Fragrance

By Gopal Annamalai

This is a story and experiences of a Malaysian estate boy in the sixties. The first half of the book describes his life in the estate. After school he leaves for India and ends up in a small gold mining town in Southern India where he falls in love with a girl. The second half of the book is devoted to his early love life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Mar 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781742843995

Gopal Annamalai

The author was a secondary school science teacher who later studied law and is currently practicing law. He has taken great care to ensure that the language is simple and can be understood by anyone who has minimum knowledge of the English.

Book preview

FRAGRANCE OF YOUTH

Chapter 1

EARLY LIFE ON YAM SENG ESTATE

I was born in the tin rich state of Perak, on 15th August 1947, the day India got independence from the British. It was an auspicious day for all Indians. India had been under the British rule for more than 300 years before the non-violent independence struggle under Gandhi finally bore fruit.

My grandfather, Sinnanan, and my grandmother were brought to Malaya by the British to work on the rubber plantation. Life on the estate was tough and they worked hard every day without any day of rest except for Deepavali, Thaipusam and Ponggal festivals. My grandparents were Tamilians. The Tamilians of Malaya had their roots in India and were highly patriotic to India then.

They cleared the forest for the planting of rubber trees and had to contend with wild animals including tigers, elephants and snakes. Their drinking water came from rivers, and there were no toilets in the early days. Nearby bushes were their toilets. Malaria was rampant and many Indians succumbed to this deadly disease transmitted by mosquitoes which were everywhere in the estate environment. Flies and bed bugs were other nuisances, and they brought their own diseases too.

My mother was a Tamil woman, but unlike most Tamil women from South India was a very fair-skinned lady. My father on the other hand was dark skinned. Both my parents were born in Tamil Nadu in India. My father started life as a tapper in an estate called Yam Seng Estate, Perak. I was told that the estate manager, Mr Royce Bromley, liked my father and made him the postal delivery boy. His job was to cycle to the town of Taiping, about 15km away and collect letters and parcels for the manager and the workers in the estate. The manager later made my father his cook’s assistant. Soon he learned to cook well and he was made the chief cook.

My mother lived with her family in the town of Kamunting, Perak. Her family was related to my father’s family, and he fell in love with my mother who was considered a beautiful lady. My mother’s brothers, were not in favour of my father because he drank too much and was known to be a womaniser. He made many visits to Kamunting to convince my uncles that he had changed and would be an exemplary husband. Finally, my uncles relented and allowed my father to marry my mother. He took her with him to stay in the quarters of the estate manager’s bungalow. My father did not live in the quarters with the other tappers because he worked for the manager.

My mother conceived five children but one perished in the womb itself. I am number three. My brother Nagalingam is the eldest. He is fifteen years older than me. Next came Perumal, who is ten years older than me. My sister, Valli, is 4 years younger than me

I was very scared of my eldest brother because he was a strict disciplinarian but Perumal was more gentle and friendly. Perumal was the best-looking with the fair skin that he got from mum while the rest of us are dark.

My brothers started working as full time tappers when they became teenagers and they brought home extra money which was handed to my father.

My mother and the wife of the manager, Meriam, became good friends. On the recommendation of Meriam, my mother was given the job of cleaning the manager’s bungalow. Her job involved sweeping, making the beds, and washing the toilet. I still remember my mother wearing a white blouse and a white sarong, while my father wore a white Nehru cap, singlet and white shorts.

My father had a licence for a hunting gun, and sometimes he would shoot ducks that flew by the bungalow in the evening during the migratory period. My father was good with his gun. He used what were known as ‘bug shot pellets to bring down the ducks. He had a hunting dog that retrieved the shot birds that fell over the jungle around the bungalow.

During the fruit season there were thousands of flying foxes in the evening sky so we were never short of meat on the table. The flying fox had a strange odour which we could still smell even when it had been cooked with a heavy dose of spices. But the meat tasted good when it was cooked in curry or dry fried in spices.

In the weekends my father and some estate workers would go hunting for wild boars with our dog and they never returned empty-handed. My father would tell us how he hunted. He told us that he would climb a tree and wait quietly for the wild boars to appear. Wild boars loved rubber seeds and when they appeared, my father would light the torch light fixed to his gun. This would blind the wild boars for a moment and he would pull the trigger.

After the hunt, my father was given the best part of the wild boar since he owned the gun. At that time, owning a gun was a status symbol. My father got the gun through the help of the manager.

The rest of the meat was shared with the other estate workers who accompanied my father in the hunt. Some meat was reserved for the successful hunting party. It was cooked and the meat was washed down with toddy, an alcoholic drink obtained from coconut palms. There was a lot of singing and dancing on the estate during the after-hunting party and many of the other tappers – whom I called my ‘uncles’ – would join in.

My father once told us that he nearly shot a tiger by mistake. He was seated on a branch and it was pitch dark. He heard the sound of crackling dried leaves and presumed the animal to be a wild boar. He switched on his torch and was about to pull the trigger but, to his great surprise, it was not a wild boar but a full grown tiger staring at the light. He immediately switched off the torch and sat there still as a statue until the tiger left.

Hunters stayed away from shooting tigers because wounded tigers can be very dangerous, especially when they cannot hunt anymore and they tend to wander close to the estate looking for goats, cows and even human for prey. People also believed that tigers were the incarnation of gods and would put an evil curse on the hunters if they were shot.

Chapter 2

THE LIFE OF A TAPPER

The estate management deliberately built their labourers’ quarters deep in the plantation so that workers seldom ventured out. The estate was everything for the workers, and they got very little news from outside. Outsiders had to obtain special permission to enter estates. A few traders came to the estate with their goods like sleeping mats, cheap textiles, jewellery and other household things.

Few of the children in the estate went to school because it was thought to be a waste of time. If the children were too young to help in the tapping, they were sent to the estate nursery and the older kids followed their tapper parents to clean the rubber cups that were fastened to the rubber trees. Children learned about tapping at a very early stage of life. The management did not encourage schooling for fear of losing potential tappers. Educated tappers could be a problem to the management because they may join the union and seek better working conditions. It was beneficial to keep the workers ignorant of their rights. Tappers’ children who got education generally moved out of the estate to look for higher education or better jobs elsewhere.

Tappers had to attend roll call at six in the morning and after the roll has been called, they straddle their Kanda stick across their shoulders with the metal pails dangling from both ends of it. They hang their tapping knives on the belt around their waist and walk to their respective patches of rubber trees. A tapper was given about three hundred and fifty rubber trees to tap in a day.

They start their work by placing their pails, kanda stick and lunch pack at a centralised spot then begin tapping. The first step was to remove the band of rubber which had dried from the previous tapping and clean the porcelain cup attached by a metal wire to each tree trunk. The dried latex, known as the scrap latex, was collected in another metal screen bag. Tapping involves the removal of a thin layer of bark from the trunk of the tree, using special tapping knives which were very sharp. Once the bark is removed, latex starts oozing out from the cut area and flows into the porcelain collection cup.

After all the trees have been tapped, the tapper takes a break and has his lunch while the latex collects in the cups. After about an hour, he takes his pail and goes from tree to tree to remove the cup from its hanger, then he pours the latex into the pail. Once the first pail is full he begins to fill the second pail.

Once all the latex in the cups has been emptied into the pails, he connects the pails to his Kanda, straddles it across his shoulder and walks to the latex collection centre. At the centre, the latex is emptied into a tanker, after its volume and its specific gravity have been recorded. The scrap rubber is also weighed and the weight recorded. The latex is taken to the factory where it is coagulated and processed into rubber sheets.

The male tapper goes home, while the female tapper goes to the nursery if she has a baby to fetch. They take a break and if there is any work such as pruning of trees or poisoning of weeds, the tappers return to the field to earn this additional income. Once such field works are over they return home to sharpen their tapping knives with a flint stone. It will take at least half an hour.

Some male workers would go hunting small animals with their dogs while some others went fishing .The toddy drinkers ran to the nearby toddy shop for their daily intake of alcohol. People from outside bring the toddy into the estate and sell it to the workers. Food to go along with the toddy is sold around the toddy shop. Very often the drunk tappers get into quarrels and fights in which some of them sometimes got injured. Late in the evening they returned to their homes for more arguments and fights, this time with their spouses.

Sometimes I accompanied my father on his bicycle to the toddy shop. He would bring along his ‘kualey’ which is a kind of glazed metal container which could hold a litre of toddy. After buying his ‘kualey’ of toddy, my father would buy food like boiled tapioca, muruku ( a crunchy flour fry), wild boar meat curry, tosai and itali to go along with the toddy. Tosai and itali are common Indian breakfast items. My father would share the food with me. For a five year old boy, as I was then, it could be a fruitful outing.

My father would get drunk and light up a cigar. The return bicycle rides could be scary, as my father would wobble around and find it hard to control the bike. I would be precariously seated at the back and there were times he fell and I was thrown into the watery ditches along the side of the gravel roads. Sometimes we both suffered from bruises and I would cry. He would calm me down with some coins and warn me never to mention the accident to mum. My mum would invariably find out anyway, especially when she bathes me. My father would get a scolding from mum who was very protective of me and my sister. These were the only occasions my mum blew her top.

Soon the night would descend and the sounds of various insects, frogs and nocturnal birds could be heard. There was no electricity in the early days, and the tappers used kerosene or coconut oil lamps to light up the house. The house consisted of the kitchen area and a small hall. There were no partitions, and a small fire using twigs was lit for smoke to keep the mosquitoes away. After dinner everyone went to bed. Early in the morning the estate messenger would announce the arrival of the morning with a bang on his gong and all the tappers would get up to go for the roll call and the daily cycle would be repeated.

Chapter 3

LIFE IN THE WHITE MAN’s BUNGALOW

We were highly respected on the estate simply because we stayed in the manager’s bungalow and my father could always put in a good or bad word about a worker. Thus he could make a life miserable or pleasant, but he never hurt anyone except my mum whom he bullied often. However, he was responsible as he made sure we got our basic needs like food and clothes and occasional treat of visits to my uncles’ house in Kamunting, mostly to please my mum. Even those visits are marred when my father got drunk, though he is bearable when he is sober.

My father, in his white Nehru collar coat, white Nehru cap and long white pants made an impressive figure. He also had one gold incisor tooth which made him distinct from other Indians. Gold teeth were a status symbol in those days, and could also be an investment too. If the tooth became rotten and had to be extracted then the gold was separated and sold for a price.

My mum reared some chicken behind our quarters and the mother hen had her own brood of newly hatched chicks. I loved chasing the chicks and the mother hen would attack me to stop my act. I irritated the mother hen a lot, but she was not too harsh with me and my mum would shoo her off whenever she was too threatening. But the mother hen never harmed me. Maybe she knew I was just young like her own chicks.

Every day the eagles would appear and fly like gliders in the blue sky. At that time the mother hen would go into alarm mode