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Anamallais16 articles
Winning is a Personal Choice
Leadership is a Personal Choice

Winning is a Personal Choice

Winning is about dedication. It is about concentration. It is about focus. It is about making tough choices willingly. It is about stepping forward and saying, ‘Choose me not because I am cheap but because I can give you the best value.’ Winning is not an accident. Winning is not a mystery. You will win if you are serious about winning. Winning is inevitable but only if you do the right things. So is losing. The choice is yours. Because……….

15 min read
Anamallaischallenge
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Riding Elephants
In a Teacup

Riding Elephants

The importance of habitat conservation in the protection of avian and animal species can hardly be overemphasized. This is why when logging companies talk about reforestation, by planting millions of trees of one species in the place of the multi-species forest they demolished, it is such a farce. Especially the animals, birds, insects, amphibians, and reptiles that used to live in the natural forest and which died with the trees, will never return. That is why when you walk in one of these so-called forests, plantations really, there is dead silence. The silence of the grave. While when you walk in a natural forest, as Hashim and I were doing that morning, the forest speaks to you.

16 min read
Anamallaiselephants
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A factory, Karpusamy, and a Masjid
In a Teacup

A factory, Karpusamy, and a Masjid

My learning in this incident of the bulldozer was the fact that to build credibility it is important to be able to lead from the front. You do not have to do people’s jobs for them. It is not even desirable to do that. But you do need to demonstrate that you know what they do and can do it if necessary. It is when subordinates get the impression that you know nothing about what they do, that it makes them nervous, and they lose motivation. The good ones feel a little lost. The crooks take you for a ride.

23 min read
Anamallaisculture
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Memories of Anamallais
In a Teacup

Memories of Anamallais

It is difficult to describe the beauty of the place where we lived; a place that changes the scene from season to season. In the summer, when it is hot and dry, the waters of the Parambikulam Reservoir recede towards the dam and the submerged land becomes visible. It is a surrealistic scene of a Salvador Daly painting. Gaunt, dry, tree trunks dead for years, look like they have been blasted with dynamite. Crumbling walls of what had once been villages. Homes where people lived and from where they moved, leaving the homes to be covered by the rising waters of the dam. Earth that is black with silt and initially looks dead. Then as the ground dries out a little and the sun touches it, old seeds germinate, grass starts to grow and covers the land. Where did the seeds come from? What happens to them when the water inevitably rises and covers them??

15 min read
Anamallaisfriendship
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1985
In a Teacup

1985

These years and incidents were tough on the one hand but were enormous opportunities for me to learn about myself, develop resilience, patience, and perseverance. They were proof that if you take the pain, then the result is worthy of it. I had taken the pain to insist that I would not let my injury come in the way of work and worked hard to establish productivity and quality standards that I look back on with great satisfaction. I stood for what I believed in and did my best. I was fully supported by people like Bertie, Jaikant, Norman, Taher and others and I am most grateful to them for their friendship more than anything else. Truly in the plantations, our relationships were far beyond good colleagueship. We were friends in a sense deeper and more meaningful than I can describe. I am most grateful.

29 min read
Anamallaisfriendship
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Manners make the man & woman
In a Teacup

Manners make the man & woman

As was the custom of the plantations when anyone got married and returned with his wife, there was a round of parties to meet the couple. So also, in our case and since I was the Secretary of the Anamallai Club, I had more than my fair share of friends and so we had a party to go to every night. The parties were formal suit and tie affairs and the hostess would go to great lengths to cook special dishes in honor of the guests and at the end the couple would be given a gift. In a place where social relationships were very important, these parties were not simply for entertainment. They were rites of passage and thresholds of entry from bachelorhood to marriage, which gave you a higher level of status and respect. They also had a ‘snob value’ associated with who invited you and who didn’t. I didn’t bother with that at all, but then again, I was invited by everyone, so for me it didn’t matter. The parties were also a good way to introduce the new bride to a way of life that was foreign to her and helped her to make contacts with senior ladies and others more experienced in this lifestyle, which could be challenging for someone born and brought up in the city. Most people who go to tea gardens for a holiday in good weather don’t realize the difficulty of that environment for those who have to live there all year round.

16 min read
AnamallaisCandura
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If it can’t make you cry, it can’t make you work
In a Teacup

If it can’t make you cry, it can’t make you work

Fear of failure has many respectable names: Consolidation of gains, Stability, Creating Permanence and so on. What is forgotten is that life is about change and positive change is growth. That growth is not looking in with a satisfied glow at what exists, but always to seek what might be. And that all growth is essentially characterized by a lack of stability, living with impermanence, and spending what you have, to fuel what you aspire to create. This is forgotten, not by chance or accident. It is forgotten deliberately, albeit sometimes unconsciously. And it is done to deal with the fear of failure if one continues to take risk.

16 min read
Anamallaischallenges
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Grass Hills, Anamallais
In a Teacup

Grass Hills, Anamallais

I used to go to Grass Hills as often as I could with my two companions, the Raman brothers. They were cousins and had the same name. We would leave my motorcycle in the garage of the Assistant Manager of Akkamalai Estate – it didn’t matter if you knew the person or not. It was our code of hospitality that at such places your house was open to anyone who needed help. If someone wanted to park a car or motorcycle or needed some petrol or a cup of tea, he only had to ask, and it was all provided with a smile. The Raman brothers and I would start walking up. The distance to the APA Hut is about fourteen kilometers. If you don’t take the road and instead walk up the hillside it is a couple of kilometers shorter, but you need a lot of stamina for the climb. The climb is steep, the elevation (six thousand feet) takes its toll especially if you are not used to it – as I discovered when I went to the Grass Hills in 2007 after a gap of twenty years. The footing is very rough and uncertain as the tough tussocky grass grows in clumps and you must find your way between clumps. If it has been raining, then almost every single blade of grass will have a leech or two on it and you are more than likely to be viewed as manna from heaven by them. But if you can overcome the effort and the bloodshed then you are rewarded with some of the most spectacular views that you could ever imagine. The road is simpler and easier but like all simpler and easier tasks, less rewarding.

14 min read
Anamallaisgaur
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Guests in the Gardens
In a Teacup

Guests in the Gardens

Guests were very special in the gardens. There were no guest houses or hotels, so whoever came, stayed with you. Official guests stayed with the General or Group Manager, Manager or Assistant Manager, depending on who they were in terms of their rank or significance for the Company. Your guests stayed with you or sometimes with your friends, depending on what was happening in your life at the time. We played host to a friend’s grandmother, another friend’s heavily pregnant wife as he had to travel urgently and to several others. In the plantations we treated each other as members of our family. We stood behind each other, no question about it. I have written here about a few of the guests. We had many more. Too many to name here. So, if you visited us and are not mentioned in this article, please know that you are remembered though I have not mentioned you here.

28 min read
AnamallaisDoordarshan
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Motivation = WiiFM (What’s in it for Me?)
In a Teacup

Motivation = WiiFM (What’s in it for Me?)

The root of all motivation is to know what one can expect from one’s efforts. WiiFM is a station that everyone listens to. What’s in it for Me? People don’t always ask you that in so many words. But you can be certain that is what is in their minds all the time. If you can translate whatever you want them to do in language that will show them what they stand to gain, you won’t need to do any convincing. For this you need language. Speak the language and you are three-quarters of the way there. One of the things I was very proud of was my knowledge of and relationship with my workers. I knew them all by sight, most by name and of many, I knew their family connections as well. They, in turn, treated me more like a tribal chief cum family elder rather than the Manager of the estate.

23 min read
Anamallaiscommunication
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Return to the Past – Anamallais in 2007
In a Teacup

Return to the Past – Anamallais in 2007

Truly it is said that tea planting is not a job. It is a lifestyle and a way of life with its own norms, culture, taboos, ways, and manners. We in the hills, were a community, comprised of people from a huge diversity of backgrounds, who in the normal scheme of things would never have even known one another, let alone be friends. But in the plantations, we were not only friends but in the case of some of us, closer than family. I can say with total certainty about not one but many of my friends from tea – ranging from workers, to supervisors, staff and fellow managers – that we would have gladly given our lives for each other and feel privileged for the opportunity. We didn’t need to, but on a couple of occasions, it came close to that.

21 min read
Anamallaisforest
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How not to meet an elephant
In a Teacup

How not to meet an elephant

The plantation years were not all about work and unions. They were a time of great fun and fulfillment; of wonderful friendships and personal growth. During these years I was able to be in the rain forests of the Western Ghats and see in their natural habitat, animals that it had always been my desire to see. I have always had an abiding interest in ecology with specific reference to mammals and their habitat. What better place to indulge that than the Indira Gandhi National Park inside which I lived for the 7 years that I lived in the Anamallais.

16 min read
Anamallaiselephants
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