I am 30 years old now. Yet I look 40. I stay in a small hamlet near Darjeeling. It is basically a hamlet made up of tea garden workers. No, I do not own the land; they say it belongs to the tea garden. I am the driver of the Manager and hold a special position among my fellow workers.
When I was four years old I lost my father. He had gone to get sausages from Keventer's in Darjeeling for the then Manager. My mother used to tell me that the earlier Burra Sahib loved to have sausages and poached eggs for breakfast. My father was the cook of the Manager's bungalow, and his prized possession; the Manager had filched him from a very famous restaurant in Darjeeling for a bottle of Glenfiddich, the restaurant owner's weakness. Twelve years later on that fateful day, there was a meeting for Gorkhaland in Chowk Bazaar. The crowd got so excited by the Supremo's speech that they were almost ready for action. The cops sensed the tension and opened fire. My father received a bullet to his chest. The packet of sausages still lay clutched in his hand when they brought him to the police station. The Burra Sahib never got to eat those sausages.
Today I stand in Chowk Bazaar with thousands of people listening to the present Supremo. They say that this latest installment of bandhs and rallies has been caused by the Central Government's decision to form the new state of Telengana. I could well understand why my father had stopped upon seeing such a crowd, but I do not really know if he was actually listening. It's been twenty six years now and the fight for identity, the fight for land, the fight for Gorkhaland is still on. I wonder if anyone is listening.
I am a class five dropout. I went to the local school in the mornings and did odd jobs at the Manager's bungalow where my mother was given a job as a maid after my father's death. Our Burra Sahib was a very benevolent man. He threw lavish parties at Christmas. We all looked forward to when his wife, an Anglo-Indian, would come with their children to celebrate Christmas at the bungalow. We used to bring the best Christmas tree and the children and their mother used to decorate it with different toys and tiny bulbs. All the Managers from the adjoining gardens and important people from Darjeeling used to come to celebrate Christmas at our Manager's house. The lawn would be full of cars. Some had red lights on their roofs and belonged to bureaucrats and politicians. The other servants in the house used to say that they were all important people who had to be served well as our future was in their hands. I wondered how. But the songs and music of the party generally deafened these questions I had in my head.