So Who's Your Mother

by Tarquin Olivier

  We took the afternoon flight to Dhaka in a Hawker-Siddeley turbo-prop; very different from the glorious VC10, but at least it was new. From the plane the city of Calcutta presented a view which showed how handsome the buildings were, Victorian and stylish, the streets well laid out, and a green park surrounded the Victoria Monument which looked like a version of St Paul’s. Had it been clean the place would have been spectacular.

  Dhaka, being Muslim, was clean, but just as crowded with Bengalis. The airport was jam-packed, hectic with nervous energy, slow queues because of frantic incompetence and the mass of thin brown hands and arms, and sad tired eyes. The drive between the flat rice fields showed village after flattened village, the aftermath of the civil war. Seldom has any country faced its hard-won independence with such huge losses of soldiers, civilians, the very fabric of its institutions. More than a million killed. Our two taxis had almost to force a way through the crowd outside the modern Hilton Hotel. The stress was enervated by a man scraping a single-stringed viol, much amplified, the same two bars over and over again. As in Calcutta, the doormen did a good job keeping the crowds out.

  Once we had signed in we took the lift. There was an elderly Danish banker almost crying between gritted teeth, because the wretched viol’s screeching notes could still pierce his ears, even inside the hotel, and he felt he was going mad. We met our banknote sales manager Don Ring at the bar for a well-deserved drink. Even there everyone seemed at the end of their tether: aid organisations of every kind and country, Russian and American helicopter pilots, young uniformed nurses shouting at each other, trying to make the horrors they were facing sound as bad as they could: the injuries, the diseases, lack of equipment, electricity or proper hygiene. Compassion featured less in their conversation than morbid point scoring. An old American irrigation expert, in his cups, said: ‘As far as I am concerned, this is a permanent international disas-ter area, and the people are just fuckin’ themselves into the grave.’ The vigour and the hopelessness.

  The State Bank was an imposing 1930s building at the end of the city’s main avenue. The Governor, Mr Hamidulla, was a soft-spoken clerical man. His wife and son had been killed in the civil war. The Executive Director most in touch was the excitable Khalid Khan. He gave us the use of a large office so that our artists could spread them-selves out and we could all feel at home there. Our search started for local design material, assisted by a moustachioed local artist none of us could stand.

  The watermark agreed was the Royal Bengal Tiger. Our leading designer Ron Turrell set to work creating a miniature portrait of Mujib, the Father of the Nation, now being treated in the London Clinic after his ordeal as a prisoner in West Pakistan. The Bank had given us an excellent photograph of him. We leafed through illustrated books for suitable vignette scenes. The Bank in its ignorance asked us to quote for many times the quantity of banknotes required and here we felt honour bound to advise them. Our banknote product manager flew out to make a study of their needs, accompanied by David Rowe-Beddoe. We were also joined by the regional manager responsible for Bangladesh, Julian Wethered, who was based in Manila. So there were now eight of us. Julian had been there before, but had had to with-draw in order to fight an enormous tender in the Philippines, which we won. His was the voice of calm. The others were inclined to respond to the Bengalis’ excitability in kind. Everything was compli-cated by the presence in the Bank and in the hotel of our competitor Bradbury Wilkinson, an English subsidiary of the American Banknote Company.

  The presence of so many of our executives added fuel to the Bengali tendency to emotion. The creaking international telephone system made contact with Basingstoke a tremendous strain. Even David, with his stentorian voice on the phone, could not make himself understood. We had to rely on telexes. This did quieten things a bit. It meant that the originator had to think clearly before sending any message, and reduced the number of shouted contradictions.

  When it came to their quantity requirements it was difficult to convince them of the fruits of our researches. Our report had been beautifully typed by the Bank’s secretaries, but when it came to making photocopies there was a problem. The Bank had no photocopying paper. I managed to find a stationery shop with thirty remaining sheets. So we made two copies and had to ask the typists to type out more. When this was done David presented the case to the Governor. Our volumes were agreed and Basingstoke started to prepare our offer on beautifully watermarked Thomas De La Rue all-rag paper, the sort used in banknotes.

  Our superiors then left. Julian was in charge with me as his side-kick, and our design artists. I thought they should get a glimpse of the countryside so I took them in a couple of taxis and drove north. The land was flat. It was a dry day, the sky blue and the rice-fields emerald. Wherever there was a little plateau, three or four feet high, it was occu-pied by village huts, above the flood levels as far as possible. Many of them were still in ruins. We drove along the mighty Brahmaputra River, the source, along with the Ganges, of all the delta mud which had created Bangladesh. It was bedecked with fishing boats, their full sails billowing.

  After an hour I stopped the taxis and we all got out. We walked beside a pond the size of a tennis court, man-made, with a loo plat-form at one end, little boys splashing around and an old man with a fishing rod. It was overhung with blossoming jacaranda trees. Beyond the fields of young rice, behind plumes of bamboo, was the first village.

  I led the way. The path between the paddy fields had sharp corners, each reflecting disputes as to who owned what piece of land. The rice was newly planted, the shoots six inches high, but with scars, abscesses and varied dots indicating a whole variety of diseases. As we approached the village dozens of bare-footed children in shorts and shirts and little dresses came out and followed us. The villagers stood still, only their eyes moving as they watched us pass. I said good-day in Bengali and they reciprocated with the waigesture, pressing the palms of their hands together, wondering what we were doing. The children followed us along the much-cornered path to the next village, a quarter of a mile away. As we got nearer one of them put his hot little hand into mine. When we got there he told everyone where we had been. As we left, Julian took the lead. Afterwards he said how much the walk had meant to him, and how his view of the people had become so much friendlier, seeing how they worked, and how vulnerable they were to monsoons and floods, how desperately over-populated and under-nourished.

  On our way back to Dhaka we saw people with piles of bricks which they hammered into pieces. That was because the delta mud had no gravel, no stones of any kind. For their roads they had to bake bricks and smash them up as a substitute.

  Thomas De La Rue’s leather-bound offer came by Fedex and we presented it to the Governor. He was accompanied at the end of his desk by a most excitable man of indeterminate status whom I shall call Mr A. This persistent, interfering and loud-mouthed man thought he would gain promotion by insulting us. As Julian explained a technical-ity, Mr A shouted: ‘He’s lying, Governor. He’s lying.’ It was good that Julian and I had so much in common. Nothing would divide us. He became my closest friend in the years which followed.

  The hand-drawn design of the ten taka banknote was approved by the Governor. I took it myself back to Basingstoke by plane to save a day’s time.

  The children were fine and so was Riddelle, the morning sickness long gone. Her pregnancy was starting to show and her features were becoming more robust. Her dislike of the flat was made worse by the cold weather which drove lots of mice inside for warmth. They scurried everywhere. They thrived on the poison put down by the Council. I have always liked mice and so did Riddelle, but her mother was patho-logically terrified of them. Once at dinner, when she was facing us with her back very close to the mantelpiece, a mouse trotted along it and stopped in the middle, inches from her ear. We saw and managed to keep the conversation going. The mouse proceeded on its way and tiptoed down to the floor. At night they sometimes ran over our bed. Riddelle said she admired their spirit.
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  I returned to Dhaka and the stress induced by Mr A. Brickbats were coming from other quarters, including Executive Directors. I gave KK a copy of Eye of the Day and inscribed it to him. Julian phrased our next telex: the brickbats ceased. Then he was handed a letter from the Governor ordering the ten taka banknotes we had quoted for. Unfortu-nately the letter added that the price might have to be renegotiated as Bradbury had submitted a cheaper offer, even though they could get nowhere near our speed of delivery, not by months. So his letter was not contractual and we had to reject it with unctuous courtesy.

  We inquired what Brads’ price might be in case we could match it. The Governor told us, which was unethical. He even showed us Brads’ letter. We telexed Basingstoke and could practically hear the conse-quent rumpus. We wanted that business. Julian was beside himself with fury. How could Brads be so hysterical? They could not even cover production costs at their price. The Bank was entirely within its rights to play one competitor off against the other, saving itself many millions of pounds. We lowered our price, not the full way, relying on the Bank’s desperation for its new supply. The ten taka was the workhorse denom-ination for their medium of exchange and would save the economy. They placed a proper order. Our engravers set to work: the engravings on steel by the portraitist, the vignette specialists and the lettering engraver, all to be merged by transfer engraving to the single plate for intaglio printing, to follow on top of the lithographic tints and vignettes.

  Normally it takes many months to produce a proof, pulled from the hand-engraved steel. We did it in weeks. I took the proof and flew out to Dhaka. There I had to clear it through customs. Their regulations had no category for such an object: a banknote proof, uncirculated, unauthorised. I was ushered into their dreary main office with account-ing clerks bent over large tables. They were writing everything by hand, from one large leather bound ledger on one table then over to the other. Nothing had changed for generations: pure double entry in the Bengali equivalent of copperplate.

  The Chief of Customs deferentially looked at the banknote proof and refrained from touching it. What a delicate object, he said, very beautiful. He waggled his head from side to side, Bengali fashion, and said that their searches for a customs coding were in vain. Hourly hourly could they be seeking and weekly weekly not finding. I made a joke of the situation and they were relieved, the whole room, to be reminded that there was a world outside. When I had signed yet another ledger I asked them, in the nicest possible way, what all these procedures were for. I said the ten taka may have cost tens of thousands of pounds to produce, but until it was issued by the State Bank it had no worth. A dear old man explained: ‘Sir, we pass on. The record stays behind.’ There really was something irresistible about them, excited as they were by the sight of a national emblem as strong as their new currency, depicting the Father of the Nation, their artefacts and scenery, being in the administration of theircountry, now in peace.

  During the sales conference David Rowe-Beddoe had the sales force and our wives for dinner at his country house west of Basingstoke. It had wooden beams, some lovely paintings including primitives from Haiti, and a roaring fire. Riddelle, now great with child and radiant, sat next to Julian. He asked what sort of a person she was. She blurted out the truth: ‘I’m a rebel,’ she said.

  Then why’, he asked, ‘are you sitting down?’ They got on splen-didly.

  I planned to go to Bangladesh to meet the arrival of De La Rue’s first massive delivery of the new currency, two hundred and seventy-five cases, each with fifty thousand banknotes. Unfortunately a mighty typhoon prevented the Boeing 707 from landing in Dhaka. The second airport at Chittagong did not have a sufficiently high load classification number to receive such a big plane so it had to land in Calcutta’s Dum Dum Airport.

  The cases were being stacked in the airport’s Customs Hall, the other side of a glass partition and in full view of the airport public. This was unnerving. The total face value was in the range of one hundred million pounds. The De La Rue security officer was organising everything well, but the only local security was in the form of two dozen khaki-clad askaris armed with bamboo staves. They watched the porters in dhotis laboriously bringing in the tons of cases from the plane and stacking them, one above the other, four high in a huge rectangle.

  In the main office, telephone and telex messages about the typhoon flew in every direction. It had caused huge damage and poor Bangladesh had to seek yet more international aid. I obtained the use of two airplanes to transfer the banknote cases to Chittagong. One was an old DC4, with a payload of ten tons, the other a Fokker Friendship with a payload of two. I thanked everyone for their help and went back to the Customs Hall. Our De La Rue security guard was suffering from jet lag and was almost asleep on his feet, so I said he should go to the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Calcutta and be back on parade at ten in the morning. I checked out the local security askaris with their sergeant. They seemed alert and keen, but I had little confi-dence in the arrangements. I decided to sleep on top of the pile of crates to keep an eye on things. I had all the lights left full on, all night, clambered up and lay down exhausted.

  I fell into a sound sleep. It was fearfully hot, the mosquitoes were in full cry with an insatiable appetite but nothing made any difference. l can sleep anywhere. Perchance to dream, and I did so vividly: about the Queen. She was wearing a summer frock and one of her hats in an English village. She was congratulating a couple on their practice of birth control. She was her usual natural self, thoughtful, with wisdom and gaiety. The subject being discussed was so incongruous that it awoke my troubled mind. I sat up.

  I looked around. What I saw was extraordinary. From my vantage point on top of all the banknote cases I saw all over the floor the dark hairy legs of Indian men, their dhotis pulled up over their heads to keep the mosquitoes out of their ears. I thought that that was a dream. I pulled myself together. The askaris were wandering round with their bamboo poles. The sleeping men should not have been there but they seemed harmless. So this was reality.

  Next day I was awakened by the sergeant offering me a cup of coffee and sandwiches, kind-eyed, enjoying the absurdity. Our security man arrived, well rested, and he supervised the transfer of all the cases to a lock-up alongside the runway. He wrote down the identifying number of each of them in his notebook. When the job was done he said he was one case short. I asked to see his list and was able to put it right. The DC4 arrived that evening. We had the porters stuff ten tons of cases in the hold, between the seats and down the aisle.

  As night had fallen and we did not know Chittagong we decided to hold our horses until the next day. I asked the sergeant whether he had sealed the aeroplane. He did not understand. I had him accompany me for an inspection and we wandered round it. On the other side there was a passenger door hanging wide open leaving the contents totally unsafe, like a man with his fly unzipped. Ladders were brought, wires were inserted in the corresponding holes between all the doors and fuselage, and lead seals squeezed to fasten the ends. The remaining bulk of the crates were securely locked in their store and our man had the key, so we both went back to the hotel.

  It was to be a long day so we agreed to start up at Dum Dum Airport at eight o’clock in the morning, suitcases in hand for an overnight stay in Chittagong. We worked out that we would need three journeys of the DC4 and four of the Fokker Friendship. I went outside and saw that the DC4 had gone. It was at the far end of the enormous runway, propellers reflecting the hot sun, engines roaring. I dropped my suitcase and ran across the hard surface as fast as I could until I reached the centre of the take-off path. The engines roared up and up as the plane gained speed heading straight at me for take-off. It was very large, the wheels were my height, its tail fin far off behind it, the engines deafen-ing, the wing span majestic. I stood, feet slightly apart, and held up my right hand in a stop sign. It bounded towards me but at least it was not accelerating. I could see the pilot through the cockpit window. He waved in acknowledgement. The
plane came to a halt twenty yards from me. I wagged my forefinger as if to a naughty child and he laughed.

  Just then I saw my suitcase had acquired a pair of legs and was running away towards the car park. Luckily it was heavy. I caught up and told the man to take it to the DC4. He was cowed and ashamed, willing to please and be forgiven. I told our security guard to load up the Fokker when it came and await my return, while I accompanied the DC4 to Chittagong to unload the cargo, hand it to the Central Bank’s officials and obtain a receipt. And so the exercise went on. As soon as the plane’s emergency ladder was down I and my suitcase were up and inside. The things we did for De La Rue.

  The ten taka banknotes were issued by the Central Bank in their hundreds of millions all over the country. The portrait of the Sheikh, the lithographic scenes of their countryside, and the local artefacts delighted everyone. The issue was a great success, despite having English serial numbers. At the Bank itself there was deep embarrass-ment at not having Bengali numbers. A series of outbursts from Mr A. made me wonder if Bradbury had put him up to it. They had obtained about a quarter of the total order and when he visited England they had put a Rolls-Royce at his disposal. We had only managed a Jaguar.

  The lowest banknote denomination, the one taka, came within the portfolio of the Minister of Finance, who was still Acting Prime Minis-ter. There were two separate designs, the first by us, the second by Brads. I went to see him. His office was in one of the large Secretariat buildings, three or four storeys high, about eighty yards long with central corridors filled to bursting with clerks, couriers, messengers all shouting at once, gesticulating, recalcitrating volubly, and the occa-sional suited executive picking his way with distaste through the tumult.