Geetanjali Krishna: Grateful from heart and sole

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

I haven't met very many people who've made me feel that much poorer for having led a relatively easy life. But one person who did so was the barefoot man of Lingia Tea estate in Darjeeling, whom I met last week. It's impossible to tell how old most of these mountain folk really are, but I reckoned he was well past seventy.

He was full of stories about the tea estate where he'd spent what sounded like a hard but eventful life, and I was interested in tea history. All in all, we were happy to meet each other.

"When I look back on my life," he said by the way of an introduction, "I feel God helped me..." Born into a poor family, Mandhata Rai had no chance to study "" instead, he was sent to work as a tea-picker early in his childhood. "That was where I met the head clerk at Lingia, Hariman Gurung in 1937. A wonderful man, he was educated and more importantly, keen on passing his knowledge to others," said Rai.

Gurung took the young Rai under his wing, and began teaching him English and arithmetic in his house every evening. Along with this, he also began Rai's spiritual education, introducing him to the writings of the great thinkers and seers of his time.

The young tea picker was a quick study and soon became quite fluent in English and Hindi. Around the time of the Second World War, at Gurung's suggestion, manager of Lingia Tea Estate, CW Emmet, appointed Rai as a gardener in his bungalow. "I did not know that soon life was going to come full circle for me soon," said Rai.

He paused, and I marvelled at how simply and lyrically this supposedly unschooled man was telling his story. Emmet and Gurung must have been equally impressed with him, for soon after, when they opened a school for tea workers' children in the estate, they asked Rai to become its first teacher.

"Imagine how far I'd come," said Rai, his rheumy eyes welling in remembrance, "from being a child who'd never seen the insides of a school, I was going to become a teacher!" He taught for several years until Emmet retired and returned to a homeland he'd left so long ago.

"Then the last British manager of Lingia took over, and to my pleasant surprise, he appointed me Head Clerk "" the highest post at that time which locals could aspire to," Rai continued.

From what I'd understood, rising from tea picker (the lowest in the tea estate hierarchy) to Head Clerk was impressive and highly unusual "" in tea estates of Rai's era. If you started as a picker, chances were high that that's where you'd end. The prospects of upward mobility were that severely restricted.

Anyway, to continue with Rai's life story, he got caught up with work, books and philosophy. In the meantime, his old mentor Gurung, became older and feebler until he finally died in 1979. "When I beheld his body, I remembered that whatever I was, was because of him. In reverence and gratitude to him, I swore never again to wear shoes on my feet," he said sombrely.

Impervious to curious stares, and the wet and biting cold that afflicts Darjeeling six months a year, Rai has remained barefoot ever since. Decades after Gurung's death, it's as if his grief still remains fresh. And whenever anyone asks why the old man has no shoes on, the young boy so blessed by Gurung's kindness briefly manages to bring his mentor back to life once again.