Geetanjali Krishna: Realigning gender roles

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

I was an aurat (woman) in those days," murmured Prasad Waiba reminiscently. We had been chatting about his life in the tea gardens at Marybong, Darjeeling, and nothing he'd said so far had prepared me for this.

I looked up, startled, and did what I hoped was an unobtrusive double check. Nope, he just looked like a retired man, not at all like someone who had once been a woman. His son, Birendra, looked at me and grinned understandingly. "He's just talking about the tea picker hierarchy, you know!" he said. I'd never heard about it, and so, of course, wanted to know more.

When children first came to work in the gardens "" and they did forty years ago, Waiba said, they were called lokras (loosely translated to children). They did light work, picking tea, and got paid rock bottom wages. "As a lokra, I used to get four annas for a day's work," Waiba reminisced.

Once children turned thirteen or so, they were no longer called lokras "" they would then graduate to being chokras (boys). "A chokra was an appellation that had more to do with the worker's age than it had to do with work," said Waiba, "I remember standing amidst the tea bushes, and salaaming the British manager whenever he went by...somehow he really made me feel nervous!"

Life in the days of the British planters wasn't a bed of roses. "Before Independence, local people weren't even allowed shoes or combs," said Waiba. Even afterwards, the manager's word was law, he was the undisputed king of all he surveyed. But this actually worked to young Waiba's advantage. He was quick on the uptake and eager to work and so, caught the manager's eye.

Soon, he was promoted to the status of an aurat. The step up to aurat from chokra was a big deal. It was the first promotion that brought a salary hike with it. "As an aurat," said Waiba with a disarming lack of self consciousness, "I had a few more responsibilities. But it was still relatively light work."

Eventually, after more than a decade of tea picking, Waiba finally became a marad (man). In the tea picking hierarchy, this was akin to reaching the very top of the hill. Waiba was luckier "" the manager gave him a chance to work in the factory. He proved his mettle and rose to the position of head clerk of the Marybong estate.

What happened to all the other marads, I asked. Given that most pickers evolved into marads (irrespective of their gender) when they were in their late twenties or thirties, surely they received some promotions after that?

Waiba shook his head in the negative, "The hierarchy in tea gardens used to be so strict that most people who joined as tea pickers also retired as tea pickers. They just moved from being a lokra to chokra to aurat and then to marad..." he said.

The entire system seemed quite misogynistic to me. But Waiba and his son assured me that it was not so. "Today, girls and boys both join the garden as pickers and work side by side, no distinction is made between them!" said Birendra.

"My wife also worked in the Marybong factory till she retired," added his father. It was one thing, I mused, for ladies to work in the factory with its more felicitously-designated hierarchy. Imagine the plight of a woman tea picker, who starts off as a lokra and has to aspire to evolving into a marad?

The father and son assured me that nobody even gave a thought to what these terms actually meant. I wonder if women tea pickers also feel that way.