0 Bhagawathi Tea Estate

I got permission from my Dad to go on a business (actually a service trip) with two uncles and a service engineer to rectify a nagging problem in a weighbridge supplied by our company, EFGE Load Cells to Bhagawathi Tea Estates, Wynad, Kerala. EFGE is pronounced FG, which means ‘foil gauge’, a delicate little strain sensor.

We left Bangalore in our HM Ambassador Mark III by 6 30 pm heading towards Mysore. On the outskirts my uncles picked up few beer bottles. After a while, one of my uncles, handed me an open bottle and asked me to have. What?? I was like… Anyway, I tasted the cold beer and liked it. I went real slow. I enjoyed my first bottle of beer. We broke our journey at Mysore and decided to continue the next morning.

The next morning, we had dosa for breakfast at a real tiny place in the narrow streets of old Mysore city. The dosa just melted the moment it landed on my tongue. This is the most memorable dosa I ever tasted. We got with our journey… Gundlupet, Sultan Battery… and we reached Wynad some time afternoon. The weather there was hot and humid… typical for a tea estate. I guess we did not work much, may be just a cursory check of the weighbridge. That night we had wine, and I had some and liked the taste. The color was wonderful and taste was excellent. As it is, grape juice was one of my favorite. We had a good dinner and peaceful sleep in the silent hills.

We started the new day with typical Kerala style tea served in glasses and after a while was Kerala breakfast. I think it was ‘Pattu’ with Bengal gram and 'Appam'. Every morning our guest house cooks served us different dishes of Kerala. Real expert cooks they were. For me it was more of a holiday… while my uncles were trying to sort out the weigh bridge problem. I walked around the estate through the tea shrubs, up and down the slopes. From one point I looked down towards our guest house and then to its left further down the hill, a little stream flowed in the valley with little houses next to it, children played around while the women washed clothes in the stream. Typical story book scene it was.

This is where I first saw tea leaf picking. It was a women’s job, they carried huge woven cane baskets on their backs and dropped leaves into them as they chose and picked the leaves from the shrubs. Once the baskets were filled, they carried them down to the factory area where the leaves and weighed and wages paid accordingly. One of the days, the factory manager showed us around the plant. It was interesting to see how raw leaves were washed, dried, dehumidified and turned into dust and then graded and packed. The place was full of managers… AM, DM, EM, FM, GM, etc. I can recall few; Accounts, Deputy, Estate, Factory and General.

Not sure if it was the second or third evening at the estate; we were invited to the GM’s bungalow for drinks. Whisky was offered and I declined it, I was not sure if I could handle it. The GM was an ex-army person and cordial to us. I think, the same evening, my uncles decided to go to a nearby town to fetch drinks and on the way back a big stone hit the underside of our Ambassador damaging the oil sump. Back at the guest house, the booze session was little wild with one of the uncles in real high spirits.

Work on the weigh bridge was going nowhere and the managers were getting impatient with us. After several rounds of discussions over phone with my Dad, it was decided that we head back home, leaving the job incomplete. Somehow nothing was going well… no progress on work, bad remarks from the customer and a damaged car. Our journey back home was a real drag; because of low oil pressure the engine was damaged and we drove real slow... litreally limped back.

If not for anything else, this trip introduced me to the world of booze. I had the confidence to handle it while most of friends had not even touched it. Now, I'm a teetotaler.

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Detail: Bhagawathi Tea Estate

0 to Kerala on Business

some time March 1992

Dad, Praveen, Padma Prasad, a marketing personnel from Epoch Instruments and I set off on a business tour. Our destinations were Grasim Industries, Mavoor near Kannur and FACT, Trivandrum. This was the very first trip in our van. The van was loaded; 5 adults + bags + an electronic weighing scale (which itself weighed around 80kg).

We left early morning, towards Mysore and we were at Prasad's brother's house at Kalpetta by noon. We had lunch there and proceeded towards Calicut. On the way we stopped by at Prasad's in-law's house which is deep inside a tea estate. The path to the house from the main road was few kilometers of narrow winding roads through hills covered by jungle.

We were introduced to other members of the family and shown through the house ...a typical Kerala style wooden house. The pooja room was a special one, the most unique I had ever seen. The room had mirrors on all four walls and the ceiling. An idol of Mahaveera stood in the center. The room had a multi-color illumination system; white, pink, red, yellow and blue. Different color lights and their combination created illusions of different times of a day. We all settled down on the floor and our host turned off lights and it was dark inside. Then one little bulb gave an effect of dawn and we progressed through all parts of a day till dusk and then darkness again. Moon-light was also a part of the show. It was creative and I loved the idea. Next our host showed us around the garden full of spices' plants ...cardamom, cloves, pepper, and many more I cannot recall. Our host served us spiced tea. We had to move on.

We touched Calicut and then took the road to Mavoor. We were at the factory gates by 4 PM. Got in touch with the concerned officers, went through the routine formalities of material delivery and soon we were at the spot where the scale was supposed to be installed. Some minor modifications were to be done in the roller conveyor system so that scales top and the conveyor top would be in line. It was planned to be taken up the following day. Praveen had to stay back (the guest house was right next to the factory) and get the work done while we decided to travel to Cochin.

We had dinner at a typical Kerala style restaurant, it was wonderful. Prasad suggested we move on since journeys on Kerala roads can be pretty slow at day time, the same journey would take twice the time and twice as tiring because of the coastal humid weather. Prasad also suggested we visit Guruvayoor Krishna temple which was on our route.

The temple as I remember looked pretty ancient and mostly black colored wood with sloping surfaces. The inside was lit with oil lamps and crowded with men in panchi and women in white sarees with golden borders. It was very warm inside. There were a couple of elephants and the drums were booming loudly. The pooja was a wonderful sight indeed.

We moved on and finally reached Cochin around 3 AM, we found a hotel and checked in. Morning we visited FACT factory to discuss check weighing system for their packing machine. The plant was pretty clean and well maintained. We studied the packing machine and it's conveyor system- that's where our scale would fit in. Later we had discussions regarding specifications and features which went on till about 2 or 3. Our work for the day was done, we had get back to FACT with our quote for developing the system, which could be done from Bangalore. Later we visited Prasad's brother's home and went back to our hotel.

Next we had to visit one of my mother's cousins S R Desai, a commander in the Indian Navy who was posted in Cochin Naval Base. We all had dinner at the Navy mess which is right next to back waters. We could see fishermen in small boats going about their work in silence. I remember having a veg sizzler. My aunt had invited us for breakfast the next morning. We had to climb 8 floors since the lift was out of order. The flat had a lovely view of the sea.

Soon we were heading back towards Coimbatore, Dad wanted to visit ACC, Madukkarai one of our customers. At Coimbatore Prasad and his colleague went to Bangalore. At ACC, our work was again at the packing section. Dad had discussions with the concerned officer about the check-weighing system we had supplied but was not functioning as expected. The instrumentation part required reprogramming. We returned to Mavoor by evening and work had progressed but not completed.

Following day the scale was in place and working. We trained the workers in operating it, all they had to learn was to tare it ...make the display zero by turning a knob. The customer was satisfied and our next task was to follow up payment. The invoice and other necessary papers were submitted to the purchase department and it would take 4 or days for the check to be realized.

During the two day stay at the guest house Praveen and I would come out evenings to watch fishes in the garden pond. Some fishes were almost 8 inches long. It so happened one of us threw a blade of grass into the water and a fish swallowed it ...this was something new to us- grass eating fish! We starting feeding them and the fishes had a party. In the beginning we would pluck only the tips, about an inch long, and later we discovered they swallowed even bigger ones. We had a great time together.

Praveen, Dad and I traveled back to Bangalore. Few years later, there was a major strike and the plant was shut down.

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Detail: to Kerala on Business

0 Trip to Kerala during Dasara vacations

During this trip we spent more time traveling then sight-seeing. Anyway, day-journeys through Kerala are as good as sight-seeing on the move. Everything in sight is great to look at... curvy roads through hills, tiled houses, cashew trees, paddy fields, streams, the landscape is just green.

One evening October 1994, our journey from Bangalore. I think the private travels took us till Kannur from where we caught a bus to Thekkadi. The journey dragged on and on... after passing Munnar, we sang noisily for sometime and we could see that some of the local passengers were annoyed at our singing. As we neared Thekkadi, it was raining. Another 2 kilometers to go our driver trying to overtake another bus in those narrow jungle roads, runs off road and our bus is stuck. It was stuck fast, our efforts to push it out went waste. We walked up to the lodge in the rain. Exhausted, I just had dinner and hit the sack.


Next morning, we went for a boat ride in the Thekkadi Lake. The place was swarming with holiday makers like us. Most people come with hopes of seeing tigers, elephants and other wild life. We were not so lucky... a herd of elephants on the lake bank, a wild boar and I think few deers, that's it. Of course we saw ducks and some lonely water birds.

Our next destination was Kanyakumari. Thekkady to Chenganacherri by bus. Chenganacherri to KanyaKumari by train. I think we reached KK late, checked into a cheap lodge and crashed into the bed. Early morning we went to Vivekananda Rock. The place is magical. We spent about an hour on the rock, seeing the meditation hall.

Our next destination was Kovalam Beach. I think we traveled by bus to Trivandrum. Checked into a hotel close to the railway station. Srinivasamurty, the co-planner had booked train tickets and the status: Waiting List some three digit number. We spent time looking around the city and then spent an evening at Kovalam Beach. I was not impressed... black and grey fine sand. We had a good lunch... I enjoyed fish and rice.




_____, Ayesh, Jayanth, Aravind, _____, Venkatesh, Srinivasamurty and that's Rajesh sitting.

Now comes the most memorable part... I'll call it unforgettable part, of our trip. Our tickets were still in waiting list which meant we had to travel in the unreserved bogie which meant no chance of sleeping. We went to the railway station, it was crowded. Our train was no less... looked as thought everybody in the station were traveling to Bangalore. We got into the second class bogies and managed to get seats. At Cochin, the ticket collector chased us out... to the unreserved bogie. Oh man, it was jam packed! We hardly had place to put both feet on the floor. At times I stood on one foot and my arms up. I had never experienced anything like this before. We traveled standing, the entire night. Somewhere near Bangalore, I got a chance to sit the doorway for an hour or so. The nine of us took turns.

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Detail: Trip to Kerala during Dasara vacations