A lazy Sunday, waiting for god knows what! I shall proceed to continue my stories of my days in tea.
A normal working day would start at the crack of dawn, of course, and I'd have to slip on a pair of ridiculous shorts, and be in the office by 6:30 am. No I was never on time, I'd crawl in by 7, because if I did turn up by 6:30, I'd be the only fool there, no my boss refused to understand that. The next hour was spent behind a desk drinking tea flavored sugar syrup, signing attendance records, thereby establishing proof that I could officially be implicated on a later date for signing without looking. I never looked what I was signing, and was pulled up on several occasions, could never care less! The workers would start trickling in, and I had to get on my bike and wrangle them like a herd of cattle, screaming at them to make it in time. Workers would have walked for almost an hour, only to see me across the bend hollering on the top of my lungs, not a sight anyone would want to see. Of course I could bloody well have shut the fuck up and stood quietly watching them crawl in, but in the industry such an act is deeply frowned upon, and pages of reports can be written about such 'un-planter-like' demeanor.
After shouting some more in every part of the garden, I could get in for breakfast. Now I had a bungalow alright, Elroy knows only too well, with a garden, trees, shit like that. I also had a retinue of 6 servants. Oh, it sounds right lovely, a king's life indeed. The six servants consisted of 6 uneducated alcoholic kleptomaniac oafs with a nasty habit of not turning up for work. That is also 6 people doing the work of 1 efficient human being, so needless to say, the food they cooked for me was consistently getting worse by the day, well most of it was stolen anyway. As soon as I'd sit at the table, the boss would call up, time to run again, it is sacrilege to be in the bungalow when the boss is out. Hmm. Some more shouting and screaming and cursing and hiding from the harsh sun, and standing around pointlessly. Lunch time, shit food, phone call, run, come back, steal a snooze, make it back up just in time to see workers sneaking off from work well before time! Oh the management can have none of that! How dare the workers try to shirk they Rs 58 a day wage?! So of course some more shouting and screaming. Back to my office, some more tea flavored sugar syrup, make grand plans for the next day, write it all down in a book. Bike it back to the boss's office, conveniently placed 5 Kms away. Then sit and wait. I'd make it to the office around 4 or 5, the boss would meet me around 8, if not 9, a lot of nodding, and waiting, and bitching, sitting around an archaic computer pretending to be busy. I'd be home by 10, if not 11, dodging drunk workers crawling home, leopards, rain, among others. With just enough energy to eat shitty food, but not enough energy to complain about the shitty food, trying to ignore the wafts of alcohol coming out of the watchman's breath. I'd make it to bed or the computer, then the girlfriend would hound me with "why don't you talk to me?" and by some divine intervention which would result in an argument could I finally sleep, if the heat would let me. Early morning, we're back again.
"Executives" we were called, farmers were what we should have been called.
I remember I once came home tired and mindfucked, as usual, and I hear this low grunting noise coming out of my guest room. I went in to investigate only to find my cook passed out drunk on the floor, needless to say dinner wasn't ready at all! What was I to do? I had to pick up the good man by his collar, drag him one floor down and throw him into my lawn, it took a while for him to wake up though. After which I had to start screaming again.
I am and always will be harshly critical of this industry, which from the days of its inception has always kept its workforce in abject poverty, always squeezing out more from them, making sure they are far away from the influences of the outside world, keeping them convinced that the outside world holds nothing for them.
It is such a lovely picture from outside the gates, and the shit inside is never visible to the naked eye. The smiles are always misleading, the rot is set in far too deep. The bungalow and the servants? Fucking sham, Elroy came to visit me, god bless his rotten soul, I had to "inform" (ask permission) my boss, and write a letter to the head office in Calcutta "informing" (asking permission) them of him staying with me. Same protocol for my parents, and wait for the last straw, if my girlfriend were to visit me, she'd have to stay in my boss's house! Why? They didn't want to workers to think she's a whore. Hmm...
I was entitled to 35 days of paid leave in a year, in 3 years I had racked up more than a 100 days. The functioning of a tea garden has been designed in such a way that the garden will function perfectly even if no one was in charge. But everytime I asked to go home, the response I'd get was, "When my son was born I was at work." Or some random drivel to similar effect. I eventually gave up on that also. The amount of professional insecurity and immaturity is downright appalling. People having worked in the industry for decades were scared of newbies, and no one knew why. I for one, knew my first promotion wouldn't come near for the next ten years! And that's what the truth was and still is, and everyone would be out for blood, waiting to step on the next one to make a mistake.
So why did I keep hanging around if I didn't like it? Quite simply because I'd have to pay through my nose to get out, so I figured I'd rather stick around.
The industry is very open to new people, my advice? Create a fake lineage of Maharajas and Governers, make sure you haven't seen the world, have a liver of steel, you're sorted.
A normal working day would start at the crack of dawn, of course, and I'd have to slip on a pair of ridiculous shorts, and be in the office by 6:30 am. No I was never on time, I'd crawl in by 7, because if I did turn up by 6:30, I'd be the only fool there, no my boss refused to understand that. The next hour was spent behind a desk drinking tea flavored sugar syrup, signing attendance records, thereby establishing proof that I could officially be implicated on a later date for signing without looking. I never looked what I was signing, and was pulled up on several occasions, could never care less! The workers would start trickling in, and I had to get on my bike and wrangle them like a herd of cattle, screaming at them to make it in time. Workers would have walked for almost an hour, only to see me across the bend hollering on the top of my lungs, not a sight anyone would want to see. Of course I could bloody well have shut the fuck up and stood quietly watching them crawl in, but in the industry such an act is deeply frowned upon, and pages of reports can be written about such 'un-planter-like' demeanor.
After shouting some more in every part of the garden, I could get in for breakfast. Now I had a bungalow alright, Elroy knows only too well, with a garden, trees, shit like that. I also had a retinue of 6 servants. Oh, it sounds right lovely, a king's life indeed. The six servants consisted of 6 uneducated alcoholic kleptomaniac oafs with a nasty habit of not turning up for work. That is also 6 people doing the work of 1 efficient human being, so needless to say, the food they cooked for me was consistently getting worse by the day, well most of it was stolen anyway. As soon as I'd sit at the table, the boss would call up, time to run again, it is sacrilege to be in the bungalow when the boss is out. Hmm. Some more shouting and screaming and cursing and hiding from the harsh sun, and standing around pointlessly. Lunch time, shit food, phone call, run, come back, steal a snooze, make it back up just in time to see workers sneaking off from work well before time! Oh the management can have none of that! How dare the workers try to shirk they Rs 58 a day wage?! So of course some more shouting and screaming. Back to my office, some more tea flavored sugar syrup, make grand plans for the next day, write it all down in a book. Bike it back to the boss's office, conveniently placed 5 Kms away. Then sit and wait. I'd make it to the office around 4 or 5, the boss would meet me around 8, if not 9, a lot of nodding, and waiting, and bitching, sitting around an archaic computer pretending to be busy. I'd be home by 10, if not 11, dodging drunk workers crawling home, leopards, rain, among others. With just enough energy to eat shitty food, but not enough energy to complain about the shitty food, trying to ignore the wafts of alcohol coming out of the watchman's breath. I'd make it to bed or the computer, then the girlfriend would hound me with "why don't you talk to me?" and by some divine intervention which would result in an argument could I finally sleep, if the heat would let me. Early morning, we're back again.
"Executives" we were called, farmers were what we should have been called.
I remember I once came home tired and mindfucked, as usual, and I hear this low grunting noise coming out of my guest room. I went in to investigate only to find my cook passed out drunk on the floor, needless to say dinner wasn't ready at all! What was I to do? I had to pick up the good man by his collar, drag him one floor down and throw him into my lawn, it took a while for him to wake up though. After which I had to start screaming again.
I am and always will be harshly critical of this industry, which from the days of its inception has always kept its workforce in abject poverty, always squeezing out more from them, making sure they are far away from the influences of the outside world, keeping them convinced that the outside world holds nothing for them.
It is such a lovely picture from outside the gates, and the shit inside is never visible to the naked eye. The smiles are always misleading, the rot is set in far too deep. The bungalow and the servants? Fucking sham, Elroy came to visit me, god bless his rotten soul, I had to "inform" (ask permission) my boss, and write a letter to the head office in Calcutta "informing" (asking permission) them of him staying with me. Same protocol for my parents, and wait for the last straw, if my girlfriend were to visit me, she'd have to stay in my boss's house! Why? They didn't want to workers to think she's a whore. Hmm...
I was entitled to 35 days of paid leave in a year, in 3 years I had racked up more than a 100 days. The functioning of a tea garden has been designed in such a way that the garden will function perfectly even if no one was in charge. But everytime I asked to go home, the response I'd get was, "When my son was born I was at work." Or some random drivel to similar effect. I eventually gave up on that also. The amount of professional insecurity and immaturity is downright appalling. People having worked in the industry for decades were scared of newbies, and no one knew why. I for one, knew my first promotion wouldn't come near for the next ten years! And that's what the truth was and still is, and everyone would be out for blood, waiting to step on the next one to make a mistake.
So why did I keep hanging around if I didn't like it? Quite simply because I'd have to pay through my nose to get out, so I figured I'd rather stick around.
The industry is very open to new people, my advice? Create a fake lineage of Maharajas and Governers, make sure you haven't seen the world, have a liver of steel, you're sorted.
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