I agree that TKP archives is not so user friendly. I found the article though it's buried under a ton of new. The link is http://www.kantipuronline.com/nwcollection.php?id=2&pubdate=2005-11-20. I am also posting the whole article, I hope Mr. Karthak or TKP do not view this as a copyright infringement. EXPRESSION --------------------- Darjeeling's tall tea tales - V By PETER J KARTHAK - Life was good in Badamtam Tea Estate because by far the most influential and powerful Nepali in Badamtam was its Manshi (Munshi in Hindi) Babu. In those years, the Manshi Babu was a Subba. The much paan-chewing Manshi Babu had more than a dozen sons and daughters and his bustling company house was called the "barrack" where the kitchen was never allowed to remain cold. His fecund wife, the Manshini Babuni, was a roly-poly bundle of Limbu joy who kept the family together. Among other things in retrospection, the couple were the proud parents of the famous Nepali footballer Benu Kumar Subba who played for the biggest Calcutta clubs and is remembered as a guru to the previous generation of footballers in Bhutan, Sikkim and Kathmandu as well. Typically, the Manshi Babu was the be-all and know-all of the garden. No less than a godfather, he knew the genealogy of all the families in his domain, their birthdays, age, the marriage dates, number of family members, their virtues and vices, education, job descriptions. He was everything to them - their guardian, leader, guide, teacher, philosopher, and arbiter, minister, judge - in fact, the first and the last resort: the alpha, omega and everything in between. He handled the labour force of Badamtam by all the means at his disposal. He explained to them, threatened them, cajoled them, convinced then, reminded them, counselled them, preached to them, praised them and advised them - all in order to get the maximum from them. He amicably settled all types of ethnic disagreements, labour disputes and cultural differences among his wards. By the versatile virtues of his multiple roles, Badamtam never saw a uniformed policeman entering its green world. Internally, I never saw a single case of male drunkenness, wife beating and child abuse nor any woman going around rumouring and gossiping. This was not a mean feat and was an exemplary track record, considering the volatile temperaments of the workers, especially the "raw" Yakha community who entertained no second thoughts in unsheathing their khukuri-s at the slightest provocation or pretext. The Limbu Manshi Babu also saw to it that his people got all their rightful salaries, benefits and facilities deserved by them exactly when they needed. No different from the Gurkha Major Saheb in the British Brigade of Gurkhas or the Subedar Major Saheb in the Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army, the Manshi Babu was the first and the last word in the labour management of the tea estate. Period! Woe be to the British planter - most of them were, in any case, dubbed "kanchha" or "kachcha" sahibs by the Nepali veterans of the tea garden - who failed to pay heed to the Manshi Babu's wise counsels and timely advice and all-important warnings that would govern in no uncertain term the whitey or Gora manager's own outlooks and official decisions. The two British managers' personal attitudes and professional discretions were shaped and moulded by the Manshi Babu. Stray, deviate and show just a faint waywardness, and the manager concerned would pay the right price at the right time for his wrong actions. Such was the fate of a particularly autocratic and stubborn senior British manager who promptly earned the sobriquet of "Khapparay" because his khappar or forehead was neatly cleaved by a tea labourer who used his "khurpa" knife for the artistic carving. This happened when the white manager acted arbitrarily and unilaterally against the male worker, and the latter, in a typical local political form, reacted by denting his pink forehead right above the eye. The scar would remain on the brow of the planter for the rest of his life and no length of hair would help cover the dimple. Ironically, the manager had his second tour of duty in Badamtam, perhaps a sign of disfavour from his bosses in the owning company, and he remained cowed and drunk most of the time in the gulag of his luxurious bungalow. This was a reconfirmation of the spoiled foolhardiness of someone superseding the Manshi Babu's domains, and justly paying for the unprofessional digression. In one sentence, the Manshi Babu was the pivot and pilot of Badamtam Tea Estate, and its workers hinged on him and swivelled around his office which he ran from his crowded and noisy home. In this, I see a classic parallel to a typical Somerset Maugham-like short story of a rubber plantation in Malacca. The veteran senior planter is happy with his settled life of post-breakfast morning inspection of his labour supervisors and coolies, then his laidback afternoon of gin and tonic, lazy lunch and reading the copies of the last fortnight's The Times that arrive in bulk to his port every fifteen days from London. He repairs to the planters' club in the evening, gets shoddily drunk on scotch and soda, has his sumptuous dinner there and retires to his fanned bedroom with his local concubine and repeats the same schedules the next day. Not so is his recently arrived assistant manager, fresh from an English public school, idealistic and full of modern ideas. He has all sorts of progressive strategies and plans for the rubber plantation and its workers, quite in contravention of his senior's proven principles of "let the local sleeping dogs lie" and "don't ruffle the endemic feathers, for goodness sake". The older veteran warns and counsels the younger upstart, but to no avail whatsoever. Back to the gin and The Times, then! As expected, the younger planter is shortly found with his head cleanly chopped off by a Dayak's sharp machete. The Empire's statistics is slightly lessened, by one head, by the untimely demise of one of its own while the experienced planter's status quo ante continues unabated and undisturbed. Ah, but I did say so, didn't I? Back in Badamtam, the Manshi Babu is the wiser one while the Gora manager the fool. But his fate was the worse: He had to make his second appearance in the tea estate, this time with his disfigured skull for all to see. But then, the people had their one and only Manshi Babu who prevented the Bada Sahib from being rendered six inches shorter from a local's khukuri swipe. pjkarthak@yahoo.com