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Journalism of Courage
Indispensable to the tea planter, the motorcycle has convincingly proved its utility ever since the pioneer British planters introduced it to Munnar8217;s tea estates in the early 1900s. Today it is the tea planter8217;s mainstay, ferrying him to every nook and corner of his sprawling estate and thereby facilitating supervision.
The other day I came across a 1911 photograph of a Munnar planter sitting astride one of the earliest motorcycles 8212; an austere-looking, springless contraption with a hard leather seat that must have wreaked havoc on even a well-upholstered posterior, given those bumpy and pot-holed estate roads!
Over the years the motorcycle has faithfully borne tea planters through thick and thin. Once a mounted planter, an ardent conservationist, resolutely pursued a fleeing poacher 8212; only to land up, bike and all, in one of the latter8217;s carefully concealed pits meant to trap wild pigs! Fortunately, he sustained only a badly bruised ego. Another motorcycle-borne planter all but drove into a wild tusker while going round his estate. Abandoning his bike, he fled 8212; only to discover later that the pachyderm had worked off its ire by punching a six-inch hole through the petrol tank.
More recently a young planter had an equally terrifying experience when he surprised a herd of elephants on a sharp bend. When his hastily grounded two-wheeler was recovered, it was found to be far from roadworthy, having been mauled into a mass of mangled metal!
Undoubtedly, the pioneer planters must have had equally scary brushes. But they never could have dreamt that a century later, female tea planters would manage the estates they had opened, zipping around on motorcycles as effortlessly as their male counterparts and facing the same hazards. Yes, another male-dominated bastion has fallen. Motorcycle-borne ladies now independently manage tea estates in Munnar 8212; a trend that started in the mid-nineties and continues.
However, while the male planter may be replaceable, the motorcycle certainly is not. An undoubted boon, it has proved its worth and become a permanent fixture in the working life of a tea planter. As one of them aptly observed, 8220;It8217;s in fact an extension of my legs!8221;
