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Magazine
Roots ... in the High Ranges
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NICOLA-ROSE O'HARA didn't come to India to find herself, or the meaning of life, or a cure for anything, or any other thing than to see where three generations of her family lived. She found kindness, curiosity and openness ... The conclusion of a two-part article.
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IT was a friendship that rewarded me: one day Hasan drove alongside me, motioned me into his auto-rickshaw with an invitation not to be refused: "come and see the riot." There by the Chinese fishing nets were the traders, rounded up like a carton with rope around them, standing in the back of a police truck. I strained to see the man who'd got me an enormous sun hat. I thought I'd stride right up and demand he be untied if I saw him. Until that is, I saw the policemen's faces, their khaki and truncheons. "Help us!" some well dressed articulate young men rushed up, "You come from a wealthy country, we're trying to make some money" (I scoured the back of the van for my friend, wondering what I'd do to save him, but he wasn't to be seen). "We don't sell drugs," the most vocal of the group insisted, "we sell nice things, what the tourists want." It's true. My hat. "But the hotels pay the corporation to use the police... " Which compromised me, as I was staying in one of the hotels. Whose side should I be on? "We're gonna get them," he upstabbed the air with a mock knife, a long one. "Oh please be careful!" I said, pale and uselessly. What else could I say? I can't riot.
One day Mr. Francis came to my room, very excited. "The TV people are coming!" he said. "To interview you!" I was aghast. Realising I wasn't sharing his enthusiasm he faltered. "It's very good publicity for you... " "I don't want publicity Mr. Francis!" I protested. Mr. Francis was mortified. My heart was racing, indignant and frightened. We didn't understand one another. "I did say I wanted privacy," I insisted. "On no!" he hastened, "it's not the portraits. They want to interview you about your family." I repented, apologetic, although I did feel at the time that that was private. Since then I've been shown it's a part of history, not just mine, but ours and to be shared. But how could I talk about my family in Munnar when I hadn't even been there yet?
So I hastened my trip to Munnar. And Mr. Francis, as part of the magic he brandished, wrote a note stating the price I could afford, and sent me to a friend who had a cardamom estate in the mountains which took guests, where I went with my document of poverty, and found another welcome.
The dizzy melange of things in the air that make Kerala: the noise of engines and horns and birds and people and music and the thuggery of lorries and fumes in the heat and the bright colours of the earth and the people moving all over it, and the shops and the heat pressing down on all like a squeezebox: all this recedes as you rise into the hills my family knew as High Range. You leave behind the Kerala of Roy, the orange and green and heat and billboards' glare give way to slopes and paperclip bends, peppercorns drying on neat sheets by the side of the road and a sense of smell returns, intense smell of forest and spices and twigs and leaves and fruits I had never smelt or seen. Jackfruit! And although the taxi came up behind belching buses and lorries that looked as if they came from some superannuated storybook, the mountains seemed to swallow the pollution. Despite its newness to me it smelt like home. It was gentle, the air and the smells, gentle as the air in Ireland. I imagined how Granny — and my mother! — must have gladly come up off the plain into the hills. I was seeing — apart from the lorries — surely, what they must have seen. As we wound up through the forest I composed imaginary postcards to my friends, "just been through a forest;" how impossibly glamorous for a stay-at-home like me! Sights seared into my memory from the side of the road: a man the colour of nutmeg, sitting like a statue in a nutmeg-coloured house, naked but for a bright white dhoti; the never-so-vivid scarlet of a woman's saree; the glossy, glossy black hide of mendicant cow. And above the forest the tea! Acres and acres of uniform shrubbery: it rose and fell in exact mimicry of the fall of the mountains, the mountains which looked so unlikely in their sudden peaks. As if this were China.
In amongst the fields of tea is the Windermere cardamom estate.
In fact I got a telling off when I got there. I was summoned to the bungalow below the guest house for drinks, by the owner's father-in-law, Captain Matthieu. We ate just-cooked pakora and drank whiskey and soda solemnly, rather religiously, in among the candles through the half hour power cut. If I had prepared my trip, Captain Matthieu rebuked, and written from Europe, then everybody would have been able to give me a proper welcome. But I didn't want a proper welcome, I just wanted to see where so much of what I'd heard about from my grandmother and uncles and aunts in Ireland had happened. When the lights were on again, he found me the telephone number of the manager of Tata Tea which now owns Letchmi Estate where my mother lived.
Thus lightly scolded, it was a little guiltily I presented myself at the Tata headquarters in Munnar next day. And as I hadn't organised anything, or where to stay that night, I arrived with all my luggage.
The (Regional) Manager of Tata Tea might be a frightening prospect if you are a quivering employee full of wrong-doing. Certainly I approached his office full of trepidation; a baggage-toting tourist with an itinerary of genealogy. Why would he want to waste his time on me? And Tata's not a name to be trifled with: there's not only Tata Tea (which has famously taken over Tetley Tea) but Tata lorries, Tata steel, Tata IT, Tata phones, even Tata teacups. Eighty Tata companies, in fact. I walked through an eternity of desks towards the office door. Mr. George Netto is an imposing man, yes, but elegant, welcoming, interested. No, he didn't mind at all that I had just turned up, he said. He ordered tea, phoned the manager of the Letchmi Estate, and made an itinerary for me in red biro on a scrap of paper. I drank tea and stared at maps on the walls. It's a plain office with a wide and tidy desk. I told him some about my grandmother, who was born on Sevenmalley Estate when Kerala was Travancore. She went to England to school aged eight, but returned and spent a very happy 20 years of her adult life here. My mother died when I was seven so I don't remember her memories of Kerala. Mr. Netto, who's been with Tata in Munnar since 1964, talked about his own family there, the health of the place, the soft water, and how it's being ruined now by tourism. The government has an "aggressive" policy to encourage tourists, he said. Well I'm a tourist, I considered. Nobody had aggressively encouraged me.
"Are you a writer?" he enquired, quite out of the blue.
Later I discovered he had modestly forgone to tell me he himself is a writer. How odd: I with all my prejudices had been ready to meet the steely manager of a pan-global conglomerate: here we were discussing literature and the meaning of life. A gentleman.
For the author, it was more than a welcome retreat into the hills.
THE piece of paper listed the Letchmi tea estate, where my grandfather had been assistant and acting manager; Christ Church, where my mother was baptised, and the High Range Club, where I had heard my great-grandfather's hat hung on the wall behind the bar. I didn't expect to be allowed to get into the bar to see the hat. I'm the wrong sex.
A man from Tata was assigned to accompany me, even though I was only in an auto-rickshaw. We drove through the pretty hills of tea, a river sparkling to our left, bordered by soft pasture, and gentle cows. Enthusiastically I asked him "Do you still see how beautiful it is? I mean, is this just everyday to you now... " He smiled at me, and then at the scenery. Then there was a blue sign LETCHMI ESTATE, the faintly military building, the security guards, the heavenly stench of green tea as we drove alongside the factory, then up towards the bungalow, the poor man from Tata trying to name the birds and the trees to satisfy my curiosity.
But the manager's wife at Letchmi Estate bungalow wasn't as wowed with the place as I was. She was from Delhi, and she was bored. Dutifully she offered me tea and we talked about how different Kerala is from Delhi. Surely since my grandmother's day she felt less isolated, what with the roads and the phones and the internet? She wasn't sure. She showed off her beautiful young son. I didn't dare ask to see more of the big bungalow, fearing intrusion, this is her home now. I tried to hide the excitement I felt that this was the very building in which my mother had lived! But my auto-rickshaw driver and the Tata guide were waiting outside so I drank my tea, refused biscuits, took a photograph, and went.
Next to Christ Church, the Church of South India, where hopefully the records of my mother's baptism were. Though unannounced, I was made welcome by a trinity of cheerful pastors who gave me sweet tea, sat opposite me in a line and interrogated me kindly. I was plagued by a fly and wondered how politely not to drink my tea. Eventually a fourth man, the sexton, with long protruding teeth and an enormous smile to display them, wearing a shirt the colour of a prelate's purple, offered to look through the records of 1937 when my mother was baptised. Meanwhile I was given a guided tour of the church. For a moment I feared this whole thing was a mistake, wrong church. I'd be a fraud. They found the baptism records quickly.
Being scornful and wary of sentimentality I never expected to be particularly moved. Surprised and excited, yes, but not in any way moved. Yet when they opened the book, and there was written "Jillian Rose" I was suddenly overcome. Something innocent and unknowing, from down the years. She was so young as to not understand the ink her name was written in, and unconscious of it, and all that was to befall her. And here was I now, her daughter... . spilling ink... . The sexton ran his finger along the line, I took a photograph. When her name was written she was just a pip — just out! And already somewhere the possibility of me was in that tiny pip. I stared at her name. Jillian Rose. Just as surely my daughters will come from me.
One of the pastors told me a story of how Christ Church came to be built. He said that a young woman who was dying of malaria sat at the top of the hill and said what a lovely site it would be for a church. Two days later she died, and in her memory was built the church. Her grave was at the top of the hill, and he wanted to show it to me. Unwillingly (it was lunchtime) I laboured up there with him. But the tombstone he showed me was inscribed "James". "Oh!", I said, then kicked myself for being so — so British "isn't James usually a man's name?" We stared at it. There was a silence. What had I done? Spoilt something, certainly. "Maybe James was her husband," I offered, "or her father," then to change the subject noted how noisy it was, even high up above Munnar, with the sound of all the car horns in the valley below. "We don't use horns quite so much in Europe," I chattered foolishly. "Why?" he asked. Another awkward silence. "Are all the roads one way?" And I tell these stories to show how neither of us was either wrong or right, only seeing the same things through a prism. (That next Sunday I went back to the Service in English at Christ Church I'd been promised, at nine o'clock. I got there Englishly at nine on the dot, though the service was obviously nearing its end. The dark interior was too full to enter: while I recognised the hymns, the words weren't English. Never mind, I'd try to squeeze in, but as I made to do so there was a prayer and sudden exodus. A flood of wide smiles, black hair, bright sarees and sandals and bibles. I tried to catch somebody's eye but failed. When I hadn't been able to communicate with anybody (my Malayalam didn't stretch to the ecumenical) I went round to the vestry and was delighted to see the sexton. But he didn't look pleased to see me. "Isn't there a service at nine, in English?" I faltered. I felt so British. No, he said. There weren't any services in English, nor had there been since 1981. I blinked back a childish disappointed tear and stared up the valley to Munnar. I hadn't understood they'd told me what I'd wanted to hear: our means of speaking truth are different. I'd spend sometime on the internet instead.
Anyway, after descending the hill, the auto-rickshaw took me to the High Range Club. The Tata guide was gone: one of the pastors said he'd be back but the driver said he wouldn't. So we set off down from Munnar a little, me, the driver and baggage, over a bridge marked "bridge unsafe. Unload and proceed".
The High Range Club is "a barrack of a building" built at the same time as Christ Church in 1910. The contractor who undertook them both "associated his work on the church as labour dedicated to God and the club building as one dedicated to the devil". I was taken round the back and made my way in along a little narrow passage to a window serving as a reception desk. A very busy man in a pinkish shirt and tie said "yes, yes" he knew who I was and had I had lunch? Which was about the most civilised thing anybody could have said at half-past two on a Tuesday afternoon. He hoped I didn't mind, it was only a buffet. But I was glad to have lunch at all.
I sat in a refectory like a school, but this was no buffet. Two liveried servants bore me dish after delicious dish which I tasted in isolated splendour. Curd rice, spicy fish, curried cauliflower, finely-sliced cabbage fried with peppercorns, dal and roti ... .
THE man in the shirt and tie was Allan Oakley, the Secretary of the High Range Club. Quick and courteous, he was almost as pleased to come across me as I was to come across him. After the uncalled for feast he took me to the bar, (which does admit ladies) old and atmospheric, with wooden bar, wooden walls, and the hats of planters hanging: (the hats of those who had given more than 30 years service), along with the heads of local hunted beasts. My great-grandfather's initials? John Moore (Jack) Bridgman. JMB. He'd been a planter first in Ceylon. One of the founders of the club! Mr. Oakley exclaimed. He proudly took down the hat from the wall, and I proudly photographed it.
He led me through to the billiards room, where pictures, mostly rugger teams, decorated the walls. My grandfather, and various names of cousins and friends I recognised, and faces! How strange to see the pictures of my grandfather, who I knew and loved, looking out from the walls of the billiards room. Could he ever have imagined one of his grandchildren staring at him from down the years, from the 21st Century? This was a man whom I knew in Ireland; humorous, gentle. Mr. Oakley was delighted to hear some family stories (obviously I didn't know my great-grandfather, but Francis O'Hara was known to us as Grand-old-daddy, so we'd get letters from Ireland signed from Granny and G.O.D... ). He swept two photographs off the walls and whisked me and them in the auto-rickshaw down to a photocopier in Munnar, so I could send copies of them to my grandmother. Also he presented me with a history of the club, boasting to the staff "she's the great-granddaughter of a founder of the club!" In fact I'm only one of dozens.
How could I ever have imagined such kindness from strangers, something I found every day in India. Most especially perhaps, from Mr. Francis, who let me return to The Malabar House Residency for a further week, despite my tendency for getting in to scrapes. I never did talk to Surya TV, but I hope that by writing this I have shared a part of your history, or I should say our history.
There's a word heard a lot in Delhi to describe a mixture of things Indian and the West: fusion. Fusion music, fusion fashion. Fusion's such a good word, not a clashing of things but a fusing. It reminded me of what my grand and great-grandparents were doing: planting.
I didn't come to India to find myself, or the meaning of life, or a cure for anything, or anything other than to see where three generations of my family lived. I found kindness, curiosity, openness and a spirit quite different to one so common in Europe where nobody can give anything away, they've packed up their troubles on their backs and are running some wearisome race — they don't know what it is, but they're going to run and by God they're not going to stop and look to see what race it is. It's not the human one. It's a paucity, a poverty of the non-material sense. The hamburger life which I didn't see in India.
I went back to Delhi and ran out of money, so my one regret is that I haven't yet seen the grave of my other grandfather in Rajasthan.
(Concluded)
The first part of this article appeared in The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, issue dated May 4, 2003.
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