History’s grandest accomplishments sometimes have the simplest of origins. When Dutch merchants controlling the spice trade increased by five shillings the price of a pound of pepper, it led to infuriated merchants in London founding the East India Company. In a span of two centuries, Britain moved from commerce to conquest, its scarlet stains spreading across the world map, marking the extent of its Empire.
In the years of colonial rule and after, a glut of literature has been written on the political, commercial, social and cultural equations that Britain and India have shared. Whatever the tidal shifts in writing, these books, on the lives and times that were, have a compelling aura.
City chronicler S. Muthiah tells me how one such book was born on the jogger’s track of the august Madras Club. “Without our yesterdays, there are no todays or tomorrows. For years, I have been talking about biography as history, urging retirees to record their experiences, not necessarily for a book, but for their grandchildren to learn how they once lived. One evening, I asked fellow walkers P. Unnikrishnan, the second Indian managing director of Binny, and A.V. Ram Mohan, who grew up in the company town of Nellikuppam, where Parry had its sugar factory, to recollect their life in British organisations between the 1930s and the 1970s when the British and Indians worked together. Later, when a dozen mercantile officers and planters met up, they thought it would be fun to relive those days, and contacted others from British Indian commercial centres, such as Calcutta, Bangalore, Cochin, Coonoor, Bombay, Delhi and Hyderabad.”
A year-and-a-half after that first meeting, Office Chai, Planter’s Brew , published by Westland, was launched on Wednesday at Vivanta by Taj Connemara, at a celebration hosted by the Murugappa Group. At an evening that resembled “old boy’s week”, where clipped accents resounded, Ram Mohan, the unofficial secretary to the project, spoke of finding stories; P. Unnikrishnan of the Q-and-A format that helped connect the dots and N.S. Parthasarathy of Parry of interviewing people. Former Test cricketer C.D. Gopinath of Gordon Woodroffe regaled the audience with the tale of British mercantile officer Basil Earle, who after downing too many drinks took up a wager, and spent the night in black jacket and bow-tie seated on the statue of Thomas Munro, much to the horror of the British directors who passed it on their way to office; V. Ramaswami of Carritt Moran spoke on how the British entrusted authority to go with responsibility and Pradipta Mohapatra of Dunlop underlined the importance of sport in forging bonds.
M.M. Murugappan of the Murugappa Group, in his presidential address, said that the book “does not just chronicle the commercial history of a certain period, but also the individual contributions of the writers to trade and industry”.
The book, with its classy cyan jacket, is what publisher Gautam Padmanabhan calls “oral history, rare especially in the field of business studies in India”. The over-500-page tome, beginning with compiler Muthiah’s note on the era of transition from British to Indian, offers a “fascinating picture of a certain culture, nostalgia, and management lessons that hold good to this day”. The interviews, some edited, were conducted with a certain sense of urgency, given the passage of time and the age of the contributors, and focus largely on “human relationships in British-owned businesses, specially India-rooted ones, because it is these institutions that deeply influenced three generations of Indian managers”. Muthiah, who has written on many well-known Chennai companies, says “those were commercial histories where the achievements of the organisations were highlighted. This book tells us the nitty gritty of how those successes were achieved.”
The intriguing title comes from a common memory for many a contributor. While British mercantile officers were served tea from a steaming pot, encased in a cosy, complete with a sugar caddy, milk jug and biscuits, Indian officers were served in a cup with biscuits on the saucer. As for the planters, in their far-flung gardens, many a problem was settled by a drink in the manager’s house or at the club.
The book is a remarkable effort to recover the weft of India during the last decades of the Raj, post-Independence and the implications of devaluation. It travels across the subcontinent, beginning with short biographies of the young Indians, who were keen to experience the wider world and left their homes to work in commercial hubs, mofussil towns and lonely estates with serried tea bushes and howling jackals. Within the confines of four decades, the mercantile lore from well-established companies is packed with anecdotes of working with the British sense of fair play, the outstanding contribution of Anglo-Indian secretaries, the institution of bearers, and the place of clubs at a time of changing hierarchy. The book, however, is a reflection of only Indian thoughts, as there is no contribution from the British who worked in these establishments and there are few pictures in it that record those times.
Ranjitha Ashok, co-author and freelancer, who has written extensively for Madras Musings, in an email interview, says, “My role was to put the material together, keeping the original voices.” What she found interesting was that although the primary focus of the ex-pats was commerce, “India did draw them in. Many made connections that stayed strong long after commercial ties were broken. It was fascinating how quickly Indians adapted to new working styles. Sadly, there weren’t too many women in positions of power in these companies... but you do get a sense of quiet strength...”
The book is about old-world nostalgia, places and institutions that have frayed around the edges, but it also offers lessons in “sound values and sterling character” to today’s managers.
