Seasons in the sun

To the former British tea planters of Munnar, recreation was as vital as work and they ensured the latter didn8217;t override the former.Sa...

To the former British tea planters of Munnar, recreation was as vital as work and they ensured the latter didn8217;t override the former.

Saturday evenings saw the planters and their wives zestfully relaxing at the High Range Club. The ladies would be at their interminable bridge and gossip sessions and the men would keep the bartender busy. Merry-making usually extended into the wee hours. A popular pastime was to stop the bar clock before 11 p.m. 8212; when the bar closed 8212; by shying glasses at it! Today the battered clock, its hands stilled, hangs desolately in the bar, a mute reminder of British conviviality and marksmanship!

Interestingly, the New Year8217;s eve dinner and dance introduced by the British planters in the 1920s is still the club8217;s social highlight, with the gents formally attired in dinner-jackets as in the British era.

Recreation was imaginatively varied. The local Hirsute Society held an annual beard-growing competition for the best facial fungus. Judged by a panel of ladies, the criteria were suitability, touchability, kissability and virility 8212; of the beard, of course! There was also a Dramatic Society whose lively skits never failed to lampoon the establishment.

There was plenty of shikar. The keenly contested annual Thorpe Cup shooting competition saw the planters and their ladies blazing away with gusto at clay pigeons at the picturesque Kundale Club. Races and other equestrian sports were popular till the early 1960s. On Saturday evenings spectators thronged Munnar8217;s famed race-course for the weekly gymkhana where punters had a field day, quite literally.

Equally popular was military training in the Southern Provinces Mounted Regiment headquartered in Munnar 8212; an auxiliary band of local planters founded in 1910 to reinforce the regular British army. In fact, several planters saw active service in the two World Wars, some making the supreme sacrifice. A cenotaph commemorating them can still be seen.

Another diversion was Freemasonry. Started in 1902, Lodge Heather is still active, functioning from the same premises used by its founders. A prized relic is its 102-year-old banner.

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Golf was a passion. In the High Range Club gleaming brass plaques list the names of the winners and runners-up in various tournaments right from the 1930s. And in 1940 the British planters launched the popular Finlay Shield Inter-Estate Football Tournament. Today, six decades later, it whips up as much frenzy as it did then. Some British legacies never fade away.