More tales from The Raj

""If nanny or mummy were busy, one of the Indian manservants was detailed to look after me, which meant that he would devote the whole of his time to entertaining me.  This was simply wonderful because boredom was completely eliminated from my life."

These words were not spoken by B, although they might have been.  They are excerpted from the delightful 'Plain Tales from The Raj', a collection of reminiscences by Anglo Indians who were born and spent their early lives there.  Reading it, I felt I knew every story because B tells many similar tales from his childhood in Bombay and Mussourie.

In one of the photos we have of B sitting on his pony, he looks very serious and mature.  Apparently, children were treated like adults in many ways.  "Daily routines were always well established.  The children woke early to the sound of crows, had their chota hazri (which B calls breakfast to this day) and took morning exercise.  Prams were soon adandoned.  Instead you were placed in a saddle which had a ring 'round it so you couldn't fall out and you were led by a syce and taken out for a walk."  B's manservant, devoted to him alone, was called "Massichurrin" and he still talks about the fellow.

On both sides, B's Indian roots are deep -- probably going back about 150 years.  We have wonderful photos of B's grandfather and great-grandfather in their Irish Hussars' uniforms.  On the other side, his great-grandfather was District Commissioner of Allahabad -- sort of like being the premier of Ontario, so vast was the jurisdiction.  His grandfather was in the senior ranks of the Bombay Baroda Central railway.  Another grandfather was chief of the railway police, one uncle was in the Indian Army, another was a Ghurka and his father was a sea captain in the British Merchant Navy.  Who has relatives like that?!

There were no old people in India, death claimed them early.  As B says, you would meet someone in the morning and by noon they would be dead.  "Life was so very short.  When anybody got ill and died -- and lots did -- they were buried the same day.  It made the parting so sudden and it made an awful impression upon people.  The cemeteries of Calcutta were crowded with the graves of young men, younger women and their even younger offspring, reminders of the fate that could still overtake those who failed to take the proper precautions," reads one passage. 

Both B's grandmother and mother were nurses -- a wise profession in disease-ridden India.  I always found it odd that B insisted on a very elaborate first-aid kit being assembled every year before our annual vacation at the Quebec cottage.  Despite my ridicule, it always came in handy.

When leaving at Partition the book says.........."Most went with a sadness accentuated by tearful farewells from the most trusted of their retinues who accompanied them on their last journey across India, ayahs who had fostered their children, bearers who had stayed with them for a quarter of a century and more."

B remembers his grandfather going out and shooting the dogs and horses so as not to allow them to starve.  He also remembers some of the servants weeping and hanging onto the train as they departed.        

I keep telling B to record his history.  "Yeah, yeah, I will," he responds, but never does.