To
My Daughter
India has a curious effect on you, when you have lived close to her people—an effect difficult to throw off, no matter how far away you may go.
For sixteen years India was my home. Then, just before the outbreak of the World War in 1939, illness took me back to England. My life in England from 1939 to 1945 was sufficiently full of battling urge and impetus to blot out everything else. Private tragedy, I thought, had closed an earlier chapter.
In 1945, with the end of hostilities in Europe, I was offered a two-year assignment in connection with service clubs in India. I sailed almost immediately for Bombay. Before I left, friends asked me why I had chosen to go back. It is difficult to put the intangible into words. I remembered the time when a neighbour of mine in India had received a letter from her schoolgirl daughter in England. The child wrote, ‘I want to smell the bazaars again.’
With me it was not the queer pungent smell of the East I wanted. Neither did I wish to see my old home. Too much lay in between. Most of all I wanted to see for myself the great progress already made by India in forging her own destiny.
On this visit I lived in cities and cantonments, in the plains, and in the mountains. The beggars were still there, it is true; so was the dirt. The great Bengal iron and steel works at Kulti were still there. The foundries of Tatanagar were working day and night, for they had learned to forge munitions of war as well as engines of peace—and beyond their walls were the same fields being scratched by the same inefficient wooden ploughs. The strange juxtaposition of modern and ancient ways was still there, but one felt a vast undercurrent bounding forward.
To my interested eyes, the most striking change was the advance made by the women of India, made, too, without much encouragement from their menfolk. Girls in fluttering saris were riding bicycles to and from their offices. (In 1939—just six years before—no Indian girl ever worked in a business office.) In the hospitals were more girls who were trained nurses. There were never enough, and they were heavily outnumbered by Indian Christians and Anglo-Indian girls; but that they were there at all was earth-shaking.
India will always be a land of extremes and contrasts, but some things will stand. Once again I saw the mighty Himalayas, ceiling of the world, and once again marvelled that anything on this earth could be so high. Once again I swallowed clouds of dust on the plains, and swam in crystal lakes in the mountains.
India the cruel. India the beautiful. Although you vow you will have no more of her, she tugs at you. She is beauty and delight. She is disease and sudden death. Smallpox, her people say, is the kiss of Kali, goddess of destruction. The deadly cobra is sacred, for once he spread his hood to shade the great god Siva. If you assess her by standards of plain thinking, you become lost in a fog in this country of impossible nonsense and potential greatness. Yet, if you encounter her young enough, if you live in the real India, not in the cities, or in congeries of your fellow men, where you are forever pigeon-holed in a life of social routine, your mind becomes stamped with something you carry till you die.
M.C.-M.
New Delhi, 1946.
New York, 1948.
Peter and I stretched full length in our deck chairs and read books borrowed from the ship’s library. It was the least form of physical exertion. Rene, aged nine months, wearing a brief one-piece cotton garment, lay on a rug beside me, kicked her heels in the air, and looked the only cool person on the ship.
The Red Sea had already served up a foretaste of tropic heat, intensified by a following wind. With ship and wind travelling in the same direction, we breathed a warm, moist air, so spongy it was almost tangible. I lay back and thought of the money spent on Turkish baths; the Red Sea was performing that service for us for nothing.
Behind us lay the cool Atlantic where, before rounding Gibraltar, we had sighted whales that blew as they surfaced, spraying misty jets of water over their heads. Then the whales would cruise abreast of us for twenty minutes at a time. The porpoises, too, we had left behind: schools of shining backs that had played scimitar games as they rose, and curved, and slid once more out of sight.
The Indian Ocean when we reached it did not feel any cooler though I was told that the temperature had dropped. All day long the flying fish swept past like fairy rapiers. Always there was a concerted upsurge of glistening backs, then a cloud of silvery needles shot through the air. Swiftly they pierced the waves again without a splash, only to be followed by another school in gleaming, horizontal flight.
We slept on deck, for only a salamander could have felt comfortable in the cabins. Going to bed on deck could scarcely be called ‘sleeping.’ In the small hours, late arrivals stepped over us, or on us. At dawn we were roused by the washing of the decks with powerful jets of water from a hose. But I forgave the tropics their heat for the sake of those magnificent starry nights. It was a continual surprise that a sky thick with heat vapour by day could be so translucently clear at night. Every evening I looked up at the stars, and every evening they were clearer, the sky they studded a deeper blue, alive with velvet softness. Planets assumed a preposterous size, and Venus looked close enough to fall into my lap.
We were on our way to India, where Peter was to start work with a mica-mining company. The life would be more suited to his temperament than anything he could find in England. Up till now nothing had held him for very long to any particular means of livelihood, because city life constrained him, and he needed regular outdoor exercise.
Peter had been born in India (where his father had held an appointment) and had lived there until he and his brother went to school in England. His brother Harry was now back in India, a district magistrate in Bihar, the same province in which our mica company was located.
I did not mind where we lived, so long as Peter was happy. He was twenty-five and I was now twenty. Some of the stardust of youth still clung to us. That golden age of dreams and recklessness carries few doubts with it. Of course we would make good. Of course the Far East was the right choice for us.
Father and Mother had fussed a little. I was the youngest of a large family, and no one ever behaved as if I had grown up. Although I was five feet seven, Mother still introduced me to her friends as ‘my baby.’
My brothers and sisters were a vital crowd. In the shadow of their initiative and success I had waged a constant battle to assert myself. But my exit to India should have caused no surprise, for my elders had strolled all over the earth. As my brothers grew up they had scattered in every direction, converging at intervals on our London home. The house was then filled with their friends from North America, Mexico, Chile, Africa, and a representative supply from Europe.
Mother enjoyed visitors. Father was not so enthusiastic and would disappear with a book to the study, or even go to bed. Mother must have had her fill of variety, and I learned more geography during school vacations than I ever did in class.
Peter had first come to the house when I was seventeen. He was dark and slender, with large brown eyes. I did not notice him much at first. It was exciting for me to have just left school, and to sit down to dinner at night like a real adult. It was still more fun to discover that after I had worked at the Slade School of Art by day, friends from home wanted to take me out at night. The world was my oyster, and I was busy trying to open it.
Peter came on the scene when I was having a wonderful time with Canada, America and Australia. Canada danced like a dream, and as I was dance-crazy he accounted for a considerable amount of my spare time. Peter took one look and went off to arrange for dancing lessons.
After that I do not remember having much to say in the matter. Peter knew what he wanted, made up my mind for me, and walked over everyone—quite literally. At one dance, an innocuous stranger was gliding over the floor with his partner, when Peter decided the man was staring at me. Peter slid me straight across to where the couple danced. The next moment, the man stumbled and fell. I never knew exactly how it was done.
There was no slackening of tension until I was at the altar.
Now as I lay and dozed in a deck chair on the ship, I felt the decision to go to India was probably the best thing for Peter. He would have more space for action. Paradoxically, he was content only when he was thoroughly keyed up.
Our ship was carrying many families going to the Far East. A boundless vitality consumed all the children. Life on a ship seemed to infect them with a dynamic energy on which the heat had little effect. The way they could outstrip even the most active pursuing parent made me wonder why we never heard of a child going overboard.
John Henry Smith, aged four, had been a great friend of mine ever since the day he told me, ‘The Captain brings me soup every morning.’ The gold badge on the cap of the deck steward had misled him. One day John Henry gave his mother the slip. He was a lanky child, pale and with ash blond hair, of the type that looks near to death’s door because of having shot up too fast. He was lively as a grasshopper and as restless.
He had been looking for something new with which to occupy himself when he found a circular iron fixture by the rails of the ship. Around it was coiled the slack of rope from the lifeboats. The centre was hollow. John Henry decided to look at the sea through this window, and he popped his head in. When tired of sea views, he tried to get out. His head stuck. A piercing screech shot me out of my chair. I found the child firmly collared, struggling, and nearly out of his mind with fright.
I spoke quietly to reassure him, then stepped behind and gently turned his head sideways to the oval opening. Chin and head promptly slid out and John Henry ran off to tell the rest of the Smith family all about it.
While preparing Rene’s food that evening in the cabin, I felt relief that on this first long sea voyage she was not yet old enough to get into such mischief. The thought was scarcely born when I heard a bump and a sudden cry. I whirled around to find Rene had fallen to the floor from the middle of the bunk where I had placed her. She must have heaved herself to the edge and overbalanced.
As I whipped her up in my arms, my heart stood still, for I saw a deep dent in the back of her skull. As she fell, her head must have struck the ironbound cabin trunk projecting from under the bunk.
At that moment Peter came back from his bath. We sent for the ship’s doctor. When he examined Rene, he looked grave. He told me to keep her quiet, flat on her back, and to send for him at once if I noticed certain symptoms. He promised to come back later.
When he had gone, I consulted Peter.
‘What did the doctor mean?’
‘He spoke to me outside in the companionway,’ he replied. ‘The symptoms we have to watch for are those of paralysis.’
Days of anxiety followed. But Rene never showed any ill effects from her accident. She lay in her travelling cot and beamed at everyone. Some of the passengers were sailors going out to join the China Squadron. Every man among them became her slave. One of our passengers was a surgeon commander on his way to the China seas. When the ship’s doctor told him of the case he came into consultation. Both doctors were surprised when the baby showed no dangerous symptoms and day by day the dent in the back of her skull filled out. Long before we completed the voyage both declared Rene to be out of danger.
After twenty-four days we reached Colombo, on the Island of Ceylon. The night before we steamed into port, I leaned over the rails of the ship to watch once more that lovely blending of tropic sky over tropic sea. Above me thousands of stars lay scattered in heavenly abandonment of plenty. Beneath, the sea glimmered out into the darkness in myriad soft ripples of restless movement. Away in the distance a new group of stars hung in the sky like a naked sword. It was the Southern Cross.
When we arrived in port, dozens of tiny rowboats surrounded the ship. Brown-skinned urchins dived from them after coins they begged from the passengers. As an eight-anna piece would sink in the water, swifter than the falling coin went a flashing brown body. The next moment the boy would break surface with the money between his lips. These men of Ceylon are a race of swimmers, for theirs is a heritage of the sea. The world was young when first they traded pearls from oysters.
It was mid-April when we disembarked. I mopped my face as we stood in the Customs House beside our baggage, waiting for it to be checked. In the air was a smell with a strange tang to it, a smell I could not place.
The courteous Indian official in khaki shorts and open-necked shirt looked far cooler than we did. A pugree swathed his head in many folds of gossamer muslin. On his forehead lay three stripes in coloured clay paint. Mr. Smith, who was standing near, told me these were the marks of a Brahmin, and that it was possible to tell to which sect a man belonged by the angle of the stripes and their colour.
I thought there were only Hindus and Mohammedans.’
‘There’s much more to it than that,’ he said. ‘You’ll find out in time. It’s a fascinating subject.’
I was too interested in my surroundings to take in the significance of this. Rene, propped in the crook of my arm, looked equally entertained. She held my shoulder and peered over the back of it. Her fat little behind humped up and down with excitement and once, as she lurched in complete reverse to follow with her eyes the brightly clad figure of a bearded Sikh she nearly pitched out of my arms.
The luggage was at last released, and I saw Peter’s slender dark head moving toward us through the crowd. It took only a moment to collect taxis for the Smiths and us, but in that moment we were beset by hordes of coolies fighting to earn baksheesh. Because we had seventeen pieces of baggage, they hoped to persuade us to use seventeen coolies. In fact, if we wished, they would make it two coolies for each suitcase.
We called to the Smiths over the heads of the milling crowd that we would meet them at the Galle Face Hotel. Then we dived for the now laden taxis, and as we moved off, the coolies turned to make a concerted rush at the next travellers.
The Smiths would stay at the hotel for the night, but that same evening we had to catch a train and start on our journey to Hazaribagh. This was not our final destination, but was en route. Some old friends of Peter’s who had known him as a child were living there for a few months. Mrs. Lewis had written to us in England inviting us to break our journey with them, before going farther. We were pleased to be stopping there first.
At the hotel, Mrs. Smith suggested that I give Rene her meal in their room, and then she would keep an eye on her for an hour so that I could make some purchases.
I had not yet adjusted myself to the unaccustomed glare. The sun felt like molten brass. Everyone else said that the hot weather had not yet started. In the drugstore where I bought a pair of sunglasses, the salesman gently smiled as I fanned myself. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is early spring weather.’
We called at the General Post Office to send a cable. At the entrance, professional letter-writers sat cross-legged on the steps plying a busy trade. Beside them other men sold sealing wax or for a twelfth of an anna applied a lighted oil wick to the wax and sealed your letter for you. Inside, things were much more exciting than in any G.P.O. to which I was accustomed. Everyone talked, chattered and argued; but cables miraculously were sent, letters were mailed, stamps were sold.
From the G.P.O. we took a taxi to the bazaar. Immediately we left the broad roads and square buildings of whitewashed cement that lined the main streets. We passed houses painted white or blue, or bright pink, all with flat roofs on which to sleep at night.
In the bazaar the shops were a dirty grey and looked as if a breath of wind might push them over. Flimsy structures of gunny cloth and poles, they toppled in drunken confusion, trailing like grimy webs of giant spiders over the crazy roofs. Grass matting enclosures leaned against walls, screening the women’s quarters. I turned to Peter.
‘Are they building the houses, or pulling them down?’
‘Neither. Just living in them.’
As we left the taxi and walked down the earthen streets, the queer smell was again in my nostrils. At the docks it had been a faint whiff. Now it enveloped me, and I knew at last the strange haunting smell of an Eastern bazaar—chili and turmeric, ginger and cloves, hot frying ghee and the whiff of a hookah, biri tobacco and cedarwood burning, cow dung in cakes drying out in the sun. A queer acrid stench came from the ditches, and the people who used them sat garlanding jasmine and tuberose.
We were pestered by small boys with shallow baskets who wanted to carry our packages, even before we had made any purchases. Beggars trailed after us whining for alms.
Peter could not rouse himself to my enthusiasm. All of this he knew. He could remember the heat. The language was not strange. Already he could recollect a few words of it. He knew what to expect. There was nothing to distract him from feeling sticky and uncomfortable. I was hot enough to burst, but kept forgetting the heat because all my senses were atwitch. Even my nose wriggled.
The street was jammed now, with a string of bullock carts hopelessly mixed with several dilapidated horse gharries. A car whirled past, raising clouds of mustard-coloured dust which engulfed us. The speed of the car frightened the bullocks. Startled, they backed into each other. The beads of their gay blue necklaces jangled as the line of carts became a tangled mass of hoofs and wheels. The carters shouted, kicked at the bullocks’ soft hindquarters, then ran forward and wrenched at their heads. They hit them between the eyes.
‘Peter, stop them from hitting the poor things.’
‘You’ll have to get used to more than this,’ he said.
‘I’ll never get used to it. Never.’
The line of carts finally straightened, and moved forward at a snail’s pace. The beggars again began to whine. The small boys trailed us, stirring up more clouds of dust. A shopkeeper dreamily spat out a jet of red betel-nut juice, then flung half a brick at a three-legged pariah dog. With a yelp of pain the dog vanished down an alley. Behind us, a human being of unknown sex was turning over the contents of a garbage can.
‘It’s useless getting worked up,’ Peter said. ‘We may be living in the 1920’s, but this is not Europe.’
That night we were to take a train through the Island of Ceylon, and then across the Straits to the mainland of India—those Straits across which Hanuman the monkey god once built a bridge with all his followers. The story no longer sounded peculiar.
Rene enjoyed that train journey. With brown eyes popping wide open, she did not miss a thing. Once again she and I could forget the heat as we watched the graceful Sinhalese waiters in the dining car. They were dressed in white. Their long black hair, sleek and immaculate, was parted in the middle and then coiled at the back of the head. It was held in position at the nape of the neck by a half circlet comb of real tortoise shell, placed above the twisted coil of hair, like a coronet worn backwards. The Island of Ceylon is the home of the finest tortoise shell in the world, and it seemed suitable that even dining car waiters should wear the genuine article.
We crossed the Straits by steamer ferry and took another train on the mainland. The following morning we reached Madras, only to find there was a twelve-hour wait for our express train, which was to take us on the next leg of the journey. We were running short of money. The shortage of funds and the responsibility for a small baby kept us from seeing much of Madras. We were relieved when the time came to board another train.
The carriages were spacious, for Indian railways run on a broad gauge line. Once inside a carriage, we had no communication with the rest of the train, unless we pulled the communication cord. By day we rested on the long padded bunks. At night these were pulled out farther to make our beds. Everyone I met was travelling with a bedroll of sheets and pillows. We bolted doors and windows against thieves, leaving the shutter blinds open for air. Dacoits (armed thieves) would make short work of a corridor train.
A railway station in Asia is one of the noisiest places on earth. The arrival of our train started all the water-carriers and sweetmeat men hawking their wares. From crowded third-class coaches brown arms reached out to buy oranges, bananas and cigarettes. Doors flew open on the side of the train away from the platform, and in a moment dozens of figures were sitting on their heels with their backs to us, making use of the gravelled permanent way. Beggars twisted in horrible deformities stood outside our windows, crying the inevitable ‘Baksheesh Mem-sahib. Baksheesh.’ Along came the ‘pan biri’ man chanting his tobacco stock. Brooms were waved in the windows by sweepers who offered to clean the floor. It was worth a few annas to get rid of the accumulation of yellow dust that had blown in and lay thick on everything.
A large section of the local population seemed to live on the station platforms. Everyone chattered or shouted. No one was silent unless stricken by palsy. The noise could be borne by day, but there was no relief from it even at night. Throughout the nights, as our train drew into each station, I shot bolt upright and wide-awake, with a din outside like the Fourth of July or Guy Fawkes Day.
After we left Madras, we had scarcely enough money for even the tray of tea and toast that is served at any railway station. Rene travelled in comfort, for she had her own supply of canned food.
At Kargpur, where we were to change trains, we put our financial difficulties quite frankly to the Indian stationmaster. Previously, I had demurred at this, for I could not picture any stationmaster doing more than look on us with suspicion. Mr. Das at Kargpur had never seen us before. He was never to meet us again, but he advanced us some money, with only our word for it that the name we gave him and our address a thousand miles away were correct.
After three days of travel, we reached what was to be my first station in India: Hazaribagh. This word ‘station’ was universally used, and I quickly fell into line. It meant any place, other than a large town, where people lived who were responsible for administration.
Mrs. Lewis was waiting at her house to greet us. She and her husband had rented a bungalow in Hazaribagh for a few months to get away from the heat, while Mr. Lewis enjoyed a short period of leave. He was the manager of an estate not far from Patna, to which they would return. Mrs. Lewis must have been about forty-five. She was short, with a comfortable round figure pleasant to the eye without being bulky. Her brown hair showed faint streaks of grey. Her dark hazel eyes seemed to grow warm and alive the moment she started to speak. As her eyes lit up, a faint fan tracery of laughter wrinkles spread away from their corners. The whole effect on me, the newcomer, was one of cheerful friendliness. Mr. Lewis was probably fifty. He was tall and did not carry an ounce of spare flesh on his frame. I doubt if he would have turned the scales at more than a hundred and thirty-five pounds. His skin was parched and bloodless, and he looked ill.
The two of them were pleased to meet Peter again, whom they had last seen when they were on leave in England and he was a boy at school. They quickly extended their friendship to include me, and this visit with them did much to initiate me in the ways of households in India and to simplify later problems which arose in my own bungalow.
Mrs. Lewis showed us to our room at once, for she knew I wanted to wash the dust off Rene. Peter showed me our bathroom, and explained the furniture there. This cool, square room had a cement floor. There was a wooden table with a jug, basin and soap dish on it. In a sunken corner of the floor stood an oval zinc bathtub. Beside it in the same recess stood a great earthen jar, of the size and height in which Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves must have chosen to hide. This was full to the brim with cold water. Beside it was an enamel mug.
Peter opened the outer door, called out in Urdu ‘Bath water,’ and in a moment a man arrived with two cans of boiling water which he poured into the tub. Once I had learned how to mix hot and cold water with the mug, I found it simple and in the days that followed began to enjoy the process. Until we became a little better organized, I used the basin for Rene.
The other article of furniture in the bathroom puzzled me, although its use was obvious. It was an enamel lavatory pan set in an iron-legged commode which had a wooden lid.
Each of us in turn bathed and dressed. When we were back in the bedroom, I said to Peter, ‘What happens next? I mean what do we do about that what’s-its-name?’
He smiled.
‘I forgot you didn’t know,’ he said. He walked back to the bathroom, and unlatched the door leading to the compound. ‘Mehter (sweeper),’ he called. Then he strolled back into our bedroom, closing the door behind him.
‘What happens now?’ I asked.
‘That’s all there is to it. When you are ready for the sweeper to bring his covered basket, you open the outer door and call him.’
As simple as that.
Mrs. Lewis now introduced her ayah, a wrinkled old soul, with a quiet dignity of bearing. ‘Satira is trustworthy. She looked after my John and Michael before they went to school. She’s a tiger for discipline, which is rare. You will find her useful with the baby. She looks after my clothes now, and the rest of the day she gets into arguments with the other servants. It will be a good idea for her to have something to occupy her time, at least while you are here.’ Satira took over Rene.
Hazaribagh was a strange mixture of hard-working officials and elderly residents who had retired there to live, in preference to returning to their own country. The station was about two thousand feet above sea level and a little cooler than other parts, so we were fortunate. The cost of living was low. People who had retired on a small pension could enjoy simple comforts that would have been out of reach in any other country. Many of them, though able to keep a house and a few servants, had little money for anything else. Several had not seen a railway train for thirty-five years. They were living in the past. Try as I would, it was difficult for me to find any link with this lost generation. Quite innocently I flouted their conventions at every turn.
One day an elderly official called to leave a message about tennis. He was elderly to me, but was probably about forty-three. Afterwards I walked with him to the gate and chatted a few minutes before he got into his car. Next day there was a social reprimand for me for having been seen talking so long, on the public road, to a gentleman, alone.
Another girl and I, both out from England and both victims of repression, decided one day to go fishing on the lake. An acquaintance who lived in a house at the edge of the lake had constructed a raft of bamboo poles with old kerosene tins nailed under it as floats. He invited another man, and with Peter, the five of us punted into the middle of the lake to bait our lines.
The floats did not function. The overloaded raft gently subsided into the water. We all fell in, except the owner. He remained on the deck directing the operations in the water. We swam ashore. He collected spare trousers and sweaters for us all, gave the ladies a room in which to change and went off to order hot drinks. We warmed ourselves with these. Later our host drove us back in his car. Next day the tongues wagged. I, who was accustomed to borrow my brothers’ trousers whenever they proved useful, was said to have fallen in the lake on purpose in order to wear my host’s pants.
All these people were genuinely kindhearted, but if you have not seen a railway train for thirty-five years, you are inclined to greet anything or anyone more recent as an unknown horror from Mars.
We left Hazaribagh, the place of a thousand gardens, or a thousand tigers, whichever interpretation you preferred, for ‘bagh’ meant both of these things. The tigers were still located occasionally in the neighbouring state of Ramghar. One was shot while we were there. It was only of vague import to me at the time, for I was still at the stage when tigers were something at a zoo, or in a child’s picture book.
When we moved, a string of bullock carts carried our belongings. There was no other transport for heavy goods, and we had bought some furniture made by local carpenters. Already we had acquired a cat, and it travelled in a cage. This cat was the beginning of a domestic menagerie without which, from now on, we never moved.
We went ahead by automobile, taking the baby’s ayah with us. The ayah’s previous mistress had gone to live in Madras. Since the ayah did not want to go so far from home, we had engaged her.
In the 1920’s the district of Koderma was the centre of the biggest mica-mining area in the world. At a place called Domchanch, Peter was to take over the combined post of assistant mines manager and zemindari manager. A zemindar, I was told, was a landowner. A zemindari manager administered the land and any villages belonging to the estate. In this case the zemindar was the mica-mining company.
The colony at our headquarters consisted of the general manager, engineer, assistant manager, accountant, and Peter. Other assistant managers lived farther out. The accountant was married, and his young wife was a great help to me during my first efforts at serious housekeeping. Unfortunately, they left for England a few months after we arrived. The other men were bachelors except the engineer, whose wife and family were in England.
Our bungalow was like most mofussil (upcountry) houses. It consisted of a series of whitewashed rooms, screened from the heat by deep verandas. Each bedroom had its own dressing room, and, off that, its own bathroom. You knew it was a bathroom because there was a hole in the wall to let out water.
The bungalow had originally been built as a guesthouse, and was therefore quite near the ‘big house’ in which the owner had lived. Mr. Bownass, our general manager, now occupied it. Just beyond the big house were the stables. Horses were necessary because in many cases the mines were reached more quickly by riding across country. I begged to be allowed to exercise the horses on the days they were not being used. Most of them were uncomfortable hacks but one bay gelding soon was giving me regular morning exercise.
The owner of the mines had recently turned his property into a company, and put it in the hands of managing agents whose head office was in Bombay. He had made two tennis courts and laid out an eighteen-hole golf course. His wife had been fond of tennis, and he of golf, so everything was in first-class condition.
Our bungalow and the big house were at one side of the golf course. Those who had not played the game before quickly started, because golf and tennis were the only ways to fill the evenings after work until sundown.
Archbold, our engineer, was a plus four at golf. He was not only a good player himself, but was always willing to help beginners. These virtues were offset by the fact that he had wolf tendencies, which you only found out about when you started to take lessons. The half mile of bushes alongside the course could at times become quite a danger zone. If you lost a ball there while playing with him, you had to use your own judgment whether or not to go and look for it.
After making a beginning at golf with borrowed clubs, I wanted some of my own. Peter had quickly outstripped me in proficiency. Possessing a good eye and perfect co-ordination, he was expert at all games. He was still happily making very low scores playing the entire course with an iron, but he told me to go ahead and buy some clubs for myself.
As Archbold was the most knowledgeable, I asked him to send the specifications to Calcutta. The sedate sports shop received a letter asking them to select and send a brassie, a mashie, and putter for a good-looking girl height five feet seven inches. His judgment of looks was biased, because there was, at that time, no feminine competition.
On a later occasion when Archbold was renewing his wardrobe, he wrote to Hall & Anderson’s in Calcutta, to select for him ‘two sets of their best silk pyjamas for a gentleman; wife in England.’ He then went on ten days’ leave to Hazaribagh, of all dull places.
At Domchanch my first struggles with housekeeping began. My ignorance of most things useful was a disgrace. At home as the youngest of the family, there always had been someone more efficient to do things, and invariably I had finished as an onlooker. The time intervening between my marriage and the journey to India had been spent mostly in furnished rooms where our meals were served by some motherly housekeeper.
Now I was on my own. It was fortunate for Peter that he possessed a stout digestion. At least I could sew, and soon was making things for the bungalow as well as for Rene and myself. My sewing must have relieved the pressure on Peter’s finances, though neither of us realized it at the time. But that saving was probably cancelled by what it must have cost him while I learned the rudiments of cooking and housekeeping.
I was now mistress of a household of four servants, none of whom spoke English. I spoke no Urdu, or Hindi. The servants did the work, at least I assumed that was why we had engaged them; but I quickly found they knew nothing. I overcame the language difficulty by using signs. When I led one of the servants to a spot and pointed, he knew then he had to do something with the thing at which I was pointing.
About this time I was told the tale of the young officer fresh from England, who was ‘failed’ in his Urdu examination. During the oral test, he was asked what he would say in Urdu if he wanted the syce (groom) to saddle his horse and bring it round to the front of the house. He thought for a moment and then replied, ‘I should stand in the middle of the drive and shout to the syce “idder aio” (come here).’
I fully appreciated the story because at that time my Urdu vocabulary was confined to ‘come here’ and ‘go there.’
One of the quickest ways to learn a new language is to be flung out on your own, where no one speaks your language. With Peter away all day, there was no way to shelve the matter. I quickly acquired a collection of words to make myself understood. Some of these words were, to put it mildly, not the kind used by cultured Indians. During those first months Peter constantly censored my flow of language. But it was good that we did not live in a city or military cantonment, for then I should not have learned the language at all. Servants and shopkeepers in those places know English. Later we met people who had lived for years in India and who could not speak a word of the language.
While learning Urdu, I had also to teach the cook how to prepare meals. It was a case of the blind leading the blind. He and I learned to cook at the same time. At first there was far too much flourish about our meals, with far too little that was edible. It was engrained in the house servants that ‘Sahib-logs’ eat about five courses at every meal. At the start I gave in because I did not know how to say ‘stop’ in their language. Whatever the food, it always tasted the same. There was a strong flavour of spices in the simplest things. A crumb chop in everyone’s house carried an insidious flavour of turmeric and powdered cinnamon, mixed with pepper.
Rene’s food was simple to prepare. We could nearly always get a chicken in the bazaar, and her broth and chicken mince were made fresh every day. I always took the precaution of tasting it before her meals, to make sure the cook had not let himself go with the condiments.
In the mofussil, cooking is done over charcoal fires. It is easy to grill or fry on an open fire. If I wanted to bake, I had to set a covered saucepan on the fire with live charcoal on the lid. Baking this way may be simple for the expert, but it is no method for a beginner. Anything that required cooking by gentle heat had me defeated. It was months before Peter got any sauces with his food.
The kitchen is always a separate building. My visits hampered other operations there. I felt embarrassed to break in on the servants while they entertained friends from other bungalows, all of them drinking our tea, so I cooked on the back veranda with an angethi. This is a glorified charcoal bucket with holes in the sides. My fire either blazed up or died to ashes. There was no privacy about my culinary experiments. If the Mem-sahib so far demeaned herself, then one of the staff felt it necessary to stand by in attendance. He was often helpful. Just before that tantalizing charcoal died to ashes, one of the servants would hurriedly wave a little fan of plaited palm leaf. He alternately fanned the fire and blew hard. Both of us would be smothered with ashes and so was the food.
The ayah, with Rene in her arms, would hover. At intervals the cook would appear with a look of acute distress on his face, while I attempted dignity with a smut on my cheek. He would watch me mournfully and then protest.
‘Mem-sahib, it is not seemly that the Mem-sahib works. This is for the cook. Let the masalchi, the lowly one, take the spoon and stir, and I the cook will bake.’
A trickle of perspiration would roll down my face. Weakly I would give in.
The saucepans had no handles. Indian saucepans are made of stout aluminium with a flat lip all the way round by which you grasp them. The servants were so deft that they could pick up a hot pan with bare hands, ignoring the kitchen cloths. I would try to lift a pan, holding a cloth in one hand and my spoon of office in the other, only to find that two hands were needed and two cloths. By that time, whatever I had been stirring had boiled over.
Saucepans without handles were awkward, whoever used them. As soon as possible we saved enough money to get from Calcutta English pans with handles. After some weeks these saucepans were still in use but every handle had been hammered of because they ‘got in the way.’
Undaunted by this experience, I thought to make the sweeper’s work easier. We had beautiful dark red floors of polished stone which he cleaned by sitting on his heels and whirling a cloth in his hands. I bought a floor mop on a pole so that he could work standing up. After a few days I found him polishing the floors once again in his own way, squatting on his heels. The mophead was in his hands, but the pole had vanished.
The social plague of caste pulled me up at every turn, and created a plethora of staff that was anything but a blessing. Servants could number up to ten or more, according to the size of the household. Two was the minimum, a cook and a sweeper, ingress and egress; but I never met any European who dared to flout the bazaar trade-unions and keep his household down to two servants. It was maddening to know that in neighbouring Burma, where no one has caste complexes, two spotlessly clean servants will run a house. But we were not in Burma.
With no water laid on, and no electric light, there is much extra work in a mofussil house. The masalchi is the water carrier and kitchen maid. He carries water from the well in large twin cans slung from a shoulder yoke made of bamboo. The other servants draw water for their own use, and their own cooking, but they will not carry it for the house. Pantry water is supplied by the masalchi and he washes the dishes after meals. He draws water for the cook and cleans the pan. When I wanted him in a hurry, he was generally sitting on his heels, pounding masalas (condiments) on a curry stone in the kitchen. (Condiments are always fresh. Pepper, coriander, ginger and the rest all grow in the villages.)
The masalchi heats the bath water in two-gallon kerosene tins and carries it to the bathrooms. He cleans the jugs and basins there. The bearers will not touch them. This means that he is not only taking orders from master and mistress but is also at the beck and call of every servant in the house except the sweeper, who is of too low caste to order anyone about save his own wife. Altogether the masalchi is the Cinderella of the staff and has my sympathy. When the masalchi falls ill, another masalchi must be engaged, for no other servant will do his work.
One of the bearers cleaned our oil lamps and filled them, but I suspected he did this because it gave him control of the oil; otherwise somebody more menial would have been found to do the work.
I discovered that most people were shown their dogs’ food before the meal to make sure the dogs received what had been bought for them. I adopted the practice for our recently acquired fox terrier pups. After our sweeper had shown one of us the food, he put the dishes on the ground nearby. The pups then stopped racing around him, and made a beeline for their meat and rice. They thrived on goat meat.
Many people who owned horses stood the wooden troughs for their grain outside a dressing-room door. The horses would be led there to eat. In this way the master could supervise their feeding while he dressed or shaved. He looked out between sweeps of the razor.
I soon learned that if anything were spilled on the floor I must not ask a bearer to wipe the spot. The sweeper must do this. Slowly I sorted out the thing each member of the staff would do, and where, according to his caste.
A Hindu cook did not touch beef, for to him the cow and bull are sacred. A Mohammedan cook would not touch the flesh of the pig, for to followers of the Prophet it is unclean. After I noticed the way village pigs lived, I understood the feelings of Mohammedans. We ourselves ate ham only if it had been imported from abroad.
At first I thought a sweeper did all the menial work, but when my man who cleaned lavatories, dogs and floors refused to touch one of our dogs when it died, I found there was more to learn. Our sweeper was of the untouchables; but there were lower in caste than he. I had to hire a ‘Dom.’ Theirs is the only caste that will touch the dead.
If a servant wanted a few days’ leave in excess of the one full month with pay which I gave to everyone, he would produce his own badhli (deputy) for those days at no cost to us. If a servant fell ill, the temporary man I engaged had to be of the same caste as the one who fell sick.
In the bigger houses there is his lordship the butler, whom for some reason the other servants always refer to as the Bootrail. He enjoys master’s wine and cigars, just like any other butler.
It was no use trying to do the work myself. Apart from the blighting loss of izzat (prestige) that would descend on the master of the house, the temperature made it impossible. In a place where it reached 117° in the shade, I did not care who did the work so long as it was not I. The heat left me so wet that if I bent over anything I dripped into it. Quite soon I issued sweat cloths to the cook to tie round his head in the hot weather.
Servants in India are very fond of children without exception. As soon as Rene could talk, she had only to make a determined noise to get her own way. From the ayah downwards, the whole staff ran errands for her with beaming faces. The servants encourage children to order them about, looking on it as a sure sign of blue blood. An active and intelligent baby quickly grasps the idea and is ready to meet it halfway.
When Rene was about three years old, I came upon her issuing orders to the grey-bearded bearer in a passable imitation of her father’s voice. I directed her energies elsewhere, and when alone with the old man, remonstrated with him for encouraging her. I could see that what I said had little effect. He repeated in admiring tones, ‘But what a fine Missy Baba.’
A spontaneous affection exists between small children and their Indian servants. Perhaps a child’s sure instinct suggests that these otherwise grown folk are still children at heart. And where a child may go through a period of aloofness with a stranger of his own race, he never has any hesitation about a new ayah or bearer.
In the first couple of years we engaged a succession of ayahs. Rene took to each one as if she had known the woman all her life. I had yet to learn that a reliable ayah should be aged about seventy, or should be the wife of one of the servants already living in the compound. I never found an ayah old enough. The fourth ayah took the head bearer and my jewellery. It was not so much what she did that gave me concern, as what Rene might be learning from her. I never had a moment’s peace of mind while the baby was out of sight.
When the fourth ayah left, I engaged no more. From this time on, Rene did considerable touring because we went nowhere unless she went with us. Since we were young, we could not bear to miss anything. If we were invited to dinner, Rene went too, cuddled in a blanket. She slept soundly on many a strange bed and she seldom woke when she was picked up out of her cot.
Rene never attended a dance. When such a rare thing occurred, about forty odd miles away, someone would offer to look after her for the night. We would leave her at some house on our way, together with the unfortunate chicken that was to be killed for her next meal. This routine so impressed itself on Rene’s mind that for years she was convinced if anyone in the house was about to travel he must first pack a chicken, and she would chase the poultry all over the compound in an effort to help with the packing.
I still had difficulty with Urdu, and was relieved to notice that several Indian clerks in the general manager’s office had similar troubles with English. When we arrived in Domchanch, our cat was separated from the remainder of our luggage and for some unexplained reason was delivered, still in its cage, at the main office. An agitated note was brought to me, written by the head babu (clerk).
Madam,
There is come one wild cat in cage. I arrive with all my might to tell you. What I shall do?
S. Mukerjee Babu
Their efforts in English were probably far better than mine in their language, but they listened to me with the grave courtesy of the East. After breakfast each morning I unlocked the storeroom, gave the cook all he required for the day, and counted out twenty-four hours’ supply of dish cloths and swabs. Things disappeared if they were not locked up. The dishcloth supply was quite an affair. Up to two dozen could be used in a day, for only the laundryman would wash them. One particular morning when three of the staff were with me in the storeroom, I noticed that the voice of the younger bearer was rather choked. I dosed them if they were ill, so it was natural to turn to him and ask, ‘Have you a cold?’ Looking a little startled and embarrassed, he replied ‘Yes.’
I had mispronounced the word ‘cold.’ What I had said was, ‘Have you married?’ When he replied that he had, I went into great detail about how to get rid of the symptoms of marriage by purgatives, hot mustard foot baths and above all, by getting into bed and staying there.
Even the immaculate self-control of Asia was not proof against this. Two of them fled from the storeroom silently doubled up with laughter. Later I heard gales of it wafted back from the servants’ quarters. The head bearer stayed and explained, but only after he saw me smile encouragement and ask for the mystery to be cleared up.
A few months later the cement floor of our back veranda became so badly cracked that it had to be repaired. The contractor made an estimate and the work started. The old floor was to be broken up and fresh cement laid. Coolies, most of whom were women, levelled the damp cement. They patted and smoothed all day using small flat wooden trowels, stopping only for an hour at noon to go to their homes in the village. By evening the back veranda was finished. Two days later the village contractor presented his bill. His English was even more peculiar than my Urdu. The account read:
Rs. 50/-/- [fifty rupees] to 24 women for pit-patting on master’s backside.
There was a universal misapplication of this word among the clerical class. I never could discover how it had crept into babu English. Once an engineer who came to make estimates asked me if I wanted drains on my backside.
Peter’s conversation, and that of all the other men, seldom got away from the subject of mica. Work was a prime topic, for there was so little else to talk about. Their many technical expressions made their conversation difficult for me to follow. They discussed mysterious things called pockets, winzes, adits, and schist. From watching their expressions I gathered that schist was a Bad Thing. A pocket was a Good Thing. ‘Pocket’ was the only word whose meaning I fathomed for myself. It meant any accumulation of mica found in the mine.
The glistening mineral so interested me I wanted to see it in the rock. There were other exciting things, too, in the mines, things like pieces of garnet and tourmaline, semi-precious stones. Once I handled a black slab of tourmaline about four inches long and one inch thick. I was told that its green tint begins to show only after cutting.
I asked so many questions that eventually Peter took me with him down Burria mine on the first shift. It was the deepest mica mine in the world, though shallow enough when compared with other types. We went six hundred feet below ground level, down steep wooden ladders. The shaft dipped like an irregularly constructed well. At the bottom it was wonderfully cool. Water seeped steadily through the rock, and where we stood they were pumping. Extra pumps would be used when the rainy season began. Soon the ends of my dungarees were wet.
A certain amount of mica had been dislodged from the rock wall without blasting, and this the coolies were bringing to the surface. Later it would be sent across to the splitting factory. The mine shaft was so narrow we could stretch out both hands and touch the walls, save at intervals on the way down, where the pock-marked sides showed where great pockets of mica had been detached. Everything seemed clean, for work in mica and rock did not create more than a light dust. All the way down the shaft, the walls intermittently gleamed a soft pink from great blocks of rose quartz.
Peter’s worries were those of any other mica manager. After he had extracted a pocket of the mineral, he never knew whether or not that was the last mica in the mine. Burria mine had proved extremely valuable.
A pocket was an area composed of solid mica, steely, hard, and shining. Within that mass, there might be perfect chunks of mica which carried no flaws. Such a chunk was called a ‘book.’ The minutely compressed ‘leaves’ of a book of mica were split in our factories and then sold in the markets of the world.
There was no such thing as a lead, or a vein. Mica lay in pockets, and mining it was a process of scratching on the surface where an outcrop protruded. Then the coolies dug until no more could be found. The next pocket might be a yard, or half a mile, away. Work was carried on continuously at outcrops all over the company’s property, for the entire district was rich in deposits. Mica in bulk is so hard, and nature has subjected it to such pressure in the course of congealing through the ages, that to detach it from rock the same methods were used as for blasting rock. Once a pocket was located, holes were drilled round it and sticks of explosive inserted.
About the time we arrived in the mica fields, our company was making an effort to reduce excessive overhead costs caused by lack of knowledge on the part of the workers. Sticks of explosive had been used that were twelve inches long, or more.
When these were fired, everyone ran away for half the morning until the detonation was heard. The length of the stick was now reduced to three inches, which was sufficient. But since the average worker had no idea of accuracy, his three inches might be anything. Peter himself now stood by the charges and lit them. Once the mica was blasted free and the workers had returned, he counted heads to make sure that everyone was back at work.
We climbed out of the mine about noon, following the midday batch of mica, in baskets on coolies’ heads, to the factory. Each area had its own factory where hundreds of coolies split the mineral into leaves. This splitting was done by hand with fine-bladed knives, for no machine had been invented that was so sensitive for the work as human fingers. Women were the experts, for they split finer, and accordingly earned higher wages than the men.
The factory was a walled-in courtyard of verandas where rows of coolies sat cross-legged. Their slender pointed knives looked razor sharp; yet at intervals, a man or woman would cross over to hone a blade. One older woman was ranked the most expert out of the eight hundred coolies in the factory. She was reputed to split leaves to one hundredth of an inch in thickness.
‘How can you see to do such fine work?’ I said.
‘Mem-sahib, I see only so far. After that I do not use my eyes. My fingers are my sight.’
At that time there was little or no legislation to protect either the mine-owner or coolie labourer. Mica thefts on a large scale were a daily occurrence. We employed guards at the mines, but a guard could be deceived or suborned. In any event, guards could not be all over the outcrops. A book of first grade mica about the size of a modern novel could fetch one hundred rupees in the local bazaar—a fortune to a coolie. Nearly every shopkeeper did an illicit side-line business in the mineral. Sometimes when our firm had a big overseas order to complete within a time limit and the full quantity had not yet been split, we had to complete the amount by local purchase. Fully aware of the thieving going on, we always called this ‘buying back our own mica.’
Because Peter was also zemindari manager, he enjoyed a greater variety of work than the other juniors. Like all estate work it covered anything from livestock to villages.
Once he was away for a week because the company was involved in a court case in Gaya. It had dragged on for so long that we wondered if there would ever be an end to what we called the Singhar dispute. Singhar was a mica-bearing property of ours that was also claimed by a local landowner.
The case had been tried in a lower court, with the verdict in our favour. Although the contestant had no hope of reversing this, his pleader was out to earn more fees for himself, and he got the case taken to a higher court. Each time a date was fixed for a hearing, the pleader asked for a postponement. Peter finally forced the issue, sat firmly in Gaya for several days, and came away with the case in his pocket. He also came away covered with mosquito bites. Gaya mosquitoes were noted for their man- eating powers.
He had scarcely returned when he fell ill with a bad attack of malaria. The mosquitoes had done a thorough job. I was still new to the effects of the fever, though both of us had previously suffered slight attacks. When Peter’s temperature registered 105°, I wanted to wire for a specialist from Calcutta. The old-timers laughed. Salts, they said, and quinine every six hours. After some days Peter recovered. In two more days he was back at work and I began to wonder what I had made a fuss about. Then I went down with malaria myself.
One evening Peter came back with the news that he was going to Sonepur Mela to buy horses. Those in the stables were getting too old for work. The yearly mela was a great place to pick up a likely horse. If there was any one thing more than another that I wanted to see in the whole province, it was this horse fair, one of the largest in the world, bigger even than the famous horse fair of old Moscow.
‘Mela’ loosely translated means ‘a fair,’ but in India there is always a religious motive for holding one. Sonepur Mela has deep religious significance. During the fair, on a particular date which is marked by a phase of the moon, there is a ceremonial bathing in the river Ganges. Immense crowds of pilgrims travel to the spot. In the course of thousands of years this ceremony has attained such proportions that a vast livestock fair and market has sprung up around it which now balances it in size. The mela is held for ten days during the full moon period of the Hindu month of Kartik (October-November). This mela is not only one of the oldest in India, but it is said to be the oldest fair still existing in the world.
Months before I knew I would have a chance to visit the mela, I had been searching for records of its origin. Something which attracted millions of people each year must have had a beginning. In my search, I was swept back through and beyond all credible history to a realm of legend peopled by gods and goddesses thirty feet high, some of them with six or eight arms and several legs.
In 2500 B.C. Hindu scriptures were in existence, but the tale I finally learned was much older than these scriptures. The beginning of the mela is lost in labyrinths of Eastern mythology. The fair is said to be contemporaneous with Rama, the seventh Hindu incarnation, and Sita.
The story goes that at the confluence of the great rivers the Gandak and the Ganges, where Sonepur now stands, a crocodile of enormous size lived. He was Lord of the Waters. His name was Grah. In a previous incarnation he had been a Gandharva prince. One day the prince went with the ladies of his household to the river to bathe. In play, he caught a sadhu (holy man) by the leg, thinking the foot belonged to one of the ladies. The sadhu, enraged at the familiarity, turned the prince into a crocodile.
One day Gaj, the great elephant, Lord of the Forests, came with a herd to drink. Gaj had also been unfortunate. In his previous incarnation, he had been a mighty king much given to deep meditation. He had been turned into an animal by a sadhu for not having noticed the arrival of the holy man at court, because of his own deep absorption. Short-tempered sadhus with powers of transformation must have been embarrassing visitors.
Gaj arrived with his herd at the river. As he stepped into the water, Grah caught him by the leg and tried to drag him in deeper. The struggle continued for thousands of years. All the elephants and crocodiles joined in. At last the elephant Gaj began to weaken. He prayed to the god Vishnu to help. Vishnu in his incarnation as Rama, in the presence of Hara and other gods, saved Gaj from the grip of the crocodile. The touch of Vishnu turned both creatures back to their normal and royal state.
A temple was erected on the spot that had become holy because of the visit of the god. Legend has it the temple was built by Rama himself on his way to fight for Sita. The present temple is said to be on the exact site of the old one.
No wonder Sonepur Mela attracts crowds for the Gandak Asnam, the great bathing festival. First there is the Hindu legend that Rama visited the spot; added to that, Sonepur is sanctified by being at the place where the Gandak River flows into the most sacred of all rivers, Mother Ganges.
Once again we were to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, who were now at their own place beyond Hajipur, not far from the mela. Mrs. Lewis had written that Satira was still with them and would keep an eye on my lively Rene, now nearly three years old.
We travelled by car. When we arrived, my family disposed of themselves so quickly it was a little disconcerting. Peter excused himself to Mrs. Lewis, saying he would be back later, and drove off to the mela. Rene, after a tiny reminder from me, gravely held out her hand to Mrs. Lewis; but the next moment she turned to Satira. She could not possibly have remembered the woman; but after ‘Salaam, baba’ from Satira, then ‘S’laam, ayah’ from Rene, the two of them turned, and with Rene leading the way, disappeared into the bathroom.
‘Well! I do apologize,’I said.
Mrs. Lewis laughed.
The next morning Peter left early, on foot, for the mela. He said a car was useless among such crowds. After breakfast Mrs. Lewis and I started out to see the fair. We should have walked, as Peter did. Instead of that we used my host’s car. A mile short of the mela the congestion was such that the car could make no headway through the solid mass of people. Mrs. Lewis told the driver to take the car home and we joined the crowd.
A railway bridge crosses the river at Hajipur. On either side of the rails are footways for pedestrians. These footways were so jammed that the police, at intervals, barred ingress to the gates until the people sorted themselves out. We finally needed a police escort using their shoulders as battering rams, to help us reach the other side.
Sonepur railway station was a sight. At that time it had the longest platform in the world, but its whole two thousand three hundred and seventy feet were scarcely enough to accommodate the traffic. The assistant traffic manager told me that on the heaviest days of the fair, the railway ran an average of sixty-four special trains in addition to the normal schedule.
People hung on to the carriages like flies, and as each train came into the station little of it could be seen except the engine. People covered the running boards. Legs and arms stuck out through windows. The roofs of the coaches were covered with people. Most of them had jumped on the train when it was moving and hoped to jump off again without buying a ticket. As the train slowed down there was a rush for the barrier. Crowds swarmed like ants over the station fence.
Yet in this country where the poor travel on foot the trains carried only a small proportion of the mela traffic. That year the estimate of attendance at the mela was three million. After moving about in the crowd I was sure this must be an under-statement.
Many animals were sold at the fair. We were told the livestock that year was less than it used to be. My mind boggled at what the fair must look like in a good year.
They said it was a bad year for elephant sales. There were eight hundred and seventy on show, and they were probably the best cared for of all the animals. Even one of these big creatures is a fine sight, but to see rows and rows of elephants away into the distance in the shadows of the old mango trees had almost a touch of the prehistoric. Each was chained fore and aft to stakes in the ground. Many fat and mischievous baby elephants were with their mothers. An occasional tusker of uncertain temper was guarded by spearmen at head and tail. We circled him at a distance.
We moved on to look at the hundreds of camels which were sheltered from the sun under trees alongside the roads. Several Pathans from the far Northwest Frontier were here, looking the animals over. These men came from the country of camel transport and they were not likely to be cheated in their choice. They were the first Pathans I had ever seen, and I was immediately struck by their height and their dignity. Their hawklike beauty and majesty of bearing was comparable to nothing else I had ever seen. Their waistcoats of scarlet embroidered with gold gleamed above baggy white pantaloons. On their feet they wore gold-embroidered Persian slippers whose toes turned up in fantastic leather curls. Crisp white muslin was swathed around their gold-embroidered head-dresses. What an air they had! They looked like eagles in a colony of sparrows.
We left the dusty road, and walked across to the equally dusty spot occupied by sixteen thousand head of cattle. Because of their great numbers, they could be housed nowhere save in a large bare space without the shadow of a leaf overhead. Buffaloes were the principal sufferers. In great heat, these water animals with no sweat pores can find relief only by wallowing in water or mud. Neither was available here in sufficient quantity.
Several groups of saffron-robed priests passed by on their way to the temple. Some had their heads shaved to the skull except for one central lock of hair on top.
We moved on to look at the thousands of horses. I could easily believe the estimate of seven thousand. Most of them, too, were in the sun, but dealers with the best animals had manoeuvred for a place under small trees. Peter was here, trying out horses. He was limping, and told me he already had been kicked twice. The fair was tiring enough, but the dealers made it worse by screaming, haggling, and jostling each other. An elderly Moslem stood out from the rest of the crowd by reason of his bright red beard. Perhaps he really had made the sacred journey to Mecca; but the days were gone when a red beard held this significance. Now, any man who felt inclined to alter his hair style went home and dipped his beard in henna.
I left Peter still bargaining and turned to watch some villagers choose their mounts. The villager does not want anything horse-size. He chooses a pony, preferring a country ‘tat’ within his means. His requirements are peculiar. He knows nothing about bone and stamina, and whatever his purchase he will work the animal to death. He does not look for a good trotter. When mounted, he walks or canters. The canter, to give it a name, is a cross between a trot and a gallop, with the hind feet at a trot and the forefeet at a gallop. It produces an undulating movement for the rider, who can sit down to it with a rigidly straight leg without rising in the saddle. It is the ‘racking’ used by mounted postboys many years ago. Racking is certainly an apt term, for it must strain the horse. When the villagers found a pony satisfactory in this respect, and therefore easy to sit, little else seemed to matter for most of the ‘tats’ were vicious as the result of bad handling while they were being broken in.
The most astonishing horses at the mela were the dancers, ordinary country-breds with this accomplishment added. They were trained, not freaks. A pair of clappers like castanets, or a native drum, started them off. The horse would prick up its ears and begin a kind of clog dance, slowly at first. The pace quickened, then became so fast that it gave the impression of all four hoofs being off the ground at once.
We could not see all the mela in one day because the fairground was spread over six square miles. I could well believe the railway staff when they said the clouds of dust could be seen from five stations down the line.
There were streets of shops selling everything from needles to bedsteads. Each shop measured about six feet by six. Their flimsy canvas walls sprang up like mushrooms in the night. After the mela they vanished.
One street was full of nothing but peep shows and ‘theatres.’ Here a mysterious square tent erection did a fine trade. It advertised a ‘Milking He-goat’ at four annas a look. When we arrived, a group of Sikhs was strolling down the enclosure, their brilliant pugrees rivalling the gay plumage of birds. Purple and pink, violet, green and rose were swathed above bearded faces. The dandies amongst them wore fine hair nets across their beards and looped over their ears to keep the curl and the cleft middle part in place.
The birds and monkeys, too, were worth a visit. Dealers asked high prices for birds of peculiar colour that were no more than common green parakeets whose heads had been dipped in dye. But the sight of the birds and monkeys in tiny cramped cages made me long to set them all free. I must have been growing hardened by now. I shall never forget my first weeks of rebellion at the state of most animals in India. On railway station platforms and in villages, I had seen mongrel dogs prowling around, hairless from disease and frequently with a leg missing. Pariah dogs they were called, truly the outcasts of the animal kingdom. On the roads, I saw cart bullocks whose tails were dislocated. The carter guided his charges by twisting their tails and prodding them in the genital parts with a stick. In time the dislocated tail joints grew into distorted lumps.
I once asked a Hindu carter why he treated his animals so callously, for with his belief in reincarnation one of them might be his father or mother. He only smiled and gave the tail another twist. Perhaps he knew the Hindu precept that suffering and pain help to a higher form of incarnation next time or probably he did not think at all.
I had travelled a long road since those first weeks when I would grab Peter’s arm and expect him to do something immediately about every unhappy animal we saw, and to find lakhs of rupees to buy all the sick and forlorn. I knew now about the many goshalas (cow asylums) created by charitable Hindus for cattle too old or sick to be used any longer by their owners. Cattle are sacred and must not be killed even if the back or leg is broken.
The Sonepur fairground is bisected by a railway viaduct. Under its many arches were groups of nautch girls, each troop of dancers ingeniously making use of one of the arches. The girls were like gorgeous butterflies, but incredibly dirty under the garish make-up and kilted skirts. Each group of nautch girls was attended by its own musicians. The combination of discordant noise coming from under the railway arches was terrific. There were drums. There were violins with strings of wire instead of gut (the noise from these wired violins is agonizing to the Western ear), and there were pipes with the sweetest notes. The pipe notes were almost drowned by the other instruments.
Something else was at the fair which was no part of the mela proper, but which we could not avoid. We had to leave the fairground past the rows of tethered camels. Beyond them we walked down a street lined on both sides by lepers. They sat up and called out for alms or lay full length wrapped in a cotton chaddar. The more half-rotted limbs and faces they could display, the greater the alms they expected. These people understood little of the disease and would have nothing to do with leper colonies. Relatives exploited the leper of the family and many sat beside him to share his takings. Leprosy was so lucrative as a means of livelihood that many a bundle of rags covered a completely healthy man.
After several days Peter had bought three horses and acquired two magnificent bruises. The fourth horse which he fancied, he rejected because the price was too high. Some days after we had returned to Domchanch, while we were taking breakfast on the veranda, the horse dealer arrived. He had found out from our servants where we lived and had walked the horse a matter of a hundred and seventy miles to tell us he would now take a lower offer. We bought it.
I had lived through the hot weather and then a flood of monsoon rain which would have swamped Noah himself. Then one October morning I staggered out of bed, feeling not nearly so wilted as usual. I noticed that the insects had disappeared. Now that the nights were cooler they had died off completely, or had gone into a state of coma which would last several months. As far as I was concerned, the coma could last forever.
I decided to air some clothes. Everything smelled of mildew. No one had warned me about mildew. The smell from the clothes was sufficiently depressing, but when I opened a wrapping hermetically sealed and took from it my fur coat, the fur came off in my hands and tufts of it fell on the floor. I learned that you could not fool an Indian insect with an English moth ball. No one had warned me of this either. That fur coat had been a wedding present from Peter.
With the coat in my arms I huddled miserably on a stool in my dressing-room. From the open door of the wardrobe came a faint smell of fungus. It would take me more than one monsoon to get used to this. A wave of homesickness swept over me. I wanted to get away from bugs and smells. In another minute I would be making a fool of myself. It was better to start moving.
I stood up, shook the handfuls of fur from my skirt, and walked out, across the living-room on to the front veranda. (Why we called it the living-room when all of us lived on our verandas I do not know.) The mail was in. I picked up the letters from a table. A firm of seed merchants must have discovered our address. They had sent me their new catalogue. Anything was better than thinking about what had once been a fur coat, so I slit the wrapper of the catalogue and the die was cast.
From that moment a gardening fever attacked me. It has waxed and waned as I have girdled the earth, but always since then, give me a seed catalogue and you can keep the daily newspaper.
Seed catalogues snare the beginner because the arch-tempters print them in colour. I turned the pages of that first leaflet and each one was more attractive than the last. It looked so easy. Just order seeds and leave the rest to nature. I consulted the water-carrier. He said that now was the time to plant cabbages, chili, green pepper, and all the things that blend to make a curry good. But my thoughts were on things that could not be eaten. I wanted flowers, lots of them. Flowers, he said, could also be planted. I hurried back to the seed catalogue, made out a list and mailed it to Mr. Pestonjee P. Pocha of Poona. I had the sense to order a beginner’s assortment.
Though learning to become a housewife was sometimes as comfortable as a hair shirt, from now on learning how to make a garden was sheer bliss. But for this new interest, my days would have been very long, for though we were a little colony of four bungalows, we met, not because we had anything in common, but because it helped to have someone near with whom to play tennis, or golf, or in the evenings to make a four for bridge. People who, in a large town, would have had little in common and therefore seldom have met, by force of circumstances suffered from seeing too much of each other and having too little to talk about. The result was that, apart from work as a topic of conversation, a natural tendency existed to gossip with careless abandon about anyone within a range of two hundred miles, solely for the sake of making community noises.
Mr. Archbold, who had spent nearly twenty-five years at lonely places, mostly in Africa, was now in a bungalow where for the first time his family could join him. His wife came out during the following year, and brought with her two attractive grown-up daughters. Our three bachelors took on new life. Two of them lived some miles away perched on mica hills, and felt that the third, who lived in a bungalow near the engineer’s house, enjoyed an unfair advantage.
The two men at the outposts constantly found urgent work that brought them to headquarters. The Archbold girls played tennis, so the bachelors played tennis too. But the girls did not stay long. Life was too quiet. Apart from tennis, there was literally nothing for them to do.
The elder girl was a lovely creature with a naturally brilliant complexion. Her mother had no intention of letting that colouring fade, or her daughter’s lovely mouth turn pallid in the heat of the plains. The daughter had been trained for both ballet and ballroom dancing and very soon mother and daughter migrated to Simla. The girl opened classes for ballroom dancing, became the blazing comet of that Simla season, and never returned.
The younger girl, attractive in Italian Renaissance style, did not stay long either. She was restless and in consequence had all three young men by the ears, but she was not content. She had thought India was going to be like the storybooks. After about ten months, Mr. Archbold left for England and his younger daughter found scope for her activities in London.
With the two girls gone, the young bachelor who lived at headquarters took to spending his evenings on our veranda, for now there was no one to walk with in the moonlight. This put quite a strain on our whisky supply until Mr. Bownass, the general manager up at the big house, was joined by his sister Helen from England, when the bachelors moved over the way, to drape their long legs on the cane chairs of the other house. The G.M.’s whisky supply and income could stand it, and we all remained good friends.
The golf course now became very popular, for Helen Bownass was a keen player. Two of the assistants who previously had shown no interest in the game sent to Calcutta for golf clubs. We even organized a golf tournament. The only people we could challenge lived about forty miles away, so we not only played them, but put them up for the night among our bungalows.
Behind our house on the further side of the golf course lay about half a mile of sparse undergrowth which in turn merged into a scanty jungle. Big game had lived there, but tigers were now scarce. None had been shot for two years. Man with his mining was encroaching on the jungle and the wild life was moving away. But wild animals still made occasional depredations and this fact was brought home to me abruptly one day.
My bedroom faced the back garden, with its long French windows on ground level. One afternoon when these glass doors were open, the sun had so warmed the doorstep that one of our terriers had stretched out there full length and gone to sleep.
It was about five o’clock. I had changed for tennis and had walked over to the courts. The bearer went into my bedroom to tidy it. While he was in the room a leopard took my sleeping dog from the doorstep. The dog gave only one yelp. The bearer turned quickly but was too late. The dog was already being carried away.
He came running to the tennis court to tell us. We all went back to the house. Pug marks of a leopard were clearly pressed into the soft earth of the flower beds. We followed the trail to where it disappeared at the edge of the golf course. We never saw the dog again.
Around Domchanch there was little natural food left for wild animals and this leopard had taken to raiding. A month later the forest officer who lived about eight miles away had his magnificent Newfoundland dog taken in the night while it slept by his bed. He slept, as we all did, with every door wide open for coolness.
The leopard never returned and soon the unpleasant affair slipped into the background.
Most of our problems at this time were not large ones of how to deal with big game, but very ordinary ones about how to deal with toothache. Peter’s teeth were in fairly good condition, but mine, attended to every six months before we came to India, were now in a really bad state. Not one tooth needed attention, but several. I suffered constantly from toothache, and the only relief at night was aspirin or cotton wool warmed on top of a hurricane lamp on the floor beside my bed and held hot to the face.
Living upcountry is not so uncomfortable as far as food and accommodation go, our income stretched to that; but other things accepted as part of the daily round in a town do not exist in the mofussil. There is neither doctor nor dentist. It is a good life only so long as you keep your health.
If we had toothache, we travelled five hundred miles to Calcutta. Our nearest railway station was thirteen miles from the house. From there it was a twelve-hour train journey. Even an appointment previously made meant staying in Calcutta anywhere from a week to ten days, for dental treatment often took that much time. After we had added up our railway fare, meals on the journey, hotel bill, and incidental expenses, we found that to have a tooth filled would cost nearly a month’s salary. In consequence many people delayed dental treatment. Juniors on small salaries thought twice about it. Some could not afford the trip at all.
One day a note arrived from a neighbour who lived near the railway station to say, ‘Do you know that a dentist arrived on this morning’s train? He is staying at the dak bungalow.’
I took the cotton wool away from my face and leaped to life. This was an event of major importance.
The whole district reacted with startled delight. A dentist on tour was unheard of. The news flew from house to house. Probably no dentist in the world was ever so welcome. If there had been a town band we should have turned it out to greet him. He may not have been a very good dentist, but at least he extracted, drilled holes, and put in fillings. No one was too fussy about the permanency of the work if the toothache stopped.
He set up a collapsible dental chair in one of several rooms in the rest house, a building for the accommodation of travellers. The immensely wide doors for coolness also made the room fairly public. The bazaar had never seen such goings on before, and as there was no charge for admission people squatted or stood in relays watching the magic being performed.
The dentist had arrived at a time of year when the usual crop of fly and insect pests was busy, including hornets that always favour your furniture. They fly into a room and build their tiny clay beehive affairs on legs of tables, chairs and cupboards, with utter recklessness. Inside the little clay hump they lay the grubs.
Having built the clay blob and housed their young, they then spend all day feeding them. They fly indoors with caterpillars which have to be shoved through the hole in the top. The hole is always smaller than the caterpillar, or he would get out again. The caterpillars that year seemed to be a tighter fit than usual, and in the dentist’s temporary surgery the hornets pushed and shoved all day.
We took little heed, for they were doing the same thing in all our houses. I was in the dental chair neatly gagged and silent. The dentist was operating his drill on a tooth, when an incoming hornet must have mistaken his route. The drilling suddenly stopped. The dentist let out a yell of pain, shook one leg hard and said: ‘Excuse me. I must take off my pants.’
His visit was so popular he was positively fêted. As the weeks passed, every time people met, someone sported a new crop of dentures. Seniors blandly smiled new teeth. Juniors’ tempers were not so peppery. Moulds for making dentures were sent to Calcutta, but all other work the dentist did on the spot. Instead of staying three weeks, our dentist lived in the district for six months.
After two years we moved farther out, still with the same mica concern, but about forty miles away from Domchanch. Our back yard was just beginning to look like a real garden when I had to say good-bye to it. Domchanch had held fewer people than Hazaribagh. The new place, Tisri, had fewer people than Domchanch: exactly one assistant beside ourselves. But it meant promotion for Peter.
Mica was there in large quantities, but more in the form of outcrops. There were no places dug deep enough to be called mines, and the work covered a bigger area. For that reason Peter required an assistant. Once again the factory was near the office building and in it the mica was split before shipment.
The office room, where any administrative work was done and where the babu clerks functioned, was also the post office. We could only buy stamps and post letters there, but it was a link with the outer world. A mail runner left each morning with a sealed mailbag slung over his shoulder at the end of a stick. At the tip of the stick was a bunch of small bells that jingled as he trotted, and dated from the days when they were intended to frighten off wild beasts. The runner travelled on foot thirty miles to Giridih, where there was a railway station and a post office. He was a regular postal employee engaged as a ‘dak runner,’ a condition of the service being that he must never walk, but always trot. If we wanted to send a telegram, the message was written and put in the mailbag. It was sent off from the telegraph office at Giridih.
At Tisri there was neither tennis court nor golf course. We had no radios. There were no libraries near, and to buy all the books we wanted to read was too expensive. We missed good music. Our gramophone was very precious and the records were prized as if they had been collector’s items, as indeed they were. Some years after this, I was in England for a few months when the B.B.C. was running the popular programme called ‘Desert Island Discs.’ I often wondered why they never gave the choice to someone who had put his selection to a genuine test. We could have given him points.
In the long evenings at Tisri, Peter could always manage to bury himself in a chess problem, but my knowledge of the game was no match for his. My own greatest privation was lack of reading matter. Even as a child my appetite for books had been insatiable, and if nothing else was available, I would pore over a railway timetable. Mr. Bradshaw, I thought, had travelled to all the places in his timetable and must be a very interesting man. If Mr. Bradshaw were not available, I freely borrowed without leave novels belonging to adult members of the family. I scampered through them without digesting them. Their meaning was outside my grasp but the written word still held me in thrall. When I was found with them there was generally trouble, and I never did understand why my elders took the matter so seriously. The books were very dull, and adults made far too much fuss about them. My passion for books persisted. Some I smuggled into the lavatory and hid under the large, old-fashioned box seat in between sessions of reading, for that was the only room where I could lock myself in. That passion for reading certainly suffered at Tisri.
The place was lonely, but at least there was a garden. Terraces sloped down to a large shady banyan tree and beyond it to the village tank where an inoffensive crocodile lived. No one knew how, or when, he had arrived. The tank was miles from any river and he must have walked overland. He was only a fish-eater and did no one any harm. He was about nine feet long and would come to the surface and lie there floating, probably out of sheer boredom.
We were accustomed to occasional bouts of malaria, but until now Rene had escaped. One morning she came into my bedroom, climbed on to the bed and almost immediately started to shiver. Her face turned putty colour and her teeth chattered. Quickly I slipped her in between the bedclothes. By good chance Peter’s young assistant owned a thermometer. We took her temperature. It was 103°. She had malaria. After a few days she shook it off but within a month fell ill again. She suffered repeated attacks though in between bouts she was as naughty a bundle of high spirits as anyone could wish.
We had lived at Tisri about five months when Bill Bownass, our general manager, went to Bombay on business to see the managing agents. He had not been well for some time, but like all of us carried on, because it was no easy matter to reach a first-class doctor. While in Bombay he was taken seriously ill and was admitted to hospital. The doctors said an operation was necessary.
It was the middle of the monsoon season. During this period of heavy rains, deep wounds do not readily heal. If a serious operation can be performed out of India, the patient has a chance of quicker recovery after it. Our Bombay office suggested that the best arrangement would be to secure a passage for Bill on a ship bound for England. This was done.
His sister Helen received the news in Domchanch and immediately made arrangements to join him in Bombay. Helen had become very popular and we were all sorry to say good-bye to her. I helped her pack, for it was a rush job which she could scarcely carry out alone. The brother and sister sailed for England with Bill in charge of a nurse, and he entered a London hospital. I was delighted to hear, many months later, that he had made a wonderful recovery, but he never returned.
Bill’s departure entailed another reshuffle of posts and we moved to a place farther off, without a European assistant near. It had a name. That was all. Even the name now escapes me. No Europeans had ever lived there. None had worked there for thirty years, but the mica outcrops existed and the company wanted to explore.
Once again I had to leave half-grown flowers I would never see in bloom. Once again we packed. Each move was made by using bullock carts for the furniture. Bullocks on the road average about two miles an hour. We always faced the entertaining problem of whether to go ahead by automobile and wait with one pot and pan until they arrived, or to send the bullock carts ahead and stay with our pot and pan in a bare house.
The carts are a series of flat boards between two enormous wheels. It was safer to supervise the loading ourselves, or the men would put so little on each cart that we would have to hire more than we really needed.
Furniture stacking with us reached a fine art, and even then something was always smashed. The carters have a habit of going to sleep on top of everything during the night, while the bullocks continue to walk. They did not get lost, because there would be a turning off the road only about once in forty miles. What sometimes happened would be that at night, with the carter asleep, and frequently without his hurricane lamp at the tailboard, an infuriated motorist would be held up because the whole contraption was on the crown of the road. The bullocks, startled by the motorist’s horn, and blinded in the beam of the light, would end by turning completely around. Still walking they would continue in the wrong direction, with the carter asleep on top. If the ropes held the furniture together, the household goods would arrive several days late. There is a saying upcountry: ‘Two moves are as good as a fire.’
On our way from Tisri we had to pass through Giridih, where the civil surgeon of the district lived. We had arranged to consult him about Rene, and gave him the history of her attacks of malaria. After a thorough examination, he told us that she was seriously infected and would be an easy prey to the malaria mosquito. He advised us to take her out of the malaria regions and send her to England.
Quite apart from the fact that there was no money to do this, I did not want to face the separation, though many parents before us had done so. Dating from that year, she was sent to school in the mountains during the hot months, and was in the plains only for the cold weather. So, earlier than we had intended, she went to school with several hundred other children in similar circumstances. I hated the arrangement. There was only one term to the school year: March to the end of November. It was unavoidable. A vacation in the middle of term would mean that the children returned to the plains during the hottest and most unhealthy season, thereby cancelling the advantages for which they went to the hills.
A wife must choose between staying with her husband or with her children. My private theory was that since a wife could stay in the house during the heat of the day, while the husband must work in the sun, he should go to the mountains in the hot weather, and the wife stay in the plains. Obviously he was the one who required a change. When I solemnly expounded this theory to other women, I was slightly unpopular. They took it seriously.
At our new destination there was a bungalow into which we could not move because the roof was broken. There was a well from which we could not drink. While fresh tiles were being brought to mend the roof, Peter lived in a tent. As soon as the roof was on, he moved in, and I joined him.
While the well was being hurriedly deepened for our use, the water in it was a dark tea colour. In this we washed, bathed and cooked. I could face up to the bathing part, but to brush my teeth I decided to use soda water. The result was surprising: I frothed like an epileptic.
Since we could not drink the dark well water, we used it in tea, or we drank soda water. As the bottles of soda were brought by a coolie, the crate balanced on his head for eighteen miles, and since he came only at intervals, our supply of soda water was carefully husbanded. After coming in from work on a blazing hot day Peter would count the bottles before he took even one cool drink—not cool, but tepid, for there was no ice.
As soon as the well was deepened, we were more comfortable. The water from it we then boiled and poured into my home-made filter. Portable filters of metal frequently end by collecting more germs than they eradicate. This was not the kind I wanted. I paid a visit to the local potter in a village six miles away. On the levelled sun-baked earth outside his hut he sat cross-legged, surrounded by earthen jars of all shapes and sizes. Flat on its side in front of him his potter’s wheel smoothly, ceaselessly, whirled. In the centre of it lay a mound of wet clay. His cupped hands curved around it and the wet pile towered, then expanded as the hands turned downward and the thumbs came into action, hollowing, smoothing, rounding a perfectly spherical jar. I could see that this one was going to be a three-gallon jar. Just what I wanted.
I explained that I wanted three jars of exactly the size he had just finished. Without stopping the wheel, he called to his young son and told him to show me those that were already fire-baked. I picked out some after testing them to see that they did not leak. The masalchi had come with me to carry them back. The three jars were soon set in position on our back veranda, one above the other, in a tripod stand cut from bamboo rods. The stand had horizontal rungs on which to rest each jar. Into the top we poured the boiled water. This jar was half full of charcoal, clean and fresh. The water dripped slowly through the charcoal and out by a tiny hole bored in the bottom, into the next jar underneath. The second one was half full of clean sand. The water dripped through this in the same way and the sand took away the flavour of the charcoal. The water then dripped through a tiny hole into the third and bottom jar, and was now safe to drink. All three jars were covered with fine muslin cloths that were changed daily. The arrangement was cheap (the jars cost three annas each) and every two months I deliberately smashed all of them and bought new ones.
At this stage I decided there would be no more gardening until the day came when we really could settle down. Our nomad life was beginning to have that effect on me.
We lived among villagers who came from the class of professional thieves. Fortunately we had nothing for them to steal. Since they lived far from any town, money meant nothing to them. They did not buy and sell, but bartered. It took us many weeks to persuade them to bring us foodstuffs to sell, and even then they brought only the rice and lentils which they themselves ate.
About once a fortnight we returned to civilization to collect as much food as the car would hold. The car was not our own but borrowed for each occasion. ‘Civilization,’ eight miles away, meant the local bazaar and one European.
When all our purchases were packed in, we must have looked a funny sight. Hold-alls and live chickens tied by the legs jostled one another in the back. Frequently I nursed a leg of kid meat on my lap, with vegetables and eggs arranged round my feet. Once one of the fowls broke loose and flew out. The ensuing chase was amusing to look back upon, but at the time I nearly wept to see our dinner flying away.
As soon as the rains came, we were isolated. Neither car nor horses could be used until a break in the rains gave time for the two unbridged rivers that crossed the mud road to drop a little. Once the mails waited a week on the opposite bank of the turbulent little river near the house. Each morning I went down to have a look at the coolie in charge of it, but we never managed to get a rope across.
In the monsoon these two rivers, which had been broad expanses of sand and rock, would become raging torrents. Once when we returned from the bazaar we were obliged to leave all our goods, fowls included, on the bank and wade across just ahead of the rising waters. After we reached the bungalow, coolies brought in the luggage. One of the fowls had laid an egg on the ground, poor little thing. I was grateful to her.
To make food last the right length of time was a problem. Dry goods came from Calcutta. To avoid expense and to keep a good supply in the house, I learned how to order only about once in two or three months. It was a fine art to work out and keep level the consumption of bottles of vinegar, sacks of flour, cakes of soap, packets of razor blades, and canned goods, so that as far as possible an order for all of them could be placed simultaneously. Even razor blades came with the dry goods, because if we waited until Peter wanted them, we paid in postal charges on that one packet about three times its purchase value. Then the mail landed the packet about twenty-two miles away and we still had to fetch it.
In spite of my efforts, our larder one day was bare. It was too much to expect Peter to eat vegetable curry and rice for the third day in succession. Frantic messengers were dispatched to every village and at last one scraggy fowl was procured. The cook cut its throat and, after plucking it, he laid it on the ground on the veranda, while he went to get a bowl of water to clean it. The kitchen veranda was as open as those around the bungalow. The district was infested with kites. One promptly dived for the bird. Our three dogs saw the bird and dashed out. Having lived for some time on a diet of lentils and rice, they too were interested. The dogs made a pounce just as the cook returned. He rushed at them. They and the kite made off, but the latter was back on a turn of the wing and nipped up the chicken a second time. By now, with every crow in the vicinity cawing and circling round the kite, all the dogs barking, and the cook screeching, there was quite a noise. The watchmen from the mica factory below at the foot of the hill came out to see what was the matter. They and the cook all chattered at top speed. In conversation they raise their voices about five notes, and the more exciting the news, the higher the voices are pitched. Meanwhile the kite, struggling to rise higher, found the load too heavy. He dropped the chicken and flew off. Immediately dogs, cook and watchmen started for the spot at the double. The cook beat the rest of the field by a neck and returned in triumph with the battered chicken. We ate it for tiffin. There was nothing else. After that incident, every time the cook had a chicken to prepare, I stood on guard outside the kitchen and banged away with my gun at the circling kites. The bag worked out about three kites to one chicken.
The food was poor but, on the other hand, with no entertaining and no thirst but our own to quench, we saved money. Previously our bank balance had always been a deficit; now it raced ahead on the credit side. Peter bought new shirts for the first time in three years.
Peter’s new shirts had to be washed, as did the remainder of the household linen. In India the washing of clothes presents certain unusual features. Only men of the ‘dhobi’ caste wash laundry. None of our servants was a dhobi. You become a dhobi only by being born one, and then you wash clothes all your life.
Laundry is washed at the nearest river, at a well, or in the village tank. When coming to terms with a dhobi, I had always found it safest to stipulate that he must wash our clothes at our own well. Now, although we had a well, we had no dhobi. The only alternative was to pay a man ordinary rates and let him take the things away. We knew that by doing so we ran the risk of a skin disease whose cause is so well known it is called dhobi’s itch.
When laundry is washed off the premises, it may be taken to the local tank. This tank is a large expanse of water anything up to one hundred and fifty feet in length, with the water contained by high earthen banks. The village may be miles from a river, and it may have only one badly constructed well. However, the village tank is often misused.
Every male inhabitant bathes in it if he feels so inclined. I have also seen sick cattle staked out in the water (scarcely an area is without foot and mouth disease). No one in the village is bothered by the fact that this affects the tank water for the remaining livestock. Village buffaloes are often scraped in the tank water and cleaned of ticks. These water animals must bathe. They just walk into the tank and lie down until they feel better. Although river water may be a degree better than tank water, the banks of a river are used for similar purposes.
There was no man of the dhobi caste for miles. Some friends who lived eighteen miles away kindly offered us the services of their dhobi, if we could send in the laundry, so once a week a specially chartered coolie travelled with a gigantic bundle on his head. He delivered the soiled linen and collected the clean laundry for the return trip. Even this simple arrangement presented difficulties. When the rains broke, the bundle of laundry became sodden. A big canvas sheet had to be bought from Calcutta. For more than three months in the year, everything was folded into this for transport.
Food was my principal problem. The obvious solution would have been to grow everything possible ourselves, but we could do this only if we knew we were to be in one place long enough to eat what we had planted.
People who did not grow their own food relied on the village bazaar if it were within walking distance. On bazaar day vegetables are brought for sale in baskets and dumped on the ground in the dust. Meat, if available, is also brought there, and cooking fat. Except in the cities, people did not go to the bazaars themselves. If you want to keep your cook, you let him do the purchasing, so he can make a little extra money. In the bazaars, crowds hover round the vendors and everything is covered with dust, which is increased by every cart and car.
In the average upcountry bazaar, butcher’s meat is goat meat, killed and sold by Mohammedans. Sheep need good grazing, which is non-existent, or are fattened on grain, which is too expensive for the bazaar butcher. Goat meat is not unpleasant. Castrated kids are fattened, and this meat is quite tender when roasted, though it lacks the flavour of sheep mutton.
At Domchanch we had all started a ‘mutton club.’ We bought and fattened sheep, killing one animal at a time and sharing the meat among club members. Such an arrangement is possible only if several families live near each other.
Beef butchers trade only in an area where they can dispose of the meat, either a predominantly Moslem part, or where there are people other than Hindus who will buy. The Hindu will not eat meat of the animal he considers sacred. Until recently in Kashmir, killing a cow even by accident was punished by death. The sentence was later reduced to imprisonment for life, and within the last few years the penalty has been changed to immediate expulsion from the state of this Hindu prince.
In another part of our province, where we later lived, we were able for the four cold months of the year to give a standing order for a weekly supply of beef to be sent by train one hundred and twenty miles, the distance to the nearest beef butcher. Even so, none of the Hindu servants could be sent to the railway station to collect the basket.
For seven months in the year potatoes are almost the only vegetable, save for a peculiarly insipid pumpkin and some green, attenuated things like desiccated cucumbers which had no flavour at all. Fruit varies, but in small mofussil places there is nothing for sale except bananas and papayas.
So variety in our diet was only a dream. This problem applied only to people on small incomes who could not afford to order cases of fruit from orchards in the hills or unlimited canned goods from the towns.
While we were living at this outlying spot, good health saved us many problems. Even when occasional sickness came, youth took this in its stride. One morning I woke up to find I had lost my voice. I wheezed when I breathed, and felt choked. I was hot and uncomfortable. In some surroundings a man may welcome a short period of silence on the part of his wife, but not on the equivalent of a desert island. I could only whisper, so I stayed in bed. I do not remember that we had even a thermometer in the house. A week later I got up because I suddenly felt hungry. It was a waste of time to be dramatic about illness. Dramatics require an audience, and where was our audience in the middle of nowhere? Years later, a doctor told me I must have had an attack of bronchitis.
One day Peter was testing a high powered pressure lamp that had been sent for use at the outcrops after dark. In assembling it, someone must have cross-threaded the main column. As the petrol was being pumped up, a jet of liquid flame shot out from this joint and hit Peter full in the face. He was blinded and two men from the mine had to lead him up the hill to the bungalow. Providentially there was a large roll of cotton wool in the house, as well as a quart of fine olive oil which had just arrived from Calcutta. Before I could stop him, he dashed for the bathroom and plunged his face in cold water.
Under protest he let me apply oil-soaked wool to the skin and bandage his face. His eyebrows were gone, and his front hair. His eyelids were blackened and burnt, but once these were dressed he could see. Twenty-four hours later I was able to persuade him to go to the nearest Indian doctor for treatment. Peter was always impatient of illness in himself or in others. Loss of activity was torture to him.
Even when the doctor babu had dressed the burns, Peter was pulling at the bandages, wanting them out of the way. For about one week he allowed his skin to be protected. Suddenly one morning, off came the bandages. He had received tertiary burns, and the delicate underskin was too suddenly exposed. For several years his face was terribly scarred. If ever he regretted his impetuosity, he said nothing to indicate it.
Not long after his recovery from the burns, Peter took some short leave that was due to him, and we went to stay with his brother Harry, who was stationed in Bhagalpur, in another part of the province.
The two brothers looked forward to these meetings. They would go off together on a jaunt like a couple of boys, and their interminable arguments would come floating back to me. They argued about everything from pins to white elephants. When they did not argue, they played endless sets of tennis singles. Always a bottle of beer was wagered on the result. Whoever lost immediately challenged the winner to a return match, so at the end nobody could remember who had to pay for the beer.
Harry had rented a house on the banks of the Ganges. I was enraptured. To stay in a house by a river, the mighty Mother of Rivers at that, seemed wonderful.
We arrived in the rainy season when the Ganges was in flood. The opposite bank was so far away we could scarcely see it. The current was so swift that small boats had to start almost half a mile above the spot on the opposite bank where they wanted to land.
Until the last vestige of pastureland was covered by monsoon water the herdsmen insisted on living with their cattle far out on grassy slopes surrounded by water. Sometimes in their obstinacy they had to be taken off in boats sent by the district magistrate. They would rather risk drowning in the night than leave the grazing grounds while rich fodder remained above water. I often saw them swimming to the mainland, pushing before them earthen jars of milk for sale in Bhagalpur. Even though the Ganges was full of muggars (man-eating crocodiles), the daily journey was nearly always made.
The morning after our arrival I got out of bed very early to see dawn over the Ganges. I walked to the edge of the compound where there was a drop of about thirty feet to the river. When I looked down, I saw a corpse lying in our creek, directly below. It was complete and almost white from long immersion. A pariah dog was tearing at the palm of one outflung hand. On the beach above the corpse, two men were up to their waists in the river washing themselves. Downstream, below it, a dhobi was flailing away at a bunch of laundry, swinging it round his head and slapping it on a big stone.
At this moment my brother-in-law strolled out from the house in his dressing-gown and joined me. He turned and called for one of the servants to go to the village for a Dom to turn the corpse loose in the river.
At the time I was surprised that Harry showed so little dismay. Several days later I learned that many half-burnt bodies floated past the house daily from the Hindu burning ghat upstream. Anyone who lives on the banks of the Ganges, particularly in a town, is unfortunately situated. A burning ghat must be near water, and the Ganges being the most sacred of all rivers, its banks have many funeral pyres near the towns. Unpleasantly well-fed giant turtles and crocodiles were always swimming near the burning ghat. The crocodiles kept under water save for their nostrils, but at any sign of activity near the funeral pyres, they rose to the surface. Then an almost imperceptible movement of their ironclad tails propelled them towards the platform of logs where the corpse was burning. They would cruise in towards it, waiting.
Bhagalpur climate was steamy in the monsoon because the place was low lying. The houses were old and the verandas near ground level. Therefore the daily scorpion and toad hunts were lively affairs. The rainy season stimulates activity in almost anything that can make itself a nuisance. While the heavy rain was falling, we were free from trouble. The downpours may continue for two or three days. These are followed by intervals of hours, days, or even a week without any rain at all. These intervals were sticky with heat and even more uncomfortable than the deluge.
In the steaming hiatus between storms every crawling and flying thing that has not been drowned but has been washed out of its own house invades the bungalows. The temperature then is exactly right for hatching out the insects. Even in my own house in the monsoon season I might be on the veranda quietly reading a book when suddenly out of a crack in the wall, a crack I did not even know existed, would pour thousands of flying white ants. In a moment I would be smothered. As they alight their wings drop off and then they cannot fly. The things crawling all over me were no longer winged insects but loathsome squashy white bodies.
Insects are dormant during the day. When the lamps are lit, they arrive in millions. There are special gala nights when one variety sweeps the board. In Calcutta, about the time of the Diwali festival, there is nearly always one night when the green flies arrive in swarms. Calcutta calls them Diwali flies, because of their arrival with monotonous regularity each year during the festival. They pile up round the base of the lamp-posts on the Red Road in small hillocks about eighteen inches high.
The ‘spider lick’ is universal. He looks like an earwig and he does not sting. All he does is walk over you. The next day that spot is a burning blister of pus. The insect likes dampness. He sits on bath towels and gets in the bristles of a shaving brush. Once Harry did not think to examine his brush before he began to shave. Within twenty-four hours his face was a mass of blisters and that was the last time he shaved for about a fortnight.
The ‘Bengal Lancer’ announces his arrival by a fearful stink. He’s only a fly but he would make a skunk cower. He is one of the stinkbug family, and the nickname for him in Bihar is simply a backhanded joke directed at neighbouring Bengal. On a real bug night it is impossible to cope with the influx. The lizards, harmless to humans and scavengers of insects, become bloated towards the end of the monsoon until even their tails are swollen with the good food.
In Bhagalpur the toads and leaping frogs were a real nuisance because they did not confine themselves to eating insects, but liked to take naps inside an empty shoe. Leaping frogs were even worse. The genuine leapers sailed through the air, landing almost anywhere. One morning my brother-in-law took his hat off the rack on the veranda, clapped it on his head and then off again as fast. Out jumped a leaping frog. I laughed till I cried, but then, it was not my head. In the evening the sweeper did his rounds with an old kerosene tin and a pair of tongs. His orders were to deposit the toad load at least half a mile away from the house. Whatever he did with them, at least the rooms were rid of their annoying activities for a time.
Of the stinkbugs, the tiny black shield bug was our biggest smell and in the whole of Bihar, the town of Bhagalpur seemed to be the worst afflicted. The bug is only about three eighths of an inch long. The smell is difficult to describe, but is pungent and cloying. The odour from even one will permeate a room. After the lamps were lit, a pattering outside like a miniature hailstorm would be heard, and accompanying it the familiar smell. We became so used to it that everyone would say to everyone else, ‘Stinkbug night again.’ All the lamps were at once put out. One hurricane lamp would be set outside in the drive, standing on a brick in a basin of water. The light attracted the bugs and they drowned as they hit the lamp. Enough light filtered on to the veranda to enable us to move about without falling over the furniture. Those stinkbugs dropped in thousands. The ground was sprinkled with them. Soon the water in the lamp basin was hidden and more dropped on those already drowned.
By this time the air would be saturated with their penetrating odour. We draped our shoulders in newspapers or anything handy, for if a bug dropped inside our clothes we were in a sorry plight. To touch the bug at all made it exude an odour more strongly. Once inside our clothes, the bug invariably slipped lower down and to extract it meant to crush it and then the smell was intensified. Whoever accidentally housed a crushed bug was ‘scented’ and everyone within range also suffered. The unfortunate person who crushed a bug was decidedly unpopular.
On such a night, all we could do was to sit down and wait for the finish. Any occupation that required a light was out of the question. The plague always came near the time of the evening meal, and that made it more than usually exasperating. A bug in one of the dishes was enough to ruin the food. If it did not drop into the food in the kitchen, it generally did in the dining-room, even though the meal was served in semi-darkness. We frequently dined with the lamp outside the room.
When our visit ended and we returned to our own house, the arrival of a swarm of locusts in the daytime was a pleasant change. I felt it would have been interesting to meet the Israelites and compare notes about the plagues of Egypt.
We tried a year’s venture on our own, at some outcrops of mica which Peter had leased. If hard work could have achieved anything, he should have met with success. At this time we lived in a two-roomed bungalow on the edge of the native bazaar. It had a roof of tiles baked from local earth and walls of sun-dried mud. The extending eaves of the roof protected the mud walls from the rain. I have since lived in places not nearly so dry.
In the hot weather the bazaar folk never all went to sleep at the same time. At night somebody was invariably awake and far from silent. In the middle of the night the Hindu family next door would suddenly begin a kind of chant. If they wanted to sing, they sang. In the hot months, night to them was much the same as day.
For days at a time Peter was away working at his outcrops. When the rainy season started, he was frequently knee-deep in monsoon water. Once he came home with foot rot. But no matter how hard a man works, he cannot sell on a falling market. We could not have chosen a worse time for our venture. We had to cut our losses and leave the mica fields.
At that moment, when we had nothing and could see no future, came my first chance of big game shooting in magnificent jungles.
A volunteer regiment had always existed, recruited from residents of various areas. There was a yearly camp, and each year the men were obliged to put in a specified amount of time at the rifle butts. A sergeant of the regular army came at intervals to instruct, and to keep check of rifle ‘parades.’ To pass the time I used to go down to the butts with the men. One day the sergeant, thinking I might be bored, kindly suggested that as they were one man short in the slit trench I might like to hold a rifle. He showed me how to cuddle it into my shoulder to lessen the recoil. We were using targets from one hundred yards to five hundred yards and the regulation army rifle. I knew so little about the niceties of the business that when I first saw the man at the targets come out and signal results with a flat metal disc on a long rod, I exclaimed, ‘Why that is just like the thing my cook uses to take the bread out of the oven!’
That day I climbed into the slit trench. After being told how to sight and where to aim, I was given one shot for ‘sighter’ and then five others to follow. I dotted the target but did not understand why for a few moments there was dead silence. The target registered for the following shots: one inner and four successive bull’s-eyes. The man up at the targets was too far away to know who was firing and he was soon cleared of collusion.
On the sergeant’s next visit he said a silver cup was presented each year for any wives and daughters of the regiment who wished to compete. I entered the contest and won the cup. This gave me a little confidence and knowledge of how to handle a rifle without blowing my head off. This experience with a rifle was to prove a real asset to me. I had been familiar with a shotgun, because there was always a certain amount of small bird shooting in cold weather near where we lived. So when an invitation came from Harry to spend ten days in the jungles, I was delighted. He had been transferred to another part of the province. To join him we took a train as far as Daltonganj in Palamau district, which was unbelievably hot until October, but in cold weather had a superb climate.
To ensure good sport, a jungle area had been chosen so inaccessible that it had scarcely ever been visited. Harry, his friend Mr. Cutler, Peter and I met at Daltonganj. Early the following morning we motored down to the river Amanhat and across it. It is about six hundred yards from bank to bank and at that time in March the river was only axle-deep.
Another twenty-seven miles by car brought us to the resthouse, the farthest point to which we could motor. There we slept, planning an early start the next day. There was no real road. The path into the jungle consisted mostly of massive boulders of black rock. We could not procure enough elephants and there were no ponies for transport. Thirty coolies were to carry our luggage on their heads. We had to take enough food for the whole ten days because it is never safe to rely entirely on shooting to fill the pot.
Although we were ready for all kinds of discomfort, part of the baggage had to be a zinc bath. In the end the bath was quite useful, for it became stacked with all kinds of gear. Four of the biggest coolies carried an enormous packing case, containing the beer, roped and slung on bamboos. This received tender care from all members of the party.
Our destination was a tiny hut seventeen miles away. We swung along at a good pace, making only one halt for cigarettes. At the hut there was news of deer and feathered game nearby. We set out at once on foot, and before nightfall had a beat near the camp.
The little hut was horrible. As I was closing one of the outer doors a snake slithered off the top on to my foot, dropped to the ground and hurried away. From sundown till dawn bats and owls kept company through the rooms. So long as they keep themselves to themselves, I do not dislike bats, but if one hits you, the hooks on the wings can catch in your hair.
The following day we decided to leave the hut and go southwest about six miles to a cleaner little resthouse free from reptiles. Just as we were starting, news came of a tiger kill. By making a small detour we were able to beat for it, and Mr. Cutler bagged the tiger with one clean shot.
During this beat, Peter and I had been arguing with each other in whispers. I, with no previous experience, had the effrontery to hiss at him that he was making too much noise, nose-wiping, heavy breathing, and so on. Peter was under the impression that I should be looked after, because I was a woman. I protested indignantly that I did not want protecting. It ended with our deciding that on future beats I was to be allowed to function alone and take what came to me.
At sundown we reached the new resting place happy. First the tiger must be skinned. A Chamar (tanner) appeared and offered his services. It is always better to supervise a new man because unless a particular method of guiding the knife is followed the look of the skin may be ruined. Also, the much sought after ‘lucky’ bones are inclined to disappear if you do not take charge of them at once. After the clavicles had been detached, we walked across to the resthouse to look over the accommodation. Since there were not enough beds, we bought clean straw from a neighbouring village and piled it in great heaps in the rooms under dhurries (floor coverings). I have seldom slept so contentedly. The air was cool and bracing and we snuggled under thick blankets, not stirring until time for early morning tea.
That shoot was one of the happiest times of my life. We never walked less than eight miles a day, sometimes more, and by evening we developed astonishing appetites.
On the last day of all, we had beaten in the morning and got nothing. After lunch of a sandwich and cold tea, we decided on a mixed beat. We were not expecting tiger and arranged to shoot at whatever broke cover. (On a tiger beat, you hold your fire for that game alone.)
We lined up, drew for places, and took our stands spaced out, overlooking a rocky river bed shrouded on either bank by big trees and bushes. In front of me some peacock broke. I had just brought off a right and left, when with a mighty roar out burst a magnificent tiger and crashed past me into the forest. 1 could not reload the gun with ball quickly enough to bag him, and Peter had the family rifle.
This incident scared the beaters. Four miles farther on we decided that for the last beat of all, we would keep to country where there were small birds and deer.
We picked a small woody hill and then we drew for places. The guns spread out at the foot of the hill. The beaters went around behind it so that they could work up and over the hill towards us. The ‘stops’ were placed fan-shaped from the first and the last guns, spreading out wider as they neared the ends of the line of beaters.
The draw for places left me last gun of all, out on the right next to the ‘stops.’ At least that is where they should have been. Later we found that they were so unnerved they were bunched together for company, leaving a big gap between my position and theirs.
As the beaters crested the hill, a shot rang out on my left. Later I learned that No. 1 had got a sambur (big deer). Then came a long silence. My only bag during the ten days had been small things. On top of that had come my disappointment that morning of seeing a tiger and not being loaded. This last beat of all now appeared to be drawing a blank.
Suddenly something dark moved through the dense shrubs and coarse grasses up the hill. The distance was too far for a shotgun. It was crossing from left to right, and if I waited, it would come near the ‘stops,’ who would clap their hands and turn it back, out on the open ground in front of me.
I had been expecting only bird, and hurriedly changed to lethal. There followed a shuffling and scuffling on the right, but nothing came my way. No self-respecting tiger or leopard would make so much noise. Perhaps it was a wild boar. The sound moved on, and seemed now to be coming from well over my right shoulder. Swinging round on the shooting stool, I saw to my astonishment a fine sloth bear ambling down the slope behind me. The ‘stops’ were not in their places, and he had slipped through the gap between us. My one chance of the whole shoot was rapidly vanishing from sight. He was well away to the right and far from the other guns. I fired.
The bullet raked through the thick pelt on his back but did not stop him. With a ‘wuff’ of a growl, he turned and saw me. He made straight for me at a shuffling run, nose to earth. A bear is one of the nastiest customers. Now a tiger is a gentleman. His anger is the rage of a monarch. A leopard is a swine, but leaves you alone if you leave him alone. But a bear is always in a bad temper.
Only one barrel was left loaded and there was no time to reload. I remembered that I was on the ground and that if I let him pass and turn back into the line of guns, he would attack someone. That one bullet had to be a certainty. To do that with a shotgun, I must wait until the last moment. It all happened in a few seconds. Given time to think, I probably should have run for my life. I fired just as the bear reached my stool. Over went the stool as I leaped up, and over went the bear screaming, with a cry like that of a child. Then he was up again, crashing down the hill, rolling over and over into the dense bushes at the bottom. I probably owed my life to the fact that bears have bad sight.
The bear was a fine specimen, though I was privately a little disappointed with the trophy. I had wanted something thick and furry. The sloth bear has a sparse coat thick only at the shoulders and very coarse. The grey chest, naked save for the white V, was ugly.
We returned to Daltonganj the next day. Mr. Cutler and Harry were due back at work. The party broke up, but Peter and I were to stay on for a short time with my brother-in-law before leaving the district.
In this inaccessible area the people were backward and some of them had never before seen a motor-car. As we drove along they would fling themselves down by the dusty tracks of the tyres to touch with their foreheads the imprints our wheels had made, to do ‘puja’ to the wind god. In India a motor-car is called a hawha gharri (carriage of the wind).
Efforts were constantly made to raise the standard of living of the ryots, but it was in spite of them and with no assistance on their part. In many places the king’s writ was unknown. The cultivators of that district were an easy prey for the moneylenders. When a ryot wanted to marry a daughter, buy land or livestock (but usually it was to marry the daughters, for which purpose they would beggar the entire family), he borrowed at some six hundred per cent from a moneylender. The moneylending profession was almost entirely in the hands of the Marwari caste. Payments could never be met when they came due. The ryot then pledged himself in return for the loan, agreeing to work for the moneylender without wages until the debt was paid, and the debt was never paid. The whole arrangement was illegal; nevertheless, this form of slave-dealing was common in the district. Neither party would come forward to admit the transaction. Only some extraneous happening could bring these cases to light.
While we were staying with Harry, he exposed a particularly blatant case of this sort, and sent for the parties concerned. With the moneylender and the ryot in front of him, he demanded to see the papers of the agreement. In their presence he tore up the documents, told the cultivator he was a free man, and explained that the transaction was unlawful. Two weeks later Harry discovered that the same ryot had borrowed again from the same moneylender on the same terms. For the first time in his life the man had been free from debt. He thought it a good opportunity to borrow again.
All around Daltonganj there was a variety of game. Some was preserved by the government under forest laws, but these laws did not apply to the game on the estates owned by zemindars. Sometimes these Indian gentlemen would invite us to a shoot.
One day the Kour Saheb of Ladi sent a message that he had received khabar (news) of a tiger in his jungles, and asked us to join him. The forest tracks, though only of scraped earth, are reasonably good, provided you use a car of sufficiently high clearance. Riding in an ancient Ford, we were able to approach to within a quarter of a mile of the area to be beaten, where we met our host.
Woodcutters who had seen the tiger early that morning were too terrified to work while the tiger roamed, and they were anxious to help us. It was a pity the magnificent creature could not be persuaded to move on without being killed. In the forests there should be plenty of room for everyone. Tigers have sufficient natural food and, save for the rare man-eater, do not interfere with anyone.
The Kour Saheb, our host, made the arrangements for placing the guns. We did not draw lots for position. He gave the best place, where the tiger was most likely to come out, to the most important guest. On this occasion Harry was the favoured member of the party. I was nearly left out altogether, but the fact that I was the magistrate’s sister-in-law helped quite a lot.
It was a little startling to find that the beaters were to work on foot, but they did not seem to mind. We also were to stand on the ground, behind groups of shrubs. The tiger was to be driven out into a clearing in front of us. Standing on the ground is not so dangerous as it sounds, provided you keep your head, but if I must be on the ground I prefer to be alone. It was unwise to have the beaters also on foot. If you are in a machan (tree platform), or on an elephant, shots are at an angle to the beaters. But this arrangement, with the tiger and the coolies all on a level with us, sent cold shivers down my spine. If anyone fired and missed there seemed every possibility of hitting a beater.
No. 2 gun on my left stood behind a cluster of bushes, but unfortunately across the clearing in front of him, about twenty yards away, was another clump of shrubs that shut off his line of vision.
The beat started. The Kour Saheb was No. 1, farthest out on the left. After a few minutes he saw the tiger move in the shadow of the bushes opposite No. 2. The Kour Saheb could see only the hindquarters and tail. The tip of the tail was gently twitching. The tiger, disturbed by the noise of the beat, was moving away. He had paused to reconnoitre. By all the rules the shot belonged to No. 2 since the tiger was dead opposite and in another moment would have moved into his view. Probably the Kour Saheb could not bear to wait. Although no vital part of the animal was in sight, our host in his excitement took all our lives in his hands when he raised his rifle and shot at the hindquarters.
The tiger leaped round and bounded back into the jungle. Such a din arose among the coolies that we thought they all were being killed. We had to keep our positions to guard each other’s flank, until someone found where the tiger had gone.
A call to the beaters brought back a screech from one man that the tiger had killed him. We decided to move forward slowly with guns at the ready. As we reached the other side of the clearing, the beaters came out one by one. Each had a tale to tell and they all talked at once. Each one claimed the honour of having been attacked personally by the tiger, but no one had a scratch on him, or even a garment torn. We found one man up a tree still babbling that the tiger had killed him. All the beaters were accounted for and none were missing. The animal had got away. A few spots of blood on the ground showed that the tiger must have been hit, but not mortally.
We suggested returning next day, since the animal should not be left wounded, but the Kour Saheb disagreed and he was the host.
A few days later when the deputy commissioner was on tour, the Kour Saheb invited him to a shoot. We told the D.C. what to expect. Afterwards we were relieved to hear that the tiger had been located in a cave. He was smoked out with burning brushwood and killed with one shot. His off hind leg had a fresh bullet hole through it.
Harry was a keen shot and a good one. Sometimes the three of us would set out about 3 a.m. in order to reach a spot five miles away by the river, before dawn. There we would lie hidden in the coarse grass until the wild geese, with a great honking, flew in for their first meal of the day. Wild duck came, too. There is nothing like a fat Brahmini duck to train the novice’s eye for bird shooting. He looks like a haystack coming over as he rises from the water.
The birds were scattered, and since it was difficult to get close the chances of hitting any were poor. When we could bring back a couple of wild geese for dinner, we felt that we had earned them.
As our visit drew to a close, the days were growing hotter. This hour or two of dawn or evening shooting meant motoring through forests already responding to the hot sun of the last days of March. The banks of the Amanhat River rapidly became a blaze of colour as the trees burst into flower. Many, like the Flame of the Forest, flowered before the leaves appeared. While its dark branches were still bare of leaves, great velvety crescent-shaped pods formed along the branches. From these dark brown half-moons emerged clusters of brilliant orange blossoms that lit up the trees like darting tongues of flame. The banks of the river looked as if they were on fire as Flame of the Forest streamed into burning splendour.
These and other trees were a natural host for the valuable lac insect, which after being processed finally becomes the shellac so much in demand by cabinetmakers. Each season infected twigs covered with the parasites were grafted to new trees. As we passed on our trips to the wild goose feeding grounds, we would see the men at work with infected twigs. When a tree host was sufficiently covered, the lac-infected branches were detached, tied into bundles, and taken away to have the insects boiled off them. The little fellows were so important that they had a Lac Research Institute all to themselves in Ranchi, where studious Doctors of Science investigated their behaviour.
With the approach of April 1, which meant closed season for bird shooting, we went out more and more frequently when Harry’s working hours were over. Soon, I ceased to care whether we shot anything, for the trip itself was always among the forests I was rapidly growing to love.
At this time Peter undertook for eighteen months the management of part of a rajah’s estate at Sagrampur which had come under the jurisdiction of the Court of Wards. Under Hindu law, several members of one family had jointly inherited the property. A period of joint muddle ensued. Baneilli Raj was in debt and heavily mortgaged. The Provincial Government had taken over control (through the Court of Wards) in an endeavour to clear things up and, if possible, to rid the estate of debt.
Mr. Godbole, a member of the Indian civil service, was on loan, acting as general manager. Peter worked under him. He was a Gujrati from western India and has since reached high office in the Indian Dominion. Baneilli Raj could not have been placed in more capable hands, but the difficulties that existed were almost insoluble. It was one thing to give an order and quite another to get it carried out. Peter’s salary, for instance, was on a monthly basis. Never in any month was it paid on time, and we were fortunate if it was only two months in arrears.
Mr. Godbole and his wife Kamala were two of the most kind-hearted people I ever met. Several times we stayed at their house. Their thoughtfulness on these occasions even went so far as to serve only European dishes at all the meals. To them our food was tasteless, for they liked their own dishes plentifully mixed with the hot condiments that seared the palate.
Kamala possessed the usual Indian lady’s large collection of saris. On one of our visits, I asked her how many she owned. She said she had never counted, but if I wished she would show me some. In her room she spread out the lovely six-yard lengths, and an ayah kept appearing with more. They ranged from gossamer fine Madras muslin to works of art with handwoven borders of real silver and gold thread. I lost count after two hundred.
She offered to drape one on me to demonstrate how it is worn. About half the length formed a skirt. She gathered innumerable folds between her fingers and fastened these at the front of my waist. Taking the remainder of the sari, she swathed it completely round my figure at waist height, until the bunched portion in front was overlapped. The remainder of the fabric she drew across my back, under my right arm, and then bringing it around to the front, she flipped the end over my left shoulder.
‘Now you are a Bihari lady,’ she said. ‘But do you notice anything different about my own sari?’
I looked.
‘No, nothing different.’
‘Over which shoulder do I drape mine?’
‘Why, of course. You wear it over your right shoulder, but you have draped my sari over my left shoulder.’
Kamala explained.
‘I am a Gujrati, from western India. All Gujrati girls drape the sari right instead of left. There is another thing. You think our fashions never change. They do. Fashionable Indian ladies to-day do not wear the sari over the head any more. Haven’t you noticed this? Particularly in the evening we not only keep it at the shoulder, but we like to clasp it there with a beautiful brooch. Look.’
She whisked open a drawer and took out a large diamond bar brooch. With the pin in her hand she gathered the soft folds of silk at her shoulder, then closed the clasp.
‘See,’ she said.
I saw. I stood and looked at her. Kamala was as fair-skinned as many a European. She was little. She was perfectly formed, her sari was crimson with a deep border of gold. Her diamond shoulder bar fired its blue lights at me.
‘I give up,’ I said. ‘I’m not competing with that,’ and started to unwind my own sari.
We lived in a big, rambling bungalow, seventy-five miles from the Godboles. Our place had four complete suites of guest rooms, dressing-rooms, and bathrooms. Our furniture looked lonely in one wing of the house. We had no car. The unbridged rivers nearly dry in the winter, became swollen floods in the monsoon. We were more isolated here than ever before.
Strangely enough, this very loneliness cured me of my childish fear of the dark and of thunderstorms. Rene was in the mountains when we moved to Sagrampur. Peter and I were alone. At the end of the day’s work, the servants, who all came from the nearest village, went home to sleep, instead of occupying the servants’ quarters in the compound. The full realization of my isolation came one night when Peter was unexpectedly detained at a place about eighty miles away.
During the afternoon menacing clouds had darkened the sky. By evening it was difficult to tell whether or not the sun had set. The sky was a sullen grey and purple mass until darkness shut out all colour. The night was hot and every door was wide open. As I sat in a low chair reading, my faithful terrier Bill, who never left me, snuggled against my feet for company. About ten o’clock a great wind arose, and with it a flash of lightning that heralded the storm. A thunderous crash in the sky made every pane of glass rattle and then, chased by a hurricane wind, the rain burst over the countryside.
Bill and I were alone in the shadows lit intermittently by flickering forks of lightning. The rain like a wave of the sea swept across the verandas and into the rooms. There was nothing for it but to shut and bolt every door, if the panes of glass were not to be shattered and the furniture was to be kept dry. In the darkness Bill and I made a complete tour. Carrying a hurricane lamp to avoid snakes, I slammed and shut everything that could be bolted and barred. I was alone. There was no one else to do it. Since then I have never been afraid of thunder or of the dark.
Rene, who was now eight years old, was genuinely scared of the big house, for after nightfall oil lamps never lifted the gloom from dark corners of the cavernous rooms. She came from school where she lived with one hundred and fifty children to a place which even I felt held ghostly echoes. She played quite happily while there was brilliant sunlight. Bill would then desert me and go off with her. She never played with dolls. One day she dragged a pile of travelling rugs into the garden and with help from the garden coolies, built a wigwam supported on sticks. When she invited me over there, I found Bill sitting on his haunches all by himself inside the wigwam. Rene said he was Hiawatha.
But as the evening shadows lengthened and the lamps were lit, she found imperative reasons to sit no farther away than on my lap. When I put her to bed, I never left her alone until she was safely between the sheets. A lamp was left where she could see it. She wanted the light in her face. The bedroom door into the lounge was left open. There was always a call from the bedroom:
‘Mummy?’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘All right, Mummy,’ before she dropped off to sleep.
Our only neighbours were a young Englishman and his wife six miles away. Their first baby was a few months old, and Mrs. James was more restricted in her movements than I was. Rene now rode her own pony, but I was unwilling for her to make the twelve-mile ride often. If anyone came near us on tour (as once or twice the local magistrate or policeman did), he would link up our two households for a brief visit by using his car. Our menfolk were more frequently in each other’s houses, since either could make the round trip before noon.
Once again there was little to buy in the village bazaar and we were loath to grow food, in case we moved on. There was a magnificent spreading barh tree in the compound. As the fruit ripened, wild green pigeons arrived in hundreds to spend the day feasting on the berries. Many mornings I delayed giving orders for the meals, hoping the birds would arrive. This would mean fat roast pigeon for dinner, for now I always kept the shotgun handy.
The people of the villages were almost entirely agricultural. Nearer the banks of the Ganges, where the soil was even richer, a swarming population was entirely dependent on the vicissitudes of the seasons. They watched for the break of the monsoon rain which could mean life or death to their crops and famine or food to themselves. Anything abnormal in the monsoon conditions drove them into superstitious panic which found outlet in many curious practices.
In a year of drought, low-caste women of the villages collected water every evening from the pitchers of five houses and then caught a frog. The cry of the frog was believed to be most readily heard by the god of rain. They put the creature in a pot and shut it in with an earthen cover. The pot was put in the hollow wooden cup into which the lever for crushing rice falls. This lever was raised with one foot and dropped on the frog until it croaked, which no doubt it did, unless it was killed the first time. Meanwhile the women sang songs about the dearth of water.
During Kartik (October-November) when the rice harvest was taking ear, the women observed various performances. They bathed before dawn, and worshipped the sun as the producer of rain. They repeated this performance every morning until Purnamasi, the period of full moon. Those who lived near the Ganges went in crowds to bathe and to offer Ganges water to Mahadeo, the great god. Towards the end of the month the longest of all fasts was observed, especially by the women, who before breaking it offered sweetmeats, vegetables and cow’s milk to the sun god.
All during Kartik our people played the game of Sama and Chako. Sama and Chako were two clay images made to represent the agricultural gods, one male, one female. All the children and young girls went singing into the fields to feed them. They did this regularly every evening without fail. No adult male was allowed to be present. Placing the images in turn in several fields of rice, mama and makai, the women made a circle, singing and dancing round. There were always the two images, one representing the male, the other the female god. On the thirtieth day of Kartik, they took the images to a river or tank and submerged them. The aghani crop would be considered to have benefited by the game, and be fit for reaping.
At this time of the year hundreds of young mango trees were planted. Among Hindus planting a mango tree is a religious act. The Hindu believes that so long as rain water falls from the leaves, in other words so long as the mango tree stands, its planter after death will abide in Swarga (heaven). When a mango grove approached maturity, the event was celebrated by even the humblest of our tenants with all the show of a marriage ceremony.
When the trees were sufficiently grown to show promise of fruit, the branch of a barh tree, to represent the bridegroom, was brought and fixed near one of the mango trees in the grove. The owner in the presence of a Brahmin priest wrapped the same piece of cloth around both. Moving to another part of the grove, the priest called down a blessing from the gods. Then he took an earthen pitcher and put in it water, some copper coins, and some kasaili. Mango leaves were placed over the top of the pitcher and on them a country lamp full of ghee (clarified butter) was lighted.
A bamboo basket containing a bride’s dowry on a miniature scale completed the symbolic ceremony. The priest finished his worship. Vermilion, the emblem of completed marriage, was applied to the mango tree as to a bride. Then sacrificial fire was lighted and the owner and his wife walked around their grove, he holding a leaf with a silver coin on it, over which a person accompanying them sprinkled milk. This ceremony they called pradahshin, the Sanskrit for walking round a sacrificial fire with the right side towards it.
The oddest feature of this ceremony was that a wooden statue of a man, about two feet high, was set in a corner and was called the chugla (backbiter), the idea presumably being to do away with scandal.
The ceremony ended with a feast to the priests and other Brahmins. The priest was generally given one of the trees as a reward. Although the ryot allowed the priest the fruit of the tree, he did not permit him to cut it down. The priest had difficulty watching the fruit of a number of isolated trees, and he usually attempted to cut it and sell the timber when the tree was big enough, thereby violating the faith of the planter. Evidently the priest’s enjoyment of heaven did not depend on the period during which rain fell from the leaves of his own tree.
Ceremonies of marriages were also performed in the case of newly excavated wells and tanks. For the marriage of tanks, a tiny portion of milk of every available class of animal was procured and mixed together. A Brahmin was then induced by money, sometimes as much as four hundred rupees, to drink the combination. He then ran away, the people after him pelting him with clods of earth. He was supposed to be impersonating the asuras, the enemies of the gods. Fixed in the centre of the tank was a jat or wooden pole with a three-pronged spear or trisul on top representing the weapon with which Mahadeo fought and overthrew the evil spirits. Our villagers were slightly muddled over this. Many thought they put the emblem there to counteract the evil eye. They gave me both accounts with utmost impartiality.
In our mail from overseas people frequently asked who our neighbours were, and what they were like. They hoped some of them played bridge. I found it difficult to describe neighbours who not only married trees to trees, but who also married trees themselves. The third marriage of the Maharajah of Kashmir to a tree was quite recent. How could I convey too, how our neighbours made simple offerings in all good faith to their phallic emblem of sun-baked mud, daubed with scarlet paint, that stood under the spreading shade of the sacred banyan tree near the village?
The lighter side of life at Sagrampur was our elephant. I had christened her Jemima, and she fascinated me. Her movements were leisurely as those of any queen. In her bath she was a luxurious sight. Each morning she took her time going to the pool, her pace slow and undulating, because an elephant must always have three feet on the ground when walking. Her trunk swung from side to side, curling in and out, searching for the nearest banana tree.
At the pool she walked in up to her shoulders. Still with the mahout on her head, she gently subsided until only the top of her skull could be seen, her prehensile trunk still questing and blowing. When cooled, she would slide to more shallow water and there roll over until flank and body were exposed. The agile mahout never lost his balance, and, like a circus artist, always ended top side up. He would then scrub her all over while she blew and luxuriated, before tolling on to her other side to repeat the process. Before she left, she would plunge her trunk again and again into the pool, sucking up water and squirting it down her throat until her tank was full.
On her way home, the mahout directed her to the trees that were her food. She pulled down branches, flinging each in turn over her shoulder for him to stack in a rapidly increasing pile on her back. When she turned for home, she was so laden that she looked like a walking tree. She gathered about four maunds (over three hundred pounds) of green fodder daily. She ate the leaves only, stripping them off the branches with her trunk and pushing them into her mouth.
Jemima’s evening meal was of atta chappatis, the large flat cakes made of brown flour and water. She picked them up and crammed them into her mouth as fast as the mahout put them in front of her. I now knew enough Urdu to understand the wise Eastern name for an elephant of ‘hathi’ (the one with a hand).
From watching Jemima’s ways I found out that elephants stand up most of the night, lying down only for about three hours before dawn. For a long time Jemima was troubled by ants. They walked up her nose when she went to bed. The mahout told me one day that the hathi had found a way to stop it. I doubted his story, and set the alarm clock for 5 a.m. In the darkness I walked over to the elephant stables, carrying a hurricane lamp. Jemima was peacefully sleeping on her side, her grey flank like a hillock in the darkness. Clutched in the tip of her trunk and covering the nostrils was a bunch of straw from her bed. She certainly had found a way to keep off the ants.
Eight hot seasons with no change to an easier climate were beginning to have their effect on us. Each year the heat seemed a little more difficult to bear. I raged at the conditions and the climate but something held me in thrall. The daily battle for cleanliness was never really won. I could not be in the kitchen all day and things were done my way only while I was there. As soon as I left, I knew the cook once again would be sitting on the floor. Everyone sat on the floor. It was a natural attitude for people with no chairs in their own houses. Simple things like smelly drains depressed me now as they never did at first. But walking back across the compound after supervising a plentiful use of disinfectant, and pushing back from my damp forehead a wet lock of hair, I would look up suddenly and be greeted by an evening sky of such unearthly splendour that I stood dumbly and looked. My spirit bowed to that glory in the sky.
The East really is mysterious, for she never thinks as you do. You are lost in a tortuous maze trying to follow her; but there comes a time towards the end of August or September, when heat and monsoon have provided such a complexity of trials that you know there can be only one mystery of the East, the one that has never been solved, the mystery of where all the smells come from in their infinite and horrible variety.
The scenery of India is some of the loveliest in the world. Colour is everywhere. The people wear it. The exuberant sunsets blaze in a flaming light that reflects even on to the eastern sky opposite, and turns it to a second sunset. Colour is in every village, in the shiny brass and copper pots, the red earthen jars, the crudely dyed cotton garments. A wedding or a religious festival is colour run riot. The bridegroom is festooned like a Christmas tree, a delight to the eye, if not always to the nose.
There is no twilight. With the setting of the sun, day rushes headlong into the arms of night, that sweet-scented tropic night, when all creepers and trees seem to waft a jasmine and apricot perfume.
As night fell, on the pillars of my veranda the moonflower opened its snowy trumpets, even as its sister creeper morning-glory gently closed its petals till another dawn. Lady-of-the-night, the cananga bush, so uninteresting by day, opened thousands of tiny petals as darkness fell. Then our garden was drenched in its scent. Some people found it overpowering and were perfume-drunk with its strength. But the next moment all this was annihilated by the smell from the village tank and ditches. They were distant, but that smell was strong enough to travel far, and the air that wafted the perfume of the flowers did not stop to make a selection. On a tropic night when the air hangs moist and heavy, deliver me from the ‘romantic’ smells of the East.
On such a night as that we sometimes amused ourselves recalling the impassioned songs of the East composed by people in temperate climates. Peter, with damp khaki shirt sticking to his back, would flop full length in a long cane chair and chortle one verse in particular, that started :
Hot winds burning, fire my brain with passion bold!
He could never sing in tune, which made it even funnier.
The moonlight is exquisite. Nothing could be more beautiful, more breath-taking. When the moon is full, it is bright enough to read a book in your garden at night. All the countryside is silvery, as if mantled in fairy snow. It draws the heart right out of you, makes you lose your head—and you sometimes do with a feeling you are not of this earth. You do queer things under a tropic moon. It is a lingering delight only so long as you do not intend to do something completely normal like going to sleep.
We lived the average upcountry life, with no electric light, no electric fans, no wire screens to keep out insects and NO ICE. On a hot night I tossed and turned, and the bed grew steadily hotter, and I thanked heaven my daughter was in the mountains. In the monsoon the bed grew steadily damper with perspiration. Mercifully Peter could generally sleep. We engaged night punkah coolies to pull the heavy fan of matting slung from ropes over each bed. No payment for night work ever proved sufficient to stop them working also by day. The result was that we spent the night rousing ourselves to rouse the punkah coolies.
Sometimes we avoided this by sleeping in the garden until the rains broke. Once Peter found a deadly krait snake in his slipper in the early morning. After that incident we put our slippers to bed with us inside the mosquito net, and we walked to bed with a lantern, to avoid the snakes.
About 2 a.m. the temperature might drop a little, or might not, mostly not. Tropic moonlight is so bright it is difficult to keep your eyes closed. I often stretched a covering over the mosquito net to keep out the light, but the covering could be draped only over one corner, or else I smothered from lack of air. The nights are as hot as that. When the moon moved around, I had to get out of bed to adjust the covering. This game went on all night, or until I dropped asleep from exhaustion. Sometimes the moon slid behind a cloud, but that was warning of a tropic storm advancing. I felt my opponent always had the ace up his sleeve.
Tropic nights are never silent and moonlight nights are the noisiest. Animals sleep no sounder than their masters. Pariah dogs in every village for miles around bark intermittently, or they throw up their heads and howl. This howling, with nose pointed to the moon, is very catching. Once the howling starts, all the dogs within range answer. Our own dogs always joined in. When they became bored, they suddenly jumped up and barked like mad, no doubt because the shadows of the bushes looked like wild animals. Peter would start from his sleep, shout at the dogs, and in the momentary silence which ensued he would drop back to sleep.
Then a jackal pack, or a solitary ‘fee-ow’ jackal, would start to give tongue. After that, like a lot of banshees lost in hell, pandemonium was let loose. All dogs within range went off their heads and crackled back defiance.
Night birds screech and chatter, with the ‘brain-fever’ bird as master of ceremonies. I never minded the brain-fever notes, as they climbed in hysterical crescendo—probably a matter of fellow feeling. Over it all, with unmusical bray, the laundrymen’s donkeys would shatter our harassed nerves. On moonlight nights the area around the house seemed populated by an extraordinary number of donkeys.
In the hot weather an afternoon rest is necessary in order to catch up on lost sleep. When in October the first cool nights came, we brisked up at once. Small annoyances no longer became major irritations. However, life at Sagrampur did not provide much relaxation. There were no distractions in which we could forget, even for a few hours, the burden of living. We did not know a change was soon coming, and that Peter’s experience had been noted and was not to be wasted.
In the northern limits of the Province of Bihar lie the lands of the Bettiah Raj. Although these estates are not so extensive as those of the great princes, they are still large. The northern boundary slopes in a slanting line from north-west to south-east and for a distance of about two hundred miles touches the southern borders of the frontier of Nepal. Although cultivated lands and villages cover the southern part, the northwest corner is jungle similar to that of the Nepal Terai. The forest varies from deep shady glades of mature sal and sissoo trees, carpeted below with soft green ferns, to tracts of coarse terai grass thirty feet high, dense and impenetrable, unless a person chose to slide through on his stomach, following the tracks of the animals. A variety of big game lives and breeds in these forests and occasionally a rhinoceros lumbers across from Nepal. Out on the plains herds of black buck, the beautiful Indian antelope, graze.
Cash revenues alone, of the Bettiah Raj, were about forty-two lakhs of rupees a year. The Rajah died in the early part of this century, leaving no children. He had neither brothers nor uncles, and the Rani, his widow, was mentally unfit. Because there were no direct heirs, the estate came under the Court of Wards. Appointments to all posts of administration from that time onward were made by the Provincial Government. The post of general manager was always held by a member of the Indian civil service, loaned for that purpose for three years. Under him were the assistant manager, legal adviser, estate engineer, several zemindari managers, forest officer, medical officer, veterinary surgeon and many other minor officials.
With the exception of the post of general manager, all of them were long-term appointments. A man retired when he reached the age of sixty.
The jungles were rich in timber, and produced good revenues, so the post of forest officer was an important one. The present incumbent had reached retiring age. Peter applied for the post and was selected. But he must first take a course in forestry at Dehra Dun, the central college of forestry and research.
When Peter had taken care of all his commitments, we were ready to go to Bettiah. Once again we packed. This time bullock carts were needed only to take us to the railway, seventy-five miles from our Sagrampur house. We were going to live at Bagaha, the terminus for a railroad which ran two trains a day.
We sent off the luggage, furniture, servants, and the dogs and cats. The two horses, Haddock and Pandora, went by road. We were always cluttered up with animals, neither of us having the strength of mind to get rid of the extra ones that had adopted us.
For the two months before his retirement, we were to live with the outgoing forest officer, Mr. Cameron. From him Peter was to gain a thorough knowledge of what is termed in forestry the Working Plan of the area. Since there were villages in the forests and cultivated land for six miles around the borders, the post also included that of zemindari manager.
From now on Peter was to be known as the Jungli Sahib. The word jungle in India is always taken to mean a wild forest and a jungli is someone or something of the wild forest. Villagers, and even your own servants, seldom use your name, because to them it is often unpronounceable. They speak of you by the work you do. There is the Police Sahib, the Magistrate Sahib, the Capt-ah-n Sahib (army captain) and so on. A man’s wife is the Police Sahib ke Mem-Sahib, or whatever the husband’s work may be, with the word mem-sahib added.
I was now, in all brevity, the Jungli Mem-Sahib. But the word ‘jungli’ has another meaning. Someone wild, or uncouth, is also described as a jungli. Because of this entertaining secondary meaning, our friends always applied our titles with gusto. I became a jungli mem-sahib and loved it.
The railway was the biggest customer for timber, and sleepers for the track were sawed at the mill near our house. In 1934 it was the only sawmill in the country that was operated by a forest officer.
Upcountry your address is always that of the nearest post office. Our postal address was Bagaha, a village about five miles from our new home. The forest officer’s house was the only thing near the railway terminus, so we enjoyed a railway station practically all to ourselves. Actually, it was misleading to say of anyone that he arrived at Bagaha. It depended on which one, the railway station or the village five miles farther away.
Mr. Cameron had sent his car to meet us at the station. It was late May and the hot weather was nearing its peak, but to us the heat seemed to burn less because at last we were going to a position with a future. As the driver turned a bend in the road, the house came into view. It could not have appeared worse. In front of us a dirty, depressing slab of brick and cement towered like a wedding cake pierced by windows and doors. Elderly plaster peeled off the outer walls. The house had been red and white, but the red was now a dyspeptic pink and the white had flaked off, giving a leprous effect. Undergrowth and coarse grass were knee-high all round except for the space in front of the house.
Peter, after one look, said, ‘You’ll never be able to do anything with that.’
But I did not mind. Peter sometimes enjoyed an inverted form of pleasure from being gloomy. To me the peeling house was more than a building covered with streaks of dirty white-wash. It was a place where, for the first time, I could look ahead and say, ‘We will do this, and that, next year. We will plant trees and grow fruit and flowers. We will make green lawns and it will be Home.’ I had never once called any of the other places home. The word had always stuck in my throat, unspoken.
The car pulled up in front of the house, at the foot of a flight of steps leading to a veranda. The private road ended about thirty yards short of this. The car had covered the remaining distance over coarse, stubby grass. Later we learned that Mr. Cameron did not care to have a drive right up to the house. He preferred grass. This was one of his several small peculiarities which we encountered.
Although we pulled up at the main frontage, this was obviously not the entrance in use. If we had been alone, we should not have known at which door to stop. An orderly conducted us on foot round a corner of the building. We stepped on to a side veranda stacked with crates, odd pieces of furniture, and moth-eaten trophies. The grass mat curtains which were to keep the heat out also kept out the light. In the gloom I nearly fell over an enormous rhinoceros head on the ground outside the door. We entered a corner room furnished as an office.
Johnnie Cameron at sixty was still a fine looking Scot. His light sandy hair was scarcely grey. His skin, though tanned and lined, had a healthy outdoor look about it. His grey-blue eyes were set under brows like a couple of crags. He showed us to our rooms with a take-it-or-leave-it look. We felt he resented us.
With misgivings I thought of our dogs and cats in the house of a complete stranger who might dislike animals. Happily there are always outhouses in the compounds somewhere, and our servants had been given strict orders to keep the three dogs leashed and the two cats in their travelling cages.
After settling in, we found Johnnie had three dogs of his own. Although this cheered me a little, we still kept ours tied and I apologized for bringing them. His eyes under their craggy brows ceased to glower, and he said he liked animals. He suggested that we let our dogs go free. He was not so sure about the cats. His dogs were not accustomed to cats. If we liked, we could chance it. Our three terriers were released and soon the whole pack was quite friendly.
The cats stayed in their travelling cages a few days longer, until the dogs became accustomed to each other. When the cats were let out, the black Persian immediately leaped on to Johnnie’s knee and went to sleep. That cat always was an insolent creature. He liked bullock carts, probably as a result of spending so much of his short life travelling on one. If a cart was being loaded, he would stroll out and rub himself against the bullock’s legs. He feared nothing and soon was among the dogs as if he had known them all his life.
Johnnie Cameron was very fit for a man of his years who had lived so long in the tropics. He played tennis and polo whenever his work permitted and it was possible to make the forty-two mile trip to our estate headquarters at Bettiah. He had built his own sailing boat and used it on the Gandak River about a mile away from the house. He liked the ladies and this took him on to the dance floor whenever possible. The ‘district’ said he had been trying to get married for forty years, but the ladies would never take him seriously.
His had been a lonely life. He loved his forests so much he obviously resented having anyone else take over the work. His feelings must have been slightly mixed, for although he did not want to help the new forest officer, he very much wanted to be nice to me.
Johnnie had a cook who overcharged him (that one puts up with if he can cook), and who also served villainous food. There was never anything fit to eat and never enough. Johnnie liked to entertain. If people were within miles of the house, Johnnie would ask them over, especially if there were ladies in the party. No one could bear to hurt his feelings, so his invitations were accepted, but it was a recognized thing, as an insurance against the food, to have a meal beforehand.
One day Johnnie asked one of the younger Brouckes over, and also a couple of other planters who lived some distance farther off, for tennis and dinner afterwards. The two invitations were generally combined because guests had to travel such distances to reach us.
Johnnie’s tennis was still of a high standard, and in a doubles he left many a younger man out of breath. We started play at five o’clock, when the heat of the day was easing, and the rays of the sun were no longer direct. We played straight through until sunset, which at that time of the year (in the month of May) was a little after 7 p.m. The climate of this district was particularly humid. At that time of the year, after a couple of hard sets of tennis, we squelched in our shoes with our own perspiration. Between games we mopped ourselves with face towels instead of handkerchiefs. We walked off the court so wet that we looked as if we had just climbed out of a swimming pool. Tennis and riding, however, were our exercise and kept us physically fit.
As I peeled off shorts and shirt in the bathroom, they dropped with a wet plop on the cement floor. A bath was refreshing, but I had scarcely slipped a cool linen evening dress over my head before I was damp and sticky once again.
I found the rest of the party already out on the lawn where a high-powered lamp stood to give us light. The open-air meeting place was a mistake. Johnnie should have collected us on the front veranda where there was a plaited grass punkah that could be pulled over our heads. The garden was stifling.
When dinner was announced we went inside to the dining-room where there was a grass fan. The rest of the furnishings in Johnnie’s dining-room were unusual. He said the servants stole his stores and they probably did. His remedy was to line the walls of the dining-room with household stores in locked, glass-fronted cupboards, which once stood on the back veranda. There was no reason why they should be any more secure in the dining-room, whose four doors were never shut. A meal in this room was like eating in an Indian railway station restaurant.
Johnnie grew bananas. Most people did this and it insured a crop all the year round. Johnnie said the fruit was always stolen, so just before a ‘hand’ of bananas was ripe he cut it down and the long, heavily laden branch of fruit was hung from the ceiling of the dining-room to ripen where he could see it. If a few bananas looked ready to eat, he would stand on a chair and cut them down. As there were always several branches ripening, we took our meals with bananas dangling between our heads.
This particular evening there seemed to be more bananas than usual. With the servants trying to pass the plates and the food from the left, serve the wine from the right, and the same time dodge the bananas, I kept losing the thread of the conversation. I was fascinated watching the turbaned heads popping in and out of the fruit.
Johnnie’s unspeakable cook served his customary dinner. Indian chicken is smaller than partridge and not so fat, and one is barely enough for two people. One chicken was served for six of us. That night the cook excelled himself. In India a light savoury is generally served after the main course. That evening it was a cheese soufflé toast. At least it should have been. After tasting the first mouthful of that savoury, we all stopped as if we had been shot. Jaws came to a simultaneous standstill. By mistake the cook had grated into the savoury a bar of kitchen soap instead of the cheese. It was well that the guests had made their usual wise provisioning beforehand.
The house was surrounded by what Johnnie called the garden and everyone else referred to as the jungle. It was impossible to penetrate the undergrowth among the trees. Small game flourished there. Pythons and jackals were quite at home in it. A wild jungle hen, one of the shyest of all our forest birds, one day walked out from this undergrowth with five chicks after her.
The monsoon came just a few weeks after our arrival and then this undergrowth disgorged toads, scorpions, and snakes. The house was built three feet off the ground, as were most houses in the district because of the heavy floods. Johnnie said this kept things out that should not come in, but he was wrong. Nothing does that except a frog step—a wire netting across every entry to the house including the guggle-hole from the bathrooms. Even then you are never quite sure. A snake was killed by our bearer on the back veranda. He liked to share his discoveries and so he showed it to us. It was a krait. Johnnie was indignant and said, ‘There were no snakes in my time.’
I was never quite sure if he thought we had specially imported the krait. Our bearer was instructed not to flourish anything he killed.
Kraits are not large snakes: the biggest I ever saw was only about thirty inches long. But the bite of a krait is said to be more deadly than that of a cobra, because death comes quicker. But the krait is a sleepy snake, and most of our escapes from them were due to their sluggishness. I have inadvertently stepped over and walked beside kraits and they never moved.
The cobra, on the other hand, is a nervous snake. I have seen one hurl itself its own length at a chicken, strike, and promptly disappear at full speed into the nearest hedge, making no attempt to eat a meal.
At Bagaha the regular office buildings for forest and zemindari administration were at the main gate. Johnnie also used one room of the house for work he wanted to do at home. One morning while he and Peter were out, the orderly came to tell me he could see the head of a cobra darting in and out of a crack above the lintel of this office door. There was a temporary lean-to bamboo roof to keep the sun off, and to erect it some ugly jagged holes had been made above the door. Sure enough, in one of them the head was showing. I loaded the shotgun with No. 8, fired, and down came tumbling five feet of twitching cobra.
I wanted no unpleasantness when Johnnie returned, and told the orderly to have the snake taken away at once. This was done, but the servants, like a pack of excited children with a piece of news, told him the story as soon as he came back. When one of them ran off to find the dead snake because he was sure the sahib would like to see it, I fled.
Kraits and cobras did not sleuth around all the time. They existed, and we took sensible precautions. After Johnnie left and I was able to remove undergrowth from the compound, we saw pythons only on rare occasions and in the forests. There were plenty of grass snakes, but they were harmless and helped to keep down the frog population. The villagers vowed that the dhaman snake sucked the udders of their cows, but I never met any reliable witness of this.
When we had lived in Sagrampur I noticed few snakes, but innumerable scorpions, both the small dust-coloured ones and the bigger ones like black prawns. The day I found one six and a half inches long, I remembered my friends at the Natural History Museum in London, and used half a bottle of whisky in which to preserve the creature, mailing the jar with its contents to England. Guy Dollman, who was on the staff of the museum, told me later that my good Scotch had been too much for the scorpion. When the specimen arrived, all the legs were detached and floating in the whisky.
When the monsoon broke, we could no longer sit out of doors in the evening, and migrated to the front veranda to sit under the punkah slung from the ceiling. At night inside the house it was stifling. No one used the rooms in the evening, except to change clothes, or to eat. Wire screen doors were unknown. They were an expense nobody had ever considered.
On the nights when the insects were unbearable, Johnnie had a system. He had survived his own system a great many years, but we lasted only two nights. We all went into the lounge, which was the central room of the house. In it was a high-power pressure lamp for light. In the hot weather, the heat given out by this type of lamp is distressing. The lounge had six doors, each about nine feet high and five and a half feet wide, two in each long wall, and one at each end. These wide double doors let in cool air. They were propped open by small wooden blocks on hinges. Johnnie shut every door and bolted it to keep it closed. He then stuffed newspapers under the doors and in every crack to keep out the insects. After that he lay back in a long cane chair, and in the suffocating heat with every outlet for air blocked up, he lit a penetrating Burma cheroot and read a book. After half an hour I should have preferred the bugs.
The second time he started to operate his system, I lasted for fifteen minutes and then reeled off to bed on our veranda, finishing the evening under my own mosquito net.
Johnnie Cameron finally left for Scotland and the Isle of Skye with his bagpipes and his kilt. Months later I received a letter from him asking how to make curry. The girl on the farm, he said, did not even know how to cook rice.
The area that came under Peter’s control spread approximately thirty-one miles from east to west, and twenty-nine miles from north to south. Peter was kept busy getting to know his new territory, for during the rainy season, though there is no timber felling or forest touring, village and land administration continue.
Tenants with problems about leases or rent came to the office. Permits to cut thatching grass were always in request. Moonj grass grows four to five feet high. It is used to thatch roofs and is also woven into the moonj matting sold in the bazaars.
The impenetrable jungle grass of the Nepal Terai, too coarse for thatching, grows to a height of about thirty feet, and serves to provide natural shelter to wild life. We never attempted to get through its dense growth except on an elephant.
Even in the rainy season our sawmill operated continuously, cutting the timbers that had been extracted from the forests during the dry months. The machinery was old and required constant attention to keep it in working order. The mistri (mechanic) in charge was a simple village craftsman and so Peter had to give much of his time to the sawmill.
The Bettiah Raj exercised a benevolent distribution of funds to schools, hospitals, Christian missions, Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques, dispensaries for the people, veterinary hospitals, and many other things. Some of this expenditure Peter, in his capacity of zemindari manager, recommended to the general manager, if it came within our area and was not directly under the control of the head office.
During Johnnie Cameron’s time, some Nepalese forest guards encroached into the jungles at Narshai Island near the Nepal border. They had attempted to lay claim to it, arguing that the property belonged to their own country. Shots had been fired. Now the matter was being discussed on the highest level by the Maharajah of Nepal and the British Minister to that country, while Peter was left to preserve the peace on the lowest level.
On this northwest border, three big rivers divided at a natural beauty spot called Tribeni. Crocodiles sunned themselves in rows on the banks. From the bed of one of these rivers, the Gandak, the bones of the earliest porpoises known to man had been extracted. Ammonite, a coiled fossil shell which Hindus called salagram, was found in the Gandak River. Such shells are highly prized by Brahmins who consider them sacred, and representative of the god Vishnu.
The rivers were full of fish of all sizes. Fishing rights were leased at Peter’s office, catches being sold in the bazaars. The fishermen made a better living than the butchers, for nearly everyone ate fish.
Gold washing rights, too, were leased on the Sonaha (River of Gold), though the man who was entitled to them earned more money by illicit fishing. Probably the small amount of gold found had been washed down from river deposits inside Nepal, where gold was common. Rich Nepalese women wore necklaces and earrings of solid, nugget-like chunks of gold.
Some years later, in 1947, I knew the Princess Dhana very well. She told me that though all the people of Nepal wore gold only those of the royal family were permitted to wear it on the ankles. When I asked her if the heavy chunks of gold gave the women discomfort, she told me that she herself had suffered considerably during her marriage ceremony. For her wedding this lovely girl had been weighted down with the gold anklets of royalty, with heavy gold bracelets, and also a gold necklace that weighed two hundred tolas (six and a quarter pounds troy).
When he left, Johnnie had distributed his dogs among various friends, but their bedfellows stayed behind. In the house and compound a cleaning up process began. Every rug and strip of matting in the house had to be taken outside, cleaned and aired. After that the place was rid of fleas for the first time.
The undergrowth outside had to be cleared away because the snake pest in the house was so bad. The plantation of tall bamboos on the west was to remain. It had been planted to break the hot west winds that blew from April to July and that swept not only dust into the house but also sand from the Gandak River nearly a mile away. Until the river bed flooded in the monsoon, it was more sand than water. Only the tangled undergrowth beneath these bamboos was dug out.
On the three other sides of the house the clearing was more difficult and nearly a hundred dead or twisted trees had to be felled. The house faced north. As the felling worked around to that side, I constantly investigated the knotty mass to find out what the ground looked like underneath. One day while watching the workmen, I put one hand to lean against a tree. Its bark was smooth and silky to the touch, and a faint grey-blue. The olive-green leaves were slender, feathery things. I was standing beside a full-grown eucalyptus tree.
A glance around showed me several more. After I battled through the thorny bushes, I found about twenty of them, all of the fine lemon-scented variety, as I could tell by pressing the leaves between my fingers. The fresh lemon scent was unmistakable. I gave orders for these trees to be left standing. A previous forest officer, we found, had experimented there with a large plantation, and these were the survivors. They looked very lovely.
The land that was cleared sloped away from the front of the house, and with only the grove of slender eucalyptus trees left standing, a view opened out which offered big possibilities for landscape gardening.
One morning after a heavy overnight rain, which had cleared the air and sharpened distant views, I stepped out on to the veranda of my upstairs bedroom. Leaning on the balcony I looked towards the grey-blue shadow of the eucalyptus trees. Beyond them, miles away in the distance, loomed the stupendous snowy outline of the Himalayas, the highest mountains in the world. They were faintly pink from the rising sun. Pile upon rose-tinted snowy pile, their magnificence was to be my garden background.
The Bettiah Raj allowed us seven malis (garden coolies), just enough for the twelve acres which, in the end, I had under cultivation. At first, the only part of the enclosure clear of weeds had been the well-kept vegetable garden. The malis had enjoyed a fairly easy time until we came. I soon learned that to get an order carried out I had to go into the garden and stay there until the work was completed. It was useless to dismiss the malis, for new ones would be no better. After some weeks of unaccustomed exertion, the head man came to Peter and said they had never worked so hard in all their lives, and their blood was dried up inside them. As the head mali was making no attempt to see that the others worked, he had to go, and one of the remaining six was promoted. A son of the late head mali promptly applied for the vacancy and was engaged, bringing the number up to seven again. There were no ill feelings.
As soon as other people in the district found I was a keen gardener, they offered me plants and cuttings and invited me over for week-ends to choose what I wanted. Sometimes these invitations came from people who had not even met me. They or their fathers had built the houses in which they lived, and their gardens were well established. I still had much to learn about gardening, and everyone was helpful. Their kindness was typical of the planter community.
October was the month for cheerful loot for a gardener. We went to see the neighbours who might live five, or forty-five, miles away. Both men and women were equally keen gardeners. Sooner or later the conversation would come around to what I was after.
‘How are your larkspurs?’ Then an innocent piece of bait would be dangled. ‘Have you any pink ones? You haven’t? Would you like some?’
At home I had a box of seedlings of that lovely shade of dusty pink, a box that should be thinned out, or I would not have started this larkspur conversation. Of course my friend would like some. What I had my eye on were her cinerarias.
Difficult things, cinerarias, because they take a long time to germinate and sometimes refuse to germinate at all. Then they will grow only in leaf mould, which has to be six years old to be any good. I had set my heart on some of her seedlings. Of course I would come away with some of the tiresome things. The little beasts had to be put in pots on a shady veranda because they go in for all that nonsense stuff about refusing to grow in nice beds in the sun, even when they are big.
Back at the house, the bearer greeted me with, ‘Two behar ke (outside) mem-sahibs have called while you were away.’
I knew why. More looters.
In many ways India is an ideal country for beginning gardeners. Once I became accustomed to summer annuals flowering in midwinter, the June roses and November chrysanthemums flowering side by side in December, it was all great fun. In India the gardener has very little waiting to do. In the monsoon, shrubberies newly planted will flower in two months’ time. Creepers gallop over archways and pillars at such a pace they over-reach themselves, and then they wave their arms about in myriads of curling feelers, stretching for somewhere farther to climb.
Sometimes the growth in the shrubberies positively alarmed me. Once while out for a walk I found some little plants of wild mimosa in bloom. Their delicious scent had first attracted me, before I even saw the sprays of yellow blossom. I planted half a dozen of the tiny things in a well-manured shrubbery, as a small frontispiece to the great acalyphas behind. The mimosa plants liked the rich earth so much they promptly leaped up to tree height, dwarfed everything behind them, and for a time got my landscape gardening thoroughly out of proportion.
In October the insects are out of the way. Nothing unpleasant is left to eat the roses, sweet peas, carnations, violets and chrysanthemums, all bursting into bloom like lovely bombshells. Herbaceous borders riot. If they are too narrow for all you want to grow, you just cut the beds deeper and wider.
In my garden in the tropics, dwarf alyssum and aubretia trimmed the edges of the beds, overtopped by phlox and snapdragon. Leaning over their shoulders the larkspur and lupin reared their candles of bloom and among them were groups of Michaelmas daisies. Behind them all towered sentinel hollyhocks of peach and yellow (no pink or red for me).
In friendly rivalry with other gardeners, I grew sweet peas with as many as eight blossoms on one stalk, and in such abundance friends decided I must be cheating. They looked to see if some of the sweet pea flowers had been stuck on with glue. I have planted potatoes the size of plovers’ eggs and dug up their crop, many of which weighed two and a half pounds each. From October to the following April not one single insect nibbled the cauliflowers, cabbages, potatoes, and sweet corn that all grew in a mad scramble to see which could be the biggest. The cabbages, great white heart drumheads, and the cauliflowers were a size I have never seen anywhere else, and with never a nibbled leaf or a crumpled blossom. In winter the only enemy of the roses was the white ant. He had to be watched. A periodic opening of the roots to sun them sent him scurrying away.
We did not need expensive fertilizers because the best soil enricher was there for the taking. At the beginning of the hot weather horse and cow manure was carted from the stables and turned into the garden. At that time the flowers and vegetables were finished. The manure mixed with the soil for six months and the results were spectacular.
Always before this, ours had been a lonely life. Even now, because of the nature of a forest officer’s work, we were far away in the jungles on tour when the weather was at its most pleasant and neighbours could meet. We still went for long periods without seeing anyone save our own villagers; but now there was a comforting feeling that other people were round the corner. In the north nothing lay beyond our forests save Nepal. If you turned south, there were two families, one of them less than five miles away. Farther on at intervals of several miles there were other houses, each in the centre of its own sugar cane fields.
The northern tip of our district had been the last stronghold of the ‘prince’ planters who made their fortunes in indigo. In the early years of this century, when successful aniline dyes were produced, the indigo trade was killed. A bad period followed until it was found that sugar cane, which had always been a village crop, could be improved with good management and marketed successfully.
Until the weather improved and the women and children would return from cooler places, the only people near us were the male members of the Broucke family, five miles away—a father and two grown-up sons. They were my first introduction to the friendliness of the sugar cane planters. The father, two hundred and fifty pound Billy Broucke, was very fond of animals. He bought only the best. He also kept three breeds of poultry, made us a gift of our first Rhode Island Red stock, and later lent us an incubator for hatching.
Billy was one of three brothers who were descendants of Dutch settlers. All three had been keen wrestlers in their youth, retaining Indian professionals to give them practice. In middle age the brothers became colossal and many stories were told about them. One hot season Billy was in the hill station of Mussoorie. He ordered a suit of clothes from an Indian tailor there. The man said he would have to make an extra charge for the amount of cloth used for a man of such a size. Billy offered to bring the tailor two more regular customers if his own suit would be no more than usual price. The tailor agreed. The next day Billy walked into the shop with his two outsize brothers, Peter and Louis. Actually the tailor was no loser in this bargain, because he had no fixed charge for anything. Not one of his customers ever knew by how much his bills were inflated. Billy of course knew this, but he loved a joke about his own proportions. The entire Broucke family dealt with that same tailor for years.
The Brouckes were well known for their pigsticking parties. The wild boars of Champaran were noted for their great weight and the length of their tusks. It was part of the life of a sugar cane planter to learn to spear the wild boar on a staunch galloping horse, while the curved tusks lunged out to slash. Few except the Brouckes possessed the means to organize these spear hunts, but the older members of the family reluctantly became onlookers, for no horse could carry their weight.
In time we met all the planter community, and delightful people they were. I felt rather like a stranger walking in amongst a large family. They had all known each other for so long that surnames were seldom used. Christian names and nicknames were customary. A newcomer found it difficult to discover anyone’s real name. The two Meyrick brothers, grey-haired, intelligent and brisk, one of whom was a member of the Legislative Council, were known to everyone as Creeper and Crawler. Creeper told me his surname was so completely overlooked that he was once presented to an important visitor from Delhi by the Maharajah of Darbhanga as Mr. Creeper.
In the days of indigo planting, a young man who arrived to work as an assistant was called a creeper. Hence our friend’s nickname. A year or so after him came his brother, who also started work in Champaran. He could not be Creeper Meyrick, because there was one already, so he was called Crawler. There were three brothers who were known as Primus, Sugar, and Rabbits. Rabbits’s son was Bunny. There was Petroleum Pete, because he was in oil.
Everyone played polo, for everyone had ponies in order to get round to his work. The upkeep of the polo ground cost Rs. 2/-/- (three shillings) a month per player. If a man had no pony but was a good horseman, someone nearly always lent him a mount for a couple of chukkers. A good player could always get a mount.
The well-established planters entertained to the extent of keeping open house. The youngsters were not expected to do so. Any young man who tried to do this was tactfully persuaded to stop by one of the older men. The result was that it was one of the few places in India where a young man did not run into debt. Your official position did not count. You were judged for yourself, but first had to ‘win your spurs.’
We had brought with us our own orderly, cook, and head bearer. That orderly was one of our mistakes. Peter had engaged him just before we left Sagrampur, after the sixteen-year-old had told him a hard luck story. The boy’s father had been accused of murdering a neighbour. A deadly feud had existed for years between the two families, and threats had been made on both sides. One morning the neighbour was found dead on his charpoy (string bed) with several wounds in the chest and blood on the bed. The dead man’s son accused our boy’s father of murder. Matters became serious. This boy, who later joined our service, came to Peter for help. Such affairs were always tortuous. Neither side ever told the truth, and the case always resolved itself into discovering who was the biggest liar. The final accusation was seldom the origin of the quarrel.
Peter went to the boy’s house. The police were already in charge, and the father was under arrest. At the house of the dead man the body lay on the charpoy in the exact position in which it had been found, so the man’s family said.
Peter knew one fact that the police had not yet discovered. The accused man owned land that the dead man had coveted. Peter noticed that there was no blood on the ground underneath the bed. The wounds were large and deep. The blood should have dripped. The family wanted to take away the corpse at once for the Hindu ceremonial of burning. In that weather the dead must be disposed of within a few hours. Peter asked the police how long a delay an autopsy would cause.
Everyone knew there was not a doctor for miles, but as soon as the dead man’s family heard the remark, they immediately began to show signs of nervousness. By now half the village had gone into a huddle and people all started to talk at once. The two warring families made moves and countermoves, but the more nervous the accusers became, the nearer Peter and the police got to the truth. The fact finally emerged that the dead man had died in his sleep. His family had quickly made wounds in his body, smearing some blood on the bed. They then cheerfully accused their neighbour of murder. If the neighbour were convicted, they thought the way would be clear to acquire the coveted piece of land.
After it was all over, the son of the accused man kept coming to Peter with hard luck tales of not being able to get work. He was a Brahmin, and half the trouble was that there were many things he was not permitted to do because of his high caste. Also, he would not touch anything someone of lower caste had touched, including me. He contracted dysentery soon after our arrival at Bagaha. His care presented great difficulties. No other orthodox Brahmin lived near, save a sadhu (holy man) at a temple about three miles away. He was of the Bairagi sect that wears no clothes at all and smears the body from head to foot with ashes. He occasionally walked up our drive when he wanted to speak to Peter in connection with something to do with the temple, but he would not have considered it among his functions to assist in a case of dysentery.
We got over the difficulty of administering medicine by saying the liquid doses were untouched by hand. We suggested that if the sick man held the bottle in a pair of tongs, he could wash the outside of it before he drank it. He had a bad time over the food question, and here I gave up trying to help. If he got hungry enough, he would help himself. When he was fit to travel, we sent him back to his village and that was the last time we employed an orthodox Brahmin.
Our cook did not stay long, either. He was of very low caste, a Chamar (tanner) which caused me no concern, and had been trained to cook by an English lady. Chamars are despised by other Hindus, and they do have bad habits. They are often foul-mouthed and are strongly addicted to drink. Previously our cook had behaved well in spite of his villainous face.
He had been of great assistance when I started to collect specimens for the Natural History Museum in London. As he was of the tanner caste, I was able to pass on to him my knowledge of taxidermy and he became expert. After we came to live at Bagaha, as soon as ‘open season’ for shooting started, one of the first birds I procured was the rare florican. The museum had particularly asked me to find them a specimen if possible. I brought it back to the house, called the cook and told him to skin and dress the bird ready for mounting. The next morning I sent for the cook and told him to bring the florican. He said that now Master was a burra sahib (big man) the cook could not do any more skinning or he would lose his cook’s izzat (prestige). He was probably right according to his lights, but the Natural History Museum lost its specimen. By that time it was unfit for skinning.
The loss to taxidermy could be accepted, but the proximity of the village toddy shop, where fermented and highly intoxicating palm juice was sold, ended in the cook’s downfall. He began to come back from the bazaar so drunk he did not care if the evening meals were cooked or not. When even the sweeper complained, the man had to go.
We then tried men who came with superlative chits of reference, and who knew nothing except how to boil rice. When there is a vacancy in a household, the news travels like wildfire. I was interviewing several men a day, some of whom had walked over thirty miles to reach us. Chits of reference have little value unless you know the person who wrote them. One man produced a letter and after I had read it I asked him if he knew the contents. He said he was not sure, but that in his family they were all household servants and when one of them was about to look for work, he would take a bundle of letters from the box in which they kept all of them. The letter read:
To Whom It May Concern:
Mittoo Ram the bearer of this letter has worked for me for three months. His bazaar bills are double those of any servant I have ever employed. He is the biggest liar I have met and he has lost most of my shirts.
We tried out some of the applicants for the post, but as Saki once said, they were good as cooks go and as cooks go they went. I preferred going hungry to paying someone for what he could not do. Finally the bearer suggested that we should try the masalchi who, he said, had been cooking our meals during the late incumbent’s drinking bouts. It had not occurred to any of them to mention this before. We gave the masalchi a trial and found he was better than the man we had dismissed. During all the pushing around in the kitchen, he had learned a lot of recipes. Happily no one produced any caste objections to the promotion.
Some time later one of the missionaries from Bettiah asked my help in finding a cook for their high school. The tale this missionary had to tell was one of the most original I had ever heard. Their cook was making so much money by overcharging that even the good missionaries’ patience was exhausted. The post must have been very lucrative, for the man, after being dismissed, sat on their lawn near the gate. When any applicant arrived, the cook offered him money to go away. By this means he thought he would deprive the missionaries of any other help and finally be taken back himself. The gentle blackmail was unsuccessful, but the missionaries never got abreast of the problem, I believe, until two lay brothers arrived who could keep an eye on the kitchen.
Of the remainder of our staff, the head bearer had been with us the longest. He came to us as a young man of sixteen. He grew up with us and learned our ways. He had shared all our vicissitudes. When either of us got worked up about anything, he knew how to keep quiet until the gale blew over. He learned to cook, to look after Peter’s clothes, to change a spare wheel on the car, to keep the staff in order, and to see that nobody overcharged us except himself.
His native village was only eight miles away from our new home, and probably never even in his dreams had he thought to be working so near his own family. His features had a slightly Mongolian cast to them, common in those parts of India where Tibet, Sikkim, and China are near, and Nepal only a short march away.
Out bearer soon produced a young cousin to work as a second bearer. These two were children of an orphan community which had come into existence in curious circumstances. Years before, at the time of a great famine, many people died. Hundreds of children were left without parents and this created a problem for the government. To save the lives of the babies and to find permanent shelter and care for them, several missionary societies were approached and asked to adopt them. The societies could not accept such a large number of children because of the high cost. The grant of money from the famine relief fund was barely sufficient for their upkeep. Roman Catholic missionaries working in the province volunteered to take the children.
The orphans grew up in the village of Chakni. They tilled the fields, built houses, and later married. My two servants were grandchildren of the original orphans. Our visitors were always a little startled when they first heard us call these servants by name. The Italian priest had baptized them Pietro and Gabriel. For about six weeks we also had a man called Seraphim, but we never completed the archangelic choir.
Pietro and Gabriel made good servants and since they were Christians, there was no caste problem. The other servants were Hindus and Moslems, and all worked together amicably save for normal domestic arguments. I was now able to engage a dhobi as a regular member of the household on a monthly wage. He washed clothes only for us and at our well.
As time went on we arranged for our servants to have small plots of land. The crops from these helped to give them a feeling of security. Some brought their wives and families. Others went home to their villages at night, or at frequent intervals, in the cold weather the servants’ quarters would be overflowing with female relations of all ages. That was the shooting season, and there was always feathered game and venison to spare from our camp. When the season closed on the first of April, the hordes of relations would find urgent work elsewhere.
Now we could look ahead to the seasons and grow nearly all our own food. This meant our table had variety and I was never at a loss if anyone on tour arrived unexpectedly.
No longer was there a feast or a famine of vegetables and fruit. At the height of the season I bottled the surplus, and we could still enjoy our own preserves when the garden was a burnt-up desert. We at once set about planting a regular orchard. Already some lime and lemon trees grew at one end of the compound and later I planted grapefruit, oranges, peaches, guavas and pineapples.
Of all the fruit, I think the pineapples gave me the most entertainment. I started with five plants and ended with about two hundred. Even so, I managed to keep the numbers under control only by constantly sending gifts to other people. The flavour of a pineapple freshly cut, running with juice, and warm from the sun is something to remember. I sliced off the crested topknot and planted this in the pineapple bed in the garden. Next season the topknot had become a real plant with roots and grew a pineapple on itself. Many pineapples grew not one but several topknots, so the fresh output balanced any decay in older plants.
At Bagaha I started to keep poultry. I locked my poultry house to be sure I got the full number of eggs. During the moulting season when the hens did not lay, we used eggs I had preserved in great earthen jars filled with slaked lime water.
Once we experimented with owning a cow but pasturage was almost non-existent. Fodder for our cow had to be bought and it was always being stolen. When the cow was milked the full supply never reached the larder. Villagers keep cattle for cart work and as plough animals, not for milk. Since other people were successful in keeping cows, I must have been a bad manager. At any rate, after some months we sold the animal.
We soon found that buffalo milk which we bought from the local herdsmen was much richer. Buffaloes thrive where cows do not. We arranged for a daily supply of slightly more than we required, in order to have enough to make our own butter. As the forest officer was the herdsman’s landlord, our milk did not get watered down.
Milk must always be boiled to prevent cholera. I simmered the milk in large shallow pans, which were then stood to cool in dhoolies (wire netted food cupboards). Early the next morning the cream would be skimmed off and beaten up with a fork in a deep dish. It turned into butter in about five minutes. I did not use a butter churn because I could never be certain it had been properly sterilized. It was impossible for me to watch all kitchen activities.
Butter made from buffalo milk is a snowy white and people unaccustomed to it thought there must be something wrong. For the sake of our visitors, I tinted it a creamy colour with saffron grown in the garden.
Each day the butter left over was rendered down into ghee by melting it slowly over a fire until a scum formed on top. The contents of the pan were then strained and the clear liquid below the scum was poured into jars to cool. Solid ghee, which is the finest type of cooking fat, does not become rancid.
Bread was sold in Bettiah, forty-two miles away, but the village bakers were inclined to sleep at night on the table on which they mixed the dough. Our own bread was freshly baked each day. We could not buy yeast so we used toddy to make the bread rise. The fermented juice of the toddy palm is sold under licence in the village liquor shops to the local winebibbers.
One day Pietro mentioned that three of the palm trees by the servants’ quarters were toddy palms. It was a waste of time to send a man five miles to the liquor shop if we could get all we wanted in our back yard. We arranged with the grog-shop man to tap our trees and let us have what we required for bread making. The remainder he could keep for himself.
Every few days he climbed the trees. First he took out of his loincloth about six inches of rope with a loop at each end. He put the big toe of each foot through a loop and climbed the tree. When he reached the top, the rope gave extra purchase while he worked. He slung free the earthen jar that was tied behind his waist, removed the full jar already on the tree, and fixed the new one in place where he had tapped the trunk, just below where the branches sprouted from the top. In the full jar a frothy milky juice was already fermenting. A very small quantity made the bread rise as well as any yeast.
Crows soon noticed our new arrangement and began to neglect their normal pursuits, such as raiding my day-old chicks, to drink the palm juice. They would fly to the tree and with ungainly flapping of wings balance in turn on the rim of a jar. Frequently they nearly overbalanced inside, for it was a gymnastic effort even for a crow to stand on his head for a drink at the bottom. When replete, they flopped to the ground. Soon all day long a hopping group of inebriated crows staggered at the foot of the toddy palms. The chickens were unmolested. Soon it became increasingly obvious that the crows were not the only ones who were having free drinks. The pleasant state of affairs outside their own quarters had been too much for the servants. While meaning no harm, towards evening they reached such a stage of hilarity they were incapable of work. We stopped tapping the trees and again bought our toddy at the village. The extra distance the servants had to travel to the bazaar for a drink, plus the cost, kept their drinking within reasonable bounds.
Now I was able to turn to the garden, which had been tugging at me from the first day. The monsoon had broken. The earth had previously been hard as a brick. It could only be chipped, not dug. With the advent of the rains it was soft enough to loosen and could be prepared for winter sowing. There was no happy medium about the weather. From solid concrete the ground now turned to bog. I paddled about barelegged and in old tennis shoes, full of dreams and schemes. After a week of digging, I stopped calling the enclosure the compound and began to refer to it as the garden.
We never attempted to wear waterproof clothes, for nothing keeps out that rain save a seaman’s oilskin and in that heat a waterproof coat is a discomfort, for you perspire under it. All during the monsoon we wore only clothes that were washable. When we had been out in the rain, we peeled off the wet clothes, dropping them with a plop on the bathroom floor, and changed into dry ones.
It became obvious that the garden coolies, who at last were genuinely working, could not keep going at the pace set by my enthusiasm. The coolies’ diet is mainly rice, and they have little stamina. All of them chew or smoke bhang (hemp) as a stimulant and would not thank you for providing anything more substantial. The malis were now willing enough, but if the work was ever to be finished, some compromise was necessary. There is no substitute for bone and muscle.
I changed my method. So long as the work did not lag too much, I showed them what was required, saw it started and then went back into the house. I knew, and they knew, and they knew that I knew that when my back was turned they would immediately take a rest. They also knew I would simulate great anger if the work was not completed, so the rest period was never long. The main thing was that the work got finished, and instead of solemn faces, everyone was cheerful. A few vegetables were always being stolen, but the garden could stand it.
During the first monsoon at Bagaha, most of the compound was ploughed and cleaned several times to eradicate jungle growth. Peter was very reasonable about my continual requests for ploughs, which in my impatience I expected to be created out of thin air.
Lawns were to slope away from the front of the house, down through the eucalyptus grove, and beyond to where the boundary of the compound met some rice fields. I was anxious for lawns there, as a fitting green foreground for that wonderful backdrop of the Himalayas. Behind that first snowy mountain range lay Everest, only one hundred and sixty miles as the crow flies.
The lawns were finally made after plenty of trial and error. Each time I thought I had a lawn, the jungle shot up, too. The grass seed we planted was mistaken by all the little birds for miles around as an invitation to a party. Even the fly-catching humming birds changed their diet. But I loved the humming-birds and thrilled with pride when they chose one of our verandas from which to dangle a nest like a thistledown bottle.
I still wanted a lawn, and it was impossible to put half an acre of ground under netting to save the grass seed. I wrote to the Horticultural Gardens in Calcutta. They told me not to use seed, but dhoob grass which grew in our district. They explained how to sow it, and said it was similar to the finest Westmoreland grass used in England for tennis lawns.
When I asked the malis where to get dhoob, their faces brightened at a familiar word. They said the syce cut this grass for the horses every morning. Armed with empty sacks and tools the coolies trotted off, pleased to have work that for once did not mean heavy digging. They brought back piles of roots which were emptied on the ground near a mali who squatted beside two large cans. In them cleaned earth and water was mixed to a soft mud. The grass roots were chopped on a board and tipped into this mixture. The ground to be turned into lawn was already levelled and damp from constant rain, and on this surface the grass and mud mixture was smoothed. In a short time there was a fine green lawn.
I had already sketched a plan of where shrubberies should grow. As soon as the ground was soft these were planted, some cuttings and some roots. I knew if I planted them quickly in early July, they probably would be five feet high by October. The variety of shrubs seemed almost unlimited, and neighbours kept sending more. They made a blaze of colour at a time of the year when most annuals cannot live and the rest of the garden looks like an arid desert.
A fiery acalypha became a favourite of mine. If it was planted in shady ground the leaves remained a mottled green. If it grew in the open, the sun turned it deep red, and when the rays of the setting sun shone through it, the leaves were the colour of blood.
Some bushes were already in the compound, but I wanted them transplanted to better places, and one day started to move them. A five-foot bush with its roots is heavy. The garden coolies were soon in difficulties when they tried to lift them. I suddenly thought of the elephants. They were not working that day, and their stables were close to the house. I sent for a small elephant and explained to her mahout that the bushes were already loosened around the roots. All that was required was to place them in holes ready waiting at the other side of the garden. To the word of command the elephant coiled her trunk around each bush in turn, lifted it and carried it to the new position. All the biggest bushes were moved in twenty minutes, the only hitch being that while carrying a plant, the elephant would persist in swishing it about and shaking it like a house-maid’s duster. She did not approve of any earth on the roots and wanted it off. But all the bushes grew and flourished.
There was so much to do in house and garden, I scarcely knew where to begin. The whole Champaran district is a natural saltpetre deposit. The houses are built with bricks made on the spot. To cart bricks hundreds of miles would make building costs prohibitive. During the monsoon our house sweated saltpetre in flakes. It stood out from the walls of the rooms in beards of glistening snow, and I was dismayed when all the pictures on the walls were attacked by damp. Some were original watercolours, and too late we found that the backs of most of them were rotted. After that first experience the remaining pictures were put away each year in tin cases before the monsoon started, in the same way that we sealed in airtight cases all the rugs. If we left silk garments on a chair overnight, they were likely to be riddled with holes by morning. Sometimes the hopper that made the meal had not bothered to move on, but was still chewing.
Mattresses and pillows had to be aired the moment the sun came out. If the downpour lasted for days, we sniffed mildew in bed all night. We never caught rheumatism, probably because the temperature was so high. When the sun came out, our bones dried as quickly as everything else. There is a lot to be said in favour of the coolie’s dhoti, twisted close into a loincloth. Skin dries in the sun quicker when there are no clothes on it.
At the start we were handicapped by repeated attacks of malaria. The forests were rife with anopheles, the malaria mosquitoes. At intervals we shivered with ague, singly or together, sometimes with the household staff as well, for they, too, were not yet acclimatized. Once the only person left on his feet was the sweeper.
Long since I had grown accustomed to these attacks. The subject was too ordinary to make an interesting conversational topic. I merely scribbled a note to a friend saying, ‘Sorry to disappoint you for tennis. Down with malaria.’
The malaria victim shakes with ague, then burns up with fever. His bones ache and so does his head. He decides he is dying, until he has experienced several attacks and finds himself still alive. He is thin and weak afterwards, but quickly recovers. After my third attack in four months, I asked the head clerk at the office whether it was an unusually malarious district.
He told me that all the Terai was known as a bad district for malaria. Some of the villages in our forest clearings were populated by Tharus. The head clerk said that in Nepal they and the Maryis were called ‘Aoulias,’ because of the special type of malaria known as ‘aoul.’
‘People who live here get sick all the time,’ he said. ‘You feel when the fever is coming on. You grow accustomed to it. You die—or you get well.”
We waited to see which would happen to us, and were glad that arrangements had already been made for Rene to go to school in England.
Few people called in a doctor. In our case one would have had to travel forty-two miles, and then prescribe the remedies we were already taking. We kept simple remedies in the house and took five grains of quinine and five grains of aspirin every six hours until the fever broke. The rapid drop from a high temperature to one that was well below normal brought the body out in such a heavy sweat that the bed sheets were wringing wet. We kept dry things at hand ready and changed at once. We were never hungry when in the grip of the fever, and so diet was easy. When the fever had broken, people were supposed to remain in bed for twenty-four hours and take things easy. Sensible people did this.
In the winter, mosquitoes were far less active though we could never discard our mosquito nets. But we seldom went down with fever at that time.
We took short hot weather trips from the end of May until the rains broke, but no extended periods of camping. The forest touring started in October, and all winter we lived in tents, returning to the house only when Peter needed to catch up on administrative details. In camp, we wore old clothes in the daytime, trousers or jodhpurs, for our days were spent scrambling up and down elephants or walking through jungles.
Because much of a forest officer’s life is spent in camp, he travels with a good supply of camp kit. Our tents were of the Swiss cottage type, large, with two tent poles, and were constructed of double canvas. We were snug inside at night, when outside it was cold enough for an occasional frost on the ground. Both ends of the sleeping tents extended on poles. One end formed a veranda and was set with rugs and camp chairs. At the other end of the tent, the poles were enclosed in canvas walls and this formed the bathroom. In it was all that could be required by any reasonable person. The bath water was tipped in from cans so hot we did not have time to notice if there were draughts under the flap of the tent.
The servants had small tents. The cook had a separate one for his kitchen. The kitchen stove consisted of sets of bricks in squares of four, on the ground. Within them was the charcoal fire and on them stood the pans. With this equipment our cook prepared delectable food.
Admittedly he had something good to work on in the winter. Every day a runner from the house brought fresh bread, vegetables from the garden, fruit—and mail. During the shooting season from October to the end of March, we supplied our kitchen with meat that anywhere else would have come within the means of only wealthy people.
In contrast to our lack of interest in food during the hot weather, we became positive gourmets by midwinter. We had roast peacock, but within a month’s time we became so fussy that we would not eat it and gave most of it to the servants. Even when we did eat peacock, we used only the breast. Legs and wings went into the stock pot for soup. The flesh of peacock is whiter than that of turkey, but is dry. By December we decided that partridge, too, was dry, almost sandy, and had insufficient flavour. At the top of our list went wild green pigeon and jungli murgi (wild chicken). Green pigeon stuffed with olives and served like wild teal with port wine sauce was a dish for the gods.
I liked duck but because Peter found it oily I experimented. I learned to eliminate any fishy or oily flavour from the meat by first covering the dressed bird with a paste made of brown flour and water. During the cooking, the oil from the flesh soaked into the flour paste. The pastry shell was then broken and the duck emerged with its flavour intact, but the oiliness gone.
Our soup was a blend of all the bones of all the game put together. It carried a depth of flavour impossible to describe. If I wanted a clear soup, the cook crushed a raw egg, shell included, into the liquid, which was then strained through clean muslin. The original brown soup was now transparent. A wineglass of sherry was tipped into it before it was served.
If we had guests, we served a sweet or savoury after dinner, but Peter was not interested in that type of food. When we were alone we generally finished the meal with fruit, nuts, and my home-made desserts. Here again the sherry came into its own. I always kept a stock of sherried prunes made at home. Dates were turned into candies after being stoned and stuffed. There was home-made fudge which almost every Indian cook I ever knew could make to perfection. This otherwise expensive candy was easy to make because of my home supply of butter.
Fish was plentiful throughout the year except when the rivers were in flood, when the fishermen could not use their nets. Fish from our rivers came to the table within a few hours of having been caught. Bachwa and mahseer were the most common, but there was a small fish like a delicious pink-fleshed trout that was delicate in flavour. We sometimes bought river prawns. They are the size of big shrimps and are very good to eat.
When the governor came on tour, life was different. From time immemorial India has delighted in pomp and circumstance. Every governor of the province tried to get rid of the trappings of office when he came to our jungles, for that was one of the few places where he could relax. He was never completely successful. Wherever he was, he had to keep in touch with the Provincial Legislature. He shed nearly all officialdom save for a police bodyguard, without which he was not permitted to travel. His needs were simple, and all he wanted was to be left in peace, but the people attached to him always had someone attached to them. At times, with police and all the whatnots, we found ourselves arranging food for about thirty-five people. Nothing could be bought in the forests. Meat we usually shot, but when catering for numbers, we sometimes sent up sheep ‘on the hoof’ and kept them grazing nearby. From experience we found this to be an insurance against indifferent shooting. We never forgot one camp, when there were so many poor shots among the guests that we nearly starved.
When on tour, we were out all day, eating the midday meal wherever we halted the elephants. Peter inspected the growth of young plantations, or marked hundreds of trees to be felled, or delineated blocks that were to come within the silvicultural operations for that period.
It was no casual touring. A forest officer worked to a detailed schedule constantly revised and adjusted, and that first must receive sanction from the Conservator of Forests for the province before being put into operation.
A working plan for the forest of our type was usually made for ten to fifteen years and then revised, or completely changed, and a fresh plan drawn up for the next ten or fifteen years. These short-term working plans (which include detailed prescriptions for what work is to be done, where and in what year) have as a basis some form of long-term policy and system of treatment. One of the primary essentials is fixing the ‘rotation.’
Our forests were being worked on a one hundred and twenty years rotation, which meant that trees were not considered to be mature and ready for the axe until they were one hundred and twenty years old with a girth of about six feet. Most of our rotations for sal, the principal timber, were one hundred or one hundred and twenty years. Some were one hundred and fifty years.
Sal, which represented seventy per cent of our marketable timber, was not only used for railway sleepers, but also for construction work. It is very heavy, hard, and impervious to white ants. Asna, another of our trees, was a handsome dark wood, and one I always hoped to be allowed to use whenever the forest officer, in a weak moment, agreed to sell me some timber for the house. The timber from sissoo was sold for making furniture. It is similar to rosewood, but lighter in colour. Haldu was almost the lowest timber in market value, though there was a steady demand for it. It is yellow, fairly soft, and used for making bobbins and in turnery.
No timber might be felled without the personal mark of the F.O. on it. This held good except for clear felling over a single block of jungle. Tree marking prevented immature timber from being cut before it had reached its full value. Tree marking alone could occupy a whole day. Back in Bagaha at the forest office, the number of trees that had been marked was checked against the number of timbers on the bullock carts that had to pass the office.
Sometimes I left Peter and went off on a trip of my own while he was out with the forest rangers. One evening I was fishing from a boat in a creek of one of our rivers. In the upper reaches where the river was broad and the wafer clear, I would spin for mahseer. Downstream in this creek, there were many kinds of small fish, and instead of the silver ‘spoon’ I used live bait.
I never could face sliding the worms alive and lengthwise along the curved hooks, and gave baksheesh to anyone available to come in the boat with me and function on the can of worms. Half an hour beforehand we would scatter atta (brown flour) on the surface of the water to attract fish. I never had any success with worms. My catch in that creek alternated between things the size of minnows that knew no better and had to be thrown back, and turtles.
On this particular evening, while I was sitting quietly in the boat, a pair of otters popped up their heads a short distance away. I kept still. Suddenly an otter dived and came up with a really big fish. He swam with it to some reeds and pushed it on to a mud bank. There it lay, quite dead, glistening in the sun. He slipped back into the water and far off the two otters started to fish again. After about ten minutes one of them returned, picked up the dead fish in its mouth and dived out of sight. His fishing that day was certainly better than mine.
There was a fairly even balance of nature in our jungles. Tigers and leopards, unlike man, do not overeat, and only kill when they are hungry. The forests were full of deer, and if carnivora had not kept the numbers down, man would have had new problems to face in animal sickness. Wild life in its natural surroundings is always in its prime, for the old or sick become stragglers and are killed by the creatures that prey on them.
Our tigers and leopards had natural food and did not interfere with man. The real enemy of the jungle folk was the wild red dog, for which there was a permanent government reward. The dogs hunt in packs and are the outlaws of the jungle. When they crossed into our forests it meant death to the deer.
Sometimes villages reported that a tiger or leopard had killed one of their cattle. People of the forest villages used the grassy tracts for grazing because it was cheap there. Such things were bound to happen from time to time. The following night we would sit up for the slayer. Peter was a fine shot, but became bored by an all-night session. Often I went out with him. It was easy for us if we were already in camp to sit up at night over a nearby kill, for the leopard or tiger generally returns.
That second time he may not eat, but he will come even if only to sniff. The slightest sound will stop him. Many a hunter thinks because he saw no tiger all night that it was not there. Probably it was sitting in the darkness watching the spot, having heard a slight noise that warned it of danger.
Man-eaters are the exception. They know too much.
Living with the wild life, I learned the signs that help a hunter; the crow in a tree looking down at something and cawing; the sudden chatter of a troupe of monkeys peering from the trees at something in the grass; the grazing herd of deer that gets a scent on the wind and scatters. I learned to look in the direction these creatures were looking.
After killing and eating, the tiger or leopard makes for the nearest place to drink. It often lies up somewhere near there, between the water and its kill.
If I was going to sit in a machan (platform in a tree) I would be there long before sundown. Leopards especially seem to return to the spot quite early in the afternoon. One night I had arranged to sit over a leopard kill, and had been delayed. Instead of reaching the spot early, I did not get there until nearly four-thirty in the afternoon. Peter came to see me installed, before going back to camp and a warm fire. I was using a 12-bore shotgun, which I preferred at close range, and on a dark night it is easier to sight than a single barrel rifle, the only type we possessed. The lethal cartridges were in my shooting bag slung across Peter’s shoulder. As we turned a bend in the forest patch, some movement made me look up.
Directly above us, standing on an outflung limb of a big cotton tree overhanging the road, was the leopard I had come to shoot. It was surveying the open country beyond for game. Peter had not seen it. I grabbed the cartridge bag from his shoulder and snapped a couple of lethal in, but it was too late. The leopard had seen us and disappeared in the undergrowth like a shadow. Never again did I part from my ammunition, no matter how heavy the cartridge bag. I sat up all night as originally intended, but the leopard did not return.
Where there was grave danger, Peter generally went out alone to do the job, only telling me afterwards, to avoid any argument about letting me come too. Once he had to wriggle through a field of sugar cane on his stomach after a leopard someone had wounded and left lying there. Peter was short-tempered with bunglers, for good reason. He and the leopard faced each other at ground level, because that was the only portion of the sugar cane he could see through. He wriggled slowly forward till he found his target, always with the possibility that the leopard might see him first. That particular animal was injured in the hindquarters and could not spring, but no one knew it at the time. Peter made a clean job of it.
I learned to be silent as a shadow, and for this reason it was better to go out alone. You always imagine it is the other person who makes the noise, and you are so intent you forget to be polite about it.
I had to face getting bitten and stung on occasion, and every machan I ever sat in seemed to be infested with either black or red ants, the large hammer-headed variety which give you a good nip with their jaws. There is even an innocent-looking creeper that if brushed against can penetrate an elephant’s hide, leaving its soft hairs to fester and poison the skin. With experience I learned to take precautions.
In camp it was natural always to carry a gun, and it became my habit to sling it over one shoulder, or, more convenient still, to tuck it under one arm, balanced through the crook of my elbow.
Coming back to camp one evening riding Temi Tahadur, I carried the gun loaded as usual, and with the safety catch on. There was always the possibility of a bird or two for dinner, or of the odd leopard slipping through the forest. People laughed at me because I kept the shotgun loaded with lethal in the choke (left barrel), and with bird shot in the right barrel. I found that the most comfortable way to be prepared for anything.
As I passed a large banyan tree, I turned to admire the immense girth which had resulted from its hundreds of aerial roots finding contact with the soil. They now massed around the main bole of the tree like a miniature forest. It was well that tree had attracted my notice, for my head was turned in the right direction. Coiled among its knotted roots was a big snake. I saw the movement as it reared up, and shot it. I did not recognize the type but the snake was so big that I tied it on the elephant and took it back to camp. It turned out to be a king cobra, and measured eleven feet ten inches. We cured the skin and later I took it to London to show to the Natural History Museum. They did not require the specimen, so on my return to Bagaha, we mounted it stretched on a backing of three-ply wood cut to the exact length and width. This trophy we set on the wall above the main staircase which led to the bedrooms. The immense king cobra sometimes had a startling effect on convivial guests, who approached it unexpectedly as they went upstairs to bed.
When there was a trip to Narshai, I took care not to be left behind. The unusual beauty of the place and the variety of transport attracted me. The heavily wooded island of about eleven square miles was intersected by many waterways that issued from Nepal. The wild life found all it wanted there in abundance, both of food and drink. On its western flank the island touched the boundary of the United Provinces. The boundary line had been demarcated down the middle of the main river channel; but the rivers were always changing their courses. The island was something of a Tom Tiddler’s ground, with us the rightful owners.
We used elephants as far as the banks of the first river where our little men were waiting. I always called these people the ‘little men,’ partly due to affection, and partly because even the tallest among them was barely five feet in height. For clothing they wore a wisp of loincloth. Their hair was never cut except possibly with a hunting knife once every few years. Their main means of livelihood was fishing. They were almost amphibious. They lived on the sandy river banks in ramshackle tents with their families and their chickens. The chickens were raised from wild hen’s eggs taken in our forests. There was an understanding between them and the forest officer about this, which overlooked the law, and harmed no one.
The little men were always cheerful. I would bring them foul-smelling black cigarettes as strong as cheroots, sometimes even a cheroot itself. They would teach me how to spear the big mahseer fish at night. We would slip into midstream in the darkness and wait there, leaning over the prow of the canoe, spears held aloft to strike the great fish as his silver side gleamed in the light of a lantern at the prow. The fish were attracted by light.
Our Chris-Craft speedboat could not negotiate the higher reaches of the river, and for this reason the little men were notified of our arrival a day ahead. They would be ready to take us to Narshai in their flat-bottomed dug-out canoes. In an English museum I once saw identical dugouts which had been found under the mud of the Bristol channel, and were labelled prehistoric. In England they were, but we used them every season.
These dugouts are about twenty feet long and cut from the solid trunk of a tree all in one piece. They are the only craft that can safely shoot the shallow rapids. The canoes are a real necessity in the semi-amphibious existence of a people whose staple diet is fish. At intervals Peter gave the little men a tree free of charge, with a paternal warning that the canoe made from it must be watertight, even if no other was. It would ostensibly be for the use of the forest officer and the rangers, but considerable fishing was done with it at other times.
Two passengers could be carried in one canoe and to ‘dress ship’ they were obliged to sit back to back in the centre. Baggage must travel separately, because a dugout when laden was only about six inches out of the water.
The little men waited for us to step into the canoes, and then pushed off with long poles. Once in deep water, the crew of one used a short paddle. Sometimes he slung his leg over the side as a rudder. In that part of the river, a series of shallow rapids flow over a broken stony bed. Even if its under part is scraped, the dugout comes to little harm because of its flat bottom. The rapids looked much worse than they really were, but Peter sometimes wickedly suggested to a nervous guest that before he shot over them it would be as well to part his hair in the middle. Once over the rapids, we were in the broad river again where the water ran clear as crystal. It would have been a lovely place for a swim, but we never got around to fencing off the crocodiles.
When we finally touched the opposite bank, we were on the island of Narshai, and could walk dead straight ahead for eleven miles if so we felt inclined, and were prepared to wade the streams and all the marshy ground. Along the sandy river bank and in the soft earth beyond there were always marks of recent jungle visitors. The prints of a big bird, with behind them a faint trail in the sand, meant that the peacocks had been out for a stroll trailing their trains behind them. Deer had come recently to drink if their cleft prints were not yet dry. Wild boar, bear and leopard had frequently crossed in the night. There were no hyenas in our jungles, and I never saw one north of the Ganges.
I never lost the thrill of finding fresh pug marks of tiger. New marks would be sharp as a sculptor’s mould, not roughened or smoothed. Sometimes they were so recent that tiny grains of sand were still falling from the edges. Then I knew the king was near.
Sometimes I found the big three-toed print of a rhinoceros that had strayed across from Nepal. It was forbidden to shoot a rhinoceros, and there was a fine for this of one thousand rupees, imposed to avoid extinction of these rare animals. The horn of rhinoceros is much in demand in Asia. From the borders of India to farthest China it is sold for immense sums. Rhinoceros horn is credited with magical properties. Indian princes once coveted them. To set one under the gadi (throne) is believed to assure security, since it is the symbol of fecundity. To-day, in any Indian bazaar, powdered rhinoceros horn sells for as high a price as an aphrodisiac.
The day’s work over, we returned to the river bank. The empty lunch basket was put in a dugout. Sometimes beside it would be peacock, or wild hare, or a delicate fleshed wild chicken for the pot. The little men would not be forgotten, and with a happy smile would tuck away some of our game for a feast that night. In the cool of evening we slipped downstream to a new camping ground. This was easier for the boatmen than to haul against the current fully loaded.
As darkness fell, myriads of insects set up their tiny orchestras. Male cicadas rubbed their wings chirruping harsh messages. In the jungles, males have it all their own way right down to the insects. ‘Happy the cicada’s life, because he has a silent wife.’
There was no scenery in the jungles to compare with that picture slipping downstream, sometimes by the light of a monster moon. On either bank dense trees crowded to the water’s edge, and a drowned forest was reflected in the river. Across from the shadows would come the belling note of a deer. Thin and clear came the cry of a night bird as it sailed overhead. Slowly I drifted down the river, with the wild life symphony swelling and falling around me, until I myself became merged in it and was one with the night.
Sometimes we asked people to join us in camp. They were glad of the change, and we liked company. In the evenings we all gathered round the fire built of branches piled high. As the campfire flickered, hunting tales were told and stories of pigsticking days, for nearly all the men were deadly marksmen with a spear after the wild boar. There was the tale of the man who speared a leopard instead of a boar. Sooner or later the argument would start as to the best way to hold the long spear when riding down the quarry. There was the overarm style and the underarm style, and I never found out which was right.
Firelight would gleam on the circle of faces. Overhead it was always a night of stars. If the moon was full, we used no lamps outside. Someone would break into the lilt of an old folk song, then another and another, as they all joined in. Deep male voices chanted the Song of the Boar, the pigstickers’ hunting chorus. Then, loveliest of them all, would flow out the organ notes of ‘Shenandoah.’ That song should always be sung to the nearby ripple of many waters, in the shadow of forest trees.
Naturally, guests always hoped to see big game. The jungle folk nearly always obliged. Just as we would be feeling quite civilized, driving the car from one camping ground to another, Peter would have to brake suddenly for a leopard crossing the path as it passed from one patch of dense undergrowth to another.
One night a scorpion on its evening ramble found me. The warmth of the campfire must have made it leave the pile of stacked timber. I was wearing an overcoat, and at first felt nothing. Fortunately, a few moments later, Peter passed behind me and suddenly called out ‘Sit still.’ I had not been moving, and I knew the danger signal. Then various manoeuvres with a sheet of stiff paper behind my head enlightened me further. The scorpion had walked over my coat and taken refuge in my hair. Now I felt it, and we both had an uncomfortable time. The creature’s feet and prawn-like claws were tangled in my curls and it struggled to get out of this strange new jungle. Every time the paper was pushed under or near it, it ran in the opposite direction across my scalp. The tiny legs felt like hard wire tips, and if my scalp had responded to my reactions, the hair should have stood on end. After about a hundred years (I was told later it was only a minute) he was scooped off. I quickly explained to our guests that this kind of thing had never happened before; but that night there was a determined tucking in of mosquito nets when they went into bed.
A few days in the jungles seemed always to refresh people. One friend joined us with two other girls and they stayed for a week. She had broken her engagement and she wanted to get away. The white-faced child soon cheered up, and the three of them behaved like a bunch of hysterical kittens. We took them out at night after big game, sitting up in trees. Finally, on what should have been her wedding morning, the bride was sitting on the ground with her back against a tree, and her mouth full of a large slice of peacock pie. Later she married an English peer and went to live in Mayfair.
Once Creeper Meyrick brought his son to the jungles for a few days, and Crawler joined the party. The son was in the Navy, and his ship had arrived in Indian waters. He was staying with his father on leave. The Meyrick brothers were two of the most delightful people in the district, and we were always happy to see them. Both played a good game of bridge, and could give a terrific account of themselves on the tennis court or polo ground. Crawler’s language in a fast chukker of polo always electrified and entertained me. It fairly blistered the polo ground.
Peter went ahead to camp with the father and son. I was to follow with some of the stores in Crawler’s car. I packed a collection of rich home-made cakes for the Navy. We allowed twenty minutes for the dust of the first car to settle before following.
By the route we took, it was nearly ten miles before we drove through the real jungle. Crawler and I had been capping each other’s experiences. I mentioned that although our jungles swarmed with peacock, I had never yet seen the famous peacock dance. At that moment Crawler swung the car round a bend of the forest road, where it opened out into grassy glades on either side. What we saw struck us silent, and gently the car was brought to a standstill.
On the grass to our left, three male peacocks stood. Their fans were spread in perfect circles over their backs. Facing each other they stamped and strutted, then waltzing they turned completely round, ending always by once again facing each other. Their jewelled breasts were gleaming. The blue and gold eyes in their tails glittered in the sun. Their necks swelled and the feathers ruffled, as they glared at each other in the circling dance. From the trees behind stretched out the long inquiring necks of a row of admiring peahens. They must have heard us. Courting was suddenly interrupted. The huge fans closed and every bird streamed back into the forest.
The Meyricks were good marksmen and while they were in camp our game pot was always full. Game of every variety simmered in the pot, fresh game being added daily. The longer it simmered, the finer was the flavour. In it would be green pigeon, wild chicken, peacock, partridge, quail, wild duck and teal; seldom venison. I never shot a deer from choice: the soft look from the brown eyes of a deer made me feel uncomfortable.
In any event, venison is overrated as a meat. The male is tough. The only meat of this type that was good eating and had a delicate flavour was the black buck, the gazelle that grazed on our plains.
One night before the party broke up, we received news of a tiger kill. Early the following morning we set out on the elephants. At the spot he was likely to break through we placed Creeper’s son. The tiger crossed exactly there, and gave the Navy a perfect broadside target. He dropped the tiger with one shot. I do not know who was the more delighted, Creeper or his son.
They left the next day, for the son had to rejoin his ship, H.M.S. Barham. A few days later that young life was to be cut short, for he went down with the ship of which he was so proud.
There were sixteen elephants in the Bettiah Raj. Elephants have always been part of a princely stable, but ours were necessary for penetrating some of the heavy jungle. They had to be cared for and fed. Their meals, like those of the other animals, must be supervised. Each elephant was issued six pounds of rice every evening, and if we relaxed our vigilance, the mahouts had a chance of a glorious rice harvest. Once they realized, however, that the forest officer might arrive unexpectedly at any moment during the elephant’s meal, they were not too remiss.
Our stable full of giants interested and entertained me. Sometimes they required dentistry. The massive ivory can grow to a great length until the tusks almost meet across the trunk. This ivory is part of the armour of a wild elephant but it can be dangerous on a domestic animal. A gentle swing of the head can deliver a blow with the tusks that would break a limb. At times our male elephants had about one third of the ivory cut. The carpenter from the sawmill came with his keenest blade and slowly sawed through the tusk, while the elephant nonchalantly stood there and let him do it. After that the ends would be bound with ornamental rings to keep them from splitting.
Deep down under the layer of pink flesh in the mouth lay the flat grinder teeth. An elephant grows six grinder teeth in the course of its lifetime. We salvaged several that had been pushed out by new ones.
Usually elephants do not breed in captivity, but we had a baby elephant who made a surprise arrival in the middle of a winter camp. His mother had a history. When three Nepalese princesses had to flee for their lives during a serious family quarrel, they escaped on this elephant’s back, riding through the jungles until they reached the Bettiah Raj in British territory. When in due course the quarrel was settled, the ladies returned to Nepal, leaving the elephant behind. About sixteen months later the calf was born.
Ours were all trained gun elephants. The biggest tusker, Temi Bahadur, was too much of a big game enthusiast. When he saw a tiger, he wanted to lower his shoulders and charge it, thus pitching his rider at all angles on his back. Once I saw Temi kill a leopard that had been hiding in the long grasses. He dashed at it and so trampled it that when we got him away the leopard was unrecognizable save for the markings on the fur. Neither Temi, nor any other elephant, could face a porcupine. The sight of one made them squeal and trumpet. If one of these small animals appeared, the shooting line incontinently broke. A porcupine’s rapier quills could hurt, and those elephants knew it. Their trunks are delicate and sensitive, and are guarded with care. Once when we were riding home a porcupine scuttled out towards the line of elephants and they screamed and danced about like a pack of mountainous schoolgirls. The little thing was bothered with all the noise and looked for somewhere to hide. Suddenly it disappeared into a hole in the ground a few feet in front of my mount. This was too much for my elephant, who nearly had hysterics.
Temi Bahadur, the Great One, was our problem child. We never reported several of his misdemeanours for fear of losing him. Tuskers, even the best of them, are always uncertain. When they go masth needing a mate, they are difficult to control and must be chained. Sometimes they are masth without warning, but usually the sign is there: between the eye and the ear a hole so tiny that, on such a big animal, it looks the size of a pinhead, begins to ooze. Then the elephant must be watched.
On one big game shoot, without warning, Temi gave me an adventure that might have cost me my life. We were a party of five, including Jim Scott, our district commissioner, and a man and his wife from Calcutta who had never been upcountry before. After all our unrehearsed excitement they must have had dinner-table conversation for months!
Our camp was small but we had twenty-six elephants, our own and ten borrowed from local landowners. The first incident occurred on Christmas Eve. We had unloaded the lunch baskets in a small forest glade. I spread open the cloth and we set out the food. That day the pièce de résistance was a large ham and peacock pie. I set it in the middle, because if there were anything unusually ‘filling,’ the men of the party preferred to know about it beforehand, and thus save enough room for a big helping. We had just sat down on the ground when there was a chatter of voices from unseen mahouts. The next moment one of the elephants appeared in the glade, making straight for the lunch table.
Jim Scott ran on to the lunch cloth and stood, arms flung wide, straddling the pie to safeguard it. A mahout arrived almost immediately to lead the elephant away.
The next incident was on Christmas Day. Temi Bahadur may have thought one of the small elephants was walking too close to him in the beating line, or perhaps he was suspicious of her because she was one of those on loan. Suddenly he rounded on her, giving her a sound pummelling with his head. The little elephant’s mahout was thrown off, and his wrist was sprained, but no serious damage was done. The little elephant was sent back to camp at once, and coddled with toddy (palm-juice spirits), and oil wherever she was sore.
It is not unusual for an older elephant to bump a young one, if he imagines his dignity ruffled in any way. To keep a firmer control of Temi Bahadur, Peter ordered a heavy spiked anklet to be linked round the elephant’s off foreleg when he was being roped up for the next day’s work. A stout rope ran from the spiked anklet to the pad on his back. When an elephant gets out of control, the mahout by means of an anklet of this sort can get one of the animal’s feet off the ground. As I have said, no elephant can walk on three legs.
Early the next day we went out after mixed game. As we returned in the evening, Jim was lucky enough to bag a fine leopard, and the trophy was loaded on to one of the elephants. By this time it was nearly dusk, so we spread out in one line and beat slowly in the direction of the camp, hoping to find peacock and partridge in the long grass.
I was alone on one of the borrowed elephants. On my immediate right was Temi Bahadur with Peter on his back. As we neared a belt of trees, Temi suddenly swerved sideways towards my mount. Peter shouted. The next moment Temi charged my elephant. As he rammed at her right shoulder, I was shot off her back, hurtling through space and striking the ground head first. I was too dazed to do anything for a few seconds. I remember an enormous rough weight, Temi’s foot, trying to stand on me, and then pushing me aside. I thought, ‘This is the end. He’s coming on top of me.’ Yet automatically my body still braced itself for the weight . . . Nothing happened. . . .
I opened my eyes and shut them again quickly. I was on my back, and above me was nothing but elephants—fighting, squealing ones at that. I had fallen in the direction from which the shock had come, between Temi and my own elephant, bringing me under their forefeet as they skirmished. The mahout had been sitting on the neck and fell forward, quite clear.
Temi’s tusks were now just over my head, driving at the other animal. I did a caterpillar wriggle out of reach. It was heavy going and we were in a patch of tall grasses that made even walking difficult. It was extraordinary that neither elephant flattened me out while I was doing this.
The squealing and trumpeting set up by the interlocked couple was terrific. Temi had brought the little one to her knees and rolled her over on her back. In that position she was helpless. Straddling her he rammed her again and again with his massive head, trying to get his tusks into her. From my position on the ground a short distance away, I thought his tusks went through the body. Later it was discovered that they disappeared in the fleshy part, under the armpits, on either side. This and the fact that Temi’s tusks were sawed undoubtedly saved the small elephant. At the time I thought the smaller one was killed. It was a sickening sight.
All this time Temi Bahadur’s mahout had stuck on somehow, and behind him Peter was clinging to the pad ropes. Both were struggling to regain control of the big fellow. During the fight his mahout was spearing Temi’s head hard and deep with his ankus (iron spike), till it finally broke off short. Peter split the stock of his rifle on the animal’s head. He then drew the mahout’s hunting knife from a pocket in the pad, and slashed and cut repeatedly at Temi’s head and shoulders. Temi apparently felt nothing. They pulled at the rope attached to the spiked anklet to get the animal’s foot off the ground. The rope broke. Temi knelt on the slack of it, while he indulged in his ramming.
After what appeared an eternity Mowla Bukkus, our next biggest tusker, was rounded up to stop the fight. As soon as Temi saw Mowla arrive, he left the little elephant and went after Mowla. The latter turned tail and fled, with Temi after him. The last I saw of them was the two elephants disappearing into the gloom of the forest, each mountainous grey rump bristling its short twig of a tail on end.
It was almost dark. The excitement of the second skirmish had distracted our attention from the little elephant. Now she staggered groggily to her feet and was away in the opposite direction, making for some trees. Some more of the elephants now returned, and I scrambled on to one by its tail, so I could have a grandstand view. The scene of the fight looked now as if a couple of motor buses had gone mad over the tall grass. The ground was flattened. In the middle was the remains of what once had been my shooting chair, now matchwood. Every rope had parted from the little elephant’s harness. Ropes, splintered chair, and pad lay in flattened confusion. My gun was picked up about fifteen yards away, still fully loaded, but the block that runs between stock and barrel was five yards farther on. My pitch helmet was also recovered. Having done its work in breaking my fall, it had dropped off and now, as Jim Scott remarked, looked like the newest thing in berets.
Peter soon came back on another elephant. They had finally pulled up Temi Bahadur by hooking the remainder of the mahout’s curved spike into the elephant’s ear and pulling hard. He then knelt down to order as if nothing had happened, and they got off. The little elephant was found next morning with no bones broken, but very bruised.
We were three elephants short for the remainder of the week. The big fellow was unsafe to take out again, and the two he had knocked about were unfit for work. They, too, were given barrels of grog and well rubbed with oil. By the time camp broke up they had recovered, but all the party agreed that the biggest ‘bag’ of the week was Temi Bahadur’s with two elephants.
Temi was later absolved from blame. Inquiries showed that in spite of all our care, a lazy mahout had given Temi nothing but bamboo leaves for three days for his green fodder. They are very heating for male elephants, so that Temi was scarcely responsible for his actions.
Our own livestock increased and small wild things from the forests from time to time were added to our collection, which came to resemble a zoo. Each new scrap of feather or fur developed a personality of its own out of all proportion to its size.
Even poultry keeping did not follow a normal course. At the start I made individual brood boxes, with doors of wire netting, which were put in the garage against the wall.
I set eight duck eggs under a broody hen. She became tired of sitting and left them. I held the eggs to my ear. The chicks were not calling inside, although it was near hatching time. I closed the box and gave orders for the eggs to be thrown away. Whether the servant forgot, or whether he left them hoping the hen might return, I never knew. She did not come back. In any case the door was latched.
Six days later Pietro came to say six ducklings had all hatched out by themselves. There they were bustling around behind the wire netting. I opened the door. One egg was dried up. Probably it had never been fertile. The eighth hatched two days after the others. I had to help the duckling out of his shell. We named him Benjamin. At first his eyes were closed. I bathed them with boric lotion, and as soon as they opened, he became too wide-awake. He paddled around, inspecting everything.
The ducks hatched during the hot weather in June, when the temperature did not drop much even at night. They had hatched without ever having been turned over, which is considered essential. They were healthy and quite able to take care of themselves. A freshly hatched hen chick needs its mother, or the warmth of an incubator at night. All I did was to put the yellow puffballs in a wool-lined box and they loved it. They were kept in a wire run and from the first day were fed with suttoo (flour ground from maize) mixed into a paste and held out to them on the tip of a feather. They were so greedy that in their excitement they would mistake each other’s fluffy behinds for the feather, and would grab hold. After two days I showed them a small pool with sloping edges that had been constructed for the ducks. They stood on the edge, experimented with their beaks, and plunged in. One suddenly dipped, wet himself all over, then shot under the water and came up at the other end. He played at being a torpedo for so long that I was afraid he would tire. I collected the lot of them in my hands and put them in a sunny spot to dry.
There was trouble with Benjamin. He was so much smaller than the others he never had a chance at mealtimes. At night I put his little sleeping box on top of my wardrobe, out of reach of the two cats. In spite of that he waddled out and one early morning I found him on the floor looking for something to eat, still in high spirits.
This was not Benji’s only adventure. The Brouckes had given us two greyhound pups. One day I saw Bella, the white hound, racing around the garden with Benji in her mouth. Bella got a beating, and Benji was put in the chicks’ wire run to recover. She must have held him as lightly as an egg because there was not a mark on him.
Because I had brought him up, he thought I was his mother and never left me. Bill the mongrel, always my shadow, came to accept the duckling, after a period of indecision. After his first inquiring sniff, which lifted Benji clean off his feet and blew him several inches away, Bill ignored the scrap of yellow fluff. The dog’s affection was such that he even followed me to the bath, waiting until I had finished. Now Benji came, too. The first time he did it I gave him a swim, but the water was too warm and he scuttled out. Visitors christened my two followers Eggs and Bacon. The only time Bill and Benji had any rest was when I sat down. Following me all day was too much exercise for any duck, and at times he had to be dealt with firmly, put in his box and the lid shut.
Benji liked gardening. When the rains started he found if he stood around where a hole was being dug, there were grubs for the taking. He could not bear to wait, and would try to stand on the tool that was being used. He cut his neck either on one of the tools or on the barbed wire surrounding the compound. As fast as he swallowed, the food came out through the slit in the front of his neck. I did some first aid with a sterilized needle and thread, and the cut healed.
Benji came to a tragic end. He fell asleep in the sun near a hedge. It was the monsoon and monster bullfrogs were everywhere. The sweeper came running to say that Benji had been swallowed. Unbelieving, I looked under the hedge. The sweeper pointed. Squatting there was a bloated bullfrog.
‘There it is. The bheng (frog) that ate the duck.’
Still doubting, I flung a broken brick at the creature. It hit him squarely, and in his fright he leaped out, disgorging Benji as he fled. My duckling was dead.
One day a man from a village near the forests brought some peacock chicks, which he had hatched under two hens. From both clutches he had raised sixteen, but kites had carried off all but six. He brought these six to us to sell. We did not go into the niceties of poaching. I bought the chicks. Within twenty-four hours they were tame. When four weeks old they were able to fly as smoothly as if they were adult. They would hop on to our shoulders and settle there contentedly. Surghu, one of the little garden coolies, took a great liking to them and, when he was wanted, could be found digging up the white ants to which they were partial.
Four of the peacocks died of chickenpox. One of the two remaining we sent to the Indian vet at Bettiah who had been promised a male bird. One day Surghu, who always seemed now to be walking about clutching chunks of white ants’ nests, announced that the name of the surviving peacock was Chuni Lal. The bird probably reminded him of someone.
Chuni Lal thrived on the good food, but like all peacocks was a trifle insolent. We often gave him grains of rice on the veranda. Chuni Lal took to walking into the dining-room for more. If he had only walked, it would not have mattered; but sometimes he flew through the window with his five-foot tail streaming out behind.
A peacock is a graceful finish to a garden, but they are destructive birds. Chuni Lal was never hungry. He would feed from his private cache in an old cigarette tin on the veranda and then nibble the fern tips from the pots on the steps, or go out and dig up flower seeds. The garden paid too for the sake of one lovely peacock. It is curious what beauty and speed can get away with in this world.
A talking myna who had belonged to a French missionary, now dead, had no home and someone thought of us. We took him, for one creature more or less in our compound made little difference.
The myna of the plains is a silent bird. The hill species, larger and with a bright red beak, is noted for its ability to talk almost as well as a parrot. Our myna spoke Latin, French, Hindustani and English. He spoke English with a guttural Flemish accent, but I was told by experts his Latin was good. His powers of mimicry were astonishing. In his previous home his cage must have stood near where his master took a nap, for the bird would suddenly make a series of noises like an old gentleman stretching, yawning, and clearing his throat. We knew the old priest was dead and it was uncanny to hear his voice saying in Hindi, ‘What is the time? Have I been asleep? Is dinner ready?’
One day the myna learned how to open his cage and he flew away. He was located in a tall cotton tree. A mali offered to fetch him. The bird watched him climbing and began to scold in Hindi. The higher the man climbed, the louder scolded the myna. The bird won, for the mali could not reach it. I had no wish to cage any bird, but this was of the mountain species, and I doubted if he would survive in the plains. We never recovered him. The following season, when birds began to nest, I listened to each squabbling group of mynas hoping to hear some English curses. But we did not see him again.
We owned a mixed assortment of dogs. In addition to various terriers, there was Batcha, a tiny Nepalese somewhat similar to a Pekinese, but her nose was not squashed. She was tiny but with the heart of a lion. She was pure white, but no albino: her eyes and nose were shiny black boot buttons. She was a terrific little scold and excitable as a firecracker. There is a saying in Urdu, ‘Chota mircha burra jhan (the smaller the chili the hotter it is),’ and Batcha certainly lived up to it.
The greyhounds we originally acquired for hunting. Before Rene went to school in England, she was with us at Bagaha for two cold weathers. Mrs. Broucke had lent her a lovely little pony called Juliet, and she joined me on my early morning rides. I hoped for a ‘bobbery’ pack, such as the old-timers used successfully, but our pack never obeyed anyone. When we killed, it was more from good luck than good management.
When we assembled on the front lawn, Batcha rushed round horses and dogs, barking furiously, but invariably left us at the end of the drive. Dogs and horses started together, but we seldom came back that way. The greyhounds hunted on sight; the terriers on scent and sight. When, belly to earth, the hounds streaked after a jackal, it invariably jinked under their noses. The jackal doubled back on top of the following terriers and sometimes met its end. We got a lot of exercise.
After a time the terriers, with tongues dangling like wet blotting paper, would be ready for home. Not so Juliet or the greyhounds. Rene would fly past me calling, ‘Mummy, I can’t hold her. The bit’s loose.’ The greyhounds took orders from no one. By the time they decided to come back they might have covered twenty miles, as villagers would later testify.
Jungle babies that were brought to me liked the shrubberies I had planted, and these became their playgrounds. Among them our tiger and leopard cubs played endless games of hide and seek, slithering in on their stomachs and pouncing out. If the cubs were found straying in the forests, they were brought to me and I raised them on the bottle like any other babies. Apart from biting through two or three rubber teats a day, they were no trouble.
These cubs were ungainly. A domestic kitten is graceful and light-footed. Tiger cubs in particular are all feet and sagging body, like an india-rubber toy without a backbone. Their paws look enormous, and out of all proportion, until one remembers that in time those paws will help to strike down a full grown deer or a buffalo. Tiger cubs were not really safe to keep after six months, though I knew of one that was kept for two years.
Not all the young things could we identify at first. One brindled grey cub looked as if it ought to be a leopard, but the snout was too narrow. It never played in the daytime and livened up only towards sunset. The Calcutta zoo took it eventually and told me it was a leopard fish-cat.
Baby deer were lovely creatures, but because we had no regular enclosure for them, they were difficult animals to have in the garden. I could not clap a portable chicken run over a deer, as I did over a cub. Young fawns were not often found straying in the forest. Probably the animal that killed the mother found the baby an easy prey.
The villagers were inclined to take advantage of my weakness for adopting animals and birds in need of shelter. Also, a gift from them meant a present from me. Their ideas of what the Mem-sahib liked sometimes went beyond all reason. I had to draw the line at crocodiles.
I grew accustomed to having wild creatures brought in, and was inclined to forget that to the rare visitor my collection of jungle folk must sometimes have been a little startling. One day we heard that Bishop Sullivan of Patna was touring his diocese. Our house was a convenient halting place and we were able to arrange transport for visitors who wanted it on the following day. If they left by the western exit, they must cross one of the rivers which was about four hundred yards wide. When the water was deep, we used our Chris-Craft speedboat. In the hot weather when the river was low, we sent our guests over on an elephant or a shallow raft ferry.
The bishop arrived on the carrier of a motorcycle driven by one of the missionaries, who had recently been given it as a present. Prior to that, they had covered hundreds of miles as best they could.
I showed our guest to his room to wash after the journey, and returned to the veranda to prepare some cool drinks. The next moment the bishop shot out of that room as from a catapult. I had left a fifteen-foot python asleep in the spare bathroom and had forgotten about it.
Some villagers had found the snake coiled up and fast asleep under a tree in the jungle. They tied it with stout rope to a long bamboo and brought it to me. Pythons grow fairly large in those parts. In the winter they are sluggish. They only eat about once in five days, and this one was probably sleeping off the last meal.
I had not been so pleased as the coolies had expected, but could scarcely turn it loose in the garden, so had tipped it into a spare bathroom and shut the door till I had decided what to do with it.
The bishop was never quite convinced I had not done it on purpose.
The monsoon arrives almost by calendar. It breaks in Ceylon, sweeps up the Bay of Bengal and breaks over Bihar about the nineteenth of June. For days beforehand, layer upon mountainous layer of cloud piles overhead. The days grow steadily hotter. No woman—except a raving beauty—could look well in that heat. You long to take off your skin and sit in your bones. You are a slab of melted butter.
The chota bursat (little rains) may arrive ahead of the real monsoon. This chota bursat is a devilish game the weather sometimes plays. You think the monsoon has arrived, because rain has fallen for a few hours. Your burning skin is relieved. Your prickly heat is eased, but only for a short time. All over again the days grow hotter, and back you go to where you started, steadily dripping. Once again the clouds pile up in thunderous beauty. You breathe air that is a dank and heavy substance, almost tangible. Around you everything is still. Every living thing seems waiting. Each night after each burning day seems waiting, too, in deathly quiet.
Suddenly, with a crash, the sky disintegrates in a vast avalanche of water. It rains for about three and a half months with intervals of hours, or of a few days, until the cold weather. There is no gentle season of the falling leaf. There is no spring. There are the cold weather, the hot weather, and the rains. On the Northwest Frontier there is not even a monsoon. When the rains fall everywhere else, on the Frontier it grows hotter and hotter. During the monsoon, whenever I felt more than usually like a dishcloth in a steam laundry, I gave a thought to the Northwest Frontier and decided I preferred to be steamed rather than roasted.
Heavy rain pinned me to work indoors, from which other excitements always distracted me. During the second monsoon season at Bagaha I started whirlwind operations inside the house, for something had to be done to make it more like a home. I had already dealt with the exterior at the beginning of our first cold weather. The outside of the house had been scraped, and then whitewashed all over. It still looked like a wedding cake, but a nice one, freshly iced. The fly-blown, mouldy look had disappeared.
We had found a good carpenter. His name was Etwari (Sunday) because he was born on that day. Etwari loved his work, and whatever he made was a thing of symmetry and grace. He could neither read nor write but quickly understood from my sketches what was required.
The house was two-storied. The main staircase was the most utilitarian structure ever conceived outside of a jail or reformatory. It was just slabs of things stuck on top of each other. Etwari, with an assistant carpenter, started work on this. I left the ugly banisters in place, but enclosed them in panelling of dark sal wood from our forests. The hall was panelled at the same time. Against the staircase wall this panelling continued right to the bedroom doors upstairs.
The lounge was being panelled too. One of its six doors was taken out, the aperture widened, and a long casement window built with a seat under it. The house wall at ground level was about two feet thick. In this I cut out recessed bookshelves on either side of the casement window and panelled them with wood.
Varnish on woodwork is ugly when the grain is good. Furniture in India suffers from layers of varnish applied year after year, under the impression that this is the ‘correct thing.’ Etwari had instructions only to polish the panelling. After that Pietro and Gabriel got to work on it with beeswax collected from the wild bees in the jungles. It was melted with turpentine. I wanted to feed the wood as well as polish it. To beeswax the panelling took so long that finally all the garden coolies were brought in with polishing rags. The lawns were not cut for weeks.
When the panelling was in place, the doors looked wrong, because they were coated with years of cheap varnish. This had to be removed. It meant taking them off their hinges. Then the green shutters that kept the house cool could not be set in position over the new casement windows. Peter dropped in at intervals to make sure the entire house was not being pulled down. He would say ‘Why the rush? You always want everything done the minute you think of it. It makes me hot to look at you.’ The poor man could not relax among such feverish activity; but where I could stand still and watch, or work, once an idea was taking material form, Peter was restless when he got ideas, prowling backwards and forwards, up and down the room while he made plans.
One day while he was looking at the work in progress, a message arrived that during the night twenty-one people had been bitten by mad jackals in Patkoli village, just down the road.
About five months earlier, some of the Brouckes’ dogs had been bitten by a mad jackal they had chased. Three weeks later the dogs went mad and had to be destroyed. We had feared then what might follow because the jackal had got away.
Peter sent sixteen of the victims to Bettiah on the next train. They took with them a note to the Sub Divisional Officer requesting passes which entitled them to free travel on the train and free treatment at Patna.
The other five refused to go. All had been bitten while asleep on their beds outside their houses. Some bore marks on the arms, some on the legs. Two had been bitten on the head. The villagers are heavy sleepers and some of them did not know they had been bitten until neighbours asked them about the blood on their bodies.
A few days later Peter could combine some work at Muzaffarpur with a Planters’ Meet to be held at the same time. I was delighted at the prospect of seeing people again. Muzaffarpur was the headquarters station of our district and was about a hundred and twenty miles away.
All along the route there were friendly houses. We stopped for a meal at the Finzels’ place. He was one of the oldest residents, and having lived many years in the same house, in the course of time had made himself comfortable. Jean, his wife, had gone to all lengths in decorating her bathrooms. Enamel and tin were painted in pastel shades to match the towels. Beside each lavatory pan were buckets of sand with small spades in them. The effect was quite like a beach. Children took one look and immediately started to build sand castles, forgetting why they had come.
Hugh Finzel was gruff and terse, but whether his guest was a senior judge of the High Court or a young man drawing his first salary, he was offered the best Madeira and the finest whisky by a man who was noted for the good cellar he kept.
Our next stop was at Bettiah, our estate headquarters, where Peter had work to discuss with the general manager. Bubonic plague had broken out in the bazaars. The flea that carries the plague lives in the fur of rats. When a dead rat falls from the rafters of the roof, you know bubonic plague has come to town. This particular outbreak was under control but because the G.M.’s duties meant daily contact with the population, he had been inoculated. The serum can affect people severely. After the inoculation he had fainted. The G.M. was annoyed with himself that day.
Peter completed his business and afterwards on the G.M.’s veranda we told him the story of the people bitten by mad jackals and of those who were rounded up later but refused to go for treatment. He told us that in the days when he was a young district magistrate, Kasauli in the mountains was the only place that gave anti-rabies treatment. People who were bitten received a free blanket together with their railway pass. An old woman came to our friend with a letter from the doctor verifying that she had been bitten. He gave her the pass, issued her with the blanket, and explained that the essence of anti-rabies treatment was speed. She must not delay, but go at once. Four days later the old lady presented herself again.
‘Someone stole my blanket on the way,’ she said. ‘I have come back for another one.’
A Planters’ Meet was held whenever any excuse could be found for everyone to collect for about three days. In August, during the monsoon, there was a Sailing Meet. People built their own boats and raced on the lake for a silver cup that was presented each year. At the winter meets we indulged in almost every form of violent exercise.
Those of us with children took them along. An ayah went too, or a bearer, because we could not keep a watchful eye on the new generation and be a mile away at the club playing in tournaments. With the extra horses and cars, the children and their bearers, and sometimes the children’s ponies, there was a lively collection that cheered you to look at it, just for the pleasant change of seeing so many in one place. Friends with insufficient accommodation put up tents in their gardens.
Arrived at Muzuffarpur, we first took a look at the club, hailed everyone there like a pair of castaways returning to the mainland, and had a drink.
Polo, tennis, and golf tournaments were to be played and everyone entered for everything except polo, which was reserved for the men. Whatever we did, the club was always the gathering point. In the evening we danced, just in case we had not taken enough exercise during the day.
The meets were very popular, because they provided a chance to relax among friends we might not meet again for months. The relief of getting away from loneliness was inclined to go to our heads, and because the Planters’ Meets of North Bihar were known in the province as amusing affairs, invitations to stay as a house guest were much in demand.
During this particular meet a Treasure Hunt was organized. It started at 9 p.m. and went on all night. The teams were in pairs of a man and a girl. The first to return with the treasure complete must report to the judges at the clubhouse. Two of the items were difficult to find. One was a buck goat, the other was a hair from a redhead. In the middle of the night the bazaar was inundated by hilarious couples looking for buck goats. The bazaar folk enthusiastically entered into the spirit of the thing (they have a keen sense of humour), and rushed about trying to help. There was only one redheaded girl in Muzaffarpur that year. For days afterwards she went around with a hunted look.
Finals of the tournaments were played on the last day. The lands of the Maharajah of Darbhanga were close to those of the Bettiah Raj and he always brought a polo team. His brother the Maharaj Kumar Saheb was a fine player and usually entered for the tennis tournament as well.
The Kumar Saheb played tennis in white shirt and trousers, but exchanged his snowy pugree for a felt hat, though he always retained in his ears two blazing solitaire diamonds the size of peas. It was only when he took off the hat that one noticed the orthodox Hindu haircut. The head was close shaven save for the ‘heavenly’ lock of hair on top, knotted to keep it tidy. Without this a Hindu cannot be drawn up to heaven when he dies.
The ladies of the Maharajah’s household always attended the polo finals, but no one saw them. Several big limousines from the Darbhanga stables would pull up beside the polo ground. In these the Maharanis and their ladies sat, watching the game from behind darkened glass windows and with curtains drawn.
On our return we stopped at Bagaha railway station to collect two cases of stores from Calcutta, and there we picked up the queerest little ‘lame dog,’ a stonemason turned parson. He was benighted and a stranger in those parts. We took him home and persuaded him to stay the night. He was a sad little soul, rather pathetic, like a small lost beetle. He had been five years on the border of Nepal and found great difficulty expressing himself in his mother tongue after so long. He left us the following morning. He wanted to reach a Scottish mission some ten miles away and we sent him off on one of our elephants.
While we were away a wild pig had raided the garden and the maize patch was ruined. The trouble started when we began to grow groundnuts. No wonder the other name for them is pignuts. We never ate our own crop. The pigs always got there first. After that they found the maize patch.
Our first evening at home I had a narrow escape. We thought by now we had the place cleaned up. I had left the veranda for about half an hour and on my return I sat down again in the chair I had vacated. The chair was the long sloping cane variety people were partial to in the hot weather, for it is possible to stretch almost full length in it. My book was still beside it and I wanted to continue reading.
I picked up the book and leaned back with my head resting on the cane work. My hair near the right ear started to move. Expecting the usual insect or beetle I did not bother to sit up, but just turned my head to look. A krait snake was about two inches from my right ear. It was no use calling for help because if I started to shout, it would probably be the last time I ever did. Never before had I got out of a chair so quickly. I killed the snake with a cane from the hat rack.
After that, when a mongoose suddenly appeared on the front veranda, I promptly gave it a saucer of milk. A mongoose kills a snake on sight. It is the size of a weasel, but if a cobra hurls itself to strike, the mongoose leaps and bites it through the neck.
The greyhounds were startled when they saw the new arrival. They rushed forward to sniff and the mongoose reared back on its hind legs, its beady eyes glaring a warning. Till the day it left us, the little creature kept those greyhounds cowed.
The mongoose took up residence among the pots of ferns on the veranda steps. While the mongoose stayed we did not see another snake in the house; but saucers of milk could not hold him for long, and I did not feel like giving him new-laid eggs which I knew he would like. He left as unexpectedly as he came, probably to find more snakes.
Since the rabies scare, the servants slept behind closed doors, although it was still uncomfortably hot. The dogs slept upstairs with us on our bedroom veranda. Soon after the mongoose left, another stranger appeared and this time there was tragedy. A mad dog ran into the garden. The symptoms of rabies are unmistakable and Pietro called me. Before I got there with a gun, one of our terriers had rushed out and been bitten. I shot the rabid dog and then inspected the terrier. It had been bitten in the spine.
When Peter came in I showed him the marks. There was no hope of saving the dog. We looked at each other. One of us had to do it. Before I had time to speak, Peter said, ‘I can’t shoot my own dog.’
Neither could I, but one of us had to do it.
Peter walked away in a hurry. With the gun in my hand, I spoke to the dog. He was a little terrier like a toy collie. His ancestors were obscure, but I loved him. He was black and white with soft long fur. He looked at me and wagged his tail because I was his friend. I wished he had not wagged his tail. I would not then have felt such a cad.
The next few days were busy with preparations, because Peter was to cross the river into the United Provinces on work. During the past two seasons, following the working plan laid down for our forests, Peter had covered many acres with young tree plantations. The Chief Conservator of Forests wanted him to see the type of reforestation carried out in the adjoining province, and to compare it with the work already started in our own area. Peter was to be on tour for several weeks, and I wanted to check his clothes and stores before he started the trip.
The day before he left I was going through a final list, and checking items already packed. The veranda was cool behind the sun blinds of split bamboo. Outside in the garden someone was shaking a wooden rattle to attract our attention. Peter looked up from packing his gun.
‘I can’t stand another conjurer who hides his wife in a basket, passes a sword through the middle of it and produces her unscathed.’
‘And I don’t want another snake charmer,’ said I, ‘with his cobras wriggling over the floor.’
Once again the travelling entertainer shook his wooden rattle.
I raised one of the sunblinds. A snake charmer was standing outside. He saw me and salaamed. At any other time I would have tried his skill on the cobra that lived in a hole in the cactus hedge, and persistently eluded my vigilance. But to-day there were other things to do.
I waved the man away. He shouldered once more the two baskets he had hopefully unloaded on the lawn. With the snakes still in them, and with his reed in his hand, he wended his disappointed way back down the drive.
He had scarcely disappeared when there was another interruption. A discreet cough sounded outside the screen. This time it was a messenger from one of the forest rangers. Peter opened the note he held out. The ranger had written to say a leopard had killed two bullocks belonging to the carters who extracted our timbers from the forests. Peter had no time to take action before he left. An assignment with a leopard big enough to strike down fully grown bullocks would take several days. Peter must have seen a gleam in my eye. When he said good-bye the next morning, he took care to give me so many instructions about our elephants and the other animals that I would have to stay in the house all the time he was away.
He had scarcely gone when another message came. The leopard had killed again, and this time a buffalo. This one sounded interesting, because leopards do not usually attack anything so large.
The temperature was still high and the forests were very boggy. Winter had not yet arrived. The river in the north had risen thirty feet in the monsoon and was only now subsiding. I wanted to go, and since Peter was away, no one could stop me.
I sent a message to the forest ranger to say I was coming, and another to the head mahout, Mohammed, to have Temi Bahadur ready. I preferred him for solitary work because nothing bothered him.
First there was the question of transport. My destination was Bhankatwa, about fifteen miles into the forests. The trip would take several days. The bullock carts could not take the tent and equipment, as the cart road was still heavily flooded for long stretches. I was without the car and I must start out on horseback.
The first nine miles of cartage was by bullock cart and then everything was to be transferred to two of our elephants already there. Elephants, big as they are, cannot carry as much heavy baggage as one might expect. The loads had to be made as light as possible. The first thing to be eliminated was a bed, and I would chance what bedfellow I found on the ground. A tin bathtub was ruled out and I had to be prepared to bathe like the sparrows, in bits. You can go without a lot, but after working in the tropic sun you require more than a face washing. Cooking pots and pans were drastically cut down.
Everything got away the day before I started, at dawn, riding Pussyfoot. An early start was best to avoid the heat and to allow time for a rest in the afternoon, preparatory to sitting up all night for the leopard.
Five miles out some peacock strutted in the fields beside the path making a dawn foray on the crops. I was in a hurry and did not shoot. Wherever there was a patch of open land, village cattle grazed. Beside each one stalked its attendant egret, solemnly intent on the business of the day. They moved with the cattle, and stopped when they halted. As the cows grazed they disturbed the grasshoppers, and snap went the egret’s beak as he lunged out for his breakfast.
After the first nine miles, Pussyfoot was handed over to the syce who had gone on ahead. He was to keep her and feed her until my indefinite return. I transferred to Temi Bahadur, and after half an hour, heartily wished I had not. How anyone can enjoy riding an elephant for long periods is beyond me. For variety I changed places with the mahout and sat on the elephant’s neck to drive him. I used my toes under his ears to guide him left or right. Temi was feeling lazy that day and frequently I had to increase his pace by pressing on his head with the ankus, the short curved rod.
Temi and I both became very warm, for the sun was now high. Soon he was plunging his trunk down his throat and sucking up water from his reserve tank. Then he flung his trunk from side to side and sprayed his shoulders. There is a lot to be said for carrying your own water supply and using your nose for a shower bath. Usually I objected to having to share the bath, but by then the jungles were so hot I could not have cared less.
It was a relief to reach Bhankatwa. All was ready, the tent pitched and my mattress inside it, on the ground. An enamel jug and basin completed the furniture.
I was back in my beloved jungles with the wild birds flying overhead. Scarcely ten minutes went by before a pair of peacocks walked out and looked me over. Though they would have been useful for the pot, I decided it was unwise to fire a gun so near the camp. One of the machans was in a tree within two hundred yards and the leopard might be near. It would have been stupid to frighten him away.
I inspected what remained of the previous kills, the bones of which the jackals and vultures had picked clean. Although I had thought these kills might have been made by one of our tigers, the indications ruled that out. A tiger generally kills by leaping on the back of the neck, and these attacks had been made from the side, near the jaw.
After lunch I tried to rest, but the tent was alive with mosquitoes and also a particularly poisonous little fly that stung like a wasp. I lay on one, so I know. The sting was imbedded in my left shoulder blade for days.
Before dusk I took up position in the machan. A pig was then tied near as bait. This order of procedure was important. If the pig is tied before you climb into the machan, it sees you, and is likely to give away your position by staring at you. I hated to use a pig as bait, but several bullocks had been killed and more would be if the leopard was not quickly destroyed.
I blew my nose with a trumpet blast before climbing the tree, and took care to do it out of earshot. I must not make another sound before dawn, for if I were even to breathe heavily, the animal would hear me.
From the start I had to adjust my position carefully. A platform of bamboos, or branches, may feel pleasant at first, but after half an hour it can be torture. The machan had black hammerhead ants in it. But as I started, so must I remain.
Nothing came that night, though I sat as still as death.
It is wonderful what a few hours’ sleep and a bath will do. The bath was fine. An old kerosene tin filled with water, and a mug to pour it over me was all I needed. Sometimes the two most important things in camp were old kerosene tins and banana leaves to wrap around the food and keep it cool. (The uses of banana leaves would require a volume to themselves.)
About ten o’clock, after the bath, I pulled on a clean shirt and called for Temi Bahadur so that I could go in search of meat for the camp. Already we had acquired some unofficial assistants.
Back at headquarters, the mahouts persisted in keeping people they called their ‘meths,’ alleging that they needed this additional help. We paid wages to none but the mahouts, but the meths remained. The going had been so boggy in camp that this time only two meths had tagged after the mahouts, but several carters, whose bullocks had been killed, took a natural interest in the proceedings, and settled down, prepared to wait for the finish. It was easy enough for me to give them the pleasure of a little meat.
On Temi’s back, broad as a couple of padded couches, I arrived in a belt of trees. Almost at once a spotted deer crossed, flitting in and out among the shadows. Several more moved away. I was using a shotgun loaded with ball and had to get fairly close. I could have used the rifle here, but I remembered a friend who, using a rifle, had fired at close quarters in the maze of jungle. The bullet ricocheted off a tree and injured one of the elephants. It might as easily have hit a man. I preferred to use a rifle only in fairly open country.
Trying to walk up those deer was difficult work, but interesting. They never seemed to get any closer in the undergrowth, and it was taking so long, I finally whispered to Mohammed that I would get down and he, making a detour, could start them moving in my direction. Temi knelt down and I slithered off his tail end. Even kneeling he was about the height of a single-decker bus. I was surprised to see the mahout, after only a few paces, quietly turn the elephant around and come back. Mohammed was a reliable man and I knew he must have a good reason. When he reached me he whispered that there was a leopard in the grass. The undergrowth, though fairly low, was still over my head. I could do no good on the ground, so decided to climb up again.
So much of our forest touring was done on elephants that we never used a ladder to mount, for it wasted time. We either hauled ourselves up by the tail if he were kneeling, or if he were standing, we ran up the trunk which he extended to the word of command. One of the many things I liked about Temi Bahadur was the gracious way he would help you when you were half-way, by lifting his trunk still higher and practically tipping you on to his back.
We looked for the leopard, but it was a hopeless search. He might have gone in any direction. We never found him again. He and I must have been tracking the deer together.
A little later a couple of wild pig rustled out, and went galloping away to the left. I got the boar. That was meat for the lower orders in camp, but the mahouts were Mohammedans and would not eat pig.
We stole forward quietly. Curb an elephant’s overpowering propensity for tearing down and eating leaves and he is amazingly silent in his movements. The tread of a trained gun elephant scarcely rustles a fallen leaf.
Soon a spotted deer appeared. This time the shot was in the heart. The deer was loaded on Temi. We sent for someone to carry in the pig. I could have continued shooting for the remainder of the day, but our immediate needs were satisfied. The meat was a luxury to the men who would eat it.
That evening I sat in a machan farther away. This time I smeared neck and wrists with kerosene to keep at bay the mosquitoes and insects. Citronella I never found to be any use. Our insects drank it and then ate me.
There was a dim half-moon. Various false alarms set me tense and alert. A blunt grey snout suddenly appeared at the foot of the ladder up to the machan. Was it the leopard come to join me? No, it was a honey badger with perfect moonlight camouflage. His back is silver-grey and unless he moves he cannot be seen. He trundled off. Soon a couple of deer stepped daintily across the path. It was curious how friend and foe lived and bred in the same forests, the deer trusting to their powers of hearing even more than to their sense of smell. Something startled the deer. A head was flung up to listen. The large eyes glowed like lamps in the light of the moon. In a flash the deer were gone, white undertails showing in the danger signal.
I lost count of time. The waning moon had disappeared. Suddenly at the farthest end of the path, in the shadows, a leopard was sitting. My heart leaped. One moment the path was empty, the next he was there, sitting up on his hindquarters. His casual manner perhaps meant he sensed no danger yet. I could not draw an accurate bead on him in the shadow. If only he would come nearer.
He sat and looked at the pig and the pig stated back at him. Then he lowered himself until his chest touched the ground and stayed, staring at the pig. That leopard was no fool. He suspected something.
Seconds might have passed. It might have been hours. Waiting no longer I tried a shot, even though the angle was bad from my tree height.
With a ‘wuff’ he leaped up, rounded like a streak and disappeared. The biggest leopard I had ever seen—and to miss it! My disappointment was great, but so often the things I accomplished easily seemed to hold less value than those I missed.
I sat quite still puzzling how the aim had been out, when to my amazement, from the right a big leopard marched straight out and up to the pig. It was unbelievable. A loud report from a rifle in the middle of the night and in spite of that another leopard appearing at the same spot. I could scarcely believe my eyes.
Things rapidly became even more unreal, for the leopard now did what no leopard ever does. Usually he lies in cover and springs on his prey unawares. This leopard stalked down the middle of the path for all the world as if he wanted to find out why the family joint had been left lying about. He walked right up to the pig. The little fellow backed behind the stake, with the leopard on the other side. The leopard let out a deep roar. I tingled as if in the grip of an electric current. The pig sat down suddenly with fright. I aimed and pulled the trigger. The great cat gave one bound and fell dead.
Had there been two leopards, and if so, where was the other? Or was there only one which had paid two visits? After waiting for some time to make sure the one on the ground did not move, I gave a series of short sharp notes on my whistle, which was the signal for the mahout that there was danger and not to come from the camp on foot.
Soon Temi Bahadur’s bulk loomed out of the darkness and swayed towards my tree. He was nearly level with the machan and I jumped across to his broad back and returned to camp. No more could be accomplished that night.
Early the next morning we brought in the trophy, a leopardess. Great was my reception in camp and the bullock carters rushed off to find a man of the Chamar (tanner) caste who would start the skinning as quickly as possible, for the temperature made speed necessary. They returned not only with a Chamar, but with sufficient salt from the village to give the pelt a rough dressing afterwards.
Leaving them, I returned to the vicinity of the machan. There might be some signs to indicate whether or not there had been another leopard. On the grass at the edge of the forest path, far from where the leopardess had fallen, were drops of dark red blood. These ceased, then farther on were a few more. The dark colour of the blood meant that this was no mere flesh wound. Beyond that spot I could find nothing more. The grass thinned out a little here and was no longer over my head. I sent Temi to circle the area, and followed on foot. Any signs there might be could never be seen from an elephant’s back.
At last I found a solitary drop of blood again, this time on the path. Beside it was a deep overgrown depression like a ditch. With my rifle ready I peered in. The familiar dark rosettes of fur could be seen down below, at the bottom. Even now his camouflage was nearly perfect. At last I could distinguish the head. The eyes were open, cold, and staring. If they had been closed, I would have known he was still alive though wounded. He was the biggest leopard I had ever seen. So there had been two after all.
I bagged two deer and a peacock for meat, then struck camp and made the journey back home. For quicker transport in that heat, I slung the two pelts across my saddle when I took over Pussyfoot from the syce. The skins were heavy and the mare indicated that no well-brought-up horse should be expected to carry such things. We flew like the wind until she knew she was near her own stable.
For a time the villagers lost no more bullocks, and the tiny village cows returned safe each evening to the sound of their leader’s wooden bell.
I had scarcely reached the house and swung myself out of the saddle when I was greeted with the news that some eggs in the hen house had been sucked. A deputation from the kitchen led me over. There the eggs lay, neatly punctured and some of the sticky yolk still on the ground. That confounded cobra had been at work again. I was suffering from a severe headache after the ride and all I wanted was a cool drink and a rest. I registered a mental note to take care of the affair that afternoon.
The cobra enjoyed a few more days of life, for within half an hour I was paying for the jungle trip with one of my worst bouts of malaria. The mahouts, who never even boiled their water, suffered no ill effects.
I never mentioned the forest trip in my letters to Peter, but news can travel fast, even in the jungles. While still miles away, he had heard all about it.
It must have been about this time that he started to refer to me as ‘circumstances’ over which he had no control.
Three weeks later Peter made another tour in the United Provinces, and this time I went with him. We were to go to Ramnagar Division, in the Kumaon hills, a most difficult touring country covering an area of several hundred square miles and with no motor roads that a forest officer could use on work.
It was an education in touring. Ramnagar Division is in the mountains, but as India has rather lofty ideas about such things, it is called the ‘hill’ area. Everything less than ten thousand feet is called a hill. This attitude of mind is probably due to living in the shadow of the Himalayas.
We left the train at Ramnagar railway station and immediately began to climb. The approach to the forest rest house is shortened by taking a route up a steep three-quarter-mile road with a gradient of one foot in four. Fortunately, the air was bracing after the plains. In the whole course of the three-week tour we never halted anywhere more than three nights and that only twice.
In the daytime we inspected various forest plantations with trees similar to those in our jungle. After two days at a rest house, we walked seven miles to our next camp. This time we were able to use bullock carts for our baggage, but after that the roads were too steep. Our baggage weighed slightly over a ton. It included a double Swiss cottage tent and its equipment, including beds, folding tables, bathroom furniture, kitchen utensils, china, our personal kit and the servants’ bedding and bundles. Most touring officers in this area travelled with a full staff, for they were on work and their office travelled with them.
We came some nine hundred miles before starting the tour, and so brought with us only a cook-bearer, a masalchi, a sweeper, and a tent man. This staff proved insufficient, partly because the cook-bearer came down with malaria. We also regretted not having brought a dhobi, since without one we could get no linen washed at all.
The second rest house we reached after a seven-mile walk and a scramble to the top of a steep wooded hill looking out over a valley with a turbulent stream cutting through the length of it. This was typical of all our camps. In every case bar one, the site was on the crest of a steep hill with a stormy stream below. Each night we dropped to sleep to the sound of tumbling waters fighting their way to the sea, thousands of miles away.
At Gurjia our tent proved warmer than the rest house, which we left vacant. There we had to abandon the bullock carts and engage eight camels with a camel man in charge. Later we met others on tour, all with caravans of pack camels, but ours I thought deserved first prize for bad manners and wicked behaviour.
Our camel man, probably because he was only temporary, was most incompetent. When a camel is to be loaded, it undoes its joints and then falls down on them. While kneeling it is loaded with bundles balanced equally on either side. A rope is passed under one doubled-up foreleg and then over its neck, to stop it from getting up in the middle of the proceedings—a game ours loved to play. As far as we could see, our camel man never once tied that rope securely. The result was that, with a heavy trunk on one side, and a case of crockery on the other not yet secured, the animal would put together its joints and heave up. Everything would tumble off. This happened three times running with one camel before it was finally roped.
Altogether we made nine halts, covering an area from northwest to south-east across the forests of this division.
To me, this new touring was a pleasure in spite of inconveniences, because of the lovely scenery on all sides. We repeatedly scaled hills having a gradient of one foot in three, covered with shady trees and looking down to narrow valleys through which flowed noisy mountain streams. The area was part of a vast watershed and every hillside literally gushed. At one halt, Sitabhani, seven streams poured from the hillside in the space of two hundred and fifty yards. This was the only time in the forests I had ever drunk unboiled water. That alone was enough to stamp the trip in my memory.
At Sitabhani we met Mr. and Mrs. Baily, the local forest officer and his wife, who were on winter touring, and kind friends they proved to be. They lent us their own dhobi because we needed a laundryman. They also sent an elephant to take us ten miles to their camp. Up till then we had carried out the tour on foot. In those parts only forest officers on duty in their own area were allowed an elephant. Even the magistrate and the police had to walk.
I had made inquiries before we started, and found there were no villages for buying food en route except at our first halt in Ramnagar, and at the last place of all, Haldwani, where we were to entrain for home. So at Ramnagar I had a tiny Dutch oven quickly made by the village blacksmith, for baking our bread. Everyone baked his own bread or went without. Green vegetables could be bought in Ramnagar. Subsequently we arranged for them to be sent after us by runner till we were too far away, then we did without. We carried a sack of potatoes with us. I had hoped to be able to procure meat with a gun, as in our own parts, but found this idea was not smiled upon. Game was scarce, unusually so for such well wooded forests. Later I found that all the other people on tour had a relay of runners from Naini Tal each day, with a standing order for fresh supplies to be passed from camp to camp, till they reached their owners.
The expense of such touring arrangements was recognized. All officers in that area received a special travelling allowance, for camel caravans alone were no small item. Mr. Baily, being on his own territory, lived comfortably. His servants were so expert in packing and unpacking every few days that half an hour after the F.O. had arrived, beds would have been made, tables set for a meal and even flowers from the forest sometimes stood on the table.
Their sweeper was quite a personage. He was the cleanest sweeper I have ever seen, always in snowy white from head to foot. Even his pugree was crisply starched. All day, wherever the sweeper worked, his green parrot went too, perched on his shoulder. When we broke camp to move on, the parrot was the only one of the party that did not walk. It sat on the sweeper’s shoulder. I never saw that parrot caged.
I could not help noticing how one thing was common to all of us on tour. It travelled with us everywhere. Whatever homely things were left behind, one was always unpacked at each halt and put on the table in the tent, or above the fireplace in the rest house. It was the photograph of the child, or children, at school in England.
How we climbed on that tour! There was no walking on level ground. As fast as we climbed up a hill, we walked down it and climbed another. On those Kumaon hills we brought muscles into play that had not been exercised for years. Every day we felt better.
The Bailys played bridge. I suspected we were welcomed partly because it meant a heaven-sent chance of a game of contract at night. We never played very late. We were steadily drunk with so much clean air after the plains that night after night we dropped asleep as our heads touched the pillows.
We stopped a night at Khaladhungi while still in the company of the Bailys. In the afternoon Mrs. Baily and I walked across to take tea with Jim Corbett’s sisters. Whoever passed that way always sent a note to the Corbetts to ask if they might pay a call. Jim was held in great esteem by everyone, and loved by all the villagers of those Kumaon hills, for he had tracked and killed the man-eating tigers that had terrorized their countryside.
The great hunter is a quiet, unassuming man. He grew up in those parts. When other children played with toys, he had a rifle. The only man I knew to equal him in jungle lore was Eddie Knowles, whose jungle background had been similar, but he lived on the edge of the Nepal Terai much farther east. I never managed to bring those two men together, but a dream of mine had always been to hunt tiger with the two of them some day, alone, with no outside aids save our own rifles and their jungle craft.
While we were taking tea with the Corbetts, Jim’s eldest sister told me she could remember the days when there was no transport, not even a railway. When her family moved to the hills for the summer, they made a journey that took many days by road. The dak bungalows (rest houses), seven miles apart, were originally meant for people of those days of leisurely travel, when several days were spent on the journey, and the forests were no place to sleep in the open. Those who did not ride a horse were carried in ‘dandies’ like palanquins, with four carriers. The retinue would be of caravan proportions, for the entire household went along.
During the last part of our tour we worked slowly east, and ended near Haldwani railway station. From there we took train to cover several hundreds of miles on the journey home.
Peter had arranged to go straight to Bagaha, but I broke the journey at Gorakhpur, about eighty miles short of the borders of our forest district, where there were shops. I stayed for the night at the house of Sir James Williamson, who at that time was agent of the Bengal and North Western Railway.
One of the bridges of this railway, a bridge that had spanned the river behind our house, had been swept away some years before by a combination of rising flood waters and hidden quicksands. On either bank of the river the railway stopped dead. Trains ran to each side and travellers then had to be ferried across. When the Williamsons had last come through on tour, our river was shallow, because it was the cold season. We had given them an escort of elephants to the deepest part of the channel and then transferred them to our Chris-Craft speedboat. We did this for any guest who was in difficulties, but the Williamsons were very entertained at the transport provided.
After dinner, on the night I stayed with them, Lady Williamson and I talked about upcountry life. I wanted to find out her angle. Her husband had started life as a junior assistant like everyone else. I mentioned a girl who had come from England to stay with us during one cold weather and who had been appalled at the isolation of our life.
I asked my hostess, ‘How did you like it during your first years out here?’
‘Every time my husband came back from work up the line,’ she said, ‘he found me packing to leave.’
The following morning, I discovered my host had ordered his private coach to be coupled to the train for my personal use. This, with a kitchen at one end, and ice on board, provided an astonishing end to a tour that started with a camel caravan.
As Sir James said good-bye I noticed a twinkle in his eye. The score was now even.
By the time we had settled down to routine after our return, it was the middle of the cold weather. The days were a golden chain of sunshine, and the air exhilarating as champagne. In the evening the sun dropped like a plummet. The temperature dropped with it. Then the rooms with log fires were pleasant places, and the hot weather only a bad dream.
One day Peter left at dawn, and was expected back that same evening. I spent most of the morning exercising the horses. In a district where everyone played polo and only a few could afford to buy expensive horses, we arranged for one man to go to Calcutta and select for us unbroken, imported, Australian Walers. I believe they were called Walers because in the old days they came from New South Wales. From Calcutta they came by train in horse wagons, and we ‘made’ them ourselves. In Australia they cost about five pounds each. Delivery at Calcutta was that plus the freight. They were supposed to have at least known a saddle on their backs, but from experience we were doubtful.
It was a toss-up whether your pony ‘made’ into anything good enough for polo. But usually the results were reasonable. We were lucky. Our fast pony Lightning was not only the pick of the bunch, but was ‘making’ well for polo. Peter liked his rare game of polo whenever we could reach Bettiah, but did not enjoy the long slow process of schooling a pony. This devolved upon me, and I found it difficult to keep up a steady routine, quite apart from the fact that anyone else would have been a better horseman and teacher.
To make a polo pony requires infinite patience. The horse’s natural paces must be co-ordinated to the requirements of a fast rider constantly checking and wheeling in the course of play. Among other things the pony must learn to ‘passage.’ When a horse turns at a gallop, it leads with the forefoot on the side on which it is turning. If a rider tries to turn left, when the horse is leading with the right, the horse comes down. Polo is played at such a speed that the pony must be schooled not only to turn on a sixpence, but in that turn to change its forefeet in the air, while wheeling on the hind feet. Without that, it is no use for polo. Teaching a pony to ‘passage’ requires great patience and is indicated by the rider’s alternating knee pressure.
Lightning was kind and willing, but even if you have made a pony sufficiently to put him into a slow chukker of polo, he cannot be left for another month until you again have an opportunity of playing. He must be kept schooled.
Peter had reached the stage where he had to face the fact that it was not possible to be a forest officer and to keep polo ponies he scarcely used. Lightning was to be sold and by keeping him schooled for polo he would bring a higher price. We had tried leaving him in Bettiah for regular exercise at our Raj stables, but the syces were making his mouth too hard, so he was back with us. After I had finished exercising him and while he was being rubbed down in the stable, I walked across to give the other horses some carrots to crunch.
Down at the elephant stables the animals were peacefully turning over their green fodder. Every now and again a curling trunk would unfurl, pluck from the pile a few succulent leaves, and plunge them down a large pink throat.
In the sunshine, by one of the shrubberies, a couple of leopard cubs were tumbling each other about. On the lawn the dogs were lying, stretched out at full length, sleeping after their morning exercise. I was at peace with the world. With Pentulengro I would have said, ‘There is always the wind on the heath, Brother. Life is very sweet, Brother. Who would wish to die?’
A distant rumble broke the golden stillness. The rumble became a roar like an express train travelling underground. The earth heaved. I started up. The massive house was swaying as if the walls were made of cloth instead of brick. There was a crash of broken windows. I rushed out, staggering, trying to keep my balance. The lawn was rippling in waves. The dogs were barking madly. The elephants started to trumpet. One of the horses broke loose and galloped away.
The hills, the mountains, the trees, all were dipping and swerving. A hill disappeared like a scenic backdrop as I looked at it. Hundreds of birds flew by, screeching their terror. Another heave of the tortured earth flung me headlong.
There was a sound of cracking walls as one side of the house tore away from the outflung verandas.
Death has sometimes brushed my shoulder, but never have I known such stark fear as I felt in the midst of this earthquake. In any other circumstances, the automatic reaction is to fight back either directly or indirectly. In an earthquake, nothing you do makes the slightest difference. That feeling of utter helplessness creates fear. Your house cracks. You run outside. The ground under your feet gapes in fissures that seem bottomless. You run. You are flung off your feet by the friendly earth you know so well, as it twitches and shakes its skin in vast disturbance.
Before the earthquake of January 1934, the countryside was flat and monotonous, save for low hills in Nepal. It stretched out in an immense plain which geologists say was once under water. Certainly in ancient Hindu writings there are accounts similar to those of the Biblical flood. Moisture is so near the surface that a well can be sunk anywhere and strike water a few feet down. In the fissures that appeared across fields and under houses, turgid water and black subterranean river mud belched through the gashes. We picked up fish in the fields. Queer bubbling geysers appeared, pushing up further sand and mud. Where surface resistance was less, spouts of water shot up. Low-lying places were flooded and in parts, the water was hot. The wells were polluted. It was a very damp earthquake.
At Mahendru Ghat, Patna, a fissure must have gaped under the Ganges itself, because for some moments there was a hissing noise and the river dipped in a deep valley of water rushing to unknown depths, before finally righting itself. A ferry steamer was tipped over. People bathing near the banks were half sucked into the mud by the force of the receding water. One of our staff was at the ghat and about to cross by steamer when this happened.
It was a relief to see Peter return all in one piece. He had gone far up the jungles, and had been in a pocket of valley scarcely affected by the earthquake.
For some unexplained reason everyone thought it was his own private earthquake and had affected nobody else. We travelled to see the extent of the damage and each person we met said ‘Hullo’ and immediately started to tell us what he had gone through. We were no exception. It took quite an amount of cunning finesse to get your own story told quickly before the other fellow started.
Not for some days did we realize how large an area had been affected, for all modern communications were severed. The whole of North Bihar had suffered what was then the biggest known earthquake in the history of India.
The bazaars had suffered most. The houses had flimsy walls and the towns were overcrowded. There was little escape for the poor souls who ran into the streets. Bazaar streets are nothing but alleyways, and the buildings fell on top of those who ran out.
In the days following, many other shocks were felt, often demolishing buildings that had previously been cracked. We had not anticipated these subsequent shocks, never having been in an earthquake before. After the first shock we returned to sleeping upstairs. Several times at night I was awakened by my bed shaking. With these earth tremors came the distant sound of masonry cracking under the strain. When I recounted this to Peter in the morning he said, ‘You’ve got earthquakes on the brain.’
We were lucky to escape unharmed. Several other people, equally ignorant regarding the subsequent shocks after an earthquake, had also slept once again in their houses. The walls collapsed about their heads.
The repeated shocks created a state of acute tension among the townspeople, and their shops and homes were completely ruined. Even bullock carts were not available to collect the corpses. In some towns rescue work had to be abandoned after ten days, and from a distance you could smell the stench of decay. The sky was black with hovering vultures. Eventually whole streets were dynamited. Hindus, no matter how poor, give their dead the religious ceremonial of burning. In this case the numbers of dead were so great that all ritual was foregone. Hundreds of bodies were thrown by their relatives into the rivers, because there was neither wood for burning nor people to carry out the ceremony.
An earthquake on alluvial soil produces some odd results. When we travelled around to see some of the damage, we found one friend camped on his lawn in front of what looked like a mad architect’s idea of a building. The undersoil had offered so little resistance to the quake, that though the surrounding cement verandas had remained in position, the house itself had sunk into the ground, leaving the red tiled roof resting sprawled on the verandas.
Mr. Marwood, the district magistrate of Motihari, urgently needed his car to use on what roads were left, and to inspect damage. He could not get at it. The garage, with car in it, had vanished complete, like the demon king in melodrama, through the floor. They were trying to dig it out when we arrived.
We offered him the use of our car as far as we were going, and he accepted with alacrity.
Mr. Marwood and his family had a narrow escape. His garage had sunk into the ground whole, but his house had tumbled to pieces on top of all of them. Mrs. Marwood, the two little children and the English Nanny were indoors but in different rooms. Mrs. Marwood got the smallest baby out. The stout-hearted Nanny, with great presence of mind, snatched at Joy, the other one, as the rafters fell in. The Nanny was wearing a sweater and to save the child’s head pulled the sweater over it. Joy, indignant at all this summary treatment, promptly bit Nanny in the stomach.
The family finally collected on the lawn after hauling each other out from lath, plaster, and bricks. Severe tremors forced them to crouch on their heels, or to sit. Mrs. Marwood told me they sat there even after all was over, staring into vacancy. The servants were safe. Their quarters were intact. She remembered dimly that someone gave her an empty packing case on which to sit. She could not remember how long they stayed there, but apparently the water carrier had not let a small thing like an earthquake upset him, even if the house was gone. He walked across the lawn to her, salaamed, and said:
‘Mem-sahib, what time do you wish to take your bath?’
Mrs. Marwood’s tale was true; but as we all met and exchanged experiences, it became a wonderful field for the storytellers. Everywhere we heard the tale of the lady missionary who was cycling along a road when a cavernous fissure suddenly gaped in her path. The last that was heard, deep down in the bowels of the earth, was a cycle bell faintly ringing.
Railways were dislocated, looking now like so many switchbacks at a fair. Bridges across rivers were down. Rivers themselves were flowing where they had never been before. Public services were dislocated. Isolated homes and villages, even in normal times, kept contact with towns only by runners and by automobile.
Profiteering in food and looting in shops started, and was nipped in the bud by summary justice of ten lashes on the spot. It worked like magic. Wealthy merchants panicked and chartered the few surviving conveyances to rush themselves and their moneybags from the ruins. They suffered a rude shock when half-way out they were stopped and any vehicles not containing Indian ladies or children were commandeered for urgent work elsewhere. Politics were forgotten, and citizens for once helped each other in the common disaster.
At one end of the district was one of the few roads open for stores to come in, and we were busy. In the midst of this a message was delivered to say that Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, had suffered severely and that the eldest son of the Maharajah was isolated at the western limit of their kingdom. He had gone on a shooting expedition. As they have few roads to reach this western extremity, he always came down into British India, on by train through Patna, and up north again to his own country. We were asked to help.
He could get as far as the opposite bank of the Gandak River, if we could arrange for him to cross it. He could then take train from Bagaha to Raxaul on their border. That section of the railway had been patched up, and a train would be sent for the prince. A few hours before he arrived, we heard from the railway that the prince was accompanied by one thousand retainers.
Every available boat was collected and two flat-bottomed ferries operated by long punt poles. Nepal was a good friend and a kindly prince. We decided to give his son honour. Down to the water’s edge we sent all sixteen elephants for him and the ladies of his house who were with him. We ranged the elephants in a double row on the sands, like a massive guard of honour. The prince was in simple European country clothes of tweed, for Nepal never overdressed. He knew the dignity of self-restraint. As he stepped ashore every mahout simultaneously gave the signal to his charge. Sixteen elephants slowly raised their trunks, unfurled them full length, flung back their heads and trumpeted the royal salute.
The worst household shortages after the earthquake were salt, and kerosene for lamps. In time they began to appear again in the bazaars, having been rushed across from the United Provinces mostly by our Bagaha route. One of the biggest oil combines in the East made an outright gift of thousands of gallons of petrol.
Soon there were lights again in the villages. Roads were levelled sufficiently for traffic, though at intervals the subsoil caved in, as the earth shook itself into place in its subterranean cavities. Railway reconstruction had started almost before anything else. Temporary bridges were erected over rivers. In time things returned to something approaching normal, even to the vernacular press, which reported that all officials had fled in panic.
As soon as possible we sent a cable to England to say we were safe. Long afterwards they told us that this cable was the first news they had of there having been any earthquake. Such is fame.
In the rainy season that followed the earthquake, the monsoon floods were the highest ever recorded in those parts, perhaps as a result of the earthquake. Knee-deep we waded in the garden, and I found the most peculiar things swimming over the tops of the vegetables. Nine-inch centipedes and black scorpions tottered for foothold on the leaves of the green pepper.
The poor villagers in thatched huts ended with not even a roof above the flood. We brought our dugout canoes from Narshai. We punted them down what had been village streets, and picked people off the roofs. We were kept busy arranging evacuation for those who wanted to move, and the deep verandas of our house sheltered several families. They brought their livestock, too, and goats and chickens were everywhere.
The first emergency over, Peter had to leave. There was work to do about eighty miles away. One of the estate zemindari managers was on leave and Peter had this man’s district to look after besides his own. To motor was impossible. The railway embankment was above water in most parts, so we started by train from Bagaha station at 4.30 a.m. one morning.
In the previous forty-eight hours, the rainfall had registered seventeen and a half inches.
The stationmaster recommended booking only to the fourth station down the line, as the embankment had been breached in the night by floods and more trouble was reported ahead of that.
We telegraphed to the railway engineer at the next junction to ask if he could spare a trolley from there. The first breach in the line was just short of this junction, and the train went no farther. Thanks to the engineer, who in the midst of his own heavy work had sent a trolley, we were able to cross. The embankment under the line had been washed away. For about thirty feet the rails sagged over the water, held together only by the bolts in the sleepers.
We put the suitcases behind and climbed on the front seat. It was a trolley pushed by two men and I have seldom seen such neat footwork. They took a rapid run, got the trolley moving fast, though they balanced on nothing but the rail track in mid-air, then jumped up behind. Away we went with enough impetus to rush along the loose rails and up the other side.
At the railway junction we stopped to have a word with the engineer’s wife, who was perched on a veranda completely surrounded by water. Refusing the offer of a drink, feeling we were already wet enough, we changed trolleys and went on.
This time we were more heavily loaded. At the junction we had overtaken Pietro, whom we had hopefully sent on a day ahead with stores and bedding. We had thought he would arrive before us and have the house prepared, but he had been detained a day and a night.
On the second trolley we now had ourselves, our suitcases, a large and heavy roll of bedding, and on the back two cases of stores. Pietro was perched on the footrest at our feet. He said he was quite secure, but looked as if he might tumble on to the rails at any moment. He had shared a good many of our mad adventures.
Behind us were the four trolley men. They pushed in turn. The pair that was resting piled on to the luggage and hung by their eyelids. We were overloaded, but it was the only way to cross that expanse of water unless we chose to swim, and none of us was a tight-rope walker.
The day rapidly grew hotter with heavy clouds piling overhead. After twenty-seven miles we reached the second breach and to me at least it did not look inviting. For one hundred and sixty feet the railway line hung in mid-air over the flood. On the far side it was deeply undercut below the rails and one could not help wondering if our combined weight would pull down the remaining ballast.
The trolley men had all along been highly entertained by the adventure. They approached this new breach with a cheerful babble. It was a longer stretch than the last breach. They had to work up a greater momentum. We rattled towards the gap with a great clatter and final bump, as the two who had been pushing jumped on behind at the last moment. We shot along the level and then with a swoop, down and over the water. With a rush we mounted the opposite bank and reached solid earth again. We turned and grinned at each other like a lot of idiots, all except the forest officer, who was wrapped in administration problems.
After another mile we reached Chanpatia. The engineer’s modern motor trolley was pulled up here and the linesman said he had gone across to the house of the manager of the local sugar mill. A train was expected shortly. In it we could continue the journey, but we wanted first to thank the engineer for his help.
The sugar mill itself was on the north side of the line, on sloping ground, and was dry. The staff bungalows on the south side of the line were on lower ground and had received the seep-through from the overflow of a big river. The bungalows were awash.
I took off my shoes and stockings. We waded up the drive through water over our knees. Mr. Thompson, the mill manager, said the water had dropped. It had previously lapped over their three-foot-high veranda by three inches. They had bricked up all doorways about fourteen inches from the floor level and cemented the bricks to save the furniture. Mrs. Thompson, balanced on a table, was wondering where they would sleep that night.
Later, when we were in the train, looking out of the windows of the carriage, we realized the large area covered by floods. In places the only things above water besides the railway embankments were treetops. Herds of cattle held precarious foothold on the sloping sides of the embankment. Families were camped in empty goods trucks. The water stretched as far as the eye could see. As we approached each level crossing, there were more people and more cattle. A forlorn cow stood on a distant island of grass about twice her own length. She looked as if she had been there a long time.
At Motihari we left the train. In the town itself quite a lot of dry land could be seen. We were still seven miles from our destination, Turkaulia.
Peter had left his car at a friend’s house on a previous visit and had returned by train, for even at that time the rain had been heavy enough to turn out earthen roads into quagmires. To this house we returned for the car, and that was as far as we got for three days.
The first evening we went down to the bridge we would have to cross. It was about two miles out of the town, and spanned the Dhanauti River. The old bridge had gone in the earthquake. The temporary bridge was level when built, but as the Dhanauti has a bed of quicksands, the centre of the bridge had sunk and was now under water. If we tried to cross, we would sink into the quicksands with it.
On the following day we tried a detour by a country road, but had to turn back because six miles out the approach to another bridge was flooded. We returned to find the first bridge now had even more water over it, in spite of the fact that no more rain had fallen. There was something else different, but for the moment I couldn’t place it. I looked again, then turned to Mr. Kemp, my host, who was with us.
‘That river is flowing the wrong way.’
‘Yes,’ he said carelessly, ‘it’s flowing backwards.’
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Earthquakes, floods, boating over housetops, bridges under water instead of over it, and now a river going backwards: it wasn’t true. My eyes must have got reversed.
Back at the house and with the help of a map, Mr. Kemp explained. The river was receiving an overflow from tributaries that start in the Himalayas. They were carrying melted mountain snows as well as flood water. Too heavily burdened, they flooded the plains, but on their way, discharged their waters into a river that could hold no more. At a spot where it could not overflow, the Dhanauti River turned round and went back.
Looking at the map gave us an idea. If sufficient fields were flooded, why not go by boat? This we eventually arranged to do. Embarking at the submerged bridge, we paddled down five miles of water over flooded fields. The Turkaulia house and garden, situated above a fine large lake, were dry. The bed smelled of mildew, but so did our own at Bagaha.
Peter inspected flood damage in the area and then for the remainder of our stay he was engaged in routine office administration connected with this area of the Bettiah Raj. His signature was required on many documents before certain work could be carried out. Further administration would have to wait until the floods subsided.
When the work at Turkaulia was finished and a hot sun had baked the earthen roads, we returned. The flood had retreated from main roads, but still covered the countryside. After going to Motihari to fetch our car, we faced a drive of seventy-two miles with certain misgivings.
After we had covered fifteen miles, the roads forked. A government road peon on duty here reported that the left-hand fork, the one we preferred, was dry. Often a villager who has never travelled in a car calls a road dry when he means he could ford it by wading knee-deep. After seven miles the road was awash and we had to turn back. We exchanged greetings once again with the man on flood duty, but refrained from asking any more directions.
We turned right and in spite of heavy going, managed to reach Bettiah, thirty miles from Motihari, about 11 a.m. We had scarcely arrived when the sky, which had been heavily overcast, rapidly darkened and a great wind arose. We had learned to know the look of an impending cloudburst. Just in time we ran the car into an empty garage at the house of our general manager. Then the sky completely unbuttoned itself and emptied over us.
For slightly less than an hour a vast avalanche of water hit the earth. Our delay, due to having to return on our tracks, had proved fortunate. By this accident, we now had a roof over us during the storm. The pipes from the gutters could not carry the rain fast enough. It shot over the eaves in waterfalls. The volume discharged through the rainpipes leading from the roof hit the ground gratings with such force that it bounced up in two foot-high foaming torrents.
As soon as it stopped, without a word exchanged, we were all of one mind, and ran out to read the rain gauge. This had been emptied at 9 a.m. No rain had fallen until the storm that heralded our arrival. The gauge registered three and a half inches in less than an hour.
The last stage of the return journey was messy. Another forty-two miles to cover and every road a bog. We had left the semi-metalled section behind, and were on what was little more than baked earth, but after the floods it was no longer baked.
We sank to the running boards in a patch of mud that stretched for half a mile. Chains on the wheels would not grip this slush. We put branches of trees underneath to give the wheels purchase. The branches shot out as fast as they were put in. Finally, from the Finzels’ sugar factory two miles away, we borrowed a kodali, the equivalent of a garden spade. The spade part is at right angles to the shaft. We dug away the mud all around, carried over more branches and put them underneath, then, by starting the engine and pushing hard from the back, we worked clear.
We arrived home about 9 p.m., too tired to eat, and plastered with mud. That last forty-two miles had taken nine hours. All the same it had been an interesting trip and I had seen a river that flowed backwards.
A custom had grown up with me of holding a rough-and-ready ‘sick parade’ on the back veranda. During the unhealthy months of the year, to try to prevent malaria, I lined up the servants at intervals and gave each in turn a dose of Epsom salts, on the principle that if your inside is in condition, you stand a better chance of throwing off sickness quickly.
Just as, after breakfast, I issued the stores on the back veranda because the main storeroom led off it, so it had also become the most convenient place to give out medicine.
The choice of Epsom salts was their own. It appeared to give them more satisfaction than other remedies, and I was glad to provide something that met with universal approval. The dose had to be swallowed in front of me to insure that there were no defaulters. At the last moment Pietro always tried to find urgent work elsewhere, so he was dosed first to give a good example. At ‘sick parade’ I was confronted by a line of agonized faces, all save that of the cook, who enjoyed it. Whatever dose was measured, he always asked for more.
The news spread that we had simple medicines and all kinds of people came to me for doses or first aid, appearing after breakfast on the veranda. Judging by the state of some of them, they must have thought I could bring the dead back to life. Five miles away was a dispensary, but they always started with me. They would stand there, wait to catch my eye, begin with a courteous salaam and then, ‘Aph mirbhani . . .’
This is untranslatable, but can mean anything from ‘Of your kindness’ to half a dozen other things.
I possessed no medical training. Their confidence in simple doses administered in an atmosphere of kindness was astonishing and a little touching. They were also not oblivious of the fact that our doses were free and those at the local dispensary, though officially a free one, were not administered entirely on a voluntary basis by the babu in charge.
Sometimes real first aid was required, as when Etwari the carpenter nearly cut off his hand, or when a lamp at the saw-mill was tipped over and a man was severely burned from wrist to elbow. After administering first aid, we would send such cases at once to the estate hospital in Bettiah, where a delightful old lady doctor functioned. She claimed to be only fifty-eight, but must have been long past retiring age. She refused to take any fees, even from people who were not employees of the estate. At almost any hour of the day or night, her old-fashioned box Ford would be seen hurrying to arrive ahead of the latest baby.
It was difficult to persuade our sick people to enter a hospital even though estate employees were treated free. To them a hospital was a strange and terrifying place where you went only to die. Their reluctance generally meant that they refused to go until such time as they really were dying, so in that sense they were correct.
I worked hard to encourage our men’s wives to go there for a baby’s birth. I helped as much as possible whenever there was an addition to a family, and I felt that anything was better than a dirty string bed or the floor of a mud hut. In the native houses, too, I was constantly chasing out the village dhai (midwife) who knew less than nothing about her work, and who carried it out while wearing a dirty sari and multitudes of greasy silver bangles.
The day after a baby was born it was smeared with mustard oil from head to foot and put on the doorstep in the blazing tropic sun to ‘harden.’ The first time I saw this I protested hotly, but was told it was the custom. I have never felt quite certain that they were wrong. Indians rub themselves daily with mustard oil. Perhaps the custom has grown up for a reason they themselves do not understand. Perhaps this regular oiling and exposure to sunlight from birth explains why they suffer less from heatstroke than the average white person.
Sometimes, after they acquired confidence in me, they would listen to me. My biggest triumph was the first time our driver’s wife went to the hospital for her baby. About three generations of relations went, too, thinking that they were going to stay in the ward. Life in the village was like that. After the girl got over her first fright, she enjoyed herself. She found several village women with whom to chat all day and no mothers-in-law anywhere. She returned to Bagaha and flourished before the eyes of envious neighbours the fattest man-child in the village. She also thought the doctor had made it a man-child and for some time Bettiah hospital was inundated by visits from hopeful husbands and wives.
If they learned a little from me, they also taught me much. I found their own medicinal herbs effective. When I would ask how long they had been in use, no one knew. They had a corrective for dysentery which checked the symptoms immediately. As soon as these symptoms appeared, we sent someone to the bazaar with two annas to buy ‘aishaph ghul.’ A piled spoonful of these seeds was tipped into a glass of hot water and the mixture allowed to cool, the seeds meanwhile giving off a glutinous substance. When cold the mixture was sipped at intervals throughout the day until the glass was empty. Since it always checked the illness in its early stages, we never had an opportunity to test it on a severe case. The usual cleansing medicines were given later.
Of massage they knew a great deal, the knowledge being passed down from father to son.
I once found a sadhu (holy man) digging with a small tool on our front lawn. I greeted him and asked what he wanted. He said a herb grew there that deadened the pain of toothache. I was unable to identify the herb. I found the villagers put great faith in it, but I was inclined to be doubtful of the remedies supplied by sadhus. They also administered cow’s urine mixed with milk for various purposes.
It is doubtful if the local people ever put the toothache remedy to serious test, for most of them, down to the very poorest, have excellent teeth, even and brilliantly white. They clean them by chewing twigs of the neem tree. In the north, where the tree does not grow, walnut juice is used instead. It stains the gums, but keeps the teeth in magnificent condition.
The leaves of the neem tree are also claimed to have medicinal properties. These are steeped in hot water and used for poulticing and fomentations. To ease our prickly heat we steeped the leaves in water used for bathing or washing.
After breakfast my activities on the back veranda sometimes became a little confused, for though people who wanted medicine arrived, officially I was issuing stores for the day. Sometimes while I was trying to accommodate all parties, a garden coolie would run in quite out of breath to say a kite had just carried off one of the smaller members of the livestock. I would drop everything and snatch a gun. I shall never forget the fury of one of our cock turkeys when I shot a kite and the dead bird dropped on him out of the sky. He thought the kite had done it on purpose, leaped upon the body and gobbling curses, tried to stamp it flat.
After such interruptions, I would go back to my bandages and poultices, while the cook walked away to the kitchen with his quota of stores. When I was handing out quinine, the villagers and I would talk about everything from crops to the high cost of marriage ceremonies.
One day after collecting his stores, the cook, who was a Hindu, asked me for two days’ leave to celebrate their festival of Holi. One of the merits of employing Hindus, Christians, and Moslems was that they never all wanted leave at the same time for festivals. This festival of Holi was one about which I was perpetually asking questions in vain. The coolies did not know, and everyone else seemed to find it embarrassing to explain to a lady. There appeared to be something monstrous about a religion certain aspects of which could not be discussed in polite society.
Holi, my villagers told me, celebrated the festival of marriage. In that case why did no respectable woman leave her house that day, if it could be avoided? People were warned to keep out of the bazaars because the feast was similar to the Roman Saturnalia. The lower classes, children, and students squirt red liquid at passers-by from ridiculous modern toy water pistols, or they throw red powder on everyone. Anyone who has been out of doors is likely to come back covered from head to foot with red stain. The more I asked questions, the less I found out.
Holi was apparently connected with honouring the Lingam, their phallic symbol which I knew from Hindu writings (the Linga Puranas) was ‘worshipped by order of the god Siva himself. It has given me (Siva) new life, a new shape which is that of the Lingam. Regard it as myself. To render it the honours due to a god is an action of the highest merit.’
Holi is one of the feasts when girls of marriageable age make offerings to Parvati, Siva’s wife, so that they too may be married. To add to the confusion, though the girls honour Parvati, wife of Siva, the men count Holi as one of the feasts of Krishna, another god altogether. None of it seemed to have the slightest connection with squirting red liquid all over each other. I never learned more from the villagers.
Some time afterwards, while I was in Calcutta to keep an appointment with the dentist, I took the opportunity of transporting a baby deer as a gift to the Calcutta zoo. The little thing had not been able to thrive on a bottle. I always wrote to the zoos beforehand, to ask if they could accommodate one of my collection. Although sometimes they did not wish for my particular specimen, on this occasion they were glad of a male chital.
Before leaving Calcutta, I lunched one day at a friend’s house and met once again the Dowager Maharani of Cooch Behar, whom I had known some years before. In an atmosphere of air-conditioned rooms and iced drinks, we discussed the various merits of skin creams and face lotions. The beautiful princess never travels without a case full of the latest make-up from Paris. When the opportunity arose, I introduced the subject of Holi. She told me the splashing about of red stain during Holi is the symbol of a girl’s attaining womanhood.
One winter we lent a block of our jungles to Colonel Bailey, British Minister to Nepal, who was on tour near our border. He and his wife camped on their own bank of the river, and crossed to our side for shooting. We were also on tour, and we all met at intervals, sometimes with our guests, if we had any, sometimes with his. Ours was a more modest form of entertaining because we received no official allowance for such things.
One day Colonel Bailey sent us a note saying there had been a tiger ‘kill’ overnight. He asked if we would care to join him and beat for it, staying at his camp afterwards for the night. Peter had work to do, but I replied saying I was coming. Collecting a rifle, and dropping some cartridges in the pocket of my coat, I set out, sending my suitcase of clothes straight to his camp.
A messenger directed me to the spot where Colonel Bailey was waiting. In the ordinary way you do not beat for a tiger in the middle of the day, as he may have moved away when the sun rose, but this animal had been fairly accurately located as lying in a patch of terai grass near the kill, which was a buffalo.
Colonel Bailey’s elephants were from Nepal. Nepalese mahouts have a custom of taking with them an unnecessary assistant who sits on the rump, and carries a medieval instrument consisting of a short iron rod with a heavily spiked knob on the end. The assistant wields this horrid thing at intervals, and without provocation, on the elephant’s behind.
Elephants possess great intelligence, though the notion that they have a long memory is a fairy tale. They are adaptable and willing, but it has always been to me a source of wonder the amount of bad treatment they will stand from a mahout without retaliating. The average mahout trains by fear, his own fear of his charge. He hits the thing he is frightened of to give himself courage. The huge animal puts up with it and rarely turns on the man. Unfortunately, when an elephant finally breaks out, after suffering from wrong treatment, the person attacked is not always the cause of the trouble, but merely the one who is nearest at the time.
I mounted one of the smaller elephants, because, with the exception of my own Temi Bahadur, I found it a nuisance to shoot from something the size of a house. Years before I had given up using a shooting howdah. This takes two people and has surrounding sides like a small cab with the roof off. The disadvantage of a howdah is that no matter how well trained your gun elephant may be, he gets bored standing still and may begin to sway slightly on his feet. The angle of sway on the howdah is greater. If the howdah is not tightly roped, there is a second and unexpected angle of sway. All this makes aim difficult when trying to sight with a rifle at a shadowy streak which may offer only a momentary target. Some men preferred the howdah. They said they could aim better and also stand up and swing round for a rear shot. My own results had been better when shooting from a pad elephant. The pad is a mattress thrown over the animal’s back and roped on. A long slit down the centre of the pad prevents any pressure on the elephant’s prominent spine. I sat on the pad above the animal’s right shoulder close to the mahout astride the neck. From there I could touch the mahout on the shoulder, or whisper to him, to give him any necessary sudden order.
On this occasion Colonel Bailey and the surgeon of the legation were the only other guns, both men using howdahs. Six elephants were sent to circle behind the grass to work quietly through it towards us. The beating elephants came out and were so near the edge of the grass it looked as if the tiger had gone. We could see their heads parting the stalks as they approached. Suddenly, almost under our feet, the tiger broke.
It bounded between Colonel Bailey and me, making for cover behind us. I left the shot to my host, but he told me later he had wanted me to have the honour. By the time I realized he was not going to shoot, the tiger was past us. I swung round on the pad and fired. The tiger jerked, then continued and was lost to view in the jungle behind us.
Both men decided I had missed, but we conscientiously turned to search for what might be a wounded animal. In the grass about seventy-five yards away we found the tiger lying dead. He had travelled all that distance with a bullet in his lungs. I was relieved.
The Baileys’ tents were pitched in a pleasant open glade near a river, and as we approached, Mrs. Bailey came down to the river bank to welcome us. She was little and slender, and a hostess to her fingertips. She was the only child of Lord Cozens-Hardy and she did not find life in Nepal the height of social activity. She remedied this by giving a warm welcome to a succession of guests from all over the world.
Though we lived in tents, Mrs. Bailey had thought of every possible comfort and meals were superlative. Her cook had been chef to the commander-in-chief, Lord Chetwode.
Some months earlier Irma Bailey had suffered from jaundice, and a doctor in Europe had put her on a very pleasant diet. Once a week for one whole day she must eat nothing but fruit. The fact that she was now in the jungle and several hundreds of miles from any markets, did not daunt her. Fruit was the diet, so fruit she got. Great shallow baskets stood on the tables, containing five or six varieties. The consignments must have taken weeks to arrive, except for local oranges. As I am very fond of fruit, I too went on a diet.
That first evening in camp, they celebrated my so-called prowess. First there were Rajah’s Peg cocktails drunk by the campfire. The brandy was old and the champagne young. The fire was warm and the mixture potent. We were all in good form by the time we walked inside the dining tent.
After the soup, champagne corks popped and the event was toasted. The Baileys kept cases of champagne for just such occasions. It was a charming gesture. Long after getting into bed, I was shooting away at tigers ail night, hundreds of them.
I remained at their camp for a few days and enjoyed some crocodile shooting. We went upstream in boats, travelling due north. On the Nepal side the river flowed between high cliffs which opened out at intervals leaving expanses of sandy beach where crocodiles basked in the sun. They lay in rows, all sizes, all ages, a couple of dozen at a time in one spot.
It is difficult to get close enough for a shot that kills stone dead. The crocodile not only sees you, but he also feels vibration of movement from a long distance and without waiting to find out what it is slides into the water. Even if you approach close enough, unless the shot stops him in his tracks, there is enough muscular action left in the ironclad tail to give one sweeping movement that propels the crocodile into the river and you never then recover the body. For my light rifle, a .405 Winchester repeater, the one vulnerable spot in his armour was the eye, or just behind it.
Both types of crocodile were there, the gharial, the inoffensive fish-eater, with thin attenuated snout ending in nostrils like a pair of bulbs; and the muggar, the man-eater (or anything else he can swallow) with squat snout, and very wide jaws to swallow big things easily. A crocodile is the only creature I have never had any compunction about killing.
On either side of the river the summit of the cliffs was honeycombed with holes of the blue rock pigeon, but only one shot at them was possible every quarter of a mile. A shot reverberated with such echoes that the startled pigeons whirled away. Then we had to wait until we rounded another bend of the river to try again.
We took lunch with us, and at midday would land on one of the sandy beaches. Long before the boats were grounded, every crocodile would have taken one disgusted look and have gone for a swim. We would have the beach to ourselves, unpack the lunch baskets, and enjoy exotic confections eaten off square Fortnum and Mason plates. When we explored the tiny screw-topped jars we discovered that not a sauce or a flavouring had been overlooked.
We made jungle trips as well. One evening as we came back to camp our elephants straggled a little. Mine became detached from the rest of the party, so I decided to take another route back. Crossing an open glade, I passed near a tree beside which stood a white ants’ nest about five feet high. Propped against the nest was a large comb of wild honey, and a bear was burrowing into the honey as if his life depended on it. Probably he had climbed the tree and knocked down the honeycomb. My slow-moving elephant was making no noise and the bear was so busy he did not even look up. His head was almost hidden in the half-eaten comb, and presented towards me was his shaggy behind. The mahout excitedly pointed towards the defenceless rump. My rifle was loaded, but I felt it was an unfair advantage to take of any bear. We crossed the clearing and before entering the forest on the farther side I gave a last glance over my shoulder. The furry behind still heaved and pushed. The bear, oblivious to everything around him, still gorged his honey.
Before leaving the Baileys I sat up several nights for a leopard. He never came, but while waiting for him I saw in the bright moonlight my first pangolin. Unlike the armadillo’s, his scaled back does not stop square at the root of the tail. He is more like an attenuated cigar of armoured plates that run from snout to tip of tail. This one had a small hump on the tail. Never having seen one before, I thought the hump was a natural excrescence until the pangolin stopped scrabbling in the earth and the hump fell off. It was the baby. I watched them for about ten minutes until something startled the mother. As she moved away, the baby scrambled up behind and, with the baby riding the mother’s tail, the two of them disappeared.
Some of the members of Colonel Bailey’s guard saw me back to camp after good-byes were said. The guard were all Gurkhas of the Indian army. They were natives of Nepal and were probably glad of an assignment in their own country. Their frontier near us was distinguished only by boundary pillars in the forest, set about four hundred yards apart.
Nepal has an area of fifty-six thousand square miles with a population of about five and a half million people. Their rulers are unique, for they have both a maharajah and a king. There were several kingdoms until at the end of the eighteenth century the Gurkhas invaded the country and conquered it. Prithvi Narayana Shah, the Gurkha leader, consolidated the country under one rule as far as possible, but he had to deal with four powerful families. In 1846 the head of the Rana family was more powerful than the king of Nepal. The king’s position became so weak that the Ranas were strong enough to ‘request’ him to appoint the senior among them prime minister and supreme ruler. This office is held in perpetuity by the Rana family with the title of maharajah. Nepal has been singularly fortunate in its rulers and Jung Bahadur Rana, the maharajah prime minister, who was appointed, was an enlightened man when other princes were feudal in outlook. In 1850 he was the first Hindu prince to visit England, never before having even seen the ocean.
The maharajah, not the king, is the real ruler. His word is final in everything, even to the marriages of the many princesses, who in recent years can no longer find husbands in their own country. For some time past they have been married to princely neighbours along the Nepal border.
We saw much of the Gurkhas and I acquired a genuine respect for them. They are always cheerful. Their women are not veiled. Their babies average about ten pounds at birth and are always contented. I have seldom heard a Gurkha baby cry.
Until recently it was almost impossible to get sanction to enter Nepal and even now a permit is granted only with the personal approval of the maharajah. Once within the country, a visitor is treated with exquisite courtesy as an honoured guest. This independent kingdom holds no allegiance to any other. The maharajah’s reasons for withholding free access were probably based on the fact that if you let the foreigner in, he is invariably responsible for alterations, not all of which suit the people. Tastes in Nepal are not extravagant. Life is simple. The people are happy. Why change it? Nepal is also aware of the saying concerning foreigners, ‘First the Bible then the Sword.’
Only recently roads have been made in this steep mountain country of ropeways over chasms. Even now, heavy equipment for use in Kathmandu valley must be carried part of the way on human backs. That is how the first cars reached Kathmandu up the mountainsides. Now, too, the farthest parts of the kingdom are in communication by telephone with the capital. The first Bank of Nepal has been opened, and the first jute mill started, small it is true, but giving a foretaste of things to come.
The twenty Gurkha battalions of the Indian army1 are all composed of voluntary recruits from Nepal. They are great-hearted, sturdy, and reliable. There is no record of a Gurkha soldier having shown fear in the face of the enemy. Their records of battle honours, individual and regimental, are superb.
Gurkhas have no inherited allegiance to any save their own ruler, yet during their term of service with the Indian army their loyalty to their officers is a very personal thing. Once I had a young Gurkha on leave as fellow passenger in a truck going to Kashmir. At the customs barrier, we opened our baggage for inspection. The boy carried a little battered suit-case containing only simple things. Carefully packed between the softest garments was an outsize photograph of King George. I noticed, too, the angry gleam in that Gurkha’s eye when the customs official handled the picture a trifle casually.
The Gurkha’s khukri goes with him through life, and this broad-bladed curved knife is counted as part of the man’s army equipment. He would enter no form of service without it. The blade is so sharp it will as easily slice a feather cushion in half as cut off an enemy’s head. That knife does serious business.
The popularity of army recruitment among these people has resulted in the entire male population of Nepal receiving modern military training by a neighbouring country, free of charge to the maharajah. The Gurkha then retires to his own country on an Indian army pension, both nations continuing to live in peace overlooking each other’s backyards. The situation is probably unequalled anywhere else in the world.
For us, visits to England were rare. Once in London, I would buy many things we needed for ourselves and the house because that would probably be my only chance to see real city shops for another two or three years.
I remember one occasion in London when Peter was not with me. Most of my purchases had been made and my packing completed. A few days were left before I was to take ship back to India. At such times my feelings were mixed, for with a schoolgirl daughter on this side of the world and a husband on the other whichever way I was heading I longed to get to one of them quickly and not to leave the other at all.
During those last few days before I was to sail, the Royal Horticultural Society held its autumn exhibition at Westminster Hall. I should have been strong-minded and stayed away. I went with only the innocent intention of sniffing a flower or two in pleasant surroundings. Once there, the symptoms known to every keen gardener gripped me. I began by admiring a plant that was not in my own garden, then another and another. I ordered rosebushes, prize dahlias, and some new chrysanthemums. As usual, I came away with an empty purse and a guilty thrill, the kind of thrill you seldom enjoy from being virtuous. This extravagance made it necessary for me to leave without buying some needed personal garments. This peculiarity of amateur gardeners may account for the fact that many who are infected with gardener’s bug wear clothes that look out of fashion.
I was glad to be back at Bagaha. Pietro handed over the household keys. This was now merely a token affair, rather like the ceremonial occasions when the Lord Mayor of London hands over the keys of the city to the King. By now Pietro was a good caterer and all was in order in the house.
Without waiting to unpack, I went out to make a tour of the garden. Twelve acres were now under cultivation and I was interested to find out how some of my schemes had matured. It looked as if all my husband’s lady friends had been giving him roses. There were two bushes of Frau Karl Druschki, and a Frau Erhart. Perhaps, I thought, if I go away again, someone will give him an Irish Beauty and a Lady Hillingdon, both of which I wanted very much. On second thoughts, better not, because next time it might not be roses that he would be given!
So when February came around, and the rosebushes I had bought in England arrived, in some obscure way I felt more than ordinary satisfaction. The ground had been prepared beforehand. As soon as the bushes had been soaked in water, they were planted. Then Peter was taken on a personally conducted tour of the garden to see them, all thirty-six of them.
Plants suddenly transported several thousand miles require a certain amount of attention before they become established, and the garden coolies were not experts. Other plants were on their way from England.
Also, a sundial had been delivered. It was always a minor trial not to know the correct time and the fact that nobody else did either did not make me any more reasonable on the subject. A sundial was the answer. The sundial was to stand in the centre of a sunken garden I had made by draining an old pond. The stone mason could not understand what was required when I described a plinth to him. In the end I had made it myself with small pieces of roughened rock, setting them in cement as I built it. Now the face of the sundial was waiting to be correctly set, and this must be done with a theodolite. We got one on loan for one day only. Just at the time when I had to do all this garden work, I learned that a party of people was expected shortly in camp. The Broucke family had been lent a block of the jungles for ten days’ shooting and they asked me to join them but I decided not to go with the party. How much I was to regret this decision later!
Afterwards various members of the Broucke family told me what happened. Somebody shot a bear with cubs. The fur coat of the bear is so long that no one noticed until after she was killed the two young cubs clinging to her back. The cubs were taken to camp and a large, cane-sided howdah was turned upside down to accommodate them. The cubs fought all night, keeping the whole camp awake. The following day Peter shot a male bear and two of the party bagged very large black buck on the plains. They had no news of tiger.
After a picnic lunch, the elephants were called up for everyone to mount. Peter assisted a lady to mount Temi Bahadur and after doing so, noticed that the cartridge bag was lying on the ground. The elephant had risen from his knees. Still standing at the tusker’s shoulder, Peter reached for the bag and was about to hand it up when the elephant swung round, grasped Peter in his trunk, and swept him off his feet into the air. Other members of the party were mounting the remaining kneeling elephants.
The elephant flung Peter up and then held him partly in his mouth, but with his trunk still firmly gripping Peter’s body. Peter struggled, the lady screamed and the rest of the party, all in various stages of ascent, stopped dead. Temi Bahadur was so big and had wound his trunk round so firmly that all that could be seen of Peter were his legs. Temi dashed him in the air from side to side. Two men of the party gripped their rifles to shoot the elephant but each time they aimed they were afraid they would shoot Peter, too.
The elephant’s mahout, cutting at his head, managed to gash him on the tender spot. Temi flung Peter away. For a stunned moment no one did anything. Peter scrambled to his feet and stumbled towards a tree. The next moment the elephant was on him again. Peter fell face down. This time instead of picking him up, Temi rammed him with his head. A mahout flung a short spear at the tusker to distract him. The elephant stopped, then walked calmly away.
Peter insisted on climbing on to another elephant and rode back to the camp. Then he collapsed and a message was sent to me. We got him back to the house at Bagaha. The extent of his injuries was unknown. He was bruised all over and his left shoulder was terribly swollen. He needed a doctor and an X-ray,
There are no ambulances in the jungles. We sent to Bettiah for one of the biggest of the estate cars. Peter was in great pain in any position at all. Making him as comfortable as possible, and telling the driver to go very slowly, we at last reached Bettiah.
For three days Peter had been unable to sleep because of the pain. We drove straight to the X-ray room. At Bettiah a stretcher was ready, but the efforts of the untrained carriers only racked Peter more. He ended by climbing on to the X-ray table by himself. Fortunately a newly installed X-ray outfit had just been put into use.
The negative showed that the left arm was torn out of its socket at the shoulder, where the elephant had gripped it. Three ribs were fractured near the spine.
Peter sat in a chair while the lady doctor and the Indian hospital surgeon tried to set his arm. They appeared to have some difficulty, but finally bandaged the shoulder. The ribs were then strapped. Obviously Peter was now in greater pain than before, but he refused point-blank to go to the hospital. We arranged to stay at the large estate guesthouse.
Peter was in agony all night. The shoulder was giving him great pain. He could not lie down without torture, so he tried to rest in an armchair. In the morning I sent a note to the doctor. Both doctors came over and unstrapped the shoulder, and found it had not been properly set. Bandages, of course, had only increased the pain. The doctors went out on to the veranda to confer. At this stage I began to suspect that neither of them knew how to set the bone.
Peter whispered to me, ‘Pour me out a double whisky neat.’
He drank it at a gulp and then, with his right hand firmly gripping his left shoulder, he gradually worked the injured left arm around. I heard a click as the bone dipped into place. Peter sank back with the sweat pouring off his forehead. The doctors returned and we told them. They agreed that the bone was now in place and they bandaged the shoulder once more.
A friend dropped in to see us and to ask if we needed help. By now Peter was exhausted, but the moment this friend suggested telegraphing to Calcutta for a trained nurse, Peter had enough fight left in him to forbid it in strong language. To have a nurse was a sign of helplessness and he could still use both his legs!
He suffered days and nights of pain. After I had settled him for the night, thinking he would drop off to sleep, I would find him climbing out of bed to sit in an armchair. Taking care of him was complicated by the fact that both beds were under mosquito nets. Many times in trying to reach him quickly my net and his were ripped.
He enjoyed longer periods of rest as the bones slowly began to mend. Just as everything was going smoothly, he complained one night of sharp pains in his chest. That, combined with a temperature, made me fairly certain he had developed pleurisy. The doctor confirmed my fear in the morning.
In the whole of Bettiah there was no antiphlogistin, not even at the little hospital. To say I should apply hot plasters was all very well, but I doubted that I could keep preparing these day and night, applying them on a patient who never did anything he was told. I had a sudden brain wave and sent a message to the horse doctor. He did not have exactly the medicine I asked for, but something similar. Pietro was sworn to secrecy. Under no circumstance was he to tell the Sahib that something they used on horses was being applied to his chest. To Peter that would have been the final insult.
For weeks Peter lived with his shoulder and arm bandaged so firmly he could use only his fingers. His ribs were stiff in plaster, and for days his chest lay under a layer of horse medicine.
I had tactlessly offered to shave him. Later on, when his temperature went down, I suggested a visit from the village barber. Once the bristles were off, Peter became more cheerful. When a man loses several days’ growth of beard, he seems to experience the same reaction as a woman with a new hat. But a shave certainly is less expensive.
When it was safe for Peter to get up, it was difficult to keep him occupied. He had never remained completely in bed, though I did not give him away to the doctor. Friends came to see him in pairs, making a four for bridge with us, to relieve the monotony, but it was apparent nothing would keep him anchored for long.
Seven weeks after the accident he insisted on going back to work. His shoulder was very stiff and remained so for a long time but after he promised to take things easy, he was allowed to go back to Bagaha. Temi Bahadur was at our stables, housed alone. He was under sentence. The general manager of our estate was arranging to get rid of him, in spite of Peter’s protests. On the evening of our return I was startled to see Temi Bahadur in the long file of animals coming down the drive at the time the elephants usually came to get their sweetmeats.
When we first came to the forests, we instituted the custom of having the elephants brought to the main lawn after tea, whenever we were in residence. Big candies specially prepared for them would be ready. These candies consisted of broken-up brown flour chappatis rolled and made into balls with cane sugar molasses. Each candy ball weighed about a pound. The elephants would hold out their trunks, daintily pick up the sweet with the tip, fling open their pink cavernous mouths and pitch in the candy. Then they swayed and sucked and sucked and swayed, flapping their ears lazily to keep the flies off. Drooling with delight they let the molasses dribble from their pointed lower lips and hang in syrupy threads. Each elephant ate about six candy balls.
That day, when I saw Temi in the line of elephants, I asked if he should not be sent back. Peter took one look, then told Mohammed to line up all the elephants as usual. Temi stood with the others. To each in turn Peter gave the candy out of a big basket. Peter could only use his one good arm, so a mahout walked beside him with the sweets. Temi received his share with the rest. Peter stood by him while he ate, patted his trunk and spoke to him kindly.
When the baskets were empty the elephants turned to leave. With trunks swinging, and ears flapping backwards and forwards like enormous fans, the long grey line disappeared in single file down the drive.
Peter slowly recovered the use of his shoulder, though it remained stiff for a long time. Soon he was at the wheel of the car again, and our driver was relegated once more to the unexciting task of keeping it clean.
During the hot weather we went to stay a short time with the Thompsons at Chanpatia. Their house showed no signs of its immersion. We had last seen Mrs. Thompson perched on a table above the flood water. Now she was plunging in a swimming pool they had made from a molasses vat. The pool was floodlit at night and a swim about eight o’clock was pleasant. During our visit Peter used the pool with the rest of us and this small achievement improved his spirits.
As Peter’s vitality increased, I seemed to flag. Any physical effort tired me. The cool nights of October usually gave me new vigour, but that year I was unable to respond. I should have taken warning. Early in October we went to Bettiah for a couple of days to stay with the general manager. Tennis was too much effort and I remained an onlooker. The morning after our return to Bagaha I was too weak to get out of bed.
We were both nonplussed. We realized I required medical attention, but much as we admired the old lady doctor, in Bettiah, after our experience with Peter’s arm we decided to look elsewhere. An Indian civil surgeon was on tour not far away, and we sent for him. He was a tall, grey-haired man, with the most nervous manner I have ever seen in any doctor. He gave us no information, and made no suggestion other than that I should be sent to hospital in Calcutta. This meant a day and a night in the train, and heavy hospital bills at the other end. I still could not accept the fact that I was seriously ill.
A friend told us of a Scottish doctor at a mission hospital on the Nepal border. Dr. Duncan was a brilliant man, had been a gold medallist in medicine at Edinburgh University, and did sometimes go out on a case. Although we had met him, we had no idea he ever left his hospital.
Peter sent him a letter by special messenger. Dr. Duncan not only came but he brought with him one of the nurses from his hospital for Indians. From the first moment I instinctively felt confidence in him. He could not stay, but left the nurse with me for nearly a week until a Minto nurse could come from Calcutta. Minto nurses sign a contract for three years, and are on call for private cases anywhere in India. Between cases they live in their own clubs which are run like comfortable hotels.
For the next few months I led the life of an invalid while my nurse, who answered to the unusual Christian name of Mardi, cared for me under the doctor’s supervision.
I had a severe intestinal condition, and was reduced to such a state of anaemia that when Mardi first arrived she had her hands full. During her first days with us, I almost never saw her without a glass of milk in her hand. Milk was part of my diet, and it must have weighed on my mind. Sometimes at night, instead of counting sheep going through a gate, I found myself counting large herds of buffaloes.
Dr. Duncan advised a spell of hospital in Calcutta or in England. He preferred England where, in addition to other advantages, I would be in a temperate climate. My protests had no effect. Peter and the doctor were in league against me. The latter now bent all his efforts towards getting me strong enough for the trip.
Dr. Duncan was one of the most selfless persons I ever met. Each time he came to see me he had to make a journey of fifty-six miles, partly by train and partly by road. The journey took a full working day and meant that on each visit his hospital for the villagers was without a doctor.
Mardi aided Dr. Duncan’s efforts, and to the end she was an efficient nurse. She was a fat girl, and when she arrived was bright and cheerful. She was Australian, and had left city life in a busy Melbourne hospital, because a friend of hers, who was also a nurse, had told her the usual stories about the delights of the East. This was her first assignment to the mofussil. There were no tiger or leopard cubs to scare her in our garden, but she had a feeling of being very far away from everything to which she was accustomed. Until the day she left, she referred to the bamboos in our compound as the ‘Bush.’
All my previous activities were now brought to a halt. Up to now I had enjoyed an almost aggressive vitality. In the touring season I had walked for miles. Six miles was a stroll, and twenty miles a pleasant day. During the monsoon, when everyone else was lying down under a fan, I worked in the garden in the sun. Now it was a constant worry to receive the usual bulletins from my staff and to be helpless to take action. I had to accept the situation because there was no alternative, and a basic contribution I could make was to be cheerful about it.
That year I had started beekeeping. My three hives were all going well. Now there was no one with sufficient knowledge to look after the bees because I had not yet trained anyone. One night the moths that are a danger to bees got in the hives and laid their eggs. My bees died.
One day Bella the greyhound came to pay me a visit in my upstairs bedroom. She had a paralytic seizure in the hind legs while she was standing beside my bed.
The malis sent a message to say that white ants had attacked some of the rosebushes.
All I could do when these messages came was to issue instructions, not knowing whether they would be carried out.
Pietro was my great stand-by. He took over the household as coolly as any major-domo. I found fresh eggs on my plate at meals, so I judged the hens were still alive.
The days must have been very long for Mardi. She did not know how to fill her spare time. By now we had plenty of books, but I doubt if she had read any since she left school. Slowly the life began to affect her. I noted the signs and frequently sent her in the car to spend half the day with some of our friends who lived within motoring distance. There were not many of them.
At times Mardi worked herself up to something approaching hysteria. Once or twice I felt like giving her a sedative. I had visions that at any moment I might be nursing my nurse. The final touch was when she thought she had fallen in love with Peter. Peter had a way with him, as who should know better than I. All the girls made the mistake of taking him too literally. He meant what he said while he said it. The girls thought he meant what he said after he had said it. Fortunately by this time I was almost ready to leave, and Mardi went back to Calcutta, where doubtless in a whirl of dances and movies she quickly forgot the ‘Bush’ life.
The doctor had achieved his objective. One morning I was taken downstairs in a carrying chair, put into the car, driven to the river where a flat ferry with the car on it took me to the other side, from there into a train for eighteen hundred miles, and from thence on a ship bound for England.
Pietro went with me as far as Bombay. On that train journey I realized a lifelong dream. I stopped the express by pulling the communication cord. At one of the stations, Pietro had walked across to the restaurant to bring me supper on a tray. They delayed so long in serving him that the train started before he had come back. There was nothing for it but to pull the communication cord.
No one was more surprised than I when the signal was answered and the express drew to a standstill. When the guard came to my window, I lay back and tried to look casual. Inwardly I bubbled with a childish thrill. Pietro and the supper were both recovered.
When I arrived in London, I entered a hospital. Expert medical care helped me to turn the corner, and to disappoint all gloomy forecasts. After a time the hospital saw the last of me; but complete recovery was a slow process, for to be of use in the tropics I must be not convalescent but fighting fit. I was already a different person, but the doctors had not yet consented to my return to India because they feared a relapse.
While waiting, I rented a small flat in London. Rene found it a pleasant arrangement to have me so long in England. During her school holidays she now had a home where she could unpack, and where she could bring her friends.
When the war broke out I was still in England. Peter and I had discussed the possibility of war so often that I knew what his choice would be. I knew, too, that it would not be enough for him to wear a uniform and sit at an office desk. That was not his nature.
He cabled to say he was leaving for England immediately. As soon as he arrived at the flat, I knew from his familiar pacing, up and down, backwards and forwards, that he would not rest until he was in the affair up to the hilt. He chose the Air Force, as might have been expected, and volunteered for night fighting.
The forest days were over, for they were to be closed by the Book of Life.
Peter was one of the First of the Few.
- Mataya-avatar—a fish.
- Varaha-avatar—a pig.
- Kurma-avatar—a tortoise.
- Narsimha-avatar—fierce creature, half man half beast.
- Vamana-avatar—a Brahmin dwarf, named Vamana.
- Parasurama-avatar—in the form of an avatar of that name.
- Rama-avatar—famous hero called Rama.
- Form of Bala-Rama.
- Bouddha-avatar—the form of Buddha.
- Kalki-avatar—a horse (this has not yet taken place).
One should remember that this passage was written before the ending of British rule in India. ↩