George Netto, the most lively chronicler of the tea country of Munnar has reached the milestone of 500 pieces of exquisite writing. The latest middle-piece titled  ‘Roamance? Maybe, Risque, a definite no’ was published by the Indian Express on August 9.

He speaks about a prudish prefect who forbade the film operator from showing titillating scenes of the documentaries and feature films shown to the students at  a school he attended in Tiruchy over half a century back.

“In the late 1950s my alma mater was one of the first schools in Tiruchy . district to visual education—a novel concept then. It, in effect, meant that occasionally English documentaries and feature films were screened at school for our benefit, “ Netto writes.

But under strict orders, Benji the operator used to blackout the scenes where a kiss became a little too passionate by inserting his palm before the lens “much to our collective dismay. Booing, cat-calls and wolf-whistles would erupt as we exchanged meaningful glances”.

A specialist on the halcyon days of the colonial past, tea tendering, horse-riding, trout fishing and partying, Netto learnt much from the chronicles left by the great English, Scottish and Irish planters. The lullaby of the brooks, the whisper of the Eucalyptus and the song of the bulbuls were so nostalgic that he writes about them with passion. The heady aroma of tea and the bewitching call of the mountain goats remain with him forever.

Born in Kollam, George  has Portuguese roots. The Portuguese who arrived on the Kerala shore in 1498 established a trade enclave in Kollam. A cemetery they built in 1519 is still in tact. George ‘s grandfather was Stephen Netto and father Gilbert Netto.

George who will be 72 on September 10 next, has had his Matriculation from the Campion High School Tiruchy, run by the Jesuits. With excellent command of English, he joined the James Finlay and Co, forerunner of the Tata Tea Co,  in Munnar at its headquarters and stayed put till he retired in 2004 after 40 years of stellar service. Meanwhile the company had transformed itself into the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Co Pvt Ltd.

A keen observer of the tea country, he enjoyed reading about the history of the plantation in the High Ranges starting in the early 19th century. Those were the days when company managers rode on horses and sent tea over ropeways across the Kanan Devan Hills. From Tuticorin the tea packets were shipped to Southampton in England. Munnar had railways too.

George started writing as a teen-ager. His first article was published in the ‘Sunshine’ magazine from Pune in 1978 when he was barely 17. Short, pungent thought-provoking musings in the middle section of newspaper edit pages are his forte. He started with the Indian Express as a letter writer in 1984 and graduated to become a regular middle-piece writer soon. B.G. Varghese, the well known journalist, was the editor then. He still treasures a letter from BG commending his writing. Another in his chest is one from the immortal singer Saigal..

An X’mas story published in the popular magazine ‘Mirror’ was a big break. Outlook magazine carried a piece by him on Munnar in its Kerala Special in 1973. Eight middle-pieces in Times of India brought Rs 4000. From a morsel of Rs 15 to 5000—not a bad bargain in India.

George is an avid reader. Now that he is retired, there is ample time to read, ruminate and carry his thoughts to the word-processor. He loves Agatha Christie and R.K. Narayan. He is also a great admirer of Ruskin Bond, 82, who writes from his home in Mussoorie in the shadow of the Himalayas.

Among the great managers of the tea company, Norman Cole from Scotland influenced and inspired him greatly until he retired and returned to his homeland. He thankfully remembers that Cole got for him a three-year free subscription to ‘The Writer’, a magazine for upcoming writers. Cole died in 1976. George kept contact with his daughter Barbara  Cole for long.

Now that he has a collection of 500 of his writings, he wants to publish a select number of them in a book form. Kushwant Singh’s son Rahul Singh, himself a great poet, writer and editor, also feels that George Netto’s musings are worthy of a book. Prasad Ambat, who lives a stone throw away from Tata Tea headquarters is a long-time admirer of George’s writings. “He is a living legend. There is no one else to unwind the revolving romance of the tea country, “ he says. Prasad also has produced a volume on the tahr population in Munnar titled ‘Reminiscence from Goat’s Own Country’.

Nicola- Rose O’Hara, a writer, from the United Kingdom, had a strange meeting with George in his office, well before his retirement. She wrote a two-part article on her experiences in Kerala in The Hindu Sunday magazine in 2003.The concluding part speaks about her meeting George Netto in the Tata Tea office where she had gone to search the roots of three generations of her family who lived in the Letchmi Estate.

“Mr. George Netto is an imposing man, yes, but elegant, welcoming, interested. No, he didn’t mind at all that I had just turned up, he said. He ordered tea, phoned the manager of the Letchmi Estate, and made an itinerary for me in red biro on a scrap of paper. I drank tea and stared at maps on the walls. It’s a plain office with a wide and tidy desk. I told him some about my grandmother, who was born on Sevenmalley Estate when Kerala was Travancore. She went to England to school aged eight, but returned and spent a very happy 20 years of her adult life here.

“My mother died when I was seven so I don’t remember her memories of Kerala. Mr. Netto, who’s been with Tata in Munnar since 1964, talked about his own family there, the health of the place, the soft water, and how it’s being ruined now by tourism. The government has an “aggressive” policy to encourage tourists, he said. Well I’m a tourist, I considered. Nobody had aggressively encouraged me.

“Are you a writer?” he enquired, quite out of the blue.

“Later I discovered he had modestly forgone to tell me he himself is a writer. How odd: I with all my prejudices had been ready to meet the steely manager of a pan-global conglomerate: here we were discussing literature and the meaning of life. A gentleman.” 

George is happily married to Esmy Pereira from Iriajalakuda, a homemaker, They have a son Leonard Allen Netto, who with a PhD in Botany from University of Calicut serves the tea company as a senior executive. Leonard is married to Shalet from Thodupuzha, a teacher-turned banker.

George has not travelled outside the tea country except that he once flew to Chennai on company chopper. However, the Nettos make annual pilgrimage to Velamkanny every year. In fact they have done it for almost five decades without a break.

Their new house at Thattathimukku on the Munnar-Thokkupara road is beautifully designed. It overlooks the misty valley of Pallivasal. ‘Brookside’ is the house name, but there is no brook now. To the dismay of a writer who wrote about brooks in Munnar for over 50 years, it has dried out.