Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Introduction
This story is mainly about my father and mother as I was just 4 and a half when I left India. My sister, Pamela was just 10 months older and we were put into boarding school in England while our parents returned to India.
Browser by chapter
a picture of my father (centre with the tie) with the Cherideo tea garden staff
My sister and I were born in Assam where my father John Allan Lightbody was an assistant in Cherideo Purbut Division tea garden for the Assam Tea Company. Tea was grown extensively in the valleys of Upper Assam. My mother, Freda Ellen Best was from Guernsey and had gone to India in 1933 with an English family to act as governess to their four children. Their father was in the Indian Civil Service based in Shillong.
The first record of my father that I can find was 1927 when he was listed in Thackers Indian Directory as being Assistant at Cherideo Purbut Division (tea garden). He would have been 24 years old. However, in 1926 a letter home from my father indicates that he was already in India and was playing football with his native team and also enjoying polo. He had six polo ponies. He was also a keen chess player and had found a decent opponent at the club in Nazira.
In 1928 his letters show that he had been moved from Cherideo to proceed with the new layout of the tea factory. He described his beautiful bungalow overlooking the 700 acre tea garden and he had been playing polo at the Jhanzis Polo Club. His brother Robin (who was also working for the Assam tea company) was staying with him.
