Photo. School boys.
© Joe Gill.
In small towns speakers agitate on street corners, calling for the plantation
workers to down tools. My taxi driver Harry says they are calling for a
stike.
I sit in the back of Harry's new white Ambassador on
a rainy afternoon in Munnar, a town built by the British when it owned the plantations
here.
After the British left, most of the plantations were owned by Tata Tea,
employing some 40,000 workers. However Tata recently transferred most of its
shares to an employee buyout, as it moved out of tea production in the face of a
world tea glut.
Harry is voting communist in next year's state
elections, and he thinks the left will win this time. "After five years the
Keralans always change their mind,"
he says. The Communists first won elections in Kerala in 1957. Their
support for education is still evidenced in the common sight of hundreds of
neatly uniformed school girls and boys, something I have not seen elsewhere in
India.
I stay in a hotel, but Harry is sleeping in his Ambassador tonight. He
invites me for a tipple of rum that evening, so we settle down in the comfy back
seat as the rain falls outside. We are joined by an Irish lawyer called David
who I met in Munnar, who is partial to the spirit. Harry gradually reveals
snippets of his life between sips of rum and water, more than 40 years driving
Ambassadors, and much more.
Photos. Road builders. © Joe Gill.
Without any warning he tells us that he has driven Indira Gandhi and Mother
Teresa in his cab. I ask him to repeat it a couple of times simply because the
odds on the congenial cabbie who has been driving me around for the last few
hours also chauffeuring the two most famous women in modern Indian history - the
Prime Minister and daughter of Nehru, and a modern Christian icon - seem slim.
He says he did not like Indira, who he drove around Kerala when she visited
the state in the early 1960s, before she became prime minister. Something to do
with her love of power. By contrast, Mother Teresa blessed him and his family
and assured him they would have happy lives, blessed by Jesus. Indira clearly
did no such thing, perhaps causing Harry's antipathy to the Congress party and
preference for the Communists ever since.
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Harry is a Christian, although Krishna adorns his dashboard. He remains
a religious man, and thanks God for what good fortune he has had - his
son, like David, is a lawyer of whom he is proud.
After his meeting with Mother Teresa, who was visiting Kerala from her
home in Calcutta, he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Years later, he
was offered a job as a driver in Kuwait by one of his passengers, a
businessman. Photo. Hindu Pilgrims. © Joe
Gill. |
 |
He took the job but it was cut short after a year when Saddam Hussein's
Katyusha rockets came flying overhead in 1991, sending him back home along with
thousands of other Indian guest workers in the Gulf state. He says after that he
returned to work in Bahrain for the American military, but the sight of the body
bags of US soldiers from the first Gulf war was too much, and he returned to
Fort Cochin for good. There he bought a nice house with his earning and went
back to driving his Ambassador.
He says India has gone to the dogs since the British
left, which may sound odd coming from a communist voting, rum drinking, 40 a day
smoker, but I never expect consistency from a generous host. He certainly told a
good story. I almost felt the presence of Indira and Mother Teresa, perhaps
sharing a bottle of Harry's Indian rum on a rainy night in the Keralan hills in
the back of his Ambassador.
Joe Gill, 18 December 2005
Additional information
Read more of Joe Gill`s
stories on our global travel guide Travel
Explorations.
As Lonely Planet describe India:
"Nothing in the country is ever quite predictable; the only thing to expect
is the unexpected, which comes in many forms and will always want to sit next to
you. India is a litmus test for many travellers - some are only too happy to
leave, while others stay for a lifetime". For more information, click on
the link: www.LonelyPlanet.com.
Information sources for India:
www.webindia123.com
www.rajasthantourism.gov.in
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Presentation of the author:
Joe Gill is a
freelance journalist working in London, specialising in the non-profit
sector, international development and Latin America.
Photo. Joe Gill from England.
© Joe Gill. |
 |
Contact
details: Joe Gill, journalist, London 44 207 607 4120.
(M)
07748597168
(H) 0207 6074120
E-mail:
joegill00@hotmail.com.
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