The Indian Equator

by Ian Strathcarron

  The review in the same Bombay Gazette two days later could have referred to any of the seventeen At Home Talks in India

  The prominent points about Mark Twain’s personal appearance are his long untidy hair, the ferocious moustache and the deep furrows falling outwards from the thin nose to the sides of his mouth which are the external and visible signs of the nasal drawl that characterizes the very thoughts of the man before he had given utterances to them. With his feet planted some little distance apart, the hands sometimes in his trousers, sometimes near his chin, his eyes are oftener than not as they would be in the presence of a group of familiar friends.

  Mark Twain used many devices to create an atmosphere of intimacy in the audience. One of them was the easy conversational style that brought about familiarity between the speaker and gathering. His reminiscences of the Mississippi and Nevada days, the narration of anecdotes, often personal and the utterly natural and spontaneous utterances broke the barrier of distance between him and the audience. At times he used anticlimactic sentences, puns and jingling words to surprise and catch the listener’s attention. But the greatest of his devices was the sudden purposeful pause that created a strange expectancy in the audience. The people receive a rude jolt when they discovered something unexpected. It was entertaining to watch the audience - the smile, the anticipatory chuckle, the unrestrained laugh of hearty enjoyment.

  The reviews throughout the tour were universally positive, partly because the Indian press were - and still are - suckers for celebrity and partly because Smythe made sure the press was squared before each performance. The routine was always the same: the Twain party would arrive in a city and the local newspaper would pop around to the hotel for an interview; they had their celebrity columns inches and Mark Twain and Smythe had their publicity for that town’s At Home. Indian newspapers were - and again still are - nothing if not verbose and it is easy to see how Twain must have spent as much time in pre-performance interviews as he did on stage. Reading them now, the interviews[4] are as formulated as the Talks: the journalists obliged with the same questions, the humorist obliged with the same answers.

  The Bombay Talks started at 5.30 p.m. - which in India means 6 p.m. (or as he would have it “The Trouble Starts at 6.00 pm”) and it would have been all over by 7.30 p.m. The Twain party liked to visit the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, which by happy coincidence is where the Strathcarron party is staying. It still is one of the great clubs in the world, delightfully old-fashioned yet with modems in each of the rooms (typically, still known as “chambers”), the rooms themselves being the size of a small apartment built in the days - the mid-nineteenth century - when space and labor were plentiful and affordable. The day starts with a knock on the door and a bearer brings in “bed-tea” and the Times of India. He throws open the blinds and the view throws onto the Arabian Sea, with the Gateway of India to its left and the Taj Mahal Hotel to its right. It remains a kind of paradise, a last pocket of resistance, more so given the chaos of Bombay that lies, unseen and unheard, behind it.

  Like a good Mark Twain footsteps hound I had offered to do a Talk there myself, this one on my book Joy Unconfined! Lord Byron’s Grand Tour Re-Toured.[5] I am nervous about the presentation as no matter how sophisticated and poly-this and poly-that the audience - and this one was as poly as they come - one is still unsure as how far an adventure so quintessential British as Byron’s Grand Tour will be understood. As it happens there were a sprinkling of Brits in the audience and their sniggers and guffaws seemed to encourage our hosts and by halfway through everyone was laughing together.

  The writer is an Honorary Member of the Royal Bombay Yacht Club and they offered Mark Twain the same privilege but made the mistake of asking him to pay for it. In his notes he wrote: “Rs 16 for a month’s honorary membership. A Club should not pay a compliment it cannot afford. It may be that some body asked for this honor for me - as to that, I don’t know. In that case they ought to change the title to of it and call Temporary Membership. I have (taken membership).”

  ***

  It wasn’t until two days after the first At Home that Mark Twain felt strong enough to take Livy and Clara for lunch with Governor and Lady Sandhurst. He had previously met Lord Sandhurst at the Garrick Club in London and of course the governor and his family had been to the first Talk and had actually invited the Twain party to lunch as soon as they arrived a week before; an invitation the bronchial cough had forced his guest to decline.

  It is a six-mile foray around Marine Drive, the crescent of the old “Bom Bahia”, the “good bay” that the Portuguese found so enchanting on first arriving in 1508. In 1534 they murdered the heathen (actually Muslim) ruler and took the main island, Mumbai, outer islands and shoreline for themselves. The Portuguese then gave Bom Bahia to the British in 1661 as part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry to King Charles II. Seven years later Charles leased it to the Honourable East India Company for £10 a year and Mumbai started to become Bombay. Riding along Marine Drive in their two-horse barouche[6] allowed Twain his first proper look at India. He later recalled:

  Bombay! A bewitching place, a bewildering place, an enchanting place - the Arabian Nights come again? It is a vast city; contains about a million inhabitants. Natives, they are, with a slight sprinkling of white people - not enough to have the slightest modifying effect upon the massed dark complexion of the public. It is winter here, yet the weather is the divine weather of June, and the foliage is the fresh and heavenly foliage of June.

  It is all color, bewitching color, enchanting color - everywhere all around - all the way around the curving great opaline bay clear to Government House, where the turbaned big native chuprassies[7] stand grouped in state at the door in their robes of fiery red, and do most properly and stunningly finish up the splendid show and make it theatrically complete. I wish I were a chuprassy.

  Then as now Governor’s House - since renamed Raj Bhavan - occupies the promontory at the end of Malabar Point, the tip of the bay’s crescent, with fabulous views back across the bay and to the city waterfront, and is thus the prime piece of land in Bombay. It was also Twain’s first proper look at the splendors of the Raj:

  Government House, on Malabar Point, with the wide sea-view from the windows and broad balconies; abode of His Excellency the Governor of the Bombay Presidency - a residence which is European in everything but the native guards and servants, and is a home and a palace of state harmoniously combined.

  That was England, the English power, the English civilization, the modern civilization - with the quiet elegancies and quiet colors and quiet tastes and quiet dignity that are the outcome of the modern cultivation.

  One has to agree: Raj Bhavan is still as magnificent as when it was called Governor’s House and is still quietly elegant, quietly colored, quietly tasteful and quietly dignified - also the outcome of modern cultivation. Our own lunch is with the current governor, the eighty-year-old Shri Kateekal Sankaranarayanan, one of India’s most distinguished politicians who apart from his myriad achievements in a lifetime devoted to the public good has also just won the prize for having the most “a’s” in his name. In attendance is Shrikant Deshpande, Secretary to the Governor, and Anuradha Aru, Secretary to the Secretary to the Governor, so a bit of a full house, governor-wise.

  If the charm of the governors and their palace remains the same, the governor’s role has changed completely. Whereas Shri Sankaranarayanan’s role in largely ceremonial, to be the local representative of the president (not unlike a governor-general in some Commonwealth countries), Lord Sandhurst was a powerful man indeed. He was only one executive level below the viceroy, and head of the Bombay Presidency, a vast area of twenty-five million people comprising what are now the states of Gujarat, the western two-thirds of Maharashtra, northwestern Karnataka as well as what are Pakistan’s Sindh province and Aden in Yemen. As elsewhere in India only about two-thirds of the country was under direct Raj rule, the
remainder being a hotchpotch of “princely states”; in the case of the Bombay Presidency no fewer than three hundred and fifty three of them.

  The princely states have been unkindly described as the rump of the Moghul Empire, which ran India for nearly three hundred years before the East India Company and then the Raj. Certainly many of the rulers were Muslim but of the kinder, pre-Wahhabi persuasion.[8] The Pax Britannica arrangement was, by and large, a win-win: the princes kept their thrones and their states and were largely autonomous but they signed away to the British responsibility for external relations and defense - for which delegation they had to pay a sizable tax. In each princely state was a British Resident, a political agent who ensured that “the British voice was heard” “for the greater good of all”, an appointment of some influence. The first rule of the British Resident was not to interfere and except in cases of gross misgovernance the rule was followed. The ceaseless civil wars were brought to an end and prosperity, at least for the rulers, reigned with the rulers.

  And prosperous they were. In terms of wealth the modern equivalent may be the Gulf Arab royal families but the Indian princes had a far longer-standing sense of moral and social responsibility; the Arabs were, after all, desert nomads until - relatively - just the other day. Being Indian they also had their own inter-prince caste system to add to the British-ordained “Warrant of Preference” being determined by the number of gun salutes their arrival or departure attracted. In this way the highest ranking princes[9] like His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad and His Highness the Maharaja of Mysore claimed the full 21 salutes,[10] His Highness the Nawab[11] of Bhopol had to keep his head down for just the 19, while His Highness the Maha Rao Raja of Bundi had to get by with 17. In descending order His Highness the Maha Rawal of Banswara heard just 15, His Highness the Deewan of Palanpur had to live with only 13, whereas His Highness the Thakar of Gondal could claim 11, and poor old His Highness the Saraswati Desai of Sawantwadi and His Highness the Thakore Sahib of Rajkot just had the 9 apiece.[12]

  The British and the princes shared a love of protocol and hierarchy. The British published a so-called Blue Book which laid down an Order of Preference; no hostess or aide-de-camp could be without one for it determined who sat next to whom at dinner, who stood where in a greeting line, if the wife of a member of the India Civil Service with twelve years standing outranked a District Judge from Burma, if a Chief Engineer of the Royal Indian Marines was superior to a Sanitary Engineer of eight years standing, if a Director of Land Records in a princely state outshone an Officer, 3rd Class Indian Civil Service, how an Agricultural Chemist fared against the Assistant Inspector-General of Forests and so on. Unintentionally the British had created a hierarchy as complex as a Moghul court - and one that attached just as much importance to following the correct protocol and etiquette.

  Happily for the British they shared just as much in common with the Hindu ruled as with the Muslim rulers. Hindu society is divided up into four castes with numerous sub-castes. British society in India happened to mirror these divisions. At the Hindu head are the Brahmins of upper and lower rank, who corresponded to the viceregal Indian Civil Service and the regional equivalents. Next come the Kshatriyas, the warrior caste and their sub-castes resembling the British Army and the Indian Army. The British businessmen, the successors to the East India Company pioneers, were wealthy but of low caste, known as “box-wallahs” to those above them, and they had their Indian equals in the Vaisyas, the merchant caste. Like the Vaisyas the mercantile class divided into two: those in commerce - bankers, insurance brokers, shippers and the like - and those in trade: shop owners, buyers and sellers who actually handled goods. At the Hindu bottom were the Untouchables who had their British equivalent, those who had “gone native”, or were of mixed blood.

  No doubt over lunch the conversation turned to the princes and their princely states and the fabulous wealth and extravagant palaces and exotic imaginings going on within. Mark Twain was fascinated by the titles: “the princely titles, the sumptuous titles, the sounding titles - how good they taste in the mouth! The Nizam of Hyderabad; the Maharajah of Travancore; the Nabob of Jupillipore; the Begum of Bhopal; the Nawab of Myscenah; the Rance of Gulnare; the Ahkoond of Swat; the Rao of Rohilkund; the Gaikwar of Baroda.” In his notes he had further fun inventing some more:

  ...the Jimjam of Jubbelpore, The Nizam of the Maharaja the Rajah, the Rao, The Nawab, the Guicowar, The Thakore of Manta (now in dispute), the Slambang of Gutcheree, the Ahkoond of Swat, the Hoopla of Hellasplit, the Breechclout of Buggheroo, His Highness the Juggernaut of Jacksonville, the Jamram of Ramjam.

  Governor Sandhurst GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, PC couldn’t quite match these, being merely the first Viscount Sandhurst, but he had taken his seat in the House of Lords on his 21st birthday having inherited the lesser title of Baron Sandhurst from his deceased father. He was a rather uninspiring Liberal career politician who had been made governor of the Bombay Presidency the year before. A mere safe pair of hands was he. His wife, Lady Victoria, was the daughter of Frederick Spencer, the 4th Earl Spencer. Through her brother Charles she was - although she didn’t know it - the great, great, great aunt of another Spencer, Diana, Princess of Wales.

  ***

  A private lunch with the governor and his staff in the Governor’s Dining Room is as splendid now as it was then. The table setting is formal and follows exactly the rules of its own etiquette, just as it has done a thousand lunches before. Moghul-style uniformed waiters hover discreetly behind one’s left shoulder, and serve in the British “silver service” style. There is no scraping and no scrunching. Conversation is small talk and chitter chatter. Napkins blot the mouth as needed then fall to the lap. A glass of Indian red wine[13] is expected to last a course, the lead taken from the governor. This is no leisurely lunch, moving as it does at a steady clip, not rushed but not dallied over. After lunch the menu is presented to the guests as a memento. I’m looking at it now:

  Dhan Dar

  or

  Cold Yoghurt Soup with Mint

  ***

  Lamb in a Cashew Nut Sauce

  or

  Masala Dosas

  Black Pepper Rice

  Carrots Stir-Fried with Green Chillies

  Baigan Achari

  ***

  Pista Kulfi

  Falooda

  After lunch an aide-de-camp shows us around the current governor’s great passion, the fifty acres of private parkland with its own botanical gardens. In Mark Twain’s time Governor’s House was only fifteen years old and the grounds were still being planted and landscaped; now, one hundred and fifteen years of care and maturity later they have blossomed and bloomed and are as immaculate - and as unnatural - as only a corps of gardeners can make them. The centerpiece is the croquet lawn, where the governor also holds his quarterly garden parties (sadly, we’ll be long gone in Baroda when the next one is held). I fear for the head gardener’s composure as he sees two hundred guests trampling all over his billiard-table smooth croquet lawn. Unfortunately the aide-de-camp doesn’t play croquet - which seems a bit odd, I thought that was what aides-de-camp did - and steers us over to the cliff top walk. He stays well inland, maybe worried I am going to push him over for not playing croquet.

  In the grounds now are also discreet, secluded bungalows where India’s leaders come to relax; we take tea in the one preferred by Jawaharlal Nehru; next door is an English country cottage preferred by his daughter Indira Gandhi. It was also a venue where Nehru carried on his infamous affair with the vicereine, Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma and I regret to say that when the aide-de-camp is showing Gillian something or other in the cottage kitchen I have a vicarious stretch on the lovers’ bed.

  ***

  After thanking and leaving the Sandhursts, Mark Twain, Livy and Clara made a short trot in their barouche to “a scene of a different sort: from this glow of color and t
his sunny life to those grim receptacles of the Parsee dead, the Towers of Silence”.

  The Parsees, as the Indian Zoroastrians are known, can lay claim to belong to the oldest religion in the world, a straightforward battle between the forces of Good and Evil with revelations aplenty. In Twain’s time they were a small but highly influential group, much favored by the British administration. “The Parsees are a remarkable community. There are only about 60,000 in Bombay, and only about half as many as that in the rest of India; but they make up in importance what they lack in numbers. They are highly educated, energetic, enterprising, progressive and rich.”

  Today unfortunately they are in decline, partly because after Independence the favoritism was removed, partly because the Hindu and Christian communities in particular have caught up with them educationally and partly because as each of their new generations has been exposed to reason and the world the religious side of Zoroastrianism has declined. In the last census ten years ago there were still 40,000 adherents in Mumbai, but when one considers that the population of the rest of the city has increased twentyfold since Twain’s visit the relative decline has been dramatic.[14] Their strength is now secular and tribal.[15] What has remained is the way they look after each other and the less fortunate: as Twain noted, “the Jew himself is not more lavish or catholic in his charities and benevolences”; not surprising then that the Tatas and Godrejs, two of India’s richest and most philanthropic families, are Parsees.