S. Muthiah - Office Chai, Planter’s Brew

Office Chai,
Planters Brew

S Muthiah

Ranjitha Ashok

westland ltd

61, II Floor, Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095

93, I Floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002

First published by westland ltd 2016

First ebook edition: 2016

Copyright S Muthiah 2016

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-93-86036-19-3

Typeset by PrePSol Enterprises Pvt. Ltd.

Disclaimer

Due care and diligence has been taken while editing and printing the book. Neither the author, publisher, nor the printer of the book holds any responsibility for any mistake that may have crept in inadvertently. Westland Ltd, the Publisher and the printers will be free from any liability for damages and losses of any nature arising from or related to the content. All disputes are subject to the jurisdiction of competent courts in Chennai.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.

Contents

The Era of Transition,
from British to Indian

by Eapen Abraham,
Braithwaites, Calcutta

by S P Acharya, Shaw Wallace, Calcutta

by Dr. S S Baijal,
Imperial Chemical Industries, Calcutta

by
V K Chandrakumar, Shaw Wallace, Madras

by John Davies,
P Orr & Sons, Madras

by Asoke Dutt,
Andrew Yule, Calcutta

by
K R Ganapathy, Parry & Co. Ltd., Madras

by Samir Ghosh,
Imperial Tobacco, Calcutta

by C D Gopinath,
Gordon Woodroffe & Co., Madras

by R Jagannath,
Ashok Leyland, Madras

by
P B Jayakumar, Guest Keen Williams, Calcutta

by A V Krishnamurthy, Parry & Co. Ltd.,
Nellikuppam

by M K Kumar,
Peirce Leslie, Calicut

by T K Madhav,
Carritt Moran, Cochin

by Gopal Madhavan, Parry & Co. Ltd., Madras

by Maria Menezes,
Imperial Tobacco Co., Calcutta

by K R N Menon,
Best & Co. Pvt. Ltd., Madras

Managing a
Chairman by Pradipta K Mohapatra,
Dunlop India, Calcutta & Gramophone
Company of India, Calcutta

by T S Nagarajan,
Brooke Bond India, Calcutta

by Kutty Narayan,
Madura Co., Cochin

by
V S Padmanabhan, Atlantis East, Calcutta

by
N S Parthasarathy, Parry & Co. Ltd., Madras

by
R Ramakrishnan, Binny & Co., Madras

by
G K Ramana, Brooke Bond India Ltd.,
Calcutta

by
A V Ram Mohan, Parry & Co. Ltd.,
Nellikuppam

by
V Ramaswami, Matheson
Bosanquet & Co., Coonoor

by Murali
Ramaswamy, Metal Box India, Bombay

by
R N Ratnam, Parry & Co. Ltd., Madras

by
Sukhendu Ray, Guest Keen Williams Co.,
Calcutta

by
Michael Robertson, Andrew Yule,
Calcutta

by
Prodosh K Sen, J Thomas & Co.,
Calcutta

by Ram Shahaney, Jessop & Co.,
Calcutta

by
M R Sreedhar, Parry & Co. Ltd.,
Madras

by
P Unnikrishnan, Binny & Co., Madras

by
K Vasudevan, English Electric
Company of India Ltd., Madras

by
Aravind Vellodi, Imperial Chemical
Industries, Bombay

Imperial Chemical
Industries, Bombay

by Khaja Ahmedullah, Tea Estates
India, Madura District

Assam Company (India), Nazira,
Assam

by
Dipankar Chatterjee, Luxmi Tea Co.,
Calcutta

by R K Dastur,
Craigmore Land and Produce Company,
Nilgiris

by A V G Menon,
English & Scottish (Kerala & Assam),
Calicut

by P P Machiah,
Travancore Tea Estates, UK

by Ravi Mathews,
Southern Indian Tea Estates Co., Peermade

by
A I Kurian, Forbes, Ewart and Figgis,
Cochin

by
Dev K Mukerji, James Finlay & Co.,
Calcutta

by
K G Nanda, Harrisons & Crosfield Ltd., Cochin

by J E G Pigott, Southern India
Tea Estates Co., Peermade

by Bharat Sarronwala, Duncan
Brothers & Co., Calcutta

by
Pradipta K Mohapatra

from
Best & Crompton House Journal
of Madras

by S Muthiah, Simpsons of Madras

by S Muthiah,
Spencers of Madras

by S Muthiah, Spencers of Madras

by
S Muthiah, In the Southern Hills

Contract of Simon Felton,
Wilson & Co., Madras

Contract of John Oakshott,
Spencer & Co., Madras

Contract of Ravi Mathews,
Southern India Tea Estates, Peermade, Kerala

Company name

Compilers Note

The seed for this book was sowed on the joggers track of the Madras Club, that venerable institution which for 75 years, after being for 50 years from 1832 a home away from home for the British Civil and Military, welcomed the merchant princes, many years before it did the shoppies and the retailers. On that track, far from jogging, the three of us often did something little better than a stroll. The senior-most was P Unnikrishnan, the second Indian Managing Director of the Inchcape Groups Binny & Co., one of the oldest British business houses in India, a name still around but with its only business, property. The youngest was A V Ram Mohan, brought up in a company colony in a company town, Nellikuppam, where Parry & Co.s sugar manufactures are, and who went on to spend some years with the firm after it had become Indian-owned. And the third person was me, always on the look out for a story, egging them on to recollect their experiences of life in British organisations between the 1930s and the 1970s.

For years now, I have been talking, on and off platforms, about biography as history. Ive been urging retirees to put down the stories of their lives, record their experiences at work and in the world around the workplace, not necessarily for a book, but for their grandchildren and their grandchildren to learn about their family, the life it lived and the world it lived in, once upon a time. Five hundred words a day is all you need to put down, I would urge listeners. And thats what I kept asking Unni and Ram to do. And neither would oblige, but thats when Unni said hed relate it as it was if someone would interview him or, at least, take down what he had to say. At which point, Ram chipped in, If its interviews, why only us? Why dont we get interviews from others, all over the country, whod worked in British business houses, the boxwallahs? There might be a book in it. And so, I, as the storyteller, got nominated to compile the book.

It was at the Madras Club again, a couple of weeks later, that we got together about a dozen persons who had retired from British business establishments and sounded them out on the idea. And to a man they thought it would be fun to relive those days again and, in telling others about how business was once done, it might offer a lesson or two to those in the business world of today. Some offered to put down their stories, others agreed to be interviewed. And all offered names from other British Indian commercial centres, Calcutta, Bangalore, Cochin, Coonoor, even Bombay, Delhi and Hyderabad. Best of all, N S Parthasarathy of Parrys enthusiastically promised to help with any interviews in Madras, Bangalore and Delhi.