Layout 1

61 / 64

The Fifties
M ijicajan in the
fifties was a
garden where
some ‘plusses’ happened and a few ‘non plusses’. The out
garden, Kolapani, had an airstrip which was the start of
the Skyplayers service to bring food etc from Calcutta for
the hungry of the North Bank. The air service also took
freight to Calcutta, such as early teas in May.
The Manager was Fred Rogers, the Garden Assistant was
Gunin Khound and i was the Mistri Sahib. John Batten had
been the Mistri Sahib but was sent to Africa for a couple of
months, and John asked me if i would look after his
elephant. it was a lovely animal and i readily agreed. My
main instruction from John was to make sure its feet were
in good order with no stones or something similar caught
between its toes. in order to make sure i was carrying out
John’s wishes, i arranged for the elephant to come to the
office every morning, lie down and present its feet for me to
inspect. He would appear with his mahout and lie down.
i then inspected his feet, one by one, and after i had finished
the inspection i had to move out of the way quickly as he
needed a lot of space to stand up again.
Later, he developed a boil on his cheek which became
quite large. The vet was summoned. He made a thorough
inspection of the boil and gave me one of these old
fashioned jars which had probably had candies in it but
now had white pills about the size of an old half crown (3
mm in diameter). i was instructed to give him 20 pills per
day. we then sat on the verandah and enjoyed a cup of
tea with the vet. He left after the tea break, and it was just
as he was driving out the gate that i suddenly remembered
i had failed to ask him how one gives an elephant a pill.
i gave him a couple of pills by hand, which he immediately
spat out. The next move (my wife Christine’s idea) was to
place a couple of pills in a papaya and offer it to him. He
was too wise; he picked up the papaya and realized the
pills were in it. He dropped it, stood on it lightly and blew
the pills out, then ate the papaya.
i then had to take over this strange task by cajoling him
to open his mouth and i threw the pills into his throat as
strongly as i could. i was also constantly speaking to him
as he covered me with his saliva. Eventually i won, and
thereafter he took the pills on a daily basis.The boil did
reduce in size to about a third but never did go away.
i could sit on his back and move around, and if there was a
branch which would hit my head as we moved forward he
would raise his trunk and break off the offending branch.
John did not return to Assam for 18 months so i enjoyed
the elephant for all that time. A wonderful animal and i
was sorry to lose him when John returned.
At that time the factory did not have CTC
manufacture so the rollers were busy but well
maintained with the remainder of the process
running efficiently. The oil fired heaters were sometimes
a problem and sadly we had a back fired explosion in one
of the dryers which severely injured the operator. The
man who was the clever engineer was by name Hope
Mistri, a Khasi from Shillong. A great man to work with,
he had the cleverness to be able to fix most problems.
in the cold weather when most maintenance was carried
out, one of the tasks i set off completing was to check the
construction of all the factory including the roof. i should
mention here that Hope Mistri was probably only three
quarters the weight of yours truly.
we climbed up, inspecting as we moved to the roof apex
where the roof sheets were definitely not capable of keeping
the weather out in the summer. whilst telling Hope to be
very careful where he walked, i myself stood on a roof sheet
which gave way, and dropped to the ground. i was very
lucky as i fell between two rolling machines.
i was taken to Tezpur Hospital in the back of Fred
Rogers’ car with my wife, Christine, travelling with me. i
was treated and x-rayed but amazingly no bones were
broken though my muscles had been adversely affected.
when i got home, i had to lie on a board for six weeks
with no mattress – but i survived !
Mijicajan In
~ David Air
Florida, USA
JULY 2015 61