some awkwardness between you two. I do apologize.
Now to answer your very valid questions. I am actually very glad you asked. Most people are itching to know, but dread the answers. It is as if I contracted some terrible disease and they fear the prognosis.
To get back to the point, yes, I gave up the civil-service job. Why? Because Layla Roy did not want to marry a government officer! Of course I am joking! The simple reason is the government job looked bureaucratic and boring. In a single word: soulless.
I actually applied to Jardine Henley on a whim, curious to see what the tea job was all about. An English friend of mine in Calcutta told me that Sterling Tea Companies were opening up managerial positions for the first time to Indians. I went for the interview and to my surprise I was offered the Assistant Manager job in Aynakhal Tea Estate. The Assistant Manager position is the lowliest rung of the managerial ladder.
They asked me some very strange questions at the interview. The first one was, if I had plans to get married in the next three years. I don’t think I even batted an eye when I answered, “No.” Many people would call me a blatant liar. Suddenly it was clear as day—I was not ready to get married. I saw this job as my survival. I need to buy some time to think things through more clearly.
The rest of my interview was equally odd. The Directors showed little interest in my academic achievements. They were excited to learn I played tennis and rugby. They asked if I liked to hunt, fish or play bridge. It felt more like an interview for a country club. Then came two of the strangest questions of all: Do you drink, and are you a vegetarian?
I answered “occasionally” to the first and “no” to the second. I later found that drinking is high on their list of credentials and being a vegetarian, an immediate disqualification. I figure what they really want to know is if I have the Westernized mind-set to fit into the tea culture. Everything else about the job can be taught.
Now that I am here, I understand this much better. Tea life is still very colonial. Social clubs, hunting, sporting events, formal dinner parties and so on. It is a whole different lifestyle, and I can see why most Indians would have a hard time adjusting.
But I digress: I don’t want to sound like I am avoiding your questions. So back to your very stern interrogation. (Your questions make me far more nervous than theirs....)
Yes, I gave up the government job. My family still acts like I committed murder. They are shocked and enraged beyond belief. I have not written to anyone or been home since I telegrammed them. I am waiting for the dust to settle before I face the firing squad—not something I am looking forward to.
Question number two, albeit a more delicate one regarding Kona. Yes, she is upset. Her family is upset. The whole world is upset. I have not written or seen them, either. Kona’s father had not bargained for his daughter marrying a junior tea planter and living in obscurity in the jungles. She was groomed for a cushy life in the city.
Everyone thinks I am throwing my future away, but strangely I have no regrets. I am happier now than I have ever been in my life. I think it is the freedom to choose that I love the best.
I hope you will not think less of me for making what many may consider a poor decision. Sometimes there are reasons only the heart understands.
Yours truly,
Manik
Any sensible person would agree that throwing away the civil-service job was nothing short of impaired judgment on Manik’s part. What was more disconcerting, Manik had accepted the tea job “on a whim” without having a clue of what it entailed. As for signing the contract agreeing not to get married for three years...three years! Did he expect Kona to wait for him? I could sympathize with Manik when he said he felt he was being pressured into marriage and understand him needing more time to think, but his whole handling of the situation with the families was nothing short of dishonorable. I could never imagine Dadamoshai, for one, doing something so cowardly. But I found myself dismissing his shortcomings for my own selfish reason: receiving his letters made me so deliriously happy, nothing else really mattered.
CHAPTER 11
Manik and I continued to exchange letters over the next several months. The weather ceased to matter and I had only two kinds of days. Good Days and Waiting Days. April arrived and a subdued dhola drumbeat pulsed through the bamboo grooves. It was Rangoli Bihu, the spring harvest festival—the most joyous time in Assam, typically celebrated with a whole week of reveling and feasting. But that year the festivities were low-key because a thread of tension was running through our town.
In a surprise move, the Japanese Imperial Army had infiltrated India through Assam. They inched past the sawtooth mountains into Manipur and headed straight for the small Naga town of Dimapur, just northeast of Silchar. The invasion came on the heels of Britain’s crushing defeat in Singapore and its faltering hold on other colonies around the globe. It was a tactical move by the Japanese to overthrow the British in India. Dimapur was the hub of the Assam-Bengal railway, the only lifeline of food and military supplies for British troops stationed in Burma. If the Japanese captured Dimapur it would have devastating consequences for British troops and the British Empire and most likely tip the balance of power.
Suddenly Assam was no longer inviolable. The lights in Dadamoshai’s house stayed on all night as community leaders gathered on our veranda to discuss the Japanese situation. It was 2:00 a.m. and cups of tea remained untouched, dark rings forming on the inside rim. I sat quietly hidden in the shadows of the jasmine trellis, listening to the elders talk.
“New regiments have been deployed from South India,” said Amrat Singh, the Police Chief. He was an imposing man with a fine turban and beard, who still looked dapper at that unearthly hour. “The convoys are traveling night and day. But it will still take another ten days to reach Guahati. Meanwhile, the Japanese are advancing fast. Three divisions are marching toward Assam—over 80,000 Japanese soldiers, I am told.”
“I hear they have already blocked off the road between Kohima and Dimapur—is that true?” asked Dadamoshai. The crease lines on his forehead had deepened. He suddenly looked very old.
“So I hear,” Amrat Singh said. “We get news of the Japanese movements from a guerrilla force patrolling the Naga Hills. They keep the generals updated on the enemy’s advance.”
“The Naga Hills! That is the most treacherous jungle,” exclaimed Dadamoshai. “I can’t imagine British soldiers surviving those grueling conditions.”
“They are being assisted by the Nagas,” said the Forest Officer. “The Nagas, as you can imagine, are the only people capable of navigating that mountainous terrain. Also being a strong and hardy people, they run up and down as stretcher bearers. The soldiers are cutting their way through using machetes and taking extra doses of Benzedrine to stay awake. Grueling, as you say.”
I sat in the dark trying to imagine the British soldiers holed up in the rainy jungles with the Naga headhunters. I hoped to God they had ample food. The Nagas were known to be cannibals. They were a ferocious tribe who wore bushy loincloths and embellished their shields and earrings with the hair and bones of slain enemies. But the Nagas were also known to be an intensely loyal and moral people and they hated the “Japani.”
“Hundreds of Nagas have also joined the regular British Army in Kohima. People are coming together from all walks of life to stop the Japanese invasion. Even the tea planters—many planters have left their gardens to join the regiments.”
“Tea planters!” I exclaimed,
