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Chinnery’s Hotel THE Baroda-born professor of English has described the experiences of the Anglo-Indian community in the last days of the British Raj with a deep sensitivity. Chinnery’s Hotel is set in the cantonment of Mhow in Indore district of Madhya Pradesh with all the seductions of solitude and silence.
Major and Amanda Chinnery set up their manor house in this garrison town with a view to indulge the well-to-do in organised leisure. The couple have three children—Bobby, Grace and Jo Anna—and they lead a cushioned life—their simple pleasures outweighing a few passing setbacks .The children were not prejudiced and did not tow line with the views of the elders regarding racial discrimination. In fact, Bobby and his little sister, Jo Anna, cultivate a close friendship with an Anglo by the name of Carl Busby. As Bobby’s friend, Carl is warmly received by the Chinnery’s. After completing his public school education from Marlborough, England, Bobby joins the Royal Air Force. The elder of the Chinnery sisters is in the second year of her marriage when Bobby dies during the Battle of Britain. Jo Anna becomes utterly reckless after Bobby’s death and the simple affection between her and Carl blossoms into a full-fledged romance. The violet-eyed, pampered Jo Anna and the motherless Anglo boy Carl, with his pale Greek-coin face, develop a bond which hints of impending disaster. The pregnant Jo Anna is packed off to her aunt’s Methodist Mission in Poona where she gives birth to Camilla while Carl is chased out of Mhow by the Chinnerys. In a bizarre twist of events, Jo Anna dies of rabies and Grace decides to bring up her niece as her own daughter. In the summer of 1946, the three Chinnery’s pack up and leave for England, fully aware of the buzz and tattle of bazaar gossip following Jo Anna’s death. Subsequently, the loss of her parents and the bleak post-war life in London feed Grace’s nostalgia for her childhood home. She carries her past like a pannier—one basket filled with memories of India, the other with promises soured in London. Thus, after spending nearly four uneasy decades in her ancestral England and accompanied by Camilla, Grace returns to the cantonment township of Mhow, where she had spent a much-cosseted childhood and youth. However when the past dies and leaves no live tissue with which to rebuild life, the place also goes with it. Back in Mhow, Grace realises that it is no longer the miniature town of her memory around which ran a toy train. Notwithstanding the trappings of order and a disciplined way of life, it has not remained immune to the profound changes that a new nation in the making has under gone during her prolonged absence. Chinerry’s Hotel has changed, too, and in its garden gone to seed history and rumour continue to intersect long after its guests have checked out, never to return. Through a subtle interleaving of past and present, the overlapping narrative of Chinnery’s Hotel traverses two continents, three historical periods and over two generations of women, and loss. The underlying theme is the abuse, violence, condescension and contempt with which the English treated the Anglo-Indians. They were treated as the untouchables of English in India. The pain and trauma caused to this community has been competently brought out in this book. It is a typical Raj novel with all the scandals, wining, dining and socialising which are associated with cantonment towns. A welcome addition to the genre of sentimental fiction about the British Raj.
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The
advent of the Anglo-American Chinnery’s in Mhow coincided with its
elevation to the District Headquarters for Civil Administration and with
it arrived several senior university-trained British officers. In
addition to the British, there was the Parsi community, the Indian
princes and the socially ostracised Anglo-Indians. The native township
was incidental, a minor accessory tucked away in the voluminous military
machine.