Teatime for the Firefly

by Shona Patel

  Too late, I realized I had overstepped my boundaries. The kitchen was not the memsahib’s territory—she was not expected to pop in. I was appalled at how filthy the kitchen was. It was sooty and dark with the smell of stale frying everywhere. There was a beat-up table in the center, but most of the pots and pans lay on the floor. The only window in the room looked out toward the servant quarters. It was grimy with grease, with dirty rags tucked into the broken windowpanes.

  The child was peeping into the doorway from behind my sari. I saw Halua’s eyes widen when he saw her. He made small angry gestures to shoo her away, but she just stood there stoutly behind me.

  “What is this plant?” I asked, holding up the leaf.

  Halua and Kalua looked like shifty-eyed twins. In their undershirts, without their uniforms, they looked astoundingly alike.

  One of them scratched his oily head and cleared his throat. It was Kalua, I realized, because he had the twitch in his eye. “We are not knowing, memsahib. It is I thinking some junglee plant.”

  “No, no, these plants are not junglee. They are being grown by someone,” I said.

  “Memsahib, I am thinking it is the Potloo putting the plant,” Halua said, fidgeting. Why would the night watchman be tending the kitchen garden? I wondered.

  “Whose child is this?” I asked. The child clutched my sari and cowered behind me.

  “Mine, memsahib,” Halua said, giving her the stern eye. “Budni, ghar jah!” he hissed sternly, pointing his finger and motioning her toward the servant quarters. He advanced menacingly, but little Budni clutched my sari tighter and whimpered.

  “That’s all right,” I said, “please go back to your work.” I closed the kitchen door. I walked around the side of the bungalow to the front of the house. The small girl skipped along.

  I settled in the cane chair on the veranda and poured myself a cup of tea. The child sat on the front veranda steps and clapped her hands and sang a tuneless song. I gave her a tea biscuit, which she munched happily, feeding the crumbs to the ants. When Manik came home he almost tripped over her as he bounded up the stairs.

  “Oh, Wendy!” he exclaimed.

  “Salaam sahib,” chirped the little one, saluting smartly, raggedy knickers and all.

  I was curious. “What’s her name? I thought it was Budni?”

  Manik laughed. “Larry calls her Wendy. Budni means Wednesday, as you know, so she becomes Wendy. Right, Wendy?”

  “Bhendi,” lisped the little girl.

  I told Manik about my kitchen visit. Manik had never visited the kitchen end of the house. The only time he had gone there was a year ago, when a herd of elephants had come and trampled the malibari. Not that there was much to trample there.

  I showed him the leaf from the plant growing in the malibari. It was a little wilted now.

  “Ganja,” Manik said, sniffing it. “Marijuana. The one time I tried it, I missed kamjari and got hell. I suspect it’s that scoundrel Potloo’s doing. That fellow is always in la-la land. I used to think he was unusually dim. He can’t even find the latch to the front gate some days.”

  A few days later when I looked back in the malibari, the plants had gone. The soil had been raked over and the surface was a barren moonscape.

  CHAPTER 22

  Dear Mrs. Deb,

  I do hope you have fully recovered from the nasty hornet bite.

  I have been wanting to invite you over for tea so we can get better acquainted. Are you available tomorrow morning around 10:00 a.m.?

  Please send a word through Hussain, my driver, and I will send the car to pick you up.

  With warm wishes,

  Audrey McIntyre

  The invitation was handwritten on an ivory note card with I. W. McIntyre, Esq. printed on the top. I showed the note to Manik. “Why is there Esquire after his name?” I asked. “Is Ian McIntyre some kind of nobility, like Alasdair?”

  “Conferred nobility,” said Manik. “General Managers of Sterling Tea Companies are entitled to add Esquire after their names. I guess it goes back to the early days of tea when British companies had a hard time recruiting able managers to run the tea plantations. After all, which fool would risk his life to work in the jungles of Assam? And for what? The money is not great, the weather horrible. So companies tried to entice them with this English lord lifestyle with all its perks—massive bungalow, lots of servants, big-game hunting and a fancy title. Englishmen love titles. They hanker for social status. Make a man feel important enough and he will do anything. The tea companies understand this very well. But it’s also true that General Managers have a free rein over their gardens. Full autonomy. They can run it any way they choose. The company does not interfere as long as the garden delivers profits.”

  “So when you become General Manager, you will be Manik Deb, Esquire?” I said.

  “Correct. And you will be my Esquiress.”

  “What nonsense!”

  “Anyway, you will meet the Esquiress of Aynakhal tomorrow. I think you’ll like her. She’s a lovely lady.”

  * * *

  Audrey McIntyre was a tiny, birdlike woman with fluttering hands and an eager smile. She wore a rose floral-print summer dress gathered at the waist, with a white sailor’s collar. Her brown hair was cut in a short bob. She came quickly down the steps of the veranda to the carport, followed by a very old cocker spaniel with sad milky eyes that greeted me with a tired but friendly woof.

  “Layla!” she exclaimed, holding out her hands. Her voice had a musical chime. She wore a hint of pink lipstick and smelled pleasantly of lavender. “How lovely to meet you, finally.” She kissed me lightly on both cheeks. Her blue-gray eyes crimped at the corners like miniature folding fans.

  The cocker spaniel was licking my toe furiously.

  “Shoo, Daisy!” Mrs. McIntyre said, giving the dog a pat on the fanny. “Oh, don’t mind her, dear. She’s rather old and completely blind, I’m afraid.” She led me up to the veranda. “Oh, do have a seat.”

  She removed a copy of Woman’s Home and Garden from the chair and placed it on the coffee table. “It’s a shame Debbie can’t join us. She was really looking forward to meeting you. Emma is running a fever. The child refuses to stay with her new ayah.”

  “Who is Debbie?” I asked.

  “Debbie Ashton of Dega Tea Estate. She said Rob, her husband, met you in Silchar.”

  “Oh yes, I remember. He is a champion tennis player, isn’t he?”

  “Your husband, Manik, is not too far behind, you know. He won the Mariani runners-up trophy last year.”

  “Did he really?” I had no idea. Manik’s letters had been full of his shikar exploits. He was modest about his other sporting abilities. I now remembered a few silver trophies wedged between books on the bookshelf. Manik never spoke about them.

  I gazed at the garden in awe. The front garden was divided into flower beds in which tall gladiolas peeped over snapdragons, peonies and cosmos, planted in descending layers fringed by short rows of daisies and pansies in the foreground. The landscaping was impeccably planned and all the colors beautifully coordinated. Many segments were demarcated by midget hedges with multicolored confetti-like foliage. There was a circular rose garden with a birdbath and even a tree house tucked in the branches of a weeping willow.

  “This is the most exquisite garden I have ever seen!” I said, thinking sadly of our bungalow’s garden with its overgrown hedges, random flowers and disobedient bougainvillea. Compared to this pruned elegance, ours looked a juvenile delinquent running amok. “It must take a lot of work and upkeep.”

  “Oh, the malis do everything. I just instruct them on what to plant where. You need to closely supervise them, though. Garden upkeep, as you know, is a memsahib job.” Her eyes followed a fly on the coffee table. She picked up the magazine and swatted it, missing by a ha
ir. Daisy the spaniel skittered to her feet and looked about in dazed panic, blinking her milky eyes. Mrs. McIntyre patted her head reassuringly till she settled down again.

  Mrs. McIntyre rang a small, engraved brass bell. A tall bearer with a placid moon face and attentive eyes came through the doorway. He was dressed in a spotless two-piece white tunic with a burgundy cummerbund and wore a white turban. His feet were bare. Mrs. McIntyre spoke to him in heavily accented but clear Hindustani.

  “Where did you learn to speak such good Hindustani?” I asked.

  “Oh dear, I had no choice. I was forced to pick up the language trying to communicate with the servants.”

  I was thinking about what Manik had told me. The menfolk, especially young assistants, had an easier time picking up the native lingo, it seemed. They took private lessons from nubile “teachers” in more intimate settings. The company encouraged them to take a crash course, and this unconventional method was condoned because communication was crucial in labor management. Some of the vocabulary young assistants picked up was colorful, though superfluous for a planter’s job.

  “Would you like to take a walk around the garden, dear?” Mrs. McIntyre asked. “I can also show you our malibari. We have a fine crop of string beans and cauliflower this season. I was going to ask our mali to fix you a basket to take home.”

  We walked across the lawn. The freshly mowed grass was springy underfoot. Daisy followed, sniffing at anthills. A warbler sang from the low branches of a Semul tree.

  “Are you interested in gardening, Layla?” Mrs. McIntyre asked.

  “Oh, I am, but I have no idea what to do or even where to begin. Our bungalow garden is such a mess,” I confessed. We passed through the arbor of trailing primroses, dense with fragrance.

  “We are lucky—the soil is so rich here in Assam. All you do is throw the seeds down and nature takes care of the rest,” said Mrs. McIntyre.

  “Where do you get your seeds and cuttings from?” I noticed the flowers were show-quality specimens.

  “I order most from the Sutton’s Nursery catalog in Calcutta. The roses I crossbreed myself.” She paused beside a patch of dazzling red poppies on long graceful stems and fingered a velvety petal tenderly. “These Oriental poppies I got from Mrs. Gilroy. She is a master gardener.”

  A Zebra Swallowtail butterfly, resplendent in black and white stripes with crimson and blue spots, quivered hesitantly on the petals of an orange cosmos, then flew off.

  “It is amazing to think that Assam is home to sixty percent of the entire butterfly specimens of the world. We have some very rare and exotic varieties in the rain forests here,” Mrs. McIntyre said.

  That was surprising information. I had lived all my life in Assam and never known that!

  The malibari occupied the entire back of the house and covered almost an acre. Sugarcane, papaya and banana plantations fringed the far edges. A small thatched hut in the corner housed bags of fertilizers, spades, shears, watering cans and hoses. Big clumps of green tomato hung heavily on stout hairy stems, snow peas and string beans curled tendrils around crosshatched bamboo trellises and juvenile carrots sprouted frilly stems from the ground. The cabbage and cauliflower planted in neat rows were big as footballs. In the centre of the malibari was a long netted enclosure running lengthwise, housing delicate strawberry plants nestled in straw.

  Mrs. McIntyre made me feel wonderfully at ease. She was gracious and kind without a bone of pretension. I told her about Potloo growing marijuana in the kitchen garden, our two-dimensional egg and chicken diet, and my rather awkward kitchen visit.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” Mrs. McIntyre tittered, clutching a hand to her chest, “so much to learn for a young bride in such a short time.”

  It seemed most bachelor assistants lived in the same abject condition as Manik. It was the memsahibs who made the servants toe the line. The servants were expected to dress neatly and behave with decorum. The company had provided all the uniforms, but if one did not keep an eye on them, servants would sell off uniforms to buy bidis or liquor and walk around looking like beggars. The memsahib’s job was beginning to sound like a cross between a schoolmarm and a jailkeeper.

  “Did you know all this before you became a tea planter’s wife? How did you even know what to do?” I was beginning to feel a little panicked.

  “I married Ian when he was a Junior Assistant, and his manager’s wife, Mrs. Barter, was a very kind and lovely lady. She took me under her wing and taught me everything. She was like my surrogate mother, really. I was very lucky to have her.”

  “Will you...? Can you please teach me the things I need to know?” I asked hesitatingly.

  “Of course, duckie,” Mrs. McIntyre said, giving my hand a little squeeze. “I will show you everything. You will make a fine memsahib for your man.”

  Tea had been served on the veranda. The bearer was laying out the food items on the glass coffee table. There was an iced chocolate cake, cheese straws and small rolled-up pastries with piped cream inside. He came around and placed a small plate with an organdy napkin and cake fork on the side table next to me.

  Mrs. McIntyre poured a stream of strong, bright tea into the cups, gripping the handle of the teapot with a quilted parrot-shaped holder.

  “That’s a beautiful tea set,” I said, admiring the old-fashioned bone china patterned with primroses.

  “It’s an old Alfred Meakin set belonging to my grandmother,” said Mrs. McIntyre. “Oh, do try some of these.” She held out the plate with the rolled pastries. “Brandy snap, our borchee’s specialty.”

  “Is your borchee a Mung cook?” I asked, taking a small bite of the brandy snap. It was light and gingery, with fresh whipped cream inside, and utterly delicious.

  I knew Mungs were traditional tea-garden cooks. They were Buddhists from Chittagong in East Bengal and came from a proud culinary lineage and specialized in Anglo-Indian cuisine. Their recipes, closely guarded secrets, were handed down from father to son.

  “Oh yes, he is a Mung. He worked in this bungalow since he was a boy. His father worked here before that.”

  Mrs. McIntyre said she knew little about Mung cooks back then. “The old borchee was a true culinary magician. He made the most exquisite wood-smoked hilsa fish with all those wonderful Indian spices and served it whole, after removing every tiny bone.”

  “I wonder how he did that,” I said. Hilsas were delicious river fish, with a rich buttery taste, but a mesh of curved, sharp bones made it impossible for foreigners to enjoy it.

  “I believe he used a muslin cloth to trap the bones like hair. It’s a very ancient technique—only Mungs know how to do that. He taught our borchee, his son, every trick of the trade before he died. It was very strange how he died, too.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s part of their tradition, I believe. They commit suicide because they don’t want to be a burden on their family. The old borchee had become very old and feeble and one day he came to take our leave. He said he was going away. His son would now take over. The way he put it, we thought he was going back to his ancestral home in Chittagong.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  “No. The old man walked himself to death. He was found weeks later by the jungle road. Withered as a leaf. The calloused soles of his feet had fallen off and lay on the ground neatly like sandals. And his body was covered with thousands of butterflies.”

  “Butterflies?”

  “Yes. Ian said a certain species of jungle butterfly feed off the salt on corpses. Ian fought in Burma during the First World War. There were corpses everywhere in the jungle covered with butterflies. Since then, Ian has hated butterflies.”

  The ceiling fan ticked. Daisy sighed.

  I sat there morbidly imagining a creeper-filled jungle full of corpses covered with butterflies and the calloused skin of their feet fall
en off like old sandals. How many miles would it take for a man to walk to his death? I wondered. Ian McIntyre hated butterflies for the same reason I hated lilies—because of their association with death.

  * * *

  The factory siren wailed. It was four-thirty and Manik was home early. He played tennis with Rob on Mondays. It was also social night at the Mariani Planters Club.

  “Debbie is waiting to meet you,” said Manik. He was sprawled on our bed in his underwear, his Bombay bloomers and sweaty workday shirt lumped on the floor. “I can drop you off at the Ashtons on my way to tennis and you can meet us at the club later together. What do you say?”

  I was rifling through the hangers in my cupboard, pulling out saris, wondering what to wear. Yards of silk lay crumpled over the bed like a stormy sea.

  Manik rolled up on his elbows, flipped a swath of silk over a shoulder and sighed breathily. “Look, I am Cleopatra!”

  I ignored him.

  “Wife, you are the big buzz in tea circles—the first Indian memsahib,” said Manik. “News travels quickly by the Jungle Telegraph in these parts.”

  The Jungle Telegraph was an efficient conduit for local gossip. News traveled from garden to garden when memsahibs bumped into one another at the club store, cooks gathered at the local haat or ayahs chatted together at some child’s birthday party. No information was sacrosanct in tea circles. I had little doubt my arrival had been noted.

  “I hate this,” I grumbled. I sat down on the bed feeling irritable and nervous. “I don’t know what to wear. All I want to be is a fly on the wall.”

  I dreaded being the center of attention. I was a curiosity. I dressed and looked different. I knew I would be scrutinized. Manik, on the other hand, fitted in with hardly a ripple. Half the time the Brits even forgot that he was Indian. Nobody changed the topic around him. There were anti-British protests all over the country. It made foreigners uneasy around Indians. They were beginning to feel unwanted. And here I was, a lonely goat standing on the wrong side of the fence.