Gautam's first bicycle
Gautam’s first bicycle was, literally, rubbish. A child’s bicycle had been put out for collection by dustmen beside the communal bins in a block of flats in Cambridge. An acquaintance in one of the apartments told me about it. – The bicycle looks OK and seems the right size for your two year old son. I went to look, saw that the bicycle, though the paint was chipped and peeling, was perfectly serviceable and had no hesitation in bringing it home. Finances were very tight those days and a free child’s bicycle was not to be passed up.
Shortly afterwards my parents came to stay. – All it needs is a bit of paint and it will be like new, my father said when he saw the bicycle. – I could do that whilst I am here. We went and bought the necessary materials and, sitting outside on steps leading to the entrance to the flats, my father set to work. Gautam sat nearby on a wicker chair and watched him, sustaining himself with a drink and a biscuit. My father removed the seat and sanded the metal frame. He painted the frame pillar box red and the handlebars and front mudguard white, to match the seat. We discussed buying stabilisers. – They will be expensive. Let’s take him to the park opposite and run behind him holding on to the seat. He will soon get the hang of it. We did just that and soon Gautam was able to keep his balance. He was then the proud owner of a shiny red and white bicycle which he could ride.
First prize in children's race
When I was about the age of five, I achieved a sporting success, winning first prize in a children’s race. It was remarkable for the fact that I won it without participating, merely watching from the sidelines. It happened at an army sports day function, in Jullunder, in the army unit to which my father was posted. At the event, soldiers showed off their physical prowess and competed for prizes. It was usual on such occasions to include some fun races for the officers’ families and children. When a children’s race was announced, a number of children stepped forward while I, being very shy, stayed firmly in my seat. A small crowd of boys and girls gathered at the starting line. At the signal, they ran pell mell towards the finish, where they arrived bunched up together with no obvious winner.
.jpg)
Later, a junior officer assigned the task of compiling a list of all prize winners, discovered to his alarm that no one had been put down as the winner of the children’s race. A winner however had to be found for the general’s wife was present to hand out prizes at a ceremony at the end. This young officer realised that all he needed was a child, any child, of about the right age. Walking along the race track in front of the spectators, the junior officer, who knew my father, spotted me. Showing great initiative, he promptly wrote my name down as the winner of the children’s race and told me to go forward when my name was announced. In due course, dressed in dungarees and a sweater, I went and received my prize from the general’s wife while the official photographer recorded the event. I was delighted to receive a large tin of sweets, which I showed off to my friends. I recall no sense of embarrassment at having obtained the prize under false pretences.
​
July 2022
Veena the sister I never knew
I grew up with two siblings, a brother four years older and a sister born a decade after me. With my brother being sent away at an early age to boarding school and my sister not born till many years later, my childhood was a lonely one with no sibling to keep me company at home. In fact there had been a fourth child, a girl, born about two years after my brother and for a long time I was unaware she had existed. My parents never spoke of her and, taking their cue from them, uncles, aunts and close family friends maintained a conspiracy of silence. In the family album there were few photographs, as no one in the family owned a camera, of myself, my brother and various cousins when young, but there were none of this girl who had died. My parents’ pain and grief at this tragedy was covered up by a profound silence. It contrasts markedly with my father’s readiness to talk about his own near brush with death, when he had been captured by the Japanese in Burma during World War II. He found that experience, in which he had escaped near certain death, much easier to speak about than the loss of a daughter. It was not till many years later, when I was at university and my aunt, Tai, one day inadvertently mentioned her name, Veena, that I found out about her existence. I learnt that she had died at a young age, of meningitis, in Calcutta,. Even after I found out, I did not feel it was a subject I could discuss with my parents, and never did, while they lived. My father died in 1997, aged 77, and my mother ten years later.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
After my mother’s death we discovered some negatives she had kept in a trunk. I had them printed at a local photographer. They turned out to be snapshots of this girl. The papers also contained Veena’s death certificate which showed she died on 29 April 1948. The facts I have about this sister, who died some months after I was born are meagre. She was born in Bombay probably in late 1945 or early 1946. She was fair, a desirable attribute in a girl child, while I am dark. I suspect I owe my name partly to hers. Like her, I was given a two syllable name beginning with the V sound, so that the names of the two sisters would have tripped easily off the tongue together – Veena and Vidya.
July 2016
​
​
.jpg)
Who is this man?
The early years of my parents’ marriage were unsettled ones with frequent moves and with my father away for long periods. Married in 1942, they lived at first in Amraoti with his mother, Nani, where my father was employed in various ill paid jobs. A son, Ravindra, was born the following year in 1943. With the coming of war my father joined the army as an officer on an emergency commission. He was posted immediately afterwards to Burma, his unit part of the force fighting the Japanese. His young wife and son stayed with his mother in Amraoti. While he was in Burma, his mother fell gravely ill with tuberculosis and was moved to a sanatorium, where she died in 1944. The family, which included his younger sister, Manda, moved to Bombay. Here they stayed with my maternal grandmother, Kaki, in three small rooms in a tenement block in the Grant Road area of the city.
In Burma my father was taken prisoner by the Japanese from whom he escaped and for which he was awarded a Military Cross. After the war ended, he chose to make the army his career and received a regular commission in July 1945. For the next year and a half he was posted to various positions, moving every few months, in and around Bombay. He stayed in makeshift accommodation provided by the army where he was joined by his family when possible.
Early in 1947 he was posted to Embarkation HQ in the Colaba area in south Bombay. For the first time he was allocated accommodation befitting his position as an army officer, a two bedroom self-contained flat in an apartment complex named Bradis Flats. Here the family could live together in comfortable surroundings. The family had grown with the birth of a girl, Veena, born in late 1945/early 1946. It also included my father’s sister, Manda, fifteen years his junior, the responsibility for whose upbringing my parents had taken over after Nani’s death. During this year he was promoted to Captain and in August 1947 India became independent. It was in these favourable circumstances that I was born, in November 1947.
This settled existence was cut short at the end of the year when my father was posted to Calcutta. The family’s stay in Calcutta, during the first half of 1948, was brief and tragic. The girl, Veena, by then just over two years old, contracted meningitis and died. After Calcutta, my father was posted to his regiment, the 1st Grenadiers. While he went to Kashmir to join his battalion, my mother returned with my brother and me, and Manda, to the tenement in Bombay. The army made no provision in those days for accommodation for families while officers were on active service.
Independence in August 1947 together with the partition of the sub-continent into two states, India and Pakistan, led to mass migrations in the north accompanied by horrific killings on both sides. In late 1947, the 1st Grenadiers were on duty in the Punjab trying to maintain order among the refugees crossing between India and Pakistan. To the civil disruption a military one was added when armed insurrectionists from Pakistan invaded the Kashmir valley. Troops of the Indian army were rushed to the defence of the state, including the 1st Grenadiers. It was there, in June 1948 that my father joined his battalion. He arrived just in time to participate in the battalion’s capture of the Gurais valley and the ousting of the occupying enemy forces. The 1st Grenadiers remained in Jammu & Kashmir till the end of 1949.
With my father on duty with his regiment faraway in Kashmir, I spent the first part of my childhood in the tenement apartment in Bombay surrounded by members of my mother’s extended family. There were my mother and brother, together with my father’s sister, Manda, my grandmother, Kaki, her eldest daughter, Tai, her son, Tatya and his wife, plus Bhau, a boy in the family my grandmother had adopted
Into this household, when I was a toddler, able to walk and talk, entered a stranger unknown to me. To my surprise he stayed and, furthermore, showed no signs of leaving.
– Who is this man? I went and asked my mother one day, puzzled by the continuing presence in the house of a person unknown to me. - And when is he going to leave?
I was informed the stranger was my father, home after a long absence on active service. My questions passed into family lore.
July 2016
Wedding Anniversary 1954
The dinner party held to celebrate their twelfth wedding anniversary was an unusual one for my parents. Parties were unknown at home when I was a child. We celebrated festivals such as Diwali with family and close friends, when special foods would be prepared and shared but there were no birthday parties for me or my brother, and anniversaries passed unnoticed. One reason was that parties such as to mark birthdays were seen as a western notion and not part of the traditional Indian culture in which my parents had been brought up. Another, unspoken reason, was that they involved extra expenditure which went against the financial economy that prevailed out of necessity in our house.
The decision to throw a dinner party in May 1954, at Ranchi, to which fellow officers and their wives were invited generated much excitement in our house. The house adjoining ours was occupied by the Moghes; Bhau Moghe was my father’s fellow officer and one of his closest friends and his wife Sumatai was my mother’s companion. Their son Bobby and I went to the same school, Loreto Convent, travelling there in a cycle rickshaw and when home we were in and out of each other’s houses. My brother having been sent to boarding school at an early age was away. There was the guest list to be decided and plans made for the food and drink to be served. There were discussions about the party between the adults in the two families and the excitement of the occasion trickled down to us two children.
Food to be served, Indian food naturally, for we knew no other, would be more elaborate than every day fare. There would be curry, made with goat meat, for no party would be complete without at least one meat dish. In addition, particularly as several of the guests were vegetarians, there would a spread of vegetarian dishes. This included rajma or chole cooked in gravy, one or two vegetables, side dishes of salad, raita made with homemade yoghurt, pulao instead of plain rice, plus chappaties or puris. As dessert there would be a western style sweet, such as trifle or floating islands. My mother was a very good cook in addition to which she had full time help in the kitchen, so making dinner for a large number of guests, about twenty or so, was easily managed. There was no seating arrangement to be decided as dinner, as was the custom, would be a buffet with guests serving themselves from the laden table. For drinks before dinner, all the drinking was always before the meal, the men would be served whisky, which could be bought at a reasonable price in the army canteen. It was what to offer the women as a pre-dinner drink which provoked the most discussion. In those days, before bottled drinks became commonplace, fresh sweetened lime juice would usually have been served, but something more festive was required for this special occasion. A non-alcoholic cocktail, the recipe for which was obtained from a book or a magazine, was prepared. It was called one-two-four-eight, representing the proportion of the ingredients, ginger, lime juice, sugar and soda water that went into it.
The guests duly arrived dressed for the occasion, the men in long-sleeved shirts and ties, the women in party saris. On the hot summer’s evening drinks were served on the small lawn in front of the house. One of the guests, a fellow officer, had brought his camera to record the event, an expensive camera judging by the quality of the prints. Before dinner was served, with the aid of a flash he took some pictures. One is of the anniversary couple my father, sporting a thin moustache, in white shirt and pale trousers with polished shoes on his feet and my mother in a sari and silken blouse wearing open sandals, both looking very young, as indeed they were, having married in their early twenties.
The other is of the assembled guests, the women seated on chairs ranged in front, the men, glasses in hand, standing behind them and Bobby and I, the only children present, kneeling at the front.
.jpg)
The party was a success, an evening of sophistication such as we had not experienced before.
​
July 2016
Durga puja among the Gurkhas
​
In 1959, my father was posted in Darjeeling, situated in the foothills of the Himalayas at a height of 7,000 feet above sea level, as Brigade Major of a Brigade, a key post in the organisation. I was just over 11 years old and attended the Loreto Convent, my third Loreto Convent, the first two having been in Ranchi and Lucknow. Of the three battalions which comprised the brigade, one was a Gurkha battalion.
The festival of Durga Puja fell during our time there. For the Gurkhas, as also for large parts of north-eastern India, Durga Puja is the biggest festival in the Hindu calendar. The Puja celebrations mark the victory of the goddess Durga over the evil demon Mahishasura, who took the form of a buffalo, and celebrates the victory of good over evil. As BM, my father was invited to the Durga Puja celebrations held in the Gurkha battalion and took me along one morning. My mother stayed home to look after my little sister, a toddler of two. The highlight of the festival, which stretched over several days, took place one morning towards the end when there was, as is the tradition among Gurkhas, a ritual sacrifice of animals. The killed animals were then taken home by the soldiers and their families where they provided a feast for all.
It was a crisp cold morning in late October, the sun well up in the sky, for Darjeeling being in the far east of the country, sunrise came early. At the place where the ceremony was to be held, a crowd of men, women and children had gathered in a large circle on a patch of open ground. The crowd was in a happy and celebratory mood. An additional factor contributing to the good humour that prevailed that morning was that the celebrations had started the evening before and carried on through the night, with alcohol flowing freely, so that by morning many of the adults in the crowd, men and women, were in an advanced state of inebriation. In the centre was a square wooden post painted on its sides with kukris, the curved dagger traditionally used by Gurkhas to lethal effect in close combat, and decorated at the top with the sacred symbol Om. Officers of the battalion and invitees, among them my father and me, were seated on chairs directly in front of the spot where the animals were to be sacrificed, to get the best view of the proceedings.
In the middle stood several of the battalion’s jawans, along with the regimental priest. One by one, the creatures that the people in the crowd had purchased earlier, were brought into the circle. The smallest creatures were brought first, a succession of chickens and other fowl. The priest sprinkled some water, said a few words, one man held the creature while another chopped off the head. Next came bigger animals, goats. These required more effort. The animal was tethered by its head to the central post, men held its back legs with the neck stretched out and the sword flashed decapitating the animal. The crowd cheered each sacrifice and soon the ground in the centre of the circle became covered with blood.
Finally came the climax of the ceremony, the sacrifice of a buffalo. This big animal required the most preparation. Ropes around its neck tethered the buffalo’s head to the post while more ropes round its body and over its back allowed others to pull the creature from the back and stretch out its neck. The priest sprinkled the head of the animal with holy water and chanted prayers. The crowd held its breath as a soldier raised high a big double edged sword. It was inauspicious to require more than one blow for the sacrifice or to have to hack at the creature repeatedly.
.jpg)
The jawan brought down the sword with a mighty blow that severed the neck in one clean blow while blood spurted on to the already blood soaked earth. The ground echoed with loud cheers from the assembled crowd. The demon had been slain, good had triumphed over evil and there would be feasting for all.
With my basic camera, and with a bit of luck, I managed to snap a picture which showed the buffalo’s head almost at the point of complete severance from the body.
.jpg)
It had been an unforgettable spectacle of blood and gore.
July 2022
Pomp and circumstance
Promoted to the rank of Lt Col, my father’s duty was to raise a new battalion of the Guards, 6 Guards, at the Regimental Centre at Kotah in Rajasthan. Once formed, the first posting for the new battalion, in February 1963, was in the capital, Delhi. The battalion was quartered in the grounds of the magnificent red sandstone Red Fort, built in Moghul times. A major tourist attraction, the main monuments of the Red Fort, such as the Diwan-i-Am, the Diwan-i-Khas and the marble Moti Masjid, were in a cordoned off area which visitors had to pay to enter. Also within the walls and built during the years British colonial rule, were army barracks, as well as houses for officers and an army mess. It was in these that the 6 Guards soldiers and officers were housed.
​
​
The CO’s house was a most unusual one. It had been a minor pavilion in Moghul times, the rear part of which was built into the ancient walls of the fort. In the British period the walls of the pavilion had been bricked in, rooms built round it and it had been converted into a modern residence. At the front of the house there was a small garden with a private side gate which led to the demarcated tourist area of the Red Fort through which one could take visitors to see the historic monuments. At the main entrance to the fort, at the massive curved gate, which led through a covered arcade of tourist shops into the grounds of the fort, soldiers from 6 Guards stood on sentry duty. If one drove into the fort in the company of my father, the soldier on duty seeing his commanding officer, would snap smartly to attention and salute which impressed guests and gawking tourists alike.
The duties of 6 Guards were mainly ceremonial. In addition to taking over duties at the Red Fort, the battalion provided men for guard duties at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the President of India. This magnificent building, designed by Lutyens had been built by the British to be the palace of the Viceroy and to reflect the glory of the Empire. The President had his own Presidential bodyguards in addition to which the army provided men for routine guard duties. We thus made trips to Rashtrapati Bhavan and attended several ceremonies in the magnificent Durbar Hall, for the conferral of military honours (there were separate ceremonies for civilian honours). In March 1963 India’s first President, Dr Rajendra Prasad, died and 6 Guards provided an escort for the immersion of his ashes in the Yamuna river. He was succeeded by Dr S Radhakrishnan.
The month of August brought with it an important annual celebration in the nation’s calendar. On August 15, the anniversary of Indian independence, the Prime Minister broadcasts to the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi. The PM’s address is preceded by a parade of the armed forces in the open grounds in front of the fort, with the command of the parade revolving between the three services, the army, navy and the air force.
In August 1963 it was the turn of the army and Lt Col RD Palsokar, 6 Guards, led the parade. Ceremonial sword held upright he escorted the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, on an inspection of the troops. A photograph of the occasion, personally signed by Nehru, was presented to the commander of the parade. Nehru, India’s prime minister since independence, died the following year, in May 1964. The independence day ceremony at the Red Fort on 15 August 1963 was to be the last presided over by him.
.jpg)
.jpg)
At the end of the year, in November 1963, 6 Guards posting in Delhi came to an end. In recognition of the services provided by the regiment, the President, Dr Radhakrishnan, invited the CO and some of his senior officers, together with their families, to a farewell at Rashtrapati Bhavan. He presented the CO a signed photograph of himself mounted in a silver frame. Afterwards tea was served to the visitors in the president’s private chambers.
The stay in the capital Delhi, had brought with it encounters with the highest personages in the land and occasions of pomp and ceremony. After less than a year, 6 Guards was posted to Sagar, a small dusty town in Madhya Pradesh.
July 2016
My most embarrassing moment
In Bombay, in 1958, aged about eleven, for the first and only time during my education, I was required to study Marathi, my maternal language, at school. I knew it well as it was the language we spoke at home. Nor were there difficulties with reading and writing it, for the script was the same Devnagari script used for Hindi, a language studied at previous schools. My father always took me along to be admitted to school in every new place we moved to according to where he was transferred. His posting this time was to the north eastern corner of the country, fighting a Naga insurgency in difficult mountainous terrain close to the border with Burma. During this time we lived, my mother, sister and I, together with my aunt and grandmother, in the familiar, but cramped circumstances of the two room tenement in Bombay, a stay of some six months. An extended stay, instead of the usual shorter periods we spent there during the periods of my father’s annual leave, necessitated my attendance at a local school. The school, a private, English medium co-educational establishment was by the seafront at Mahim, within walking distance of the tenement. It was called the Scottish Orphanage Society’s School (subsequently changed to Bombay Scottish School) reflecting its origins as an orphanage founded by Scottish Presbyterians. It had long since become a private school for the children of well-to-do residents of the surrounding area.
When he took me along to be admitted my father made a point of telling the head that, never having studied Marathi formally, I was a little weak in some aspects of the language and would benefit from special attention be paid to me during Marathi lessons. I started attending the school and in due course the first Marathi class came around. The teacher, a big, burly, dark man entered and seated himself in front of the class, where he jiggled his legs under the desk as Indian men are wont to do. He asked the class to open the textbook to a particular page. Along with the rest I did as instructed and noted, unaware of the danger ahead, that there was a poem printed on that page. Suddenly the teacher, singling me out by my name pointed to me and, to my horror, ordered ‘Sing this poem!’ I did not know then that traditionally, in Marathi, poetry is not read but is chanted or sung. I could have read the poem, albeit slowly and haltingly, but singing was well beyond me. I was painfully shy, hated having attention drawn to me, was, and remain, unmusical. It was a moment of acute embarrassment when I wished the earth would open and swallow me up. I stood up with the eyes of the whole class upon me and stammered out something to the effect that I did not know the tune. The teacher, seeing there was clearly nothing to be got out of me, turned to another pupil. Satisfied that he had done his duty the Marathi teacher left me alone after that. My father dismissed my indignant protests later with his customary loud laugh. Even now, many years later, the awful embarrassment of that moment remains seared into my consciousness.
September 2022
First driving licence
While my father was posted in Delhi, in 1963, our family acquired its first car. After the purchase of a small flat in Bombay, this was the biggest single item of expenditure. In those days, the Indian motor car industry was undeveloped and there were only three makes of Indian cars available, a low slung Standard Herald, an Ambassador, the biggest of the three, and a Fiat. The Fiat was selected and for this there was a waiting list. When my father’s turn came, it became necessary to choose a colour from the limited choice on offer. We went to Connaught Place to the showroom of Premier Automobiles where the cars were displayed. After much discussion, in which my views were also sought (and given) autumn russet was the colour decided upon. Finally, one day the new car arrived and we looked upon it with our hearts bursting with pride and joy.
.jpg)
In December 1965 my father was posted as Senior Instructor to the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehra Dun. Dehra Dun is situated in a verdant valley in the foothills of the Himalayas. The IMA was where the cadets who had completed their training at the National Defence Academy (NDA) and who had opted for the army, were sent for a final year before being commissioned as officers in the Indian army. The IMA sprawled over a huge area some distance from the city. Within its grounds there was accommodation for the gentleman cadets, as the trainees were known, officers and their families, as well as the facilities and amenities required for such an establishment including classrooms, dining halls, sports and leisure facilities. The cadets travelled about on bicycles in large groups, ordered about by cadets from among their ranks appointed to positions of authority over them. The IMA was a self-contained small town where army hierarchy and rules prevailed.
​
​
I had been impatient to learn to drive since we got our car. At university in Bombay, I came home for the holidays and pestered my father to teach me. The roads in the grounds of the IMA, being closed to public traffic, provided an ideal training ground. I soon mastered the gears and acquired a reasonable ability to drive. It then became necessary to acquire a driving licence. The local test centre was in the city. I went there one morning with my father, accompanied by a junior officer, both of whom, having taken time off work, were in military uniform. My father drove us to the test centre and parked the car. The man conducting the test came out and I got into the driver’s seat. He asked me, given the way the it was parked, to first reverse the car out. I was fine driving the car forward but had had little opportunity to practise reversing the vehicle. I struggled with the gear stick and failed to engage the car in reverse gear. My father explained to the man that the reverse gear on the car was a bit stiff (it was) and I could drive (I could). The man looked at the two army officers, resplendent in their uniforms and decided it would be wisest not to pursue the matter further. He accepted my father’s word regarding my driving ability and without further ado granted me a driving license.
September 2022
You never can tell
During the time my father was posted as Senior Instructor at the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehra Dun, I was at university in Bombay. The IMA was where the cadets who had completed their training at the National Defence Academy, and had opted for the army, were sent for a final year before being commissioned as officers in the Indian army. I came home regularly during the holidays where, in the summer of 1966, my visit coincided with the putting on of a play by the cadets of the academy. The play selected was GB Shaw’s lesser known work, You Never Can Tell, a seaside comedy. With several hundred army cadets there was no shortage of men to fill the male parts. There was however a lack of women to play the women’s roles, some wives of the army officers gamely offering to act, while young girls there were none. My presence was providential and I was selected, if that is the right word in the absence of any alternative, for the part of the teenage Dolly. Mrs Clandon, a woman of modern views, has been living alone in Madeira and returns to England with her children, Gloria and twins Philip and Dolly. The children have been raised in a liberal manner and are used to speaking freely, especially Dolly.
We had rehearsals, conducted by a civilian teacher, who ensured that we knew our lines, entered and exited at the proper moments and conducted ourselves reasonably in our parts. Finally, there was a performance in a packed hall in front of officers and families, and massed ranks of cadets. It was a huge success. As Dolly, I had some of the cheekiest lines which elicited the loudest laughs. At the end I drew the biggest applause and received numerous compliments for my performance. It was great fun being the centre of attention.
.jpg)
.jpg)
My father on the other hand was worried by it. Most unusually, seating me in a small enclosed veranda adjoining the drawing room at home, he gave me a fatherly talk. He urged me not to allow my head to be turned by the applause and the bright lights and told me, somewhat anxiously, not to consider a career on the stage. In his youth he had been greatly taken by some performances he had seen and had considered abandoning his studies and going on stage. He was afraid that after my recent performance I might have similar ideas and he wanted to warn me against them. I had no such thoughts myself and had no difficulty giving him the assurances he sought. The conversation was more revealing about him than myself. As a young boy, dazzled by the glamour of the stage, he had seen it as an escape from the miserable circumstances of his childhood. Instead, with determination and strength of character, he had worked long and hard, had succeeded in escaping an impoverished childhood and had built a better life for himself and for his family.
August 2022
Before/After
The 90th birth anniversary of cartoonist Mario Miranda (1926-2011) was deservedly celebrated in his native Goa in May 2016. His cartoons, signed simply Mario, had been providing amusement to readers of the English language press from the time when I was a young girl growing up in India. Mario’s cartoons featured in the daily paper The Times of India and the magazine The Illustrated Weekly both publications to which my parents subscribed. The cartoons were shared in the family and raised a wry smile of amusement among adults and children alike. One cartoon in particular endured in our family long afterwards and became embedded as a figure of speech.
The cartoon was made up of two pictures. The first showed a family - father, mother, a small boy, his sister, and a dog (there was usually a dog in the family), setting out one morning for a day’s outing. All were clearly happy, the parents beaming, the children skipping about in delight, the dog with its tail straight up, all looking forward to the pleasures of a picnic and a day out. The second picture showed the group returning in the evening. The parents looked frazzled and worn out, the children tired and close to tears, the dog trailed behind with his tail between his legs. The two pictures bore the captions – Before/After.
​
​
This particular cartoon was not forgotten but stayed with my father. Thereafter he would say, usually of a child, but also sometimes of an adult, who had become tired and fractious after an event – Iska after ho gaya (He has reached the after stage) and everyone understood what he meant. Mario’s cartoon endured for decades after it had first appeared in print and made a useful addition to our family’s vocabulary.
May 2016
The Wedding day
An important part of weddings, here in the west, is the arrival of the bride at the venue, usually a church, where family and friends assemble for the ceremony. A special car, such as a Rolls Royce along with a liveried chauffeur, is hired and the bride, escorted by her father, arrives in style for the ceremony. On the day of my wedding, my arrival was a bit different.
At the time of my marriage, in June 1971, my parents had recently moved into their own house in Pune, the first they owned. The house at Anand Park was, in those days, on the outskirts of the city and difficult to get to without one’s own transport. Scooter rickshaws, a common and inexpensive mode of travel, were unavailable in the area and those in the city refused to take passengers to this remote location. Scooter rickshaws plied their trade as far as the main gates of the University of Pune, about three miles from the house, and no further.
I came home for a stay of some months prior to getting married during which time I acted as the family chauffeur. My sister continued to go to the school to which she had first been admitted when the family moved to Poona, in the cantonment area. There was a schoolbus to take her there and back, but the bus would only come up to a certain point, Mahsoba Chowk, about five miles distant, so she had to be taken there in the morning and picked up in the afternoon. My father did the morning run, and I had the task of going in the afternoon to bring her home. I drove around my mother, who never learned to drive, when she needed to go shopping or to visit someone, my father being busy with his writing. Around this time, my father started to develop cataracts in his eyes. This was not a problem during the day, but after dark, he would be blinded by the lights of oncoming traffic. So I took over the driving at night, my father sitting beside me on the front seat, where he was an extremely nervous passenger, panicking when he was blinded by the lights of oncoming cars and disbelieving when I told him, with a touch of asperity, that I could see. Of course when somebody had to be picked up or dropped at the university gates, where rickshaws were easily available, I was deputed to the task. There was a general acceptance of my role as family chauffeur.
The wedding was a large affair with friends and family members on both sides invited. It was held at a purpose built hall about 4 miles distant from the house. The ceremony, followed by lunch for the guests numbering several hundred, then a reception in the evening for an even larger number of invitees, could all take place at this venue. My father, masterminded the organisation of the whole affair, with able assistance from myself and Bobby, a childhood friend. Family members, mainly from Bombay had gathered for the wedding and had been accommodated in the house. Hotels offering reasonably priced accommodation were non-existent in those days. My paternal grandfather, Kaka, my maternal uncle and his wife, Tatya and Mami, my mother’s older sister, Tai, all stayed in the house in Anand Park. Others stayed with neighbours or with friends. My husband’s family, several of whom had made the long journey from Assam, had made their own arrangements.
My father was overall in charge for the arrangements on the day itself. This included, among a host of other matters, the logistics of transporting everyone, from where they were staying, to the place of the wedding. For this there were a number of cars at his disposal, with persons to drive them, among them my brother, Ravi, and Bobby. On the morning of the wedding, my father organised the travel of all guests to the hall with military precision. He directed persons to go in one car or another, ensuring that efficient use was made of the places available. He himself left the house early taking his father, Kaka, along with him. He needed to oversee matters at the hall and be present to receive the groom, his parents and family members.
I retreated to my room to dress in my silk sari and to put on the jewellery and ornaments deemed fit for the occasion. When I came out suitably attired, I found the house had emptied. The only persons left were my mother, her elder sister Tai, my uncle Tatya and his wife. Not only could none of them drive, my uncle and aunts from Bombay had few occasions to sit in a car, barring the odd taxi. The number of persons, five, was right to transport comfortably in our small Fiat, which was in the driveway, and there was an experienced driver namely, myself. The realisation dawned on me that my father had mentally assigned me to take my mother and these relatives to the wedding hall, oblivious to such niceties that perhaps, on this day, I ought to be chauffeured there. If I was to attend the ceremony, I would have to take myself there. My mother locked up the house, then she, my aunts and uncle took their seats in the car. I got in behind the wheel dressed in my finery and drove myself to the venue.
​
June 2016
Officers and Gentlemen
It is a treasonable offence for an army officer in one country to make contact with another army officer in an enemy country. This was applicable in the case of India and Pakistan, which had existed in a state of mutual hostilities since their birth as two independent nations in 1947, and had fought each other in three wars since then, in 1948, 1965 and 1971. So early in the 1980’s, when Col RD Palsokar MC, a retired officer of the Indian army, started corresponding with Lt Gen Habibullah Khan Khattak - also retired - from the Pakistani army, the Indian authorities took notice and sent a man from the Central Bureau of Investigation (the Indian equivalent of MI6) to investigate. The colonel invited the plain clothes detective in, informed him he had written to the Pakistani general in connection with his current research into the history of an Indian army regiment and showed him copies of all the letters. The man left and reported to his superiors that the correspondence had no treasonable intent.
After his retirement, in 1969, from the Indian army, Col Palsokar had turned to writing on military subjects and had established himself as a military historian of repute. After he had over a dozen books to his name, he began to receive commissions to write the official histories of Indian army regiments and institutions. The writing of the official history of the Bihar Regiment was his third official commission. When he began his research into the history of the regiment, he realised that one of the most illustrious former soldiers of this regiment was a general then living in Pakistan. As a military historian, he appreciated the value of such an important source being still alive and so he wrote to the general, with the consequences described above. The Pakistani general was slow to respond, perhaps because he faced similar difficulties with the authorities in his own country. When finally he did write, his reply was enthusiastic. He expressed his willingness and desire to meet the Indian army officer who was writing the history of his old, much loved, Bihar regiment.
.jpg)
The 1st Battalion of the Bihar Regiment had been formed during World War II, in September 1941, by a British army officer, Lt Col Tweed, from an existing Indian army regiment. Lt Col Habibullah Khan had taken over, in March 1945, as the battalion’s first Indian commanding officer. The granting of independence from colonial rule in 1947, had brought with it partition, into two independent states, India and Pakistan. Along with territory, there had been myriad other divisions, including that of the Indian army, with many of its regiments and institutions, formerly united, being split between the two countries. In the case of the Bihar regiment, its British officers returned to the United Kingdom, while some of its Muslim officers opted for Pakistan, among them Lt Col Habibullah Khan, whose origins and home were in the North West Frontier Province of the newly formed state of Pakistan. War broke out between the two newly independent countries almost immediately afterwards and men who had fought together became members of opposing armies.
In the Pakistani army, which he had opted to join, Habibullah Khan’s career prospered and, over the course of the years, he rose to the rank of Lt General. The continuing state of hostilities between the two countries meant that there was a problem in arranging a meeting which both men desired. A Pakistani general could not come to India, nor could an Indian colonel travel to the enemy territory of Pakistan. The general, having taken early retirement from the Pakistani army, had gone on to establish a successful business and was therefore a man of some means. He arranged for the meeting to be held in a nearby neutral country, Sri Lanka. The two men accordingly travelled, from India and Pakistan to Sri Lanka where they met in a hotel in Colombo.
Over the course of the next few days, they had long conversations during which the general spoke freely about his experiences as an officer with the Bihar regiment. The Indian colonel made clear his admiration for the gallant exploits of the senior, older man, while the Pakistani general recognised the open minded attitude of the colonel, who had put aside narrow definitions of patriotism in the interests of writing a true historical record of the Bihar regiment. At the end of their stay, the two men parted to return to their respective countries.
.jpg)
In the official history of the Bihar Regiment, written by a retired Indian army colonel, the exploits of this Pakistani general received full recognition as the following extract makes clear: ‘This young captain (Captain M Habibullah Khan Khattak) needs special introduction at this stage as he was to take over this battalion after its conversion to the 1st Bihar Regiment as its first Indian commanding officer. As the following pages bring out, he was to give a certain elan to the Regiment. The Regiment owes its present emblem and battle cry to him. He was the first to introduce the Gorkha hat for the Regiment. The part he played in the Regiment’s winning of the two battle honours of Haka and Gangaw (in Burma) and getting 49 gallantry awards in less than two years is something worth recording in letters of gold. No other infantry battalion of the Indian Army won so many awards in such a short period during World War II.’*
As professional soldiers, as officers in opposing armies, the two men had fought on opposite sides during the course of their respective army careers; as gentlemen they met on terms of mutual respect.
​
*The Bihar Warriors. A Historical Record of The Bihar Regiment 1758-1986 by Colonel RD Palsokar MC, 1986
A Burglary
The houses on Chamberlain road, adjoining the university of Southampton, were due for demolition to clear the way for new buildings and, in the interim, were rented out unfurnished to mature students with families. We occupied a three bedroom semi-detached house with our young son, then a toddler of two. We equipped it by buying some furniture, including two sofas, from the departing family, acquired other items by looking in the second hand ads in the local press and bought and laid ourselves a new carpet for the living room, a cheap multi-striped carpet of many hues, woven together with fibres left over from all the other carpets made in a factory. Money was tight and we managed as best we could with the limited funds at our disposal.
We had bought a second-hand car, a Ford Escort, with an unexpected gift. The car was useful for shopping and getting around with a small child. Gautam had a car seat in the rear into which he was strapped when we went out. One morning we set out together, all three of us. I dropped V at the local railway station where he caught a train to attend a seminar in London. Afterwards I went to an area near the house where there was a greengrocer, a baker and other shops, to buy some necessities. It was therefore some time after we had left that I returned to the house.
As I parked the car I saw with some alarm that the front door was wide open. There has been a burglary was my first thought. I gathered up Gautam from his seat and rushed into the house. I went first into the front living room where we had a rented TV set and saw with relief that it was still in its place. It then occurred to me that I should check other expensive items to see if any of them were missing. I stood downstairs and tried to think of what else we owned that was of some value and which a thief might have taken. I racked my brains for several minutes. The house contained second-hand furniture, minimal, inexpensive, kitchen equipment and our personal items of clothing. It gradually dawned on me that in our possessions there was nothing that a thief would consider worth stealing. We owned nothing that was valuable.
The open door was the result of us both thinking the other had pulled it shut when we left that morning and sometime during the morning it had swung open of its own accord.
May 2016
Education transforms lives
My father’s last army posting was in HQ Southern Command, Pune, the city in which my parents intended to settle down after his retirement. A young woman, Hilda Pinto, was his secretary in the office. Her father too worked in the same establishment. He had a lower position, that of a peon (porter) in the same Southern Command complex.
After his retirement, my father started writing freelance on military history. When he needed some secretarial help he thought of Hilda and for some time she came on a fairly regular basis to the house. He soon moved to doing all his own typing, he was a competent typist, as well as editing and correcting. Though Hilda’s services were no longer needed, she kept in touch with my parents who always had a warm welcome for her.
In due course Hilda got married and had two sons. The boys went to school and afterwards to a good local university where they studied engineering. Hilda still came to visit my parents, now along with her family so we were kept abreast of the boys’ progress. After graduation both boys got jobs in local firms, as qualified engineers, in executive posts.
Hilda’s father, with only rudimentary education, worked in an unskilled, low grade post, as a porter. Hilda, after finishing school, acquired secretarial skills and was able to work in a clerical post in an office. Her sons, went on to university after school and, with university degrees, obtained employment in white collar executive posts.
In the course of just three generations, this family, with each succeeding generation better educated than the previous one, was able to make the leap from low-paid unskilled work, through secretarial office work, to well remunerated executive employment. There was no luck that brought them this success nor was there any mystery about how they achieved it. It was through education, education, education.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. - Nelson Mandela
June 2016