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Ratna Raman
chances upon an Unrecorded
Vocabularian-Phonetic
Rebellion
Hitherto Unknown Even to the
Postmodern
Phase of Subatern Studies History
How Subalterns
Squashed the Tea Estate Burra Sahibs
From Bagdogra Airport it is
a lovely afternoon ride to the Dooteriah tea estate. The tree plantations start
almost as soon as we get off the main highway and both sides of the road are thickly
carpeted, with dense green tea bushes. Tea leaves plucked from bushes growing at
a higher altitude are more flavourful, Babua, the man at the wheel, informs us
while the car begins its smooth, gradual ascent into the hills. The journey is
beautiful and we unwind on the way to the tea estate, drinking in the colours
of the sky and the earth. At the start of the tea estate the smooth road is
replaced by badly rutted, narrow roads that were originally horse carriage
routes through which the tea estate managers travelled up and down. Now cars
and jeeps travel on them jostling shock absorbers and the innards of people
sitting in them.
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| Photograph by the author |
We arrive at the Dooteriah
Estate in the early evening and alight at the Guest house, a gorgeous old
building with high ceilings and ancient red oxide floors, once characteristic
of South Indian architecture. The floor has a fabulous sheen, despite hairline
cracks all over, rather like those on heritage porcelain taken out of ancient
family chests. There is many a slip and unceremonious sprawl to be got past before
we eventually sit down to our first cups of freshly brewed Darjeeling leaf tea,
the flavour enhanced by Britannia Top biscuits. The view from the top is nothing
short of spectacular. Lush, blue-green, triangular mountain ranges frame sloping
valleys with large circular bushes of tea that taper into greenness while all
around the bungalow, end-of-summer flowers burst into colour within beds and in black polythene bags
filled with soil. This horticultural practice of growing plants in durable
black polythene containers in most places in these mountains sustains not only green
life but also precious clayey soil since the requirement for terracotta
containers has been greatly reduced by the sustained use of portable polythene.
The visiting estate manager
invites us to look at the sifting and processing of tea on the estate. The
journey begins from the point handpicked leaves packed into plastic bags arrive
via ropeway from different gardens in the mountains. The leaves are spread out
to dry and then processed, eventually dried and then sorted into four
categories. It is a fascinating process and we also taste different flavours. When
asked if the name Dooteriah meant anything specifically, he draws our attention
to the tall Datura bushes with large white flowers that grow all over the
estate. “It is possibly a corruption from the name Datura,” he observed
laconically, pushing us to recall how many similar instances of naming were
part of the legacy that the British left behind in India, in the course of
moving back to their more scientifically named destinations. We have, of course,
quickly renamed all our significant roads and cities. (Not that such change is
ideal or advisable since it short-circuits and compresses memory while erasing history.)
However, in quieter and relatively undisturbed pockets of the Indian
subcontinent, older names remain and reverberate, endorsing the
multiculturalism of time via language.
Dooteriah for Datura is a
charming example of the sort of naming specific to the British residency in
India. As was the elaborate ritual of tea tasting that we were drawn into
during the subsequent period of our stay. Although great tea
grows now on our mountain ranges, our tea drinking (and coffee drinking)
traditions date back to the British, who planted and oversaw the idyllic,
luxurious tea estates, where the only thing that everyone really did was to
grow, pluck, process, pack, brew, and drink tea. Every other activity was only
incidental, since in good weather the mountains ask very little of inhabitants
and visitors alike.
On the way to other tea
estates as we drove in and around the various valleys, we saw little shops selling
green produce on different sides of the road. Many kinds of mountain greens,
violet radishes, luscious green gourds, and small round red chillies that I
first mistook for cherry tomatoes greeted us. Among the spread out vegetable
ware, I was struck by the abundance of a vegetable that appeared sporadically
on Delhi’s vegetable carts for two days in October and disappeared almost as if
it were only a mirage.
When we visited our grandparents in Chennai and uncles and
cousins in Bangalore and Mysore, usually in the summer, we were first
introduced to this vegetable. Akin to the gourd and the pumpkin families, at
home we referred to it as chow chow and in South India it was called Bengalooru
Katthirikai (eggplant). Other than the fact that its oval shape was reminiscent
of medium-sized green brinjals, there was little other similarity between the
real eggplant and this green vegetable that grew on a vine. It could be cooked
into a stew, along with lentils or cubed and cooked into a dry vegetable, garnished with coconut and eaten
as an accompaniment to Saambar rice (spicy tamarind lentil mixed with plain
rice). The peel of the chow chow was thick and covered with a sort of white
stubble. This was usually transformed into a smooth thohayal (chutney). For making
the chutney, the peel was roasted along with black gram dhal and ground with a
little tamarind and red chillies. The resultant paste was garnished with mustard
seeds and asafoetida and subsequently eaten with rice, dosas, chappatis, and
pooris. The peeled vegetable was often cut into roundels and dipped into thick chickpea
batter (mixed with a little rice flour, salt, and a pinch of asafoetida) and
served up as platefuls of hot fritters, with steaming cups of coffee, that we
consumed on hot lazy afternoons.
Here in the hills there seemed to be two varieties of chow chow,
pale green and creamy white.
Stopping by the stately Teesta river at the vegetable market adjoining the
highway, I am informed by the women selling the vegetable that the white
variety is costlier and has a longer shelf life. I am intrigued further by its
local name, Iskush.
They offer me stems and leaves of the Iskush and I learn that these are cooked by
themselves as greens or with yellow lentils and eaten with rice. As I mouth the
name Iskush
in order to remember it better, Babua, our charioteer, amused by my interest,
regales me with stories of the Iskush.
When he was a little boy, Babua
tells us, in a village not very far from Kalej valley, his grandfather would
come home beaming from ear to ear, at the end of a day’s work. When asked why
he was so happy, he would proudly announce “momo khaya (I ate momos). ” Babua
went on to explain that long ago “momos” (steamed dumplings), now part of popular
street food in much of North India, were made by monks at the not-so-nearby Buddhist
monasteries. Cooking food for an entire community, these dumplings (mostly
vegetable) were steamed inside enormous containers, and lay visitors such as
his grandfather had access to them if they were in the vicinity of the
monastery at mealtimes. “We used to wonder then,” Babua muses, “what this momo was
that made our grandfather so happy. Only when we were older and could head to
the monasteries did we find out. These days, every household makes momos, not
only with vegetables, but also with chicken and pork, and everyone owns small steamers
in which they cook them, so now every child knows the taste of momos.”
“You must try iskush momos,”
he adds, deferring to our herbivorous
preferences. As we head home he stops and draws our attention to a small
wood-and-iron shed beside a tea garden over which green leafy vines have been
trained. Stepping out of the car we can see Iskush gourds of varying sizes draped
in pleasant green foliage. My daughter, who does not share my fascination for Iskush,
asks Babua why he does not extol the potato which is so much more delicious. “The
potato can be found all the year round,” replies Babua. “The Ishkush is
there for only a season and we eat its leaves and its stems and its fruit. Then
it is gone and we miss it. In my village, after the fruit is over and the
leaves and vines have been consumed, the roots are dug out and eaten and
relished. Then we wait for the next season!”
We reach the guest house and
savour Iskush
momos (reminiscent of ravioli-stuffed zucchini) that Mahendra has made for
dinner. The next morning, following a pre-breakfast huddle with Mahendra, green
Iskush
paranthas (the leaves and vines are cooked and ground and kneaded with flour
and spices) find pride of place at the dining table. Crisp and green, the
paranthas are served with savoury yellow lentils cooked with Iskush stem
and leaf. Washing all this goodness down with steaming cups of tea, I wonder idly
if Iskush
was introduced to the Kanchenjunga ranges by plantation wives who grew them in the impromptu kitchen
gardens that frame the sides of magnificent tea estate bungalows.
 |
| The Ishkush on its vine. Photograph by the author. |
Slowly, it dawns on me that maybe,
when plantation wives arrived in India, they were armed with squash from their
gardens. They must have planted a few aged squash in the lush soil, longingly hoping
to propagate familiar associations of home in a strange new land. Emboldened by
the familiar climate, the squash rooted itself effortlessly in this foreign
environment. It appealed to local residents who took to this English vegetable,
root, shoot, and leaf. They eventually appropriated its name and made it their
own. Iskool
and iscooter
are two significant (north)
Indianizations of the words ‘school‘
and ‘scooter’, both of European origin.
The third and perhaps more endearing (north) Indianization that I have come upon
is the exotic Iskush
which has now replaced the low profile, more prosaic, ‘squash’. With the season’s last crop of Iskush carefully
rolled in old newspapers, and tucked into carry bags, we headed for Bagdogra, from
where we would soon return to the workaday plains.
RATNA
RAMAN TEACHES ENGLISH AT SRI VENKATESWARA
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