I looked at my father and found him watching me intently. The subject matter had made him uncharacteristically loquacious. Without waiting for me to ask the obvious question, he continued with emphasis.
“White men lived like little tin gods in India. Some of them became self-made millionaires – something they could never have achieved elsewhere. So obviously they wanted to stay and retain their kooshy and easy lifestyle. But the only way they could persuade themselves that their oppressive presence in India was necessary was to convince themselves that they were superior to the Indian. They wanted to believe they had a God-given right to enforce their will, their language and culture on the country. But it was just another way to validate to themselves their erroneous notion of superiority.”
The British rulers despised their Indian subjects, basing their sense of superiority on skin colour and nothing else. To choose culture or civilisation is laughable. Indian culture stretches back centuries. To pick intelligence defies logic. So they selected an irrefutable fact and conveniently dismissed the photoprotective properties of melanin, deeming it irrelevant. Skin colour was a platform on which the Empire built a system of discrimination, apartheid and brainwashing.
That evening I pulled up the sleeves of my cardigan and looked at my brown arms.
What’s wrong with them? I was indignant. How stupid to hate me because I’ve got brown arms!
I knew there were many ways, many many ways, I could inspire frustration and dislike but having long brown arms wasn’t one of them. I thought of some of the Indian girls in school who were darker skinned than I and was stunned in case that was the reason behind the nuns’ hostility. Poor logic always sat uneasy with me.
In the end the Empire showed their true colours. Once the trimmings were removed, their insignificance was clearly apparent when they ran away like cowed dogs with their collective tails between their legs, leaving bloodshed and chaos behind. The excuse for their rapid departure was that time was ripe for change but in reality there was neither the money nor the energy to stay. The Empire was broke as a result of World War II, men were exhausted and people dispirited after six long years of horrendous fighting.
Having governed India with a deliberate divide-and-rule strategy, the Empire marked their leaving with formal partitioning of the country. This created cataclysmic upheaval, chaos and turmoil, especially for poor people. Taking no responsibility for their actions, they looked away from the mayhem, bloodshed and the displacement of millions of people that was the direct result of their policy. Neither did they stay around to manage the bedlam. Their hasty exit meant the new regime had no time to acquire the necessary skills to cope with the mess that India had inherited. It was as though the new government had been deliberately set up to fail so that by default, the Empire would look good.
Because of family holdings, my father had spent time travelling in the Punjab, the seat of some of the worst riots, which he witnessed first hand.
“People were frightened. Your mother remembers the roti wallah who used to deliver bread disappearing one day. No one knew what happened to him and in the turmoil no one cared. Everyone had to look after himself. Though I never did, Christians took to wearing visible wooden crosses on their shirtfronts to protect themselves. I understood that fear.”
And then his voice trembled with unshed tears as he transferred his gaze from my face to the far distance. “I’ve never been in a war zone but I’ve seen bloodshed and massacre. I had to close my eyes to people – little children – being hacked to death. I’ll never forget the screams, the noise, the suffocating stench. Sometimes I still feel it in my sleep.”
He paused to collect himself and his voice when it came was so thin I had to lean forward to catch his words. “I’m glad I didn’t have daughters then or I think I’d have gone mad.”
I had studied the Quit India Movement in school and the process that led to India’s independence. But those were just facts that I’d committed to memory to regurgitate in a timely manner and pass exams. It was only in conversation with my father that evening that those same facts came alive and I recognised that the nuns, with their predilection for white-skin privilege, had skimmed over the horrors of the India–Pakistan partition. Unable to help myself at my father’s anguish the words shot out of me.
“That’s dreadful, Daddy. Criminal! Mountbatten should’ve been tried for war crimes.”
And now, twenty-seven years after Independence I was conscious that it was our turn to leave, to be displaced, albeit without the bloodshed. We had given up our language and culture to successfully integrate into what, for my ancestors, was an alien land, and now, more than a hundred years later, the current generation of my family was being uprooted and we were on the move all over again.
Faced by the enormity of other people’s suffering my protest was drying up but my father hadn’t finished. It was as if floodgates had been released after the pent-up pressure of many years. His focus had returned to the future, his tone said, This is not the time or place for histrionics.
“Of course it’s cruel. Of course it’s not fair! It hasn’t been fair for generations. Jobs, houses, lots of things were earmarked for some people while others have been excluded. Before World War I my father was barred from buying a house on the Mall in Simla so we lived in Wexlow, our twenty-two room, three-gable home in Allandale, instead. It was only later, when the rules were rescinded that we moved into that forty-room place high on the ridge that overlooks the Mall. The one that you’ve seen.” He smiled reminiscently and I knew he was seeing Delhi House in his mind’s eye.
“Though that house was reputed to be the best private house in the Summer Capital, second only to Vice-Regal Lodge, Moira and I were still thrown off the Mall by some upstart officer when we were children. The same officer who was practically illiterate, who couldn’t get within sniffing distance of a home like ours!” Unusually for him, contempt showed in his voice. “Though my father was a Director of the Cecil Hotel where the dignitaries stayed through the summer administration and on the Board of numerous other companies, skin colour gave that nobody, a jumped-up mamooli creature, the right and might to bully small children.”
We all know it takes great courage for an officer of the law astride a fifteen-hand horse and protected by uniform of the Empire, to accost an eight-year-old lad and his younger sister. According to Aunt Moira my father had pushed her behind him, squared his shoulders and stepped forward. Remembering his manners in the presence of a young lady, even though she was only four years old, he curbed his language as he consigned the officer to a very hot place. “You-you-you g-g-go to ha-ha—hades.”
That night he continued, “Your great-uncle, though he became an eminent specialist and rose to be Head of School, Tropical Medicine, in Calcutta and was awarded an MBE in 1924, was precluded from advancing beyond the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Indian army. At least he got that far. Others weren’t ‘allowed’ to be so lucky. Most of the Indians were duboured and kept down. The better jobs, better housing, better everything was quarantined for an elite few. Now it’s the turn of the local people and we need to leave.
“And remember,” he continued, “You are not unique. History is littered with people who were driven out of their homeland for one reason or another – religious persecution, poor economic conditions, politics, war. In our case we are lucky. We recognise it’s the end of an era, we are left over from a previous society and we choose to leave. It might be a loaded choice but nevertheless it is our choice. So stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re a jolly sight luckier than most.”
His remorseless logic made me afraid I’d disgrace myself with tears but my father, sensing my anguish, changed his tack. “The important thing to remember is that you are lucky, your Goan heritage is a happy one, of friendship and music, song and dance. Don’t give yourself airs and graces about that either. Your distant ancestors were horny-handed sons of the soil who climbed out of manual labour to give us a better life. You come
from hardy stock. You’ll have to cope. You’ll have no choice.”
Having made this pronouncement his manner reverted to matter of fact. “But you cannot stay in Kanpur. If you do, you’ll be a living sacrifice to the glories of yesteryear.”
CHAPTER 19
BOOBY TRAPS
Packing up the house had been an onerous task that Lily and I had found exciting even though we knew our safety was compromised, particularly by the fan room. With all the additions and subtractions to the house by past generations, the home we inhabited was an eccentric building that was heaven for adventurous, growing girls but a burden of responsibility for our parents.
In the early 1900s the advent of electricity necessitated the addition of an extra room to our summer bedroom. It was small and purpose built, with one external wall containing a circular hole large enough to accommodate an induction fan. Since the fan had four blades, each measuring about forty-six centimetres in length, the opening was also large enough for a grown man to hunch over and climb through. Beyond the fan a cement houdh formed the shell of a water tank. A wire framework covered with grass matting called kus kus made up the roof and extended the houdh’s walls.
The function was sophisticated and based on evaporative cooling principles. Had the induction fan been left to its own devices, it would have blown in a hot, dehydrating wind, worse than the blast from a furnace. Instead, water from the houdh was pumped over the kus kus matting, keeping it constantly wet and giving us delightfully cool and fragrant fresh air. We knew we lived in paradise.
Once the monsoon broke the induction fan became obsolete for that year. With much ceremony the fan was dismantled, cleaned, oiled and stored until the following year when once again it was called on to save our lives. When the kus kus matting was removed, the houdh emptied and scrubbed, the hole in the wall, an unintended entrance, became glaringly apparent.
In order to block off entry to all and sundry, whether it be of the two- or four-legged variety, or the type that slithers on its belly, a plank of polished wood was placed against the pseudo-portal and held in place by two large and heavy cabin trunks, each measuring one square metre and filled with all sorts of odds and ends. These we laid one on top of the other, completely covering the fatal spot.
Packing up our home meant the cabin trunks were called upon to perform their original duty, leaving a gaping space behind, an obvious entry portal.
With Uncle Hugh gone we were particularly vulnerable. He had a reputation as a crack shot in spite of his advanced years, and that kept a certain horde away. He also commanded enormous respect in the district so local people looked out for him. Without him we were insecure and frightened. Our other safeguard, my beloved Reg, was also permanently asleep under the laburnums.
“We can’t leave it like that.” Lily sighed. We had propped a thick mattress against the plank of wood that closed off the gap and knew it would keep the cold at bay but not an intruder of any kind. Another solution was required. Being young adults, primed to share responsibility, we knew it was up to us to invent an inspired remedy. This wasn’t time for trivia.
Famous last words. The remedy came from trivia. Initially, Lily was set for analysis.
“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” she started before I cut in sharply and sarcastically.
“We could get murdered in our beds! That’s what can happen.”
Rape, sexual assault, violation of a woman’s body were torture and crimes we had never heard of in our gently cocooned lives. Even jokes that could be construed as risqué or close to the limit of propriety were never repeated in our presence.
“What we need is an alarm that alerts us to the dacoits so we have at least a fighting chance.”
We looked at each other helplessly. I might as well have said we need to fly to the moon because an alarm simply wasn’t available. Lily returned to being analytical. “What’s the next best…” and we both shouted with glee, “Booby traps of course!”
That set us thinking.
“Remember that Laurel and Hardy cine we saw, where they use thumbtacks to immobilise the baddies?” I asked Lily. In the film the goondhas are barefoot, they break down a door and charge in, only to step heavily on sharp thumbtacks. The pain completely incapacitates them so that all they can do is hop around madly or fall over.
We surveyed our handiwork doubtfully. Both of us had the same thought that neither wanted to voice. Up-ended thumbtacks didn’t seem much of a defence. And then, like a good penny, a brilliant idea dropped into both our minds.
Traditional Indian cooking uses fine tin pots called dekshis, covered by equally thin lids referred to as dukhners. This structure promotes the even distribution of heat. Every kitchen has a plentiful supply of different size dekshis accompanied by a corresponding size dukhner.
For the first time in history, perhaps the only time, our dukhners found a new role. Bolting the doors between the fan room and our summer bedroom we jammed a row of dukhners into the crack between the doors and the framework.
Our hysterical laughter was in response to both the noise and our ingenuity as we slowly, gently pulled the door open and created an unqualified cra-s-s-s-sh as a wave of metal hit the hard mosaic floor. It was enough to frighten the living daylights out of any hardened criminal.
But our trials were incomplete. We were pulling the doors open from the summer bedroom rather than pushing them open from the fan room, from where we would expect the intruder to originate.
“We need to see if it works from the other side,” I said innocently to Lily. “Do you want to try it?”
My sweet, gentle, trusting sister did just that.
It took me a second to shoot the bolt home and skedaddle. Sometimes, for no tangible reason, sixteen-year-olds revert to ridiculously childish behaviour in spite of the stunning brilliance they have just displayed.
A week before we were due to leave, my mother straightened up from packing the final portmanteau and pronounced with relief, “Thank goodness that’s done. I’ve been having nightmares that we wouldn’t be ready to hand over to the nuns on Saturday.”
My father, Lily and I had no such misgivings. We had seen our mother in action many times before and respected her planning capabilities. But the fun and excitement of so much activity was wearing off and the stark reality of actually leaving was setting in.
“Just think,” said Lily that night as we sat huddled under our rizis, “this time next week it’ll all be over. We’ll be in the train.” The future beckoned us with bewitching fingers, exciting possibilities, and at the same time our hearts were heavy with a sense of irreparable loss. Neither of us voiced what we were both thinking. This time last month Uncle Hugh was with us.
The rooms were forlorn and deserted. With the disposal of generations of personal belongings we were now unable to remember what had gone where or to whom. All that was evident were empty shelves gathering dust that some other hands would remove, faded patches on paintwork where pictures had hung, in the same spot, on the same wall for all of our lives. Soon other people’s pictures would hang there.
The silence hung heavy in empty rooms, magnified in intensity by our movements that resonated off bare walls. Unconsciously we spoke in hushed voices, like you do when someone is dying, as indeed the life that we knew was dying around us.
The whole house had taken on the atmosphere of an unloved, deserted being, “whose lights have fled, whose garlands dead” and all but us departed. Reproach leapt out from every corner and guilt added to our burden. We were forsaking our refuge, our haven, our dear, dear friend.
At breakfast the next morning, our mother said, “Right! All the clearing and packing is done, we are organised for the last-minute things so today we take a break. Lily and I will bake a cake and we’ll have high tea in the winter garden.” Her unspoken words hung in the air. This is the last Sunday we will ever spend in the home where we belong, where our psyche is deeply embedded in the seasons and the soil.
Feastin
g was usually kept to special occasions like Christmas, Easter and birthdays so that afternoon, replete with our unusual bounty, we relaxed back to enjoy the last of the warm, gentle sun.
“I’ll nip over and see Claude.” My father prepared to walk the half hour or so to his brother’s house.
“I’ll come.” Sixteen-year-old girls are irrepressible, but a look from my mother changed my mind quick smart. After he’d left she explained.
“Your father needs time with his brother. They are both hurting like hell at the moment, so leave them alone.” Her unusual use of the mild expletive reminded me that though I had a lot to lose, my father had more.
He hadn’t been gone for more than ten minutes when a stealthy movement caught my peripheral vision. “Mummy,” I called softly, “there’s a man standing at the houdh. I don’t know what he’s doing.”
Before my words could register, this stranger leapt on his bicycle and raced back the way he had come, past the car standing in the porch and up the driveway to the public road.
No one moved. We were stunned. We were bemused. We were the whole dictionary of words that mean dumbfounded. My mother’s facial expression was a study in incredulity. Did what I think happen, actually happen?
It took a few moments before we rushed to crowd around the houdh that stood on the edge of the rose garden alongside the driveway and was about six metres from where we had been siting. Nothing appeared to be different. The man hadn’t urinated in the standing water or desecrated it in any way, as we were expecting.
“He probably just wanted a drink,” my mother started to say, and then we saw.
A complete stranger, in broad daylight, had the audacity to enter our private compound, cycle 90 metres up the driveway, unscrew the brass tap from the houdh and pocket it, plug the flow of water with a piece of wood and take off at the speed of knots.
The horror of his boldness frightened us. “Thank God your father wasn’t at home,” were my mother’s first words. She knew there was still a vestige of respect left for older women which prompted a singular thief to grab his loot and make off. Had a man been present, the bandit might have felt more inclined to be aggressive and instigate violence.
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