Morrison Estate

Morrison Estate is a beautiful, southern Western Ghats mountainous based, 199 acres estate. The estate is in 2500 ft above sea level, and it was developed by an Englishman James Morrison when Britain ruled India. After India's independence, James sold the estate to Verghese Kurien, a local entrepreneur, since then Kurien family solely owned the estate. All the Southern estates are same, home of tea, rubber plants and some rare spices like cinnamon. But Morrison estate was pioneer to all other estates, Morrison taught all “how tos” to local farmers including special irrigation techniques and how to sell it through various markets. So the locals always has gratitude to Morrison even though they sold the estate 50 years ago. They named the road after Morrison which leads to estate from town.

The current owner of Morrison estate is Sebastian Kurien, grandson of Verghese Kurien, who is retired professor and ex serviceman. He started his career with Indian Army as solider and studied his masters while in service, after completing army service, he became professor at local college. He is an honest man, after retirement he decided to spend most of his time in estate home, which was built by Morrison, a beautiful castle styled home. Even though his family insisted him to stay in town, he refused to do so. One of the main reasons is town pollution, unbearable noise, law and order. Kurien always want to be with his wife and relatives, friends but his compulsive straightforwardness keeps him away from town.

Kurien was right because the town is ridden by ideology driven politicians. Some times there were as many as 5 meetings at same location, the sound from loud speaker are unbearable to any one living in the town. Irony is, same ideology but different flavors also yell at each other and fight with each other. For example, at the national level a right ideology driven party decided to split their party for better management, they created a small fraction for students, one for labors, and one for hardcore religious. But Kurien’s town people didn’t know the management’s intention but fought with each other, even though they are all belong to one party technically but politically not, then just imagine, the situation between different ideologies. Kurien knows it all very well, sometimes he himself stops some party meeting to ask this kind of questions, obviously they don’t like and Kurien gets into some troubles later.

Kurien’s schedule was very well planned, he left home at early morning on Monday to estate, stayed there until Friday. Friday evening he starts from estate to home. His Saturday mainly with account settling, deposit money in banking, his Sunday with Church going. Kurien’s wife happy by seeing his peaceful mind after his stay away from home, but her only worrisome is forest animals. Kurien’s human interaction in estate is local indigenous people who are still decided to live in forest. They have some special respect to Kurien because he is the first one to introduce them the "Indian constitution’s affirmation policy for indigenous people". Many people from the indigenous group benefited from those affirmation actions. Most of them left the forest to settle down in town since they got good education and job. But for some, they don’t want to leave the forest since they emotionally attached and they think that they belong to forest. Most of the indigenous people now employees for the estate, but now due to depopulation, Kurien and other local estate owners employ people from town. The farming business is not much popular as before. Kurien decided to cut the farming land by at least 50% because of rising labor cost and other logistical issues.

The work week for Kurien started as usual, he bought many items from town for indigenous people. They always give a list of items required from town with Kurien, he buys all of them. Sathaiappan showed up around noon, Sathaiappan is leader of the local indigenous people.

“Good Afternoon, Professor, How are you? “ Sathaiappan started with his usual greeting.

“Afternoon, Sathaiappan, I’m fine” Professor replied.

“Sir, be careful, I heard from my boys that 2 leopard on loose in this area, double check the estate gate before dusk”, Sathaiappan showed up whenever there is a news like this and Kurien knows it. Kurien acknowledged it. But Sathaiappan’s visit has more intention than his usual warning messages.

Sathaiappan continued “Sir, my son’s marriage scheduled at town on next month. I’m planning to take all of our people to there. What do you think? “Kurien little shocked because some of them are in forest since their birth, they can not manage in town for even one day. Sathaiappan said “Sir, as you know my son now working in town, he is going to marry town based girl, they are very adamant to keep the marriage in town, I got some worries that how my people can manage out there? How can town people behave to us? I’m kind of confused”.

Kurien also thinking in same way as Sathaiappan, but Kurien encouraged him “Sathaiappan, your people have to come out of forest to join with our main stream, why don’t you take this as chance to introduce town life style to your people, may be they encourage their kids to go school and may some more people even adopt town life style”. Even though Kurien encouraged Sathaiappan to take all of his people to town, he is little hesitant and doubtful, Kurien sees lot of risks like their clothes, food and other habits might trigger friction between them and town people. In order to mitigate the risk, Kurien advised Sathaiappan that “Sathaiappan, please ask your people to dress like town people, ask them to learn town style, some haircut also okay, learn some basic town style language, I can help you, no issues”

Sathaiappan is very happy with Kurien’s advice, he left the place. But Kurien instinct tells something wrong with the plan. Kurien called his home to inquire about whether any meeting or procession planned on the day when Sathaiappan’s son marriage date, his wife confirmed that there are 36 meetings and 15 procession planned already but still 30 more days to go.Kurien now has moral obligation to train indigenous people to get to know about town life style as much as possible. They all also willing to learn some basics.

Sathaiappan’s son marriage date came, all people from forest ready to go town to attend the marriage. Kurien’s plan is to take all of them in two buses. Sathaiappan very thankful to Kurien. The journey would take 3 hours from estate to town,Kurien followed the bus in his jeep. Since it is early morning, the travel is fast and they reached marriage hall on time. After marriage all are ready to go back to forest, now this time town is busy with meetings and processions are getting ready. The bus struck in traffic, people started noticing some unfamiliar and different faces in bus. Kurien prayed god to clear traffic to move fast. By the time there was a big party’s procession coming towards them, police getting ready to control them. Some one from procession start throwing stone towards police. The place became war zone within 20-25 minutes. People starting to scatter from the fight between police and party men which grown out of control. The innocent indigenous people also coming out of bus to save their life. The mob set fire on first bus but no body is in there. Some one from mob shouted to indigenous people that "hey, kill this guys they never vote for us". Even though the indigenous people looking like a town people, the political party mob identified them. The mob got some indigenous people and start beating them. Kurien used his force to separate the innocent people from mob, by the time some one from mob stab Kurien from back. Kurien looks back and noticed he is his ex student.

After all violence, police rescued all indigenous people and took them to forest safely. But 3 of them died in violence. Kurien is admitted in the hospital but his health deteriorates day by day, as wound is not the problem, his mental pain creates more damage, after 5 days in hospital Kurien dies.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow! Thank you! I always wanted to write in my site something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
Good one Subba. Nice storytelling.
Thanks Sukumar for your comment
Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said…
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