Out of India

by Michael Foss

  But released from the order of our conventional timetable we were free to improvise. Going home from the club we would follow the bhishti, laying the dust with the water from his goatskin as he edged slowly away from pseudo-Europe towards the ragged fringes of the cantonment bazaar. Greedily, we accepted nameless morsels from grubby stalls and keyhole shops where kids splashed water on the straw tatty, to make a cooling evaporation in the smouldering air. Ragamuffins kicked a ball of paper or cotton scraps into our path, challenging us to an impromptu game, jeering at our ineptitude (as yet we knew very little about team games).

  ‘You want jiggy-jig?’ they laughed at our innocence, pointing to shanties at the back of the bazaar. ‘Very clean sister, she like jiggy-jiggy. You try?’ Laughing, they swept on, hacking the rag-ball wildly over the khud-side. We blushed, not with shame but out of ignorance. We felt the presence of a mystery, but what it was we did not know.

  *

  One afternoon, in the leafy part of town inhabited by Europeans, I bent down to pat a dog. It was a handsome black labrador with a thick coat, lying restive but soulful in a patch of hot sunlight. As I ruffled the neck-fur and tugged at a drooping ear, the dog lurched up on its haunches and snapped at me, catching me on the cheekbone and breaking the skin.

  As I staggered back I heard a lean major cry, ‘Good grief, the boy’s been bitten. Grab that hound.’

  The dog, now completely quiet, was collared and led away, its tail curled between its hindlegs. Anxious faces peered at my cut, which was only superficial, and I was taken to the military dispensary. While an orderly was dabbing my face and cutting some sticking-plaster, I heard the word ‘rabies’ murmured.

  To hear that word. It implied a world of horrors. Immediately, the dog and I were closely watched, as if we shared some guilt. Was the dog foaming from the mouth? Did I show signs of hydrophobia? Should the dog be killed and its brain sent for analysis? That would take time, the laboratory was far away. Should I begin the treatment anyway, the agonizing course of injections into the wall of the stomach? At night, I snivelled into my pillow, imagining a salivating jaw ripping into my flesh.

  But the dog was normal, showing no signs of canine dementia. It had only been panting in the sun, suffering as we all did in the heat. My attention had made it jumpy and irritated. The fearful word ‘rabies’ ceased to be a crushing anxiety and retreated into some receptacle of warnings in the back of my brain. I began to see India in a new colour, a place with dangerous surprises hidden amid the privileges and the fun.

  *

  Sometimes Father took us to watch his Indian troops on some regimental occasion. In the declining day, when the worst of the heat had passed off, we sat on canvas chairs by the touchline of the sportsfield. A fine dust, pulverized by flying feet, blew off the bare surface. On a table by the halfway line, a big silver cup stood on a cloth with the regimental crest. An inter-company hockey match was under way and my father, trying not to look bored in the seat of honour reserved for the commanding officer, applauded carefully when others did the same. He hated sports. Hockey in particular was a penance to him, because when forced to play it he had been as maladroit as a lamed camel, and he was left-handed to boot.

  But the Indian soldiers loved the game. They lashed into the ball with passion, protected only by puttees wound around the ankles. The ball skimmed the hard ground like a musket-shot, guided by the most delicate stick-work and sleight-of-hand, but pursued by violent oaths and furious gestures. I saw my father wince as a rush of Urdu hit his ears. The least of these expressions, I learnt later, were ‘filthy pig’ (to a Muslim) and ‘your mother’s a whore’ (of more general application). But there was effervescence in their play, in the way they changed in a flash from apparent malevolence to joyful comradeship, from a brutal clash of sticks and whacks on the legs to radiant smiles and an arm across the shoulder. Sport, to us, seemed to mean earnest exercise, and modest sobriety in victory or defeat. To these sepoys it was fantasy, warfare, boasting, condescension, triumph, mercy. I began to perceive then, however unclearly, how these men might fight for real, with what raw fury in adversity, with what tears of compassion in relief. At the end of the game I saw the shy flush of approval on the faces of both winners and losers, the sigh for things done well as they lined up for the presentation of the cup. They were still grinning as they suffered my father’s congratulations in halting Urdu.

  We children had time on our hands, and an instinct to use it in low company. To help keep us out of mischief Father arranged for me and my brother to have riding lessons. A couple of times a week we went down to the lines of an Indian cavalry regiment (I forget which one). Out of the sun we passed into the high gloom of the stables, temporarily blinded by a deep wash of shadow, hearing the big animals shifting and blowing, their hoofs clunking hollowly on the wooden stalls. I smelt damp straw and urine, and the sweet odour from the brushed and curry-combed bodies.

  Beyond the stables, by the side of the schooling ring, the risaldar-major awaited us. This native soldier, the senior Indian NCO in the regiment, was traditionally a figure of lofty importance, even grandeur. The essential intermediary between British officers and native troops, he was the pivot on which the well-being of the regiment rested. If the balance was wrong then the life of the regiment was likely to be cockeyed and tipped over into resentments. And good risaldar-majors knew their place and worth. Usually, they measured up to their own estimation – ramrod figures with handsome cavalry moustaches and the stamp of command on weathered faces. The shine on their riding boots had the moonlit sheen of a deep still lake; the cummerbund about the long tunic was placed to an inch; the ends of the tight-wound turban, with the regimental colours aslant, waved bravely below the high peak of the pugree.

  The risaldar-major came forward a little stiffly on legs getting old and too used to riding. His salute to my father had the dignity of respect without a hint of subservience. Formally, he turned to us children and saluted again, this time with a smile. ‘Ah, young sahibs,’ he said, ‘come. Now, we ride.’

  I did not like it. I was frightened. The beast was too large, the glossy brown back a continent too wide for my puny legs to encompass. Unable to get a grip I felt the bruising bump of the hard cavalry saddle. The risaldar-major stood by the ring with a long whip in his hand. With the tip of the whip he stirred the horse, giving it more a caress or a tickle than a stroke. ‘Huh,’ he whispered, ‘huh,’ or for more urgency a rapid ‘hah, hah, hah,’ using an equine language that the horse understood perfectly. Arching its neck it moved into a deliberate rocking-horse trot, round and round the ring, for me an interminable torture. I held the reins, but for all the control I had I might just as well have been on a fairground merry-go-round.

  ‘Good, good,’ cried my instructor who was also my tormentor, ‘back more straight, please. Bottom up down. Up and down, up and down. You see, very nice, very nice riding.’

  After an unpleasant expanse of time I was allowed off. I never did get used to it. On every occasion I fell trembling from the high horse-back into tough Indian hands.

  Afterwards, the ground once more stable under foot, our instructor used to take us to his quarters for light refreshment. Gravely, the risaldar-major ushered us under a low lintel into a small compound surrounded by a mud wall. His wife was waiting to greet us, smiling and salaaming. She was in Punjabi dress, a long tunic and light silky pantaloons nipped in at the ankles. Her hair, raven-black with a few streaks of grey, was loosely gathered at the nape of her neck, and she had a little gold stud in the side of her nose. As she moved her hands, bangles tinkled. She spoke not a word of English, but the lean of the shoulders and the spread of the arms expressed welcome and conviviality. We all settled on the cloth placed on the ground, my brother and I awkwardly, the risaldar-major and his wife with graceful ease. Between us were plates with small eats and titbits, and thick glass tumblers. We nibbled flaky pastries and small soggy balls so sweet that they made the teeth ache. We were offered weak tea without
milk, or fresh fruit juice.

  There was much gesturing towards food but not much was said, we being almost silent out of nerves and embarrassment, the soldier out of dignity, and his wife for lack of English. I looked at her covertly, as much as I dared without open rudeness. In the midst of a winning smile was a mouthful of bad teeth. But taking note of her from her neat toes to her thick luxuriant hair, sensing the warmth from the tawny brown skin, losing myself with blushes in the impenetrable deep of her dark eyes, hearing the small music of her bangles and the slithery rustle of her clothes, I thought I had never come across anything so beautiful.

  *

  The dog took up most of the space on the narrow seat. It was a muscular bull-terrier, brindle in colour, with the eerie pinkish eyes of the breed and an affection for humans. It liked to nuzzle up close, even to strangers, shoving a powerful shoulder into the back of the nearest leg, and any unoccupied lap soon found itself a pillow for a blunt head with a look of loopy devotion. At this moment, the head was in my lap and the compact body was lolling at ease along the seat, cramping me into a corner, against the shudders of the window. A thin dribble from between a set of wicked teeth was making a damp sticky patch on my shorts.

  The dog, which belonged to one of my father’s fellow officers in Ferozepore, had been pining in the heat of the plains. For this reason it was seconded into our family and was travelling with my mother, my brother and myself on the narrow-gauge railway between Kalka and Simla. We were all promised the relief of the hill station, the luxury of a Himalayan view together with warm days and cool nights at 7,000 feet.

  A visit to Simla was almost as good as a passage home. For the members of the Raj it was a refuge, a settled place for the heart amid the ravages and indignities of their responsibility in this perplexing conquered land. Simla was entirely a British invention. In 1819 the Political Agent for the Hill States took a virgin tract of mountain and put up the first dwelling, no more than a little thatched cottage. His successor, a certain Lieutenant Kennedy, built the first permanent house. Ten years later there were still only thirty houses. But by the end of the century Simla was a sizeable town of great importance, the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, the summer seat of the Governor-General, and the summer capital of the Government of India. There, if anywhere in India, the members of the Raj could feel physically and spiritually safe.

  At that altitude it was a pleasure to breathe the air. But first we had to struggle through the throng to the air. My mother, as usual, was making a meal of the complications – the dog, her children, the luggage, our destination. She was both stern and flustered, going from frown to dither in a moment. My brother had charge of the dog, straining at its lead, its claws skittering on the floor. In the native maul that enveloped the arrival of the train, even the most hardened hustler or beggar backed away from the panting bull-terrier, with its fierce rictus of a grin, its head like an inquisitive python, and its over-friendly tail whipping bare legs. Not until we were outside, with the rickshaws arranged, did my mother relax the stiff set of her head and try a few sniffs of the mountain air. A piece of her burden, some of the eternal ambiguity of India, slipped away. Even the over-excited dog, sprinkling spittle over our shoes, received a consoling pat.

  I know now that she was trying to put behind her the recent shocks of her marriage, the loss of her baby, and my father’s too enthusiastic militarism. Where better to re-compose herself than in Simla? She could begin immediately. How pleasant it was to bowl along streets that had some clear, assignable purpose, leading to shops and hotels and banks and government offices. Too much of Indian life had been a muddle to her, indescribable routes that merged into a labyrinthine maze without exits. A little mysterious exoticism did not go amiss in the East (but like spices in the native curries it could be over-done for the English palate), but at bottom she wanted clearer signposts stamped with messages from her race and place and society.

  Now, here we were in the Mall, heading in the direction of Viceregal Lodge, going to an hotel that lay under Observatory Hill. What could be more reassuring than that? Behind, to the east, the tall green peak of Jakko rose up at the end of the spur, sweet-smelling with a pervasive scent of deodar cedars and pine resin. Westward from Jakko, the town rambled half a dozen lazy miles along the ridge to the bald lump of Prospect Hill. Slipping down from the ridge, on the southern slope towards the plains, bungalows, buildings and low government blocks peeped from the trees, lying like contented beasts in the greenery. Rhododendron and hydrangea cascaded out of the woods, waiting to threaten the paths with a seasonal flood of blossom.

  If you half-closed your eyes, and dreamed a little, discounting the bazaar and the evidence of humanity on the streets, you could imagine yourself in some pleasant Alpine town temporarily occupied by a transient oriental circus.

  *

  We had other business in Simla. My brother and I were to be put to school, to receive a proper, British education, the sort that the little cantonment school in Ferozepore could not provide. We would go to Bishop Cotton School, an institution for European boys founded in 1866 in thanks giving for the deliverance of the British from the horrors of the Mutiny in 1857. It was accepted that this school taught the real virtues appropriate to imperial responsibility.

  For some reason we did not go there at once. We had an initial period, perhaps a time of trial or cramming for a level that might be beyond us, of private tuition with Miss Smythe. She seemed rather ancient to me, a relic of a departed gentility. But despite her age this kindly lady was almost too lively for her maiden dignity, in tweed skirts and cashmere knitwear, with an optimistic cast on life.

  Her view of what constituted adequate knowledge in the young was rather quirky.

  ‘Now, boys,’ she said, sizing us up on the first visit, ‘what do you know about Harry Lauder?’

  I knew nothing about the Scottish comedian, but it hardly mattered because she was already hurrying on, gesturing with a thin vivacious hand around the Victorian gloom of her little parlour. From then on she usually had a surprise question, a little time-bomb left to tick in the wastes of our ignorance. Did we prefer rickshaws to tongas? Had we heard of trade unions? Where and what was the Taj Mahal? What was the maiden name of King George’s queen? Did we know what a juggernaut was? What countries did we pass on our journey from England to Bombay? What was seven times nine, and nine times twelve? Would we like some kulfi? Should she show us her collection of small porcelain dolls?

  These and another thousand sprightly hares sprang up in her lively mind, flushed out by an invincible curiosity, and once she had raised an attractive quarry she chased it up hill and down dale, hardly caring where her investigations might lead. It was an approach to learning that enchanted me. I began to see the world as a vast kaleidoscope of iridescent facts that could be fitted into any number of patterns. With a mere turn of the head and a rearrangement of the eye the pattern changed. It was the cast of mind that was important.

  It amazed me that she made no invidious distinction between British and Indian. The intertwined histories shifted unpredictably between heroes and villains, who were not quite those you would expect. Her imagination was at ease in both England and India, and she did not hesitate to draw lessons for British children from the daily life of the Indian streets. I stood in her window, my head in a whirl, trying to apply her principle of inclusiveness. From that window I looked on a large natural bowl into which was stirred pell-mell the mixture of our lives. Cars and donkeys, turbans and topees, a large church and a small gurdwara, scuffed earth and tarmac, banks and go-downs, a cold-water standpipe by a runnel of raw sewage, imperial soldiers and Nepalese porters, pretty dogs on leads and pariah dogs with sores. But looking at the faces in the street, white and brown and every shade in between, I could not perceive from the buzz and the activity the essential colour of the soul.

  We did not stay long with Miss Smythe. I missed her, though I left more dizzy than enlightened, somewhere between sunlight and fog.


  *

  I had been ill with bronchitis. The cool and the damp of the hills had some disadvantages. I was confined to bed and shared my seclusion with the bull-terrier who volunteered to divide the bed with me. Growling playfully it contested my pillows and sheets, and when my mother came to read me a daily helping of Kipling (Simla and the world of Mrs Hauksbee were becoming real to me) she had to squeeze herself on the edge of the bed between sprawling paws. I grew fond of that dog.

  So we were friends, the dog and I, and when the time came, after I was recovered, to take the dog for a good walk I pleaded with my brother – who was in charge – to let the dog off the lead. A fit young dog on a lead is a sorry beast. The day was warm, calm, without a sign of trouble, with few people about, so my brother agreed. We strolled with the dog at our heels – it was well-trained, up to a point – until we approached a crossroads where a smart Indian man in European clothes stood talking to a companion. Sitting at their feet was a small spaniel. As we came up the spaniel became excited, yapping and jumping, starting towards the bull-terrier but still wagging its tail. It was only a puppy and no doubt had something inquisitive and civil in mind.

  But the bull-terrier, for all its fawning on humans, could not abide other dogs. If it thought itself challenged, it went for the other dog at once. The short hair between the shoulder-blades bristled, the ears went back, the brutal muzzle slit into a snarl. A low rumble reverberated in the deep chest, the thick muscles bunched. Without any preliminary, no testing or probing, it launched itself straight at the throat of the spaniel. The jaws closed and locked, the bulging legs braced, the fearful head twisted and turned, shaking the poor spaniel like a cornered rat. There was an appalling, dangerous contentment in the growl. The bull-terrier was set for the kill.