41 He felt something similar about the British treatment of Indians closer to home. In Johannesburg, South Africa, he said: “Look at the difference between the position of the Canadian Indians and the Indians with whom the United States government has to deal. In Canada the Indians are peaceful and contented enough. In the United States there are continual rows with the government, which invariably ends in the red man being shot down.”
42 Nicknamed by the British “Golgotha” as the climate was so unhealthy in the bug-ridden bogs and swamps.
43 Even more remarkable was the Sudan Political Service. It recruited only unmarried men between the ages of 21 and 25, almost all from public schools, one-third of them the sons of Anglican clergy. Yet it was so well run that it enabled 140 men to have charge of nine million people.
44 A first draft version of the last chapter.
45 A famously inept and corrupt QUANGO whose dead hand pervades the India it is meant to protect.
46 Construction started before her Diamond Jubilee in 1901 and it was opened twenty years later.
47 Also responsible for All Saints Cathedral in Allahabad and the Gothic Crawford Market in Bombay.
48 We will visit the Taj Mahal in three weeks, Twain time.
49 General Post Office.
50 Looks familiar? It is modeled on the Church of St. Martin’s in the Field in Trafalgar Square, London.
51 Likewise the city’s main square was called Dalhousie Square and is now called BBD Bagh after the initials of the three yahoos who bungled an attempt to assassinate the then Lt. Governor, Lord Dalhousie.
52 As I had rather presumptuously started to call my one hour audio-visual book-promoting presentation.
53 For the 8 February 1896 pre-Talk interview at the Continental Hotel and the 11 and 13 February At Home reviews.
54 Fort William, now completely out of bounds, the HQ of the Indian Army’s Eastern Command.
55 Now an organic garbage dump on the Hooghly river spread around a 250-year-old banyan tree.
56 A full-dress, colonial-tropical passeggiata.
57 In a letter to her daughter Jean, Livy declared their lunch at the Belvedere was the finest meal they ate in India.
58 Nagaland wasn’t even part of the Raj yet somehow woke up one morning to be told it was now Indian.
59 A well-loved British comedy actress who embraced the cause of Gurkha war veterans having British nationality.
60 No coolies in the Himalayas.
61 Or “tincture” - a shot and a mixer, in this case brandy and soda. A chotapeg was a single; a burrapeg a double. I can’t see Twain bothering much with the former.
Part Four
Badlands, Bad Times
Muzaffarpur
To say that Muzaffarpur is the back of beyond is to give beyond slightly more recognition than it deserves. It’s not at all certain why Mark Twain chose to lecture here at all, apart from the fact that Smythe must have rounded up a good fee from the local planters. A lonely old life it must have been for them stuck out here too.
Twain’s twenty-seven hours journey here was circuitous and inconvenient and it meant splitting the family up and meeting en route westwards two days later. Not much has changed; the 15609 Avadh Assam Express is not one of the more glamorous routes that Indian Railways ply, and the rickety old train clangs along in its own time, fours hours later than the fifteen hours promised. To add to the grimness we are shoveled into a compartment from hell. Opposite Gillian, Sita and me is a family on an outing from perdition: he farting brazenly, she making an intermittent funny high-pitched squeak for no apparent reason and two children bored and being fed on fizzy drinks and boiled sweets.
At least the train rattles along so slowly that one can get a good look at the poorest state of India, Bihar, known to Sita and her compatriots as the Badlands of India. It is still recognizable from Twain’s description:
There is nothing pretty about a mud Indian village. It is a little bunch of dirt-colored mud hovels jammed together within a mud wall. As a rule, the rains had beaten down parts of some of the houses, and this gave the village the aspect of a mouldering and hoary ruin. I believe the cattle and the vermin live inside the wall; for I saw cattle coming out and cattle going in; and whenever I saw a villager, he was scratching. This last is only circumstantial evidence, but I think it has value. The village has a battered little temple or two, big enough to hold an idol, and with custom enough to fat-up a priest and keep him comfortable.
The scene inside the train is as otherworldly as the one unfolding outside in the plains - and on the open dormitories and farmyards otherwise known as platforms. The hawkers are on corridor patrol selling an astonishing variety of brightly colored plastic knick-knackery. In quick succession we see brightly colored plastic blister packs of small racing cars, brightly colored plastic revolvers, brightly colored plastic flip-flops, brightly colored plastic mugs, brightly colored plastic combs, brightly colored plastic banana guards, brightly colored plastic rattles, brightly colored plastic thermos flasks, brightly colored plastic toothpicks, brightly colored plastic ping-pong ball shooters, brightly colored plastic zip pullers, brightly colored disposable plates - these the last things India needs one might have thought. Sita’s favorite is a small brightly colored plastic tube of ear spray boasting the motto “made in Germany”. Gillian is rather partial to the brightly colored plastic lipstick holder bandoleer; I am keener on the brightly colored plastic anti-rabid dog water-pistol. This must be like life before the shopping channels.
Relief failed to arrive with disembarkation; we checked into an appalling dump called the Chandralok Hotel, supposedly the best hotel in town and the only one claiming two stars (from whom is uncertain). Over dinner of an insipid curry, remixed chutney and the last of our Darjeeling wine we looked back wistfully at the joys of our compartment on the 15609 Avadh Assam Express.
***
Muzaffarpur, in the state of Bihar, was as much of a backwater then as now but at least then there were far fewer people with whom to share the experience - and an empty backwater is far less trying than a full one. Now it is as crowded as anywhere else, possibly more so as the farmland around was famously fickle, suffering from the scandalously hot mid-plain summer and then not knowing how much damage the floods would bring. The plainsfolk flocked to the towns, making at least some sort of self-generated economy - and thus improvement over their poor benighted life chances in the Bihar badlands.
Twain arrived at Muzaffarpur Junction at midday and stayed at a bungalow belonging to a an indigo planter called Mr. Hall, a member of the Muzaffarpur Club founded eleven years earlier. Twain slept all afternoon, changed into his tuxedo and was entertained to a private dinner for twelve in the Muzaffarpur Club. He then gave an At Home there from 9.30 to 11 p.m. Later, no doubt after a couple of convivial pegs at the bar, he and Smythe would have been pulled by a rickshaw-wallah to the station for the 1 a.m. connection to meet Livy and Clara at Dinapore on the Ganges and then all together onto Benares.
Today it is as if the Muzaffarpur Club froze the clocks at 11.30 p.m. on 20 February 1896 and have yet to thaw them out. If India in general is prone to avoiding change for change’s sake, Muzaffarpur turns the whole avoidance exercise into its raison d’être.
We arrive unannounced as the phones in Muzaffarpur aren’t working and are ushered in to see the secretary, Sanjay T. G. Sharma (Col. Rtd.). He is nearly as old as the club and just as courteous. He speaks that wonderful old Indian Army clipped English I’ve heard at clubs so many times before. His office has rows of dusty box files up against one wall and old calendars strung up on the other. The flip calendars all show December for that year. The walls are a color I can only describe as faded. He sits beh
ind a massive old stately desk, which he later tells me is made from oak and came with the club. On it are lying four piles of beribboned files and two empty inkwells. The floor is dust swept, cracked tiled and matches the walls. An ancient retainer in a dhoti and worn out, shuffling flip-flops brings us chai. I explain my mission. The colonel says all this is possible but it might take some time to find the records and do I mind waiting. I say, no, I’ve got all day. He gives me a look which says he wasn’t used to dealing with such urgency.
“Come with me,” he says, “and we will tour the premises.” He lifts himself up with surprising agility. On the way out he barks to his clerk in the Indian fashion. From the Anglo-Hindi I can pick out “1896” and assume the clerk is about to get even dustier in the vaults.
We enter a large T-shaped area. “The lecture would have certainly been in here,” the colonel says. We are in a miniature aircraft hangar. I look up and up and up to a corrugated iron roof. A dozen fans hang motionless just above head height. A very dusty bookcase sits near one corner. None of the spines have survived. “All from the English time,” Sanjay says and sees me looking up, up, up. “That’s for the summer. It’s toasting in here. How many did he lecture to?”
“I don’t know. There’s no newspaper record for here and he doesn’t say. But it was usually to all the members,” I reply, “There wasn’t a lot of entertainment. How many members are there now?”
“Two hundred and fifty. Same as then. The constitution has not changed.”
“At all?”
“At all.”
“Presumably there are no planter members now.”
“Oh no, our members are the Muzaffarpur elite. People like your father,” he gleams at Sita. “Not any old Tom and Jerry can get in here. Joining fee is one hundred thousand rupees [US$2,000 or £1,500]. We have white balls and black balls as before. It’s a two black ball regime here. Mostly they are senior members of the IAS [Indian Administrative Service, the successor to the colonial elite ICS, Indian Civil Service], doctors, leading lawyers. We have a four-year backlog. Dead man’s shoes, we say.”
He leads me into a room off the hangar, much smaller with a lower ceiling and tawny yellow walls. There are no windows but rusty iron meshes. It hasn’t been used for years. “This was the dining room,” the colonel says.
“So it was,” I reply. “He said he had a private dinner for twelve. I can just see them sitting here now. And the kitchen?”
“It was an English kitchen in the cookhouse. It still has English tiles on the roof. But we have not eaten here since many years. I’ll show you the other room.”
On the opposite side of the hangar is an identical sized room to the dining room. It was once white instead of the yellow it has become. “This was the billiard room. Look.” Sanjay shows me the raised bench with withered upholstery and the scoreboard on the wall. It could only ever have been a billiard room. In the middle is a ping-pong table with a dark grey surface. It hasn’t been dusted for years. In fact nothing seems to have changed at all since the last British member left, including the dust.
“Where is the billiard table?” I ask.
“We keep it in another room. It isn’t used. It is English too, bought new in 1895.”
We wander back through the hangar. I’m trying hard not to be rude or insensitive when I ask Sanjay why the members are members as there don’t seem to be any facilities.
“For the veranda,” he replies. “Come.” We go back through the remains of the dining room and from a side door enter into what might be another club. Ahead of us stretches a long, clean space with cane sofas and occasional tables on one side and eight columns on the other. The walls are freshly whitewashed - the first I’ve seen in India - and the floor clean and quarry tiled, not unique but unusual. Mosquito net rolls hang ready to drop from between the columns. Even the wiring is tucked into place - mostly.
Beyond the columns Indian grass grows down to a small lake. There is hardly any litter. “It’s delightful,” I say, “you could almost call it the Veranda Club.”
“Every Saturday afternoon and evening the members gather. We serve beer and hire in the food. Some bring their own whisky. It’s always fullish.”
“I can see why.”
We drop into a couple of cane chairs and look down to the river. I say, “In Mark Twain’s notebook he drew a sketch of Mr. Hall’s farm. He said it was on the Ganges but that must have been a mistake.”
“Yes, he would have meant the Bodhi Ganduk. That’s a tributary of the Ganges. Runs past Muzaffarpur about two kilometers from here.”
“And Hall had a steamer to cross it to reach here, apparently.”
“That’s quite likely,” says Sanjay. “The lake down there probably was a bulge in the river. You can see it’s all silted up over that side.”
“And from what I’ve read the planters were a pretty eccentric, hard living lot. Not badly rewarded either: Hall told Smythe that taking good years and bad they made a return of fifteen percent. Quite likely to have his own steamboat. And a still. What happened to them after Independence?”
“The planters? It was an English thing really, indigo. The Indians have lots of small farms. Family farms, not big spreads like the English had. Even if they stayed the politicians would have given their land away. Can I see the sketch?”
Back in his office Gillian digs out the sketch. A fresh - in the sense of recently deposited rather than newly made - bound book sits on the edge of the desk: the 1894-1897 Visitors Book.
The colonel looks at the sketch. “Apart from the river name it’s pretty clear. The windmill is the clue. I think that will be on north side opposite. There’s a narrow road bridge over it now. We can take a look later.” He barks another order to the clerk. This time the common word is rickshaw.
“Is the address Andrews Fields helpful?”
“Not really, but the windmill in the sketch is.”
I stand over his shoulder as he opens the ancient tome. He flicks through to find the entry for 20 February 1896. The pages are semi-stuck together, but dryly. At first he turns them too roughly and some parts get left behind. He soon has the knack of separating them, easing in an old steel inches ruler. There it is: Member: R. K. Hall, Andrews Fields. Guests: M. Twain & C. Smythe. Hall has signed RKH in the Member column, Smythe has signed CGS in the Guest column. Well, well, one of those lovely moments when our paths re-cross.
A quick chai more and the colonel and I clamber into one rickshaw, Gillian and Sita another. Ours has 1913 painted on the back; the driver looks even older than that. I’m not light and neither is the colonel. I suggest we take three rickshaws or spread the load with Gillian or Sita; he will have none of it.
Bihar is not only the poorest state in India but the one with the worst reputation for dacoitery,[62] caste killings, the most thuggish police force, the most corrupt and gangsterish politicians and general backwardness - really the Badlands of India. Two minutes with eyes on stalks in the back of the 1913 rickshaw is enough to confirm at least the latter; a further three minutes talking to the colonel confirms the remainder.
“It’s very underdeveloped. There has been so much money sent here from central funds over the years but the politicians have stolen it. This is the part of India most like the one that Mark Twain would have seen - I mean it would all have been like this. Now these of course. You see these everywhere” - he is pointing to an engine on the back of a converted rickshaw - “generators, as there are so many power cuts.”
We pass slowly by shop after shop - actually more like shack after shack, stall after stall, shed after shed, lean-to after lean-to. Sometimes there’s not even that, just a person practicing his trade on the sidewalk: a shoe-fixer here, a barber there, a metal grinder here, a tailor there. Tailors have practically died out in the big cities, but here nearly every clothes stand has one. I’ve never seen so many sta
nds. No one seems to be doing any business and some of the stock looks as tired as the rickshaw. Sanjay explains they don’t need to do much business. They sleep in the stall and pay no rent because no one owns the sidewalks. “But they’ll pay a bit for protection, that’s for sure. When the election comes they’ll get that back for their vote. The gangsters are politicians, or vice versa; they take and give back.”
“What’s the point?” I ask, “if they end up even.”
“Ties them all in. The politicians get free votes. The stall holders can’t do anything about it. It’s the system.”
Now we are upon the old British road bridge over the Bodhi Ganduk. It is just wide enough for two-way traffic and built before there was much of any traffic. Now it is a seething mass of impatience, a smothering mass of still-air pollution, a total impossibility of movement beyond the speed of the slowest hand-pushed cargo-rickshaw. There is no space between the opposing flows but that doesn’t stop the motorcycles and pushbikes competing for it. The noise from the horns behind, in front, all around is - must be - a danger to the eardrums, especially in an open rickshaw at horn height. I jump off and tell Sanjay I’m walking across because it’s quicker and my ears and nerves can’t take the decibels and bedlam. He sits tight and doesn’t see it as anything more than an inconvenience. I say I’ll wait for him on the other side down-road from the subsequent pent-up overtaking maneuvers and the accompanying horn blasts. As I wait an elephant and three camels head onto the bridge in the opposite direction. Oh, boy.
The Indian Equator Page 18