INDIA ON MY MIND

Rome. August 20. 2012

 A reminiscence of India’s independence

On August 15, India celebrated  the sixty-fifth anniversary of its independence. Much has been  written about India  both in current and historical terms, but I feel  I would like to add my comment as one who actually was there in 1947, for I was born and went to school in Lahore (then  in British India), and spent the first ten years of my life in Afghanistan with frequent  trips  across the Khyber Pass.

 In the dark pre-dawn hours of a cold  February morning of 1947,  a large American military truck picked my family up in Kabul for the first leg of an epochal move, back to Europe (the first time for me) after the World War.

I, of course, was both thrilled and awed, for this meant  goodbye forever to those mountains which had towered over me all my life. It is strange that, since then, I have had the chance to say “goodbye forever” to those same mountains  on two further occasions (1973 and 2007).

But, essentially I was thrilled, because I had always dreamt of riding in a Jeep and I had  developed an inordinate admiration for the Americans also perhaps due, I can’t say in what measure, to the Head of Mission’s daughter – an “older woman” to me: she must have been  perhaps eighteen – who, when she walked,  wiggled a part of her anatomy which I hadn’t known, till then, could be wiggled at all. I was riveted  by the spectacle. Perhaps it was my first glimpse of “the American Dream”.

The voyage had just begun and, in Peshawar, then a pleasant frontier town, I had learned the  astounding fact: that the sign “The Management reserves the right of admission” on the hotel restaurant door was the  indirect, typically hypocritical English way of saying “no Indians”. I had not yet read E.M. Forster, but this was really “A Passage to India” in the flesh.

There was a long – three or four day – train journey ahead, to reach Bombay, either by the “Frontier Mail”, my favourite, or the “Bombay  Express” which, to me, sounded like a sissy name. Of course, with my luck, we ended up taking the latter.

Indian trains then were probably built on a nineteenth century model, or, perhaps, had been designed specifically for the Empire. Each compartment was separate, with no communicating  corridor, and with  doors giving directly to the platform. There were compartments reserved for women  and others of varying size, some   “public”, others “private”.

Ours was a family size compartment, rather large, with two sofa-beds. two upper berth bunks, a bathroom, and a sort of  living space with a table and some chairs, all firmly riveted to the floor. A totally ineffectual fan flapped lazily from the ceiling.

The organisation was incredible: as the train approached a particular station, towards dinner-time, my parents  would “dress for dinner” (i.e. black tie  and evening dress), and. when the train stopped, they would  disembark to go to the restaurant car. They were immediately replaced by a kindly,  “Aja”, an Indian nanny, who also brought a tray of food for the children – no curries, only delicious dhal – made the beds and sat with us until the next station, when the diners would return and she would depart with the empty dishes.

We have forgotten that trains, in those days, really did go “clickety-clack”, that  there was a constant swaying motion and that the passage over railway points would shake passengers to the bone: I loved all this, because it made me feel the joy of  speed (who knows? Maybe even 50 mph!) and certainly did not disturb my sleep.

Even to a child. it was obvious that my parents felt apprehension at travelling through Punjab, which had been the scene of rioting and mass killings, especially at the  Amritsar railway station,  through which we were due to pass. Tensions were still manifestly high at the station and the train was  practically  assaulted by  panic-stricken Hindu families, who obviously wanted  to get as far away as possible from the future Pakistan (Identical scenes, albeit in reverse, were taking place with trains going towards the North West). Such was the haste of these families that, right in front of  our compartment window, a milk bottle fell out of a bundle and cracked, spilling the contents on the platform. The scene that followed disturbed me greatly, and still does,  sixty-five years on.  When all had boarded, the doors had clanged shut and the train was beginning to move on, I saw  an “Untouchable” – a “Sweeper” – who approached the pool of white milk on the black platform floor, and with his bare hands scooped up what he could into an  old  tin, I suppose to help feed the family.

India has always been close to me, and I already realised then that  this was an entire world and not a “country” or a “state”. It took me a while to assimilate the fact of “partition”, because,  in earlier years, “my” India had been  the Punjab, between Amritsar and Lahore, very close geographically, but now separated by an international border.

The social and political tension and the constant  threat of  sudden violence  were evident even to me, a child of ten, and yet when  the British troopship to which we had been assigned left the port of Bombay,  I really felt pain at the idea of leaving, not knowing, of course, that I would be back in  times which were more tranquil, in spite of the Indo-Pakistan war  of 1971.