|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mehtars and Marigolds: A Story of Four Generations in British India
(1874 to 1948) DEAR God, how can we forget the British and they, us? Of all the traders, rulers and trader-rulers, they were the best, while they lasted. We owe them the Great Indian Railway and our great Indian penchant for all things phoren. We also owe them our nursery rhymes and our democracy and the products of both who rule us as our babus today. Here’s someone who has dusted the cobwebs off all postisms and colonialisms and writes back from the Empire. Good to know someone out there misses us as much as we miss them.
Spurred by tales of opportunity the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ has to offer, newly weds John and Sussanah Perren decide to sail to India from Wiltshire, England in 1874. Their arduous six-month journey ends at Shimla (then Simla) where they decide to set up home. This (then) summer capital of India takes up a large part of the narrative and if nothing else offers a peep into the transformations the hill station went through over several decades of its adolescent years. Shimla, in those times, was both a place and a struggle for the British in India. It was a metaphor for the opportunity and resources any colony has to offer as well as the challenges and resistances it throws up. It was retained as a sanatorium after the British wars with Nepal in 1814-16 and "although the terrain was rather bleak and ungracious, (but) in other directions the scenery was majestic". But most of all for the British, it was "a bitter-sweet memory of home-cuckoos and thrushes, pines in the mist, honeysuckle and roses in the rain". Intertwined with history’s march is the fate of their son, William and daughter-in-law, Mary, who also arrive there later from Calcutta as part of the government entourage in the six-month-old railway line in1903 which climbed, "where only tongas and bullock-carts had gone before". Their frequent shifts to Kingsway Camp, Delhi, the winter capital, afford us a sneak peek into life with a retinue of Indian ayahs, khansamas, dhobis, bhistis and mehtars. Their daughter Clare’s family of five kids and husband, Hector, a dragoon guard, with their exotic postings take them through a strange variety of homes, from living "inside" the Red Fort in Agra to the far-eastern Shillong with its Victorian Bungalows and the remote tribal regions of Assam. As the drama of World War II unfolds, Hector, now an officer, finds himself caught up in task of lending logistical support to the Allied forces while Clare’s brother Bill is captured by the Japanese army in Burma. With peace and the men back, comes the painful realisation that the clamour for independence means its time to pack up. Family photos and
anecdotes liven up the narrative. History here means history with a
slant—the author, e.g., finds it amusing that while the British
"POWs often modified local names `85 the Japanese simply applied
their own pronunciations to Thai words" (isn’t that what the
British did to all proper names in India?). When she marvels at the
fact that the Japanese "paid a daily rate" to all POWs for
working on the "Death Railway", it is our turn to be amused.
And yet, Ms Dinner manages to charm us. Her account of the Raj will
certainly stir waves of nostalgia on both sides.
|
||
|
|
||
Everything
said and done, it is a difficult job getting inside your great-grandmom’s
memories. Walking gingerly across bridges which creak at the hinges,
Barbara Dinner sets out to explore the India of her family’s post-prandial
conversations. She attempts to recall the fascinating lives and times
of four generations of her family in India, three of which were born
here. The result is not only a lively account of lives lived a century
and a half ago, but also a walk down the annals of history and
exciting glimpses of the past at the intersections.