I wrote the first Blog with no intention of writing a second one! Something triggered in me on the 1st of April when I remembered that I had appeared for my first job interview in Delhi exactly 56 years earlier. It turned out to be my one and only interview!
Thereafter I changed jobs but it was always in response to an invitation.
Your interest and encouragement made me write the next one, and the next! Now I enjoy posting a new piece every day. Many of my readers are those who shared a career in Tea. Those were truly wonderful days. Hard work with plenty of time for outdoor activity and sport. Great Club life and parties galore. Chivalry, learning the value of honesty and keeping one’s word at any cost – things that have stood me in good stead all my life!
Those who followed after us into a life in Tea marvel at what life was like ‘in the old days’. Some of you overseas friends get a whiff of the romance of the Raj years. Today, some of the ways of yester years sound preposterous and even unfair, but who can deny history? But the great thing is we have evolved with the times. Right through my 4 decades in Tea I never typed a letter. Always dictated them. I was very fortunate to have had wonderful Secretaries, who typed my letters, made my flight bookings, organized life for me. After I got out of Tea I was lost but then I not only survived but thrived!
Some of you who read my blogs are dear friends, connected to me through common interests. Many of you do not know my earlier life. Here is glimpse of what I was like in my younger years.
Lastly there are my loved ones who know most of these stories but marvel when some interesting snippet turns up.
To all of you I say, “Thank you for your encouragement!”
And now let’s get started….
The Tea Gardens sent their packed Tea as a consignment for either direct shipment to London or for the Calcutta Auctions. The warehouses were therefore in or near the Calcutta Docks. A mixed assortment of teas were sent down from the Tea Gardens. One consignment could comprise of say, 7 chests (cases) of OP, 40 chests of BOP, 20 chests of BOPF, and 15 chests of Dust. There would be hundreds such consignments coming down each week from the various gardens in Assam and Bengal. There would be a weekly closing of catalogues coming up for Auction.
At some times of the year when production is high the Tea Trade Associations at the Auction Centres would stagger the offering and spread them out a bit.
A draft Catalogue would be printed approximately 4 weeks before the date of the Auction. Teas would be inspected by the Tea Brokers before the catalogue was finalised and printed.
Incidentally, there were only a handful of Tea Brokers in the 60’s – the more prominent being J.Thomas, Carritt Moran, and A.W. Figgis.
Packing each sample individually for say 50 plus buyers required a lot of man power and each Broker had a large number of people working for them both at the warehouses, as well as, at their city offices.
They drew a sample from each Lot. The size of sample had to accommodate the amount of samples to be distributed to the registered Auction Buyers.
One set of samples went into our Tasting Rooms where they were laid out according to Lot numbers and batches put out for the Tea Tasters to taste, and evaluate the teas.
A week prior to the actual Auction a price list would go out to the Buyers such as Brooke Bond, Lipton, Typhoo, James Finley, who used it as a guideline to select teas they were interested in for their packets. There were also buying agents for Importers or upcountry wholesalers.
Later in the 70’s, the USSR entered the Indian market and buying agents like A.Tosh & Sons, Nava Bharat, Saraf and so on, operated in the Auctions on their behalf.
In those days Brooke Bond and Liptons were different companies and fierce competitors. Later they were acquired by Unilever and merged with Hindustan Lever. Some of the fire went out of the auction room when that happened!
I told you that I was on a crash course in Tea Tasting, and Broking operations in order to get me ready for JT Cochin. The company always started a Trainee in the warehouses and he could be there for at least one year, maybe more. However, I was in the Calcutta warehouses for one month only! I learned to take out samples from tea chests predetermined by the head of the sampling crew. These samples were put out on a plywood tea chest panel and we were taught to sniff and check for any taint. Because of strict controls in the Factory and during transit, tainted teas were rare. But if there were any they were sold in a Supplementary catalogue, generally at a discount.
(In later years two other Auction Centres came up in the North, Gauhati and Siliguri to cater to demand from pan India. And Coonoor and Coimbatore were added to Cochin in the South, but we will not go into all that just now.)
The warehouses were hot, steamy and uncomfortable. I longed for the air-conditioned rooms at the Head Office. However, there was a silver lining. We had an arrangement for the JT executives to eat lunch at the Merchant Navy Club at the Docks. They had a terrific Cook and I would order Masala Prawns and Crab and other goodies for lunch to be washed down with a pint!
This warehouse routine was not entirely relevant to me because the procedure for sampling and inspection in Cochin was different, and I dare say less unwieldy and more efficient. The following month I went headlong into Tea Tasting and attending Auctions, and learning the ropes of the paperwork involved with contracts and payments.
I guess that will have to wait for another day!