It was Christmas day in 1966 and I and my colleague Ivan—young bachelors sharing a quarters in a remote tea estate far from Munnar— were having a guest for lunch. Hugh Muir, a young freckled-faced Scottish lad, had recently joined the estate as an assistant manager. This was the first time he was ever spending Christmas away from his kin and he was lonesome and homesick. Perhaps he felt drawn towards Ivan and me as the three of us shared a common factor: we were bachelors, of roughly the same age, all spending Xmas away from home.
In those days the British management of Munnar’s tea estates seldom socialised with their staff, snootily sticking to their exclusive planters’ club for social interaction. But Ivan and I had proved that youth can easily bridge such social divides by inviting Hugh over for lunch. Christmas carols, courtesy Radio Ceylon, enlivened our spartanly furnished living room as appetising smells wafted in from the smoky kitchen where Arulappan, our Man Friday, was busy preparing lunch. Gradually our awkward initial reserve gave way to pleasantries and light-hearted banter as the ice was broken. Yet Hugh’s face betrayed a pang of deep regret over his separation from his kin whom he sorely missed. “What’s Christmas without one’s loved ones around?” he lamented.
Then over the air waves came Jim Reeves’s soothing baritone as he inimitably crooned the opening stanza of ‘White Christmas’: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas / Just like the ones I used to know / Where treetops glisten and children listen / To hear sleigh bells in the snow. ...” Hugh’s eyes misted as his thoughts drifted homewards to his snowbound cottage in Scotland where his loved ones were perhaps huddled round a blazing log fire amidst laughter and cheer.
He fought back tears, trying hard to mask his embarrassment with a feeble grin. Then he sighed resignedly as Reeves sang the unforgettable second stanza: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas / With every Christmas card I write / May your days be merry and bright / And may all your Christmases be white. ...” The carol couldn’t have been better timed, nor could anyone have rendered it more poignantly than Reeves. It struck a common chord among us—celebrating Christmas sans our loved ones—and left us lost in thought for some time. After a hearty lunch Hugh departed, his cheerfulness restored. Ivan and I felt a sense of elation. We had befriended a homesick lad and made his day, appropriately enough on Christmas day.