Many had laughed at their venture believing the valley to be badly sited for tea growing and through which elephants roamed from time to time. It also boasted a rainfall six times that of London. Oh no, their critics smirked, they'll never succeed in growing tea there.
But they did and they prospered.
Their family motto: 'Do try it', was found by Ralph's father scribbled on the wall of a wayside long drop, and he adopted it as his own for the family. Whatever it actually referred to was never disclosed to Ralph. The illustration that accompanied the motto on the wall, seductive though it was, proved physically impossible to those Westerners who ‘did try it’, as it were.
As a young boy, with his parents much involved in setting up the plantation, Ralph had been fairly free to find his own amusements. Now in his late 60s, he smiled, reminiscing on the times he'd spent in the company of his friend, Lavinder, the son of one of the servants. His real name was ‘Ravinder’, but his father couldn't get his tongue round the ‘R’ so Lavinder he became.
Around the age of 10, there was some pressure from his parents to conform more to the social and class distinctions of the tea-growing society around them, however, his warm relationship with Lavinder, remained happy indeed. They'd become more like brothers and maintained their close bond over the years.
At some point, Lavinder's growing man hormones began to make their presence felt, assisted by a young lady who liked the swing of his dhoti. He was looking for a job, and he'd requested Ralph's help to obtain an ‘SAE’ as it was part of the requirements for his application for the position as supervisor of tea pluckers. A similar request to his uncle Pradish had been refused because he said he did not know what an ‘SAE’ was. Lavinder was stuck; in fact he felt himself wedged between an elephant with an ingrowing toe-nail and a water buffalo unable to pass water, so he turned to Ralph to help him navigate the English ways.
“I can't expect much from an uncle the crotch of whose dhoti hangs so disgustingly low to the ground,” he explained to Ralph.
'Tell me what you need and I'll see if I can help you', Ralph encouraged. He already knew what an SAE was, but the novel way Lavinder explained things was always a delight to hear.
Lavinder tweaked his moustache on both sides, bringing tears to his eyes since he hadn't much moustache to tweak. He cleared his throat with several hefty chesty coughs, glanced at a piece of paper in his hand on which the letters SAE were printed large, and began.
“‘S’. First I need to hire a suit. It isn't done to approach the nincompoop in charge of us bloody natives wearing a dirty working dhoti. Then for ‘A’ I need an ‘at, which I have to raise and then hold in front of me with my written request lying on top. See, we damned natives’ have our own eti ketti'.”
Ralph laughed. “And the ‘E’?”
“That's to show I have my ‘E license’, to drive an Elephant, that is,” he said, his eyes sparkling as he waggled his head from side to side.
“Seated up at the steering end an overseer of tea pluckers has an elephant eye’s view of all the tea pluckers. Also keeps them from sneaking away for a crafty brew up, or anything else they may get up to in the bushes. I'll get to keep the contents from an elephant pooper-scooper I've invented too. Should make a little on the side providing manure for the nincompoops’ wives roses. Not too dusty for an upwardly bloody mobile go-ahead native upstart like myself, eh my friend?”
He paused, looking keenly at Ralph.
“So, how about helping me get my SAE sorted, then?”
But Ralph couldn’t contain his laughter any longer; a simple 'self-addressed envelope' didn't seem quite enough somehow...
Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)
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