Bowling out the Raj

Now that beating England in Cricket is passe for India, and other erstwhile colonies make for bigger competition, it is difficult to imagine the Euphoria of the first series win against the former rulers, especially for my grandfather's generation.
This was a middle on this issue published again in The Times of India

Bowling out the Raj

My grandfather was a civil servant in British India and was rewarded with a prefix of Rai Bahadur for years of devoted service to the Raj. We grew up with a strong dose of nationalist literature and films—this was the era before television and its numerous khadi serials—and imbibed the fact that all such desi bastions of the British Raj were worthy of ridicule, if not worse. Although we could not quite reconcile our straight-backed, stern-faced grandfather with either the lampoons or the villains we saw on celluloid or found in print, this did not prevent us from grilling him about his loyalties.
His anecdotes about several current politicians and ministers whom he had sent to jail in the days of old—when the representatives of the British Raj were the judge, jury and executors of justice—added to this image. The incongruous note was that the same politicians and ministers did not exactly fit into the heroic image of freedom fighters of screen and print—in fact quite the contrary. Jail seemed to be a fit place for most of the leaders anyway. Nevertheless, we continued to torment him on his loyalties and his role as the enemy of the people. He defended himself claiming that he only did his duty and did it well and administered the province a whole lot better than the erstwhile jailbirds did today.
He confessed to an occasional dereliction of duty, by passivity or relaxed vigil which may have aided these impulsive youngsters and the deep sorrow he felt when an execution, the penalty for such impulses, came up in his district.
He, however, remembered the assassination of his close friend and colleague, an English D.C., with great pain, and spoke of the senseless anguish to his innocent family. In contrast, he had scant respect for the leaders of the local khadi brigade, whose maximum penalty was a few months in a 1st class jail.

Decades after his retirement, when Wadekar and his knights errant were reawakening our jingoistic zeal with their heroic deeds in distant lands, topping it all by beating the British Lion in his own dismal den, the raucous celebrants hunched around the transistor had an elderly member. With tears streaming down his cheeks he applauded the India victory. He told us, “You will not understand what this means to me. We beat the masters—at their own game—the game they taught us.
We beat them in their own home. These lads are all right. They remind me of those youngsters in Midnapore...” It was the field of sports that finally settled the questions of true loyalties.

Nude Interlude

This is one of my middles published in The Times of India.

The Nude Interlude


This is a story of my maternal great-grandfather, the scion of a feudal family in strained circumstances, who was pursuing his higher education in Calcutta with a view to improving these circumstances through the good offices of the British Raj or the courts of justice, whatever luck offered. This he ultimately did, in both the court of justice—as an advocate and later through the British—via the neither very Bengali nor quite Civil nor really Service oriented Bengal Civil Service.
However this story has nothing to do with all this. This is a romantic interlude which predates his career days, when even great-grandfathers are bashful teenagers in repressed times being crushed in the treadmill of education. At the ripe young age of seventeen, he entered the holy and solemn state of wedlock, with a young heiress of another feudal family from the other side of the river Damodar—with as ancient a lineage and as exalted a subcaste as his, but with a significant difference—that of a far better financial position. He did this at the behest of his elders and betters—with the same end in view as his Calcutta education: improving the family circumstances.
His young bride was all of five years old, and brought him vast tracts of land and the means of continuing his studies. But marriage did not mean a life of domestic bliss for the couple. It would not have been practical anyway as he would be more of a baby-sitter than a husband and he would have to wait nearly a decade before his bride came of age and came to grace his household. In the meanwhile he could visit his in-laws on the occasion of ‘jamaisasthi’—when son-in-laws all over Bengal are feted for a day—to compensate for the other 364.
But the young man would not be content with so little. So, on his long trek back to his village from the nearest railhead—on his way back from college during breaks—he would make a detour and cross the Damodar near his bride’s village. Perhaps he did that to get a quick glimpse of his young bride, but more likely to enjoy the lavish hospitality—the birthright of a jamai—at his well-to-do in laws.
On the occasion of our story, he was on his way to one such unscheduled visit when, sighting him at the river ghat, the village belles gave the call, Jamai esheche!—the son-in-law has come—and ran to announce the news so that his hosts could come and request him to spend a few days there. This was the usual ritual.
But this time one member of the bathing party stayed back to stare at the jamai. Who else but the young bride, alone with the jamai for the first time? A classic romantic scene—the river ghat, the freshly bathed heroine, the travel weary hero— but with a difference. Our tiny heroine was in the buff— her only item of apparel, a mini saree, was neatly bunched and held under one arm. My great-grandfather had not bargained for such a meeting with his bride and glared at her in consternation. His bride burst into tears, threw down the sari and streaked home bewailing Jamai choch koreche!—the son-in-law has made eyes at me!