the buildings had been constructed recently. Orange daisies grew in abundance right round the main office. The wind blew fiercely from all sides. The place was deserted. We were the only human beings around. It was easy to imagine the loneliness of Adam and Eve in Paradise. We walked towards the tower and stood underneath it. Its white iron structure stretched on and on towards the sky. In some strange way I felt as though I was standing underneath a giant fowl with four legs. We were so high up in the land that where ever we looked we saw valleys, hillocks, tea factories, roads spread before us forming a picture more clear than what one would see from a plane or a helicopter. “That must be Horton Plains, that must be Nuwara Eliya, the factory over there must surely be Great Western,” we speculated freely, not really bothering about the accuracy of our statements. The view was breathtaking and revelling in its splendour was more than enough. After all it was that single moment that mattered; being on top of Bambarakelle, with the wind blowing and the rain about to come down any minute; two figures in helmets and riding jackets, looking down at the world beneath them... A drop of rain! As cold as ice. It was time to pack up, to close the gates of heaven and head for home. Now, there in the distance stands the giant fowl with its four legs. We are back in the bungalow. “So we stood underneath the del,” we tell each other proudly. There are too many clouds in the sky to see the sun go down. But soon the white tower in the distance will turn into a small red light shining fiercely in the darkness. Before long Appu will announce dinner. And before all the stars appear in the dark sky, before the owl begins to hoot in the palm tree, before the clock strikes half past eight, the lights of the bungalow will be switched off. Only Kawal, the watcher will be awake, guarding our bean cultivation from invading wild boars. Another day in the mountains comes to an end. |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Ever
wondered what life is like in the mist covered bungalows of the
tea plantations in the hill country? How do the inhabitants who
live behind stone walls built by British planters, amidst heavy
teak furniture, cosy fireplaces, green lawns, roses and plots of
cabbages spend their day?