It was certainly no bed of roses for the British pioneers who manned the fledgling tea estates of Munnar in the early 1900s. Life was unrelentingly tough and totally devoid of today’s conveniences.There was hardly any electricity, no telephones, radios or even gramophones in the remote estates. Mail from the UK arrived just once a month. The only newspaper to reach the planters was the Madras Mail, often a week late. Magazines from the UK were treasured and meticulously circulated among the expatriates. Interestingly, this was the origin of the local planters’ circulating library which still continues.Innovation was the order of the day. In the absence of refrigeration, fish was brought live from the plains, swimming around in large earthen pots. For want of polish, beeswax was used: smeared on felt pads attached to his feet, a domestic help ‘waltzed’ up and down inelegantly and the wooden floors shone!Preparing for a dinner party, a newly-recruited worker took innovation a step further. Hoping to please the lady of the house and not finding a better receptacle, he filled her chamber-pot with flowers and placed it prominently in the sitting room! Fortunately, the horrified woman discovered the gaffe before her guests arrived.Lavatories were quite primitive. One wife lamented pointedly, “The sweeper often knows the state of your bowels!” Beds were uncomfortably lumpy and often an assembly of tea chests doubled as a cot. Hot water for a bath came in large tin cans reeking of kerosene and smoke. Leaking roofs were all too common. Once, while entertaining a dignified clergyman from England, a planter’s wife was acutely embarrassed to find a persistent trickle seeping through the boards of the ceiling, just near the guest’s chair. “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed apologetically, “I’m afraid it’s that civet cat on the roof.”Her impudent 8-year-old daughter disagreed. “Civet cat!” she sneered saucily, “From the time it’s been going on, it looks more like an elephant!”In spite of himself, the clergyman guffawed.Then during the devastating floods of 1924 a group of planters found themselves stranded on a hillock with the flood waters rising alarmingly around them. In a rescue bid, an enterprising colleague fastened a fishing line to a golf ball and drove it across the raging river towards them. Using the fishing line, the stranded group painstakingly hauled over lengths of rope and other accessories to rig up a bridge of sorts and cross over to safety — a classic example of improvisation, and courage, in the face of danger.
