Ralph
Pennington-Forbes believed himself to be a well-balanced person. Some
would smile at that. To put it plainly, he was a Burgher, born of
English-speaking descendants of early Portuguese and Dutch people who
settled in Ceylon, as it was called then. His parents had purchased a
small valley close to Adam's Peak, clearing the land a little at a time
and planting tea, when, at the time, a disease threatened to wipe out
the coffee plants in the area.
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)
