After my short stint at Head Office, and after having completed my orientation course, I was posted to Rydak Tea Estate. I was handed over an air ticket and boarded the flight to Bagdogra on the 3rd of January 1975. The company car dropped me to the airport and after checking in I boarded the plane on my maiden flight. This itself was a great experience. As I sat in the aircraft I thanked God for the opportunity that He had provided to me and for the number of first experiences that I was to face in life.
The Indian Air Airlines Fokker Friendship aircraft landed at Bagdogra Airport at 12.30 P.M. and here I was, ready to take on life confidently. I collected my bags and entered the waiting area to look for someone from Rydak Tea Estate who was supposed to meet me. I looked around asked a few people if they were from Rydak, but each time I would get a negative reply. Slowly doubts started creeping in whether someone would come to meet me or not. I decided to wait for sixty minutes and then I would venture out on my own to get to the estate. I planned on two options that were available for travel. The first one would be to take a taxi to the estate. I started scouting around for taxis but not a single taxi driver wants to go to Rydak as it is 180 km away from the airport. Later I get to know the real reason they don’t want to go is because they will have to travel on a dirt road for 40 km through a thick forest. I now have to pursue my second option and that is to get to Gangaram Tea Estate, a Duncan Brothers property, where my sister’s brother-in-law is the Estate Manager. This now seems to be the better option as the taxi drivers are willing to go there and it is just 5 km from the airport. While I am negotiating and bargaining with the taxi drivers, I see a cream color Ambassador car whiz past me at great speed and come to a halt in the parking. My heart tells me that this car is for me and so I go out to meet the driver of the car hoping for the best.
I see a young well built stocky man in shorts get out of the car and go inside the airport building in a rush. By now the airport is closing down for the day as the last flight for the day has just departed. I follow him and finally catch up with him and ask if he is from Rydak Tea Estate. He breaks out with a large grin greatly relieved that he has found me. He welcomes me, apologizes for the delay and introduces himself as Sarosh Rustomfram, an Assistant Manager of Rydak Tea Estate. I get my bags and load them into the car before we leave the airport premises. He then asks me what I would have done if he had not turned up. I share with him my two options and tell him that since the first option did not work out I was planning to go with the second option. He then tells me let’s go to that estate and meet them as it is very close. I tell him that it is not necessary to go there, but he insists and the next thing that I see is the sign board of Gungaram Tea Garden and we leave the main road and follow the road directions to the Manager’s bungalow. We are fondly greeted and welcomed by Raja and Padma Azariah ( my sister’s brother-in-law). Later I get to know that they had met Rustom at the club on the weekend and had requested him to bring me to their house when I arrived. After a high tea with Anda Bhujia (Indian egg scramble) and Paratha (a stuffed flat bread) we leave for Rydak at six in the evening.
On the drive to Rydak, we got talking and Rustom started telling me the bare facts of a planter’s life on the tea estate. At that point of time I thought that he was making it up and was trying to scare me, but later on I realized that he was speaking the truth. His one piece of advice to me was that in the tea planting community one must never refuse the food offered and whenever someone visits you in the bungalow you offer him whatever you have to eat, no matter what time of the day or night.
We drove nonstop for five hours and he kept telling me about the road conditions, the forests, the wild life in the forests, the workers of the estates, the club life on the plantations etc., etc. We were traveling on the highway and it was pitch dark with the fog setting in and getting heavier as we travelled along. Suddenly, he took a sharp turn to the right and announced that we were now entering the Buxa Tiger Reserve. After a few kilometers of driving through the forests we hit the dirt road. It was more of a dry river bed than a road. We had to negotiate not only small streams, but boulders and sand. Lucky for me he was a good driver. There was not a soul on the road and at that point in the thick forest all the scrub jungle had the shape of an elephant or a bison.
Bungalow Number 13, Rydak Tea Estate
We finally entered Rydak Tea Estate at eleven at night. We drove straight to Bungalow Number 13 where I would be staying. As I entered the bungalow there was a big reception party waiting for me. What I noticed was that all of the gents were in shorts on a cold winter night with the fire place ablaze. I was introduced to Prem Singh (my Senior Assistant Manager), Charanjeet Mohan (the Factory Assistant Manager) and a fellow planter Bobby Grewal and his wife Raj from Jainti which was a neighboring tea estate. They were all waiting for us to have dinner together. Everyone asked me a lot of questions which I answered one by one. I was told that I would be staying in Number13 Bungalow and would be sharing the bungalow with Charanjeet Mohan and Rustom for three weeks. Rustom would be moving out because he had been transferred to Kopati Tea Estate and Charanjeet would move on to the Number 7 Bungalow when it was vacated by the Factory Engineer who had recently resigned. The group tried to tease me and scare me about the ghosts living in the bungalow, but being a young man, I told them that I was not afraid of ghosts and am ready to take on life as it comes.
After a good dinner Prem, Bobby, and Raj left and the three of us retired to our rooms. I was earlier told that I must be in office at six am the next morning and I would be introduced to the Estate Manager who would tell me my responsibilities at the estate and also give me practical training on the job. I slept like a log that night and only got up with a start on the sound of a siren coming into my bedroom.