Girmit : Stories from the tea gardens of Assam

<p>Golap Chandra Khound’s <i>Girmit</i> (‘Indenture’) is a collection of ten short stories based on the tea gardens of Assam.  Khound earned notable fame as a short story writer of the <i>Ramdhenu</i> era (1951-1967) and he is at his dexterous best in this collection of short stories based on the highly idiosyncratic tea garden way of Assam. The word ‘Girmit’ roughly translates to ‘agreement’ or ‘contract’ and all the stories in this collection feature the indentured labourers and their lives as deeply woven with the tea plantations of colonial and post-colonial Assam. <i>Girmit</i> has stories of the exploiters and the exploited; of the British Sahibs and their Indian shadows or Babus; of a bountiful landscape and tea garden people; of hopes horrors and terrifying consequences and of pathos and promise.</p>