Our education was one of my father’s major considerations; he wanted to tackle it in a serious and modern way. None of the girls in the Bikaner family had gone to formal schools before. It seemed that we were to be the pioneers. It was not considered essential for girls from our kind of family background to be sent to school; home schooling was the preferred method. It was my father’s decision that his daughters should first be tutored at home, and then be sent to a good school. Our early education in Bikaner was entrusted to a lady teacher, who hailed from South India. She made learning fun for us, and I remember once, in order to show us what a South Indian village looked like, she took the trouble of ordering our carpenter to make a large tray, and got some soft sand from the desert and made a little village scene complete with a hill, houses made with paper and beautifully painted with a temple at the hill crest. It was a major attraction for us and even to this day, I can recall her dexterity in accomplishing this task.
Our next tutor was Ram Singh Tanwar, a local Rajput Thakur, who at one time, also taught my father and his siblings. With a baldhead ringed with greying hair and an impressive white moustache, Ram Singh was very well-educated and an excellent teacher. He took our education seriously and procured all sorts of reference books from the palace library. A beautifully- bound set of the junior encyclopaedia, lavishly illustrated, although dated, going back to the time of great grandfather, was still a source of great pleasure and knowledge. Ram Singh accompanied the entourage as we moved from Bikaner to Delhi and then to Bombay. He was a stickler for time and discipline and was always punctual with lesson timings. He had a twinkle in his eye and a great sense of humour.
Like a good teacher he was capable of imparting knowledge, and at the same time lightening things up a bit and making them fun. Our studies were well regulated and besides, a regular literary course also included a thorough grounding in the history of our ancestors. Ram Singh used to read chapters of Rudyard Kipling’s‘Jungle Book’ and other stories from grandfather’s library books. The education and training imparted to us by our tutors at home had indeed been useful to us.
During the formative years of my life, the greatest influence was that of Mrs. Marie Edwards, our governess. Mrs. Edwards or Eddie, as she was more popularly known, had played a motherly role in my life and shaped my character and personality considerably, and it was not just me – she was also a hugely positive influence on both my sister Madhulika and our companion Rita Kumari. She taught us wonderful games, cultivated the habit of reading, and inculcated in us the ability to think for ourselves. Above all, her positive thinking, mingled with her love and affection towards us, helped in infusing a new life, full of fresh courage. I indeed, owe a great debt of gratitude to Mrs. Edwards.
It was entirely thanks to Eddie who ignited my passion for reading. She used to read to us from various books by the extremely popular children’s author Enid Blyton at lunch and dinner time. The author Michael Ondaatje quite accurately said of Enid Blyton’s books:
‘Looking back, they were all about eating, an adventure takes place and then in the middle of it all they stop for tea and scones. The amount of food the English eat has always surprised the East.’
I must concur with him: I was extremely curious about the rock buns and other comestibles that the children featured in her books were tucking away throughout the day, more often than not, culminating in midnight feasts in their schools. All of this of course was completely alien to us but left me extremely curious about such activities.
I think Eddie came to us when I was about eleven years old; she was one of the greatest influences in my life apart from my father. She came from an old English family which had settled in the princely state of Mysore for many years. After the death of her father the family moved to Calcutta where they remained till they eventually packed up and left permanently for England. Eddie used to tell us that she was married to an Englishman, Mr. Edwards, and even had a daughter, and if I recall correctly, she told me that the little child had some problem with her ears, but unfortunately the child died and she lost her husband soon after.
Finding herself a widow, she sought employment as a Governess and eventually became the Governess to Princess Shamim of Palanpur, a state in Gujarat. The Nawab of Palanpur Taley Mohammed Khan was a close family friend of my grandfather and they often visited each other on shooting trips and other ceremonial occasions. His second wife, the Begum, was an Australian lady and Shamim was their only daughter. When Shamim grew too old for a governess, we were all indeed fortunate for having Eddie come to us at Bikaner and remain there for quite some time. Eddie used to tell us that often the Nawab of Palanpur and his family used to stay at Bikaner House in Bombay on their way to the Continent for the summer season, and she said that the Nawab gave strict instructions to his staff that under no circumstances was beef of any kind to be brought into Bikaner House, since it was a Hindu household. It was indeed very sensitive of Nawab Saab to respect the faith of his host.
Eddie had an unending supply of interesting stories about her family and her childhood days in Mysore and of course her charge, Princess Shamim. They were obviously gracious times—with strictly observed seasons, it seemed that no sooner had summer arrived in North India, the princes and their families departed for England or the South of France and only returned after the monsoons had calmed the heat. When the Palanpur family sailed for the south of France they were accompanied by Mr. D’Mello, who was private secretary to the Nawab, and the Begum’s personal maid, Sophie. Eddie looked after Shamim and they travelled by ship to Europe and it took many weeks for them to get there. En route they had lots of fun and participated in fancy dress parties, which to us sounded like a fairy tale. Many years later, I met Shamim at an art gallery in Bombay and we spoke fondly of Eddie. I found Shamim to be a shy and reserved person. The life of Shamim seems to have led as a child was very much like that of Angela Brazil’s stories or Enid Blyton’s ‘Mallory Towers’ series and what went on in these English schools.
Eddie was a great letter writer, and kept a number of pads of fine airmail paper and envelopes as they cost less to post. I remember she used to write with an English ballpoint pen called ‘Bic.’ Whenever my parents went abroad, Eddie’s only request was a supply of Bic pens. By virtue of her penmanship, I too learnt to write proper letters to my father as well as to friends and family in general. My father too was a great letter writer and used to send us lovely post cards whenever they were travelling abroad. We would receive long chatty letters from him. I have fortunately preserved almost all of the correspondence from my father and today it forms a very good record, not only from a reference and historic point of view but also to read the lovely letters he wrote to me over my lifetime in his own handwriting.
In later years when I was living in London, we would write letters to each other every week, and many to friends and family also in Bikaner and other places. My father had a very nice style of writing, and I felt that mine was no less. However, my father disagreed and would tell me that Malti Chopra, the daughter of a family friend, has impeccable handwriting and I should learn from her. I would be extremely peeved, as I felt I was doing quite well without Malti Chopra, and other people praised my handwriting too, so I was not about to change. My father used to say, ‘Biggy, no one in Bikaner can read your writing except for me, so when you write letters to others they bring them to me so I can read them.’
Of course I did not believe any of that for one moment. That said, it is sad that today no one writes letters any more, unless it is business correspondence. Personal letters and cards on birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas have almost vanished altogether, with electronic mail and other current devices, what record will possibly remain in the future? Post offices and stationery shops are closing down everywhere. Recently in India, the old standby – the telegram – that brought good and bad news in equal measure to millions was done away with. I suppose this is progress but I still maintain that there is nothing nicer than either
sending or receiving a handwritten letter written on good quality paper; at least it is tangible and something that one can keep and cherish in years to come.
Many years later Eddie’s nephew Ralph, his wife Phoebe and son Ian, who was deeply influenced by Elvis Presley and adopted his distinctive hairstyle we thought he was very handsome and dashing, decided to return to England and Eddie insisted on leaving with them. My parents tried their best to persuade her to stay but she was adamant and to our great sadness she left and her family relocated to Glasgow. What happened with Eddie was in hindsight very similar to the story of Nanny Dent, both were much loved nannies, respected in the household they worked in and adored by their many charges, both made a decision to retire far from the counties in which they had lived and worked for decades. Strangely they both also finally settled in Scotland a climate very different from the tropical climes of India and eventually I think the change did not suit them and both died early. Perhaps had they remained with the Bikaner family, the level of care and comfort they would have received may have prolonged their life. She was a great correspondent and wrote us all many letters on her favourite fine airmail paper giving us all her news. I only saw her again once when we were in London in 1968 on the way back from Spain after the World Shooting Championships. We were staying at the Westbury Hotel at the time and my parents called Eddie over to come and spend a week or so with me and keep me company-we had the best time. She made our lives so much richer. She was fair but firm and exactly what we needed at the time.
My sister Madhulika, on the other hand, had an interesting collection of nannies that came and went periodically. My sister suffered from asthma as a child and it is to the credit of one Mrs. Sodhi that she was cured. Our physician then was a Dr. Kanwar and he had some revolutionary ideas about curing asthma, he believed and it now seems quite correctly, that if the lungs are strengthened then the symptoms of asthma will ease. He devised a complicated set of bottles and tubes; the purpose was for my sister to blow the water out of one bottle and through a series of tubes into another. Mrs. Sodhi took this up as her project in life and ensured that she practised her exercises every single day, and it was to her credit that slowly but surely my sister overcame her asthma and was fully cured. Mrs. Sodhi had a prodigious appetite and to the astonishment of our staff, was capable of eating several dozen chappatis or rotis at each meal, a record that remains unbroken till today.
Finally, it was time to join a proper school and my parents decided to send us to a private school run by Mrs. Law, an Englishwoman married to an Indian general. They had a spacious bungalow just off Lodi Road, and our classes were held under trees most of the time as there was not enough space indoors. Many of the children who attended the school were from the Embassies and High Commissions and this gave us a great opportunity to make friends of different nationalities from different countries and learn about their lives and culture. I recall very clearly an American boy called Edward; a class mate who was extremely short- sighted and wore glasses with thick lenses. Elizabeth Taylor, the famous Hollywood actress was married to Eddie Fisher at the time and we teased him mercilessly as only small children can by shouting, ‘Eddie Fisher where is Liz?’ at the top of our voices. Instead of being annoyed as was our intention he remained totally calm at all times. Obviously he had a great compassion for animals and birds since one day he rescued an injured crow in the school garden which was very commendable of him but unfortunately we thought otherwise and ran away as far as possible from him and the ailing crow.
Analjit Singh, the youngest son of Bhai Mohan Singh of the Ranbaxy family, was also in my class for a few years. He was called by the nickname of ‘Mannu’ and he was a sweet and extremely well- dressed little boy. He came to school wearing immaculate white shirt and shorts and his hair tied up in a little top knot, and none of us could possibly imagine that in the future he was to become a hugely astute and successful business magnate. We lost touch as we all went on to different schools and many years later when we met by chance at the dinner party given by Karan Thapar, journalist and television personality, he recognised me when I was introduced to him as someone from Bikaner. ‘Don’t you remember me? I am Mannu!’ he said and so it was under the grey beard that I could still see the young boy I knew at school so many years ago.
I had always wanted a dog of my own. Earlier attempts at smuggling in a puppy were duly foiled by my parents as neither of them was too keen on dogs. In Delhi, during my school days I was a regular visitor at the Tehri Garhwal House on Bhagwan Das Road. In years to come, both the elder princesses Anupama Kumari and Nirupama Kumari were to become close family members of my family by marriage when they went on to marry my maternal uncle Maharaj Kumar Jai Singh of Dungarpur and my cousin Maharaj Kumar Mahendra Singh of Udaipur, respectively. But all of that was in the future, even though Appa Mamisa was much older than me, we became good friends. I liked her particularly, as she was very fond of animals and had both in their house as well as in their huge garden a veritable menagerie of animals of all descriptions. She once gave me a little puppy which I took back home without asking my parents. This created a huge furore and the poor little puppy was duly sent back to Tehri Garhwal House. However, a while later she gave me a little baby squirrel, which was the sweetest little creature one could possibly imagine. As far as I was concerned it was love at first sight, and I was allowed to keep her.
My parents felt that a squirrel was perhaps more acceptable than a puppy. At any rate they did not raise any objections and the squirrel became part of the household, and it would perch on my shoulder whenever I was at home. I loved it dearly. However, I was not allowed to take it with me to Bombay and so I had to leave it with the housekeeper Meghji in Delhi. On my return I found that though it had been well taken care of, it had grown considerably and had become quite feral, and one day when I tried to pick it up it proceeded to bite my finger. With the squirrel grimly dangling from my finger I ran to my father who came to my rescue, and gave the squirrel a tight tap on its head and it promptly let go and fell to the floor and scurried away through the open window, never to return. That was my first and last attempt at keeping a wild animal as a pet.
Serendipity is a wonderful word, which the Oxford English Dictionary describes as ‘the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way’. That is the precise route whereby I came across my first pet dog and perhaps the greatest love of my life. Before my delightful little toy poodle Winchester entered my life, I had had in the past like most children, an entire gamut of pets of one kind or another ranging from fluffy bunny rabbits, the odd budgerigar, dozens of fish and even a little lamb that had been presented to me by Thakur Kishen Singh who was a senior ranking officer in my father’s staff. The lamb would stay in Karni Bhawan, one of our family properties not too far from the palace and I would visit it every day. Once the lamb grew up Kishen Singhji arranged for it to be taken back to the farm and had a replacement sent. Of course, dim witted that I must have been, never caught on to the fact that this miracle lamb never seemed to grow to adulthood, or that it must miss its mother.
Eventually, I wanted a dog of my own and it so happened that every now and then while we were summering in Bombay we would play board games with some of my mother’s Kutch cousins, who, though much older than us in age, were extremely affectionate, kind and patient with us. We loved playing the board game ‘Risk’ for hours on end with them, while they in good humour indulged us. I confided to my mother’s cousin Hanu Uncle that I longed for a dog of my own. ‘Get a little poodle,’ he said. My Kutch granny already had an apricot poodle among other dogs. I am not certain if I consulted my parents about this or made an arbitrary decision. However, the next thing I knew was that Kutch granny and I were sitting in the living room of the dog breeder, a delightful Parsi lady, and she brought in an armful of fluffy little white puppies – I loved them all but could of course, only have one.
I asked her to set them on the ground and waited to se
e which one, if any, approached me directly. It is said that the puppy chooses its future owner and not the other way round. One soon did in a confident manner and this was the puppy I wanted, so I bought him and quite naturally, coming from a family that hunted and shot, I christened him ‘Winchester’ after the gun makers. It so happened that at the time my father was also shooting their model 50 Shotguns and so it made perfect sense. He was popularly known as ‘Winchie’ and was the great love of my life. Even my father who was not particularly keen on pets was fond of Winchie, perhaps because he was named after a gunsmith! I refused to have his hair clipped in the typical poodle cut and instead let it grow normally and he looked like a fluffy little lamb, more like a Bichon rather than a poodle.
Winchie was a highly intelligent dog and quickly adjusted to the family and the peripatetic lifestyle that we led. Winchie was fortunate, as in those days he was allowed to travel on the plane and the train with me which I believe, is no longer possible. My sister Madhulika told me of the time she was travelling with her Red Setter on a train when one of her co passengers took an instant dislike to him and ordered them both off the train. Finally, and with great difficulty (since they were not too far from Bombay) she found someone who was willing to give them a lift to her apartment—a harrowing story indeed.
While travelling during school breaks, Winchie would accompany me, and if we were travelling by train and it was time for him to be walked, Hari Singh, an employee in our household, would take him out on the platform so that he could stretch his legs and attend the call of nature. The people at the station were most intrigued and wanted to know if he was a little lamb; they could not believe that he was a dog as they had never seen one like him.
Around 1974, when my father sold Bikaner House in Bombay and was waiting for the apartment that he had bought to be completed, they decided to stay for the summer at the famous Taj Hotel in Bombay. My father asked Mr. Ajit Kerkar for special permission to keep Winchie at the hotel with them. Mr. Kerkar very kindly permitted this and so, for the rest of the summer, my pampered pooch resided in a suite at the Taj. My sister recalls several incidents when little mishaps took place, even though he was very well-trained. One day when my sister was waiting in the foyer for the lift to take Winchie out for his walk, he decided to pee on the floor. Deeply embarrassed, she promptly picked up a handful of the sand kept in the ashtrays on each floor and poured it on to the offending puddle. That done, she quickly disappeared with the offender! Those were the days before the advent of close circuit television (CCTV), thus the culprits escaped.
Palace of Clouds Page 19