From My Notebooks In 1977: Still travelling with Carol on the East bank of the Brahmaputra

An Ahom castle in Assam

[We are on our way to Dibrugarh, upriver in Assam, expecting to spend the night in a DAK bungalow, one of the many rest houses built for travellers in British India. We already had invitations for the following days to visit first the oil town at Duliajan, about 50 kms East of Dibrugarh, and then on to a British tea estate at Margherita another 50kms or so further East, owned by Jimmy and Jean Beven. Due, no doubt, to our unusual means of transport and our personal stories, we were invited everywhere.]

We got to DAK at 5.30, expecting half-hours peace. Almost immediately the two guardsmen from the Tea Estate appeared: one in a modern stock-broker’s pin-striped suit, the other in lighter gear. I had to send them off, and used Carol’s request for aspirin as grounds to plead for mercy on health grounds. They were very pleasant, and promised the jeep for later, and left. Carol tore into me for using her health as an excuse – not unreasonably – and then went on about it ¬– unreasonably, while I retained my annoyance at not being free to simply stop and sit and reflect after such a lovely day. But we broke it down in time, and when Dilip arrived we were both happy.

Party was chiefly interesting for: A wealth of pretty young Indian wives; Sikh’s talk about rice crops in Punjab, recently bad, and the advances of Haryana; His wife’s lost ambition to be a journalist.

Monday, January 31st

From Dibrughar to Duliajan. First to Dilip, then to Special Branch. [We were supposed to check in everywhere.] Then to Agrawallah, then finally on the road out from the “overbridge” cross-roads, past Triplex drycleaners and the Khodi shop, out along the railway line, 30 miles of quite good road.

Duliajan is a company town, bult by private British interests for Assam Oil Co. Now of course nationalised.

75,000 gals per hour through treating plant.

75 million tons crude per annum to Gauhati through 16inch pipe.

Crude from well to collecting stations where water and gas are separated off. (Flare of gas burning; only 40 % is used by fertiliser plant and local energy needs) Then to tank farm, then to treating plant where heated to 95 degrees C. and cooled. This breaks up the crystalline structure of the waxes (This crude heavy in wax} to enable it to be pumped in winter, 1100 kms to Bihar. (Some refined in Gauhati. Third refinery planned in Assam.)

Drilling well, mud is pumped from plant 10 miles or more away. Also gas and water. Drill pipes of 30’ lengths drawn up in 90’ segments. 90 seconds to pull up each segment. Drill bit may be changed every 80 ft or so. 1400 hp to turn bit. 700 hp to pump mud. New rig costs India $1,500,00. Rig helper gets about 450 rps per month, plus bonus free home and services = 700 rps = $18 per week.

Waste gases used to fire the company crematorium.

[We went on from Duliajan to Margherita where we stayed several days in great comfort.]

Margherita Tea Estate. Jimmy and Jean Beven. 473 hectares. Plants per hectare 11,000 to 15,000.

Tea is one unique species. Varieties, by selection, called clones. 30 altogether. Margherita has 20 or so different ones, by curious names like TV-2 or Margherita 1.

Beven makes tea to customer requirements, as opposed to producing for a general standard and leaving the selection to buyers at auction. Now almost none is sold through auction. Europe and America are a growing market for expensive teas.

Process; Tea plants plucked weekly, two leaves and a bud. Produce 14 to35 quintals of made tea per hectare per annum. Quintal = 100 kgs. His plants yield in 2 to 3 years. Can live for 100 years or more. Mulch and paraquat (herbicide). Guatemala grass when land is fallow (deep rooted). Principal pests, red spider, green fly, and fungus.

Leaves are dried of 30% of their weight by blowers. Then two methods. CTC – cut, turn, and curl – by pronged rollers. Or Orthodox, rolled between revolving discs. First gives a more “liquory” tea. i.e Thick Body – tea “creams out.” When left standing it becomes opaque. Second gives lighter, more aromatic tea. Then laid out on aluminium sheets about half inch deep for 30 to 45 minutes to complete “fermentation” before being dried and packed. Best chests of mango wood, and another wood from Andoman islands.

Plantation Act of 1953 (?) requires brick houses, free firewood, 2 weeks holiday, transport home at certain intervals, minimum 8% bonus (has been as high as 20%) recently profits were about 20%.

The day with R.K.Barua [An oil man.] An evening party

Jimmy and Jean Beven get us an elaborate picnic lunch and we set off to follow various tracks to the “inner line.” Border of Arunachal Pradesh, to find elephants working lumber. On way, stop to take pictures under the road sign for the Stillwell Road, to Chunking, Yunming, Wanting, etc. Barua pulls up. Is very excited by idea of taking us in his jeep to see various things. The wildcat rig, down to 17,000 feet, pipes stuck by extreme pressure forces them against side. Schlumberger lowers explosive charges to free joints.

Pat O’Leary from Burma. The all-denomination temple, recreation rooms. R.K’s constant emphasis on the vulnerability of his installations (explosives, etc) and how much he relies on the goodwill of the people around (Singpho tribes – light grey cloaks, loin cloths, bows & arrows, Tibetan settlement. The ropeway, for monsoon, across the Noa Diking, upstream from Mige.

Lots of logging – Hollock, Hollong, Simal and the ironwood (Nurah?).

February 6th

Crossing the Brahmaputra. DAK bunglow. One bottle of beer and a half of whisky left from Monday night before. Call Sengupta to say goodbye. Then to SB office, back to police station – very fluent policeman in charge – back to SB. Ferry on unmarked, sandy road. On to the “Joya”– tea hut owner in long dhoti gives us boiled egg and tea. Great calm expanse of river, clumps of foliage sailing downstream, like offerings. Pan boy selling betel on board. Ferry costs 7.50 for bike and rider. Soldiers and peasants all with woolen scarves wrapped round heads and chins like toothache sufferers. Large port of Dibrugarh was swept away by erosion in a recent monsoon (’73?) so new business is building in Tinsukia.

On the crossing, waves of sadness engulf me. They seem to rise out of the water itself, since I have no particular reason for sadness or melancholy. As I contemplate it, I feel a great tide of feeling submerged beneath the daily details of life, but ebbing and flowing powerfully according to its own purposes. At times, no doubt, I travel with this current, at other times against it, and probably I have no real conception of its meaning or existence.

My observations and sensations of “reality” must be so conditioned by this fundamental stream of emotion that they would be seen as all works of the imagination. And I’m led to think that a true description of this journey should also be entitled Imaginary. This has some relevance to another recent series of ideas which led me to see the life of the emotion as a “looking glass” image of the physical world, and my hypothesis as “The Looking-glass Principle.”

We are pulsing through this grey flatness of water between banks of sand that crumble and fall before our eyes. The journey has lost its beginning and offers no end and we might be floating along the Styx for all I know.

The ferry arrives on a forlorn bank of the river, wind blowing sand through the rushes and grasses. Long dusty road leads out. We stop and savour the silence for a while. See solitary boatmen out on the river which is now choppy in the breeze. Where we meet the main road an elderly man entertains us with lusty laughter and gestures while giving incomprehensible directions to Demraji and N.Lakimpur. Countryside on this north bank is richer looking and emptier. Great variety of tribal faces pass on the road.

Many men with bows and arrows are thrashing about in a marsh of water chestnuts trying to start up some creature they’re hunting. At one point a small black thing darts out and speeds across the vegetation to disappear again. They follow with howls but lose it. One of them looses off a couple of arrows at an egret – but without much conviction. His string seems rather loose. The arrow’s path very curved. Meanwhile two women work steadily bent over in the mud harvesting chestnuts, each with a basket slung at her hip.

The feeling is that if we stopped here we might be drawn in and able to stay, but we both need rest from experience, and time to think. After 80 miles we get to Lakhimpur – 2.30 pm and get a good lunch at Joya hotel.

[The Bevens have given us introductions to another Tea Estate.]

Then another 80 miles to Monabarie T.E, which seems to recede as we approach. Well after dark we turn into the garden and at last find Roy Eastment’s bungalow. He’s there alone and fixes us up. We eat and drink and play music. Soon we’re dancing to Hindu film music and having great fun.