Maddy's Ramblings

No, I am not talking about any of his rumored links, but the bright red rose he pinned to the lapel of his achkan. Nehru was insistent that it was always bright red and not pale in color. Also it was never yellow as some books mention. So what is the story behind it? Was it an event that got him to carry on with the habit, was it a woman or some women? Or??

We talked about Gandhiji and his austerity, as well as his loin cloth wearing and the reasons behind that. But Nehru always wore an immaculate Achkan (sherwani like coat) with the Gandhi cap and the telltale bright red rose and at times a small cane with a silver head. Nehru, his ackkans and the red rose became inseparable after he became prime minister. In fact the laal gulab went on to become a family symbol for the Nehru’s as time went by and their supporters even coined the ‘lal gulab zindabad’ slogan during the Indira days. The man and the rose evoked strong reactions in the 50’s. Deep Inder’s (The invisible path) Laila explains it nicely - As soon as we would see him with the familiar red rose on his coat, we would all shout in genuine joy, Chacha Nehru ki Jai, Chacha Nehru ki Jai!” “And he would gracefully join his hands in Namaste which we all felt was meant especially for us…

Or listen to Deepak Chopra’s (The Soul of Leadership – excerpt source acknowledged gratefully and now recounted with thanks) story about the day Nehru visited Jabalpur- My (Deepak’s) mother had dressed in her best sari and it did not matter whom she turned to – a maid, a best friend, nobody could talkj of anything but Nehru. When the motorcade finally wound its way through the streets, it passed directly in front of our house. Then something remarkable happened. My mother had found a place in front of the crowd. Earlier she had confided to us that she was certain Nehru would notice her among the tens of thousands thronging his route, and although we had teased her, her confidence remained unshaken. And when the moment came, she actually did catch Nehru's eye! He paused for a second, and then reached for the single red rose he always wore in his lapel. He tossed it to her. Even in all the tumult my mother caught it, and when the parade was over, she took it inside and carefully placed it in her best vase.

All that afternoon our house wad filled with people coming over to marvel at the rose, the kind you could buy in the market stall for a few rupees. But because Nehru had thrown it with his own hands, it had taken on his mystical status. And because my mother had caught it, so had she. People who saw her every day now lowered their voices to a whisper in her presence and looked at her with reverence. And when I looked at my mother, I saw that her brush with greatness seemed to have given her a new sense of herself too. At the days end, Nehru’s rose was saved for posterity, carefully pressed between the pages of a book like a sacred relic.

Mallika Chopra his daughter, however gives a slightly different version – She (Granny) kept in a vase in the middle of an emptied room, and friends flocked to see it, shoes off and in silence or reverence. When the rose began to fade, her mother threw a party and gave a petal each to her friends. According to her, Deepak who wondered about the rose and its significance got this profound explanation from his mother - In those rose petals are the hopes of the Indian future, our dreams, our aspirations, longings of a lot of suppressed people longing for freedom, our passions and love for each other, and what we strive to become. The rose, she said is an essence of our soul.

But as you can imagine, the rose became a subject of many a legend. One such legend is that he took to the habit of wearing a rose in his buttonhole after a child pinned one on his ‘chachas’ chest in 1938. The story goes that he started to and eventually got accustomed to tucking the flower to his jacket after a little girl courageously came too close and tucked it on his jacket at a function. It is said that he often compared the two saying that children were like the buds in a garden who needed to be cared, nurtured and loved, as they were the future and foundation of a nation.

Another legend (MG Agarwal – Freedom fighters of India V2) is that he wore it in honor of his ailing wife Kamala who passed away before him. That he liked roses is clear and is mentioned in other memoirs and stated by Shashi Tharoor in his book on Nehru – the story of how Nehru redressed a matter concerning a not so elaborate wedding for his sister Krishna (Betty) by plucking a red rose and tucking it into her hair before the ceremony.

But other accounts mention that Indira Gandhi had the responsibility of picking and delivering a red rose from his teen murti garden every day. ..Anyway thus we saw associations for each of the famous persons of that period, Churchill and his cigar, Gandhi his loincloth and his staff and Nehru’s red rose.

Rama Narayana Chaudhry was one who decided to find out and recounts an interview with the PM

I have often intended to ask you, why do you always wear a red rose?

Nehru: There is nothing special about it.

Chaudhary: Nothing special?

Nehru: No. I began wearing it casually 10 to 15 years back. And I like a deep red, not faint.

But Nehru did not always give the same answer to the question. Once Bruce and Beatrice Gould, Associate editors of ‘The ladies home journal’ met up with Nehru at Delhi and brought up the topic of the red rose - Mrs. Beatrice Gould commented "I admire your always wearing a rose. Is it a symbol of anything?""Yes, of levity," he replied. "It is necessary, in the midst of problems, to remember the lighter things.

Mathai his secretary writes in his memoirs (My days with Nehru) that there was talk of Congressmen in the Indian Parliament to start a "Red Rose League," as the British Conservative MPs started the "Primrose League". And he goes on to rightly mention that it would have been futile anyway for one cannot expect imagination from Indian politicians or to associate them with anything beautiful…

Austine writing for the Milwaukee sentinel (The women in Nehru’s life) in 1956 narrates another tale (actually she retells the version from the famous (or infamous) interview given by Nehru’s sister Krishna Hutheesing and published in the Ladies Home Journal in Jan 1955) – One of the Indian prime Minister’s most ardent feminine admirers never had the privilege of attending one of his parties. Actually she was a complete stranger to Nehru- although she is supposed to be the inspiration for one of his romantic customs – the wearing of a single Yellow (should have been red) rose on his simple white tunic. The story is that this nameless young woman used to stand outside his house morning after morning waiting for a glimpse of Nehru and that finally when she did see him, she shyly handed him a yellow (red) rose. He took the flower, got into his car and drove away. For weeks after that the girl kept her daily vigil. At first Nehru was annoyed. Then puzzled, then pleased. He always was gracious enough to slip the flower into his buttonhole.

When for one reason or the other, the young woman stopped paying her daily tribute to the country’s most powerful political personage, it is said that he sent for one of his gardeners and asked the man to bring him a yellow (red) rose every morning.

Something about this story is not quite complete and I say that because Mathai mentions that Nehru was perhaps upset (there is also this problem of the credibility of Mathai’s memoirs) about the interview given by Krishna and the rose story. While it would have been interesting to delve deeper into the story of the lady and the rose, the difficulty to unearth any information after so many years is so high that I gave up.

While Indira used the rose for effect, Rajiv Gandhi did not. He used the shawl over his shoulder like Motilal, to wean the masses and interestingly Zail Sigh who carried on the tradition, always wore one on his achkan except on the swearing in day!!

All said and done, as a saddened Nehru visibly wilted after the Chinese war while the fresh rose on his lapel signaled that it was time for another to wear it. The ill-fated Lal Bahadur Sastri who succeeded him and was the steward of a successful war against Pakistan, did not sport such objects and had a short career.

Been a while since I posted something and this one is going to be a light post as we were busy traveling to our favorite city, the big apple or New York and using the opportunity to see a bit of the US open. Also went to take a look at the Indian enclave called Jackson heights (a bit of advice – don’t waste your time going there for good Indian food, stick to Curry hill (Murray Hill around Lexington ave and 28th), though the place does give you a real feel of India.

Central Park

Wandering around the Hudson River banks, walking through central park and testing new eateries on the upper west kept us busy for a few days.

Sania giving somebody (not me!) a tough look

But the main idea was of course to see the quarter finals at the US open and watch Wavrinka, Djokovic, Murray, Youzhny and of course a couple of our desi stars Sania Mirza and Leander Paes.

Paes waiting for a Bryan serve

Was great fun of course, to watch the smoldering Swiss Wavrinka, the glum Scotsman Murray, the mercurial Djokovic and the moody Youzhny. Paes and Stepanek showed what team work is all about when they beat the Bryan brothers and Sania and her partner Zheng showed how it should not be played, at least on that particular day when they lost the semifinals.

Could not meet her though !

The Arthur Ashe stadium was a revelation, housing some 25,000 people and an example of how a well-made stadium makes watching a game even from the highest stands, a pleasure. And now some of the day in pictures.

If you are wondering what is hanging over my left ear (like a lot of others at the stadium), the device is a little radio provided by Amex which transmitted commentaries of the events live, so it was nice listening to the ESPN audio while watching the match.

Andy Murray

Stanislas Wawrinka

Novak Djokovic

Mikhail Youzhny

Sania practicing

Sania Zheng

Most of the photos were taken by my son Arun, so thanks to him.....

No Indian can ever forget the taste of Amul butter on fresh bakery bread. I won’t either. Each time we visit our neighborhood grocer, I try to find ways to convince my wife that we should buy a packet Amul (Can’t say I have succeeded, perhaps after reading this she will change her mind!). How would it be, if I spent a few hours on the person behind it all, a Malayalai born at Calicut in 1921 but knew that his life was to be made elsewhere, moving past Gobichettippalayam, Mannargudi, Madras, Jamshedpur, Bangalore, Michigan(USA), to finally end up at Anand, a sleepy little town in Gujarat (where he was to remain till the end of his life)? The story would span a few days of telling, but I will try to be concise, and make it a half hour's read.

I think I have mentioned this previously. Each of my articles is the mostly the result of a personal journey to learn the story which I then retell to you all. This one that follows the same route and as I picked up each fact from books and articles, I marveled at the person behind it, none other than Verghese Kurien, a simple man with big ideas, who wanted to make a name for himself. He was like many of us, a person who wanted to become a military man, a boxer, a metallurgist, an atomic scientist, a tennis player, but ended up among the buffaloes of Gujarat, who he always maintained were his best friends. He was as we will soon see, a person who initially wanted to flee the dust and calm of Anand to the hustle and bustle of Bombay but remained on to become the Dudhwalla of Bharat. That was Kurien, the man who symbolized the calmness of milk, but was actually a powerful man of sometimes brash and caustic words and one who never suffered fools – he was the person who herded AMUL.

I never had the good fortune to meet him, but many a year ago, I visited the NDDB/IRMA or the Indian institute of rural management campus which he created at Anand, while my cousin was studying there. Those were the days when I used to shuttle to Baroda and parts of Gujarat from Bombay to visit GEB (which as I never knew, had Kurien as a member and later as chairman, for a brief period)!!

Verghese Kurien - He was certainly a magnificent person to study, just consider the fact – the milkman of India never liked milk himself, and never drank it. As one from farming stock, I can testify that buffalo milk always tasted richer and better, and Kurien was the first to use buffalo milk to make milk powder unlike all the other manufacturers who worked on Cow products. And of course who can ever forget a related creation – the Amul girl. But we will come to all of that presently.

He was certainly an interesting fellow, hailing from Calicut who went to Madras to complete his studies at Loyola College, and later engineering from Guindy. Like many, he too had brushes with other interesting persona in his youth, like Gen Thimmaya who was his UTC adjutant! After his mother tore up his military commission letter for the EME, for she had just lost her husband and did not want a son to die in a war, he was directed to the Tata’s where his illustrious uncle John Mathai had organized an apprenticeship. Mathai was a director at TISCO then and eventually Kurien ended up amongst the ingots and molten iron at Jamshedpur in 1944. His heart was not in it, and when he found that his name was often linked to his uncle’s and he was getting special preference, he sake a way out.

Around this time, I believe it was 1945, the British government had sought applications to award scholarships for overseas studies to some 500 aspiring students and Kurien applied for it against his uncle’s wishes. He wanted to do an MS in metallurgy and Nuclear physics actually. With all that hope he found himself in front of an interview board headed by Sir Maurice Gwyer, of Delhi University. Expecting questions about his stated fields of interest, Kurien was shocked when he was asked what he knew about pasteurization. Not knowing the exact details, he blurted out that it had something to do with boiling milk at a certain temperature. Maurice promptly informed him that he had been selected for a course in dairy engineering. Kurien voiced feebly his protests that he wanted to do metallurgy, which were quickly brushed aside since only one seat was left and this was it. Kurien took it with a heavy heart and was told that his destination would be the USA.

Heading back, his next task was to face his mighty uncle, who immediately countered that Tata’s could send him overseas if that was he wanted, but Kurien would have none of it. Mathai’s parting words were that Kurien was making a stupid mistake to leave TISCO for diary engineering, a folly. Kurien next spent a few months at the Imperial diary institute at Bangalore to prepare himself for the course.

Soon he was headed across the seas to America, and he landed at Boston, heading to the Ohio state university in Columbus only to realize that he had been misdirected. He was sent then to the Michigan state university to study under Arthur Farrell. Since they did not have an MS in diary engineering, he ended up taking metallurgy as a major, nuclear physics as a minor and Diary engineering as a second minor to complete the credits. He made some good friends like Medora and Dalaya who were to play important roles in his later life. Interestingly, his team there was beaten in the race to patent colloidal iron, something that could have made him a millionaire, but that was not to be.

He did get some training at some of the Wisconsin creamery plants and soon he was armed with a master’s degree in metallurgy. Would it now take him back to TISCO? As you will all retort, of course not!! In fact he left the US with an appointment letter for Union carbide after he had been interviewed. Kurien had supposed that he would wriggle out of his commitments with the Indian government and join UC somehow. He had also hoped to use the special connections of his uncle who had by this time become the union Finance minister under Nehru!

The problem was that he had signed a bond with the government for Rs 30,000 and if he was to break it he had to pay that money for the release, which he did not have. The ministry informed him that he was posted to a place near Bombay. After some haggling his base salary was recommended for increase from Rs 275/-pm, to 600/-pm, but his uncle refused to approve it. It was 1949, Kurien was 28 years old and the date was May the 13^th. He had a job offer for all of Rs275/ p.m against the other document from Union Carbide for Rs1,000 pm, a princely sum. That was the irony of the situation. Bu then again just imagine if he had accepted and become part of that company responsible for the disaster in Bhopal!! What would have been his legacy?

Anand was not a town then, it was a sleepy, dusty village masquerading as a town with no hotels or transportation, save an odd tonga according to Ruth Herdeia who has written the ‘Story of Amul’, and trust me if you can get your hands on that book, buy it. It is a lovely testament to Amul and Kurien.

Anyway Kurien found his lodgings in a garage attached to the superintendent’s house and he even had to fashion a toilet and bath in those confines using corrugated board, himself. The situation in the institute was pathetic and the hundred odd people were marking time till the HQ at Bangalore shut it down. Kurien soon had company, a cook named Anthony sent by his brother to take care of his food. The despondent Kurien took to shabby dressing in khaki overalls, sporting shabby a beard, chain smoking and playing cards to while away his time (many a malayali would remember his youth, for this is still a pretty common scene in Kerala). Weekends were a boon, and he fled to Bombay to live it out at the Taj hotel with his friends.

Nearby, a fledgling milk cooperative was struggling to stay afloat. But how all this came about is another interesting story. Around 1924, a number of British in Bombay fell sick. The investigation revealed that tainted milk was the cause. Tests at London concluded that the milk was no better than London’s gutter water. Urgent searches for better sources were conducted and they ended up with the Polson unit in Kaira. Now Polson was founded by a clever Parsee named Pestonjee Edulji Dalal (Dalal’s nickname was Polly, which he adapted into the British sounding Polson’s for this brand name) and by then the farmers of Kaira district where Anand is situated had become the suppliers to Polson. Getting the milk across to Bombay was no joke in those days. Polson who had by then become the popular supplier of Polson’s Butter responded by packing the cans in gunny bags and pouring chilled water on them during the 350 km journey to Bomaby. And thus Bombay became the trade destination for the milk suppliers of Anand, via the Polson unit. But Pestonjee was quite a greedy man, ever the entrepreneur, he insisted that the British allow him a monopoly in milk procurement from the Kaira farmers. They agreed and thus was formed the BMS of Bombay milk scheme. You can imagine what happened to the poor farmers, for all they got was a pittance while Polson swallowed the rest. The farmers complained to the iron man, Sardar Patel who convinced them to form milk cooperatives. Morarji Desai was asked to set this up and he chose a visionary named Thribuvandas Patel to lead the effort. They grouped up and naturally Polson retaliated by finding fault with the milk, the quality and so on. Again the farmers were thwarted, and they went back to Patel who suggested that they get Polson out of the equation by owning their own diary. This was in 1945. Morarji was again deputed and he organized the first strike when the BMS refused to accept milk directly from the cooperative. The farmers went on a 15 day strike, during which event all the milk produced were poured out on the streets.

Thus entered another interesting person of this story, on the scene, none other than Dara Khurody who later formed the Aarey milk colony of Bombay. He convinced the Englishmen to concede stating that the Guajarati’s were illiterate and knew nothing about milk production. ‘After all they would soon fail, so concede for now’ was his advice, and the farmers finally saw victory. Thribhuvandas went about getting the various Kaira units going and finally tied up with the government creamery (paying an annual rent of 9,000) to make milk products in Anand).

That was the unit Kurien was then in and attached to, but then again how did this very unit come about in existence? Well it was established during the 1914 world war to supply cheese to the British troops in Mesopotamia!! Rumors state that the quality was so bad that the cheese killed more British soldiers than those killed by the enemy! You can imagine the pathetic situation Tribhuvandas was in, struggling to fight Polson, and with no knowledge of the technicalities of doing things in furthering the farmer’s cause, all while a bored Kurien, trained in the USA was wandering around playing cards and puffing away, counting days before he escaped this hell he was consigned to.

What would make these two meet? What would convert Kurien’s hell to Kurien’s heaven? What would change the situation? Would it be fate, luck or hard work or a combination of everything? Would they receive the blessings of their well-wishers in Delhi? Let’s go to Anand to find out.

Maganbhai Patel was the conduit, and he sought out Kurien who he had observed to be an efficient engineer but consigned to fictitious research work. He introduced Kurien to Thribhuvandas and Kurien started to help out by repairing the antiquated machines and keeping the creamery running. What they did was pasteurizing milk and chilling it before supply to others. The machinery failed often and Khurody in Bombay kept on rejecting the milk supplied by the cooperatives. Kurien finally told Thribhuvandas in exasperation that they should buy new equipment to survive.

And thus came about the first of the Kurien legends – about his visit to L&T Bombay to buy a pasteurizer. Thribhuvandas obtained a loan of Rs60,000 from his brother-in-law with which Kurien was deputed to discuss the procurement of a machine from L&T. Axel Peterson, the Dane in command was not too keen to meet the scruffy looking guy who had walked to his office and pompously asked to buy a Silkeborg Pasteurizer. Axel was taken aback and curtly retorted to Kurien if he had any idea how much these things cost, and if he knew what he was talking about. Kurien assured him he did and that he was a diary engineer. Axel then asked for proof of secure finances and Kurien responded with the bombast that was to become his trademark, he pulled out the wad of notes from his pocket and threw it across to the Dane, stating – ‘here, you can see it now’! The Dane naturally shocked and taken aback had no choice but to eat his words and soon he agreed to supply the machine as soon as possible, which he did.

As he wandered about Bombay after this event it appears that he came across a ‘shadow’ reader who predicted that Kurien was unhappy in his job but that he would have a phenomenal rise in his career. Kurien sniggered, returned to Anand and sent yet another resignation letter to the government asking for relief from the bond. Soon the reply came, this time accepting his resignation and allowing him to do what he wanted. The jubilant Kurien was packing his bags when a terribly upset Thribhuvandas came by. He asked Kurien is he had found another job. Kurien replied that he had not. Thribhuvandas went about reasoning, asking him to remain and help them get the equipment installed and running. After much discussions, Thribhuvandas requested Kurien not to abandon them and to remain for two months at a salary of Rs600 pm. His simple plea was – We need you here!

Kurien says that it was these four words that held him to Anand for the rest of his life. He just could not leave them in despair. Was it his respect or friendship with Thribhuvandas, was it his conviction to doing something worthwhile or was it something else? Kurien says that he was gradually pulled deeper and deeper into the workings of the cooperative and the day to day life of the farmers. He says – ‘I saw that when you work merely for your own profit, the pleasure is fleeting, but if you work for others, there is a deeper sense of fulfillment and if things are handled well, the money too is more than adequate’.

But on the sidelines, another war was about to begin, the one between Khurody who was setting up Aarey and who had aligned himself with Polson, against Kurien and the farmers of Kaira. Khurody saw the Kaira cooperative as a competitor to his Aarey plans. By this time, interestingly, Dalaya a diary expert whom Kurien met in the US, had come to Anand, upset after the partition and Medora incidentally worked in Khurody’s lab in Anand. The three friends from the US were together again. Dalaya who initially worked for Kurien without pay soon joined the dairy staff and would also stay on until he retired. As things turned out for the better, Kurien decided to stay and finally got the house that Desai occupied, as his lodgings.

Soon the balance was tested when Khurody, Polson and Kurien fought for milk collection areas, but Kurien triumphed when he outwit Khurody. Eventually in 1952, Kaira got the exclusive rights to supply milk for the BMS. Then came the milk powder story and a bitter fight between Pestonjee and Kurien. It was also the time when Aarey milk colony became operative and Khurody cut back on Kaira supplies. Kurien would not reduce supplies to BMS, but increased it and had an interesting argument with him where he retorted that it was not possible for him to plug the udders of his buffaloes when he had too much milk. Khurody was in the meantime importing milk powder from Switzerland, and well, as things stood, the Kaira guys were unable to reverse the situation, for Bombay would simply not buy all their milk. Thus came about the decision to make milk powder. Kurien left for New Zealand to figure out how. By chance he found out that the New Zealanders were selling substandard powder to India. When confronted, they immediately reduced prices for the said powder and eventually promised support to Kurien and Kaira for developing their dairy technology to the tune of 10,000 pounds sterling.

May 1953, that was when the next turning point in his life occurred. Kurien met Susan (Molly) Peter from the MM family. By June they were married and the next day they were off to Anand. Soon came the UNICEF proposal for aid and Kurien accepted it, albeit with some reluctance. It was here that the idea of making milk powder from Buffalo milk, never attempted before, came about. Aarey had a spanking new plant, Kurien and Patel still had their ramshackle unit in Anand. Yet he invited Unicef for a demonstration of milk powder production from buffalo milk. Dalaya showed them how with a spray gun and an air heater. But UNICEF would not take a decision immediately based on this bench experiment. Dalaya and Kurien then decided to use an experimental spray drying unit they had seen at L&T. The very same Axel Petersen came to help and Dalaya proved that they could do a large scale production with that unit. Khurody continued to try and hijack the UNICEF officials with ifs and buts, but the decision had been taken. UNICEF then tried to force Kurien to buy a Dutch plant when they had planned for a Danish Niro unit. After some stiff back and forth communication and backed up by HM Patel principal finance secretary, Kurien refused to relent and finally the plant was under construction. Kurien said later that it was an important lesson – that with adequate support, confrontation pays. Another person who worked with them tirelessly all this time was Maniben Patel, Sardar’s daughter.

The plant was being set up and the president Rajendra Prasad came to lay the foundation stone, when horror of horrors, a mouse jumped on the stone and scampered through. Kurien was aghast, but the villagers were overjoyed, Lord Ganesa had appeared to assure good fortune!

In the meantime another salvo was fired between Polson and Kurien, this time over butter. Ridiculing Kurien that nobody could beat Polson, the old Pestonjee dismissed Kurien who had come for discussions, from his office. But Kurien simply went ahead. Soon came up the grand occasion when Nehru came to inaugurate the plant. It was a touch and go scene for there were many a hiccup in the process. L&T’s Soren Kristian Toubro, Morarji Desai, all pitched in to get the problems sorted out. Dalaya was the star, the man who could get the solutions to various technical problems that cropped up. Nehru was happy, he hugged Kurien and said, ‘I am glad there are people like you in the country to do the things you have done’.

Kurien thus hit the limelight. He found new friends like TT Krishnamachari, and HM Patel. Kurien was made the GM of the new plant. By this time, the milk production had gone up from 200kl to 32,000 kl in 1953. Then came the fight to break the Polson butter monopoly. MRF’s KM Philip, Molly’s brother in law gave Kurien some fine marketing ideas. He insisted that Kurien needed a brand name and thus came about the name AMUL (from Amulya, also as an acronym for Anand Milk Union Ltd). To get the distributors set was the next challenge, TTK, Akberallys, Spencer & Co and so on were finally roped in, but the many hundred Irani restaurants of Bombay would not initially give up Polson. Eventually Amul succeeded.

Then came the demands of the armed forces and the manufacture of condensed milk. Here Kurien had another multinational to fight, Nestle the incumbent supplier whose lofty Swiss managers assured that such things are not done by measly natives and you could not make condensed milk from buffalo products (when Kurien visited them to ask for development support). What those people forgot was that Kurien was a crafty and determined Malayali who had also become a Gujarati (entrepreneurial- go getter spirit) by adoption. He took up the challenge and produced the necessary samples for approval. The government quickly curtailed Nestle imports. Later Nestle apologized to Kurien and provided Amul the technical assistance to make chocolates. Nestle was not the only one, next came Glaxo and the long drawn fight over baby’s milk powder. Glaxo stated that it was not possible to or safe enough to make such things in India. Here he had a tougher fight since Glaxo had embedded support in the bureaucracy. After a torrid fight, Amulspray was launched in 1960 and Voltas became their dealer in South India to ensure success.

It is time to wind up the story for you need reams of paper to tell all I learnt, and so a few more paragraphs in closing. By 1957 the Kurien’s were blessed with a daughter Nirmala. Time went by, NDDB was set up in 1965, IRMA was formed and Operation flood came about. Michigan state university conferred a doctorate and Kurien became Dr Kurien. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s one night stay incognito at a farmer’s house in Ajarpura village in 1965 demonstrated the nature of the center’s political commitment to Anand’s success. This led to the establishment of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), to replicate the Anand Pattern countrywide. It is said that NDDB was entirely created by the funds gifted by the Amul and Kheda farmers, perhaps the only instance where a national body was created by a cooperative of the farmers. All unheard of in India until then.

Anand’s experiment was replicated in other parts of India, milk vending machines were manufactured, and as the support and opposition for Operation flood increased, an interesting event occurred when Beatrice, the queen of Netherlands and Margret Alva her official escort visited. After introductions, Alva piped up stating that Kurien was an MCP because the crest of the NDDDB symbol was a Mohendajaro bull, not a cow. The queen looked questioningly at Kurien who retorted, ‘no bull, no milk’!! The queen burst out laughing. Kurien became the NDDB chairman in 1965 and eventually retired in 1998, but not without grooming a successor. That was Amrita Patel, daughter of the illustrious HM Patel. As he retired, he also picked up a slew of awards including the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan. Anand and Kaira had hit a high of a whopping 122 MMT of milk produce as they moved into the 21^stcentury. His trips to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Moscow make interesting reading, and provide some amusement.

Later when many people called Kurien the father of Anand, he replied to clarify – ‘It was Thribhuvandas who made Amul, not I.I only helped him. Working with him taught me to see things as he did’. He was also a funny man, of quick wit, in a seminar, Professor of Economics, CT Kurien from Kerala apparently introduced himself to Dr. Kurien. “Hello, I am C T Kurien” for which Dr. Kurien immediately retorted “I am V Kurien – Village Kurien!”punning on City.

But Kurien’s final days at Anand were not rewarding, as events unfolded, and Kurien was soon convinced that appointing Amrita Patel was his mistake. Patel had a view that NDDB had to be corporatized as the marketing set-up was in a shambles. Kurien felt this would be tantamount to backdoor privatization. It was time for him to go. As reports stated - His protégé, Amrita Patel, who succeeded him as the Chairman of NDDB in 1998 was spearheading the move to turn co-operative to producer companies and hiving off marketing side of business into separate entities. Kurien bitterly opposed the move as he feared the private players like Nestle and Britannia will eventually take over the marketing yet again. In a sense, he felt his life’s work was being destroyed.Never one to support bureaucratic ways and indifferent fools, he crossed swords with anybody he felt were in his opinion not having the plight of farmers in their plans. Since 1998, his life was spent in many a quarrel, first with Amrita Patel, his own protégé, when the new brand ‘Mother diary’ Sugam was created competing with Amul. In 2005 IRMA board members also protested on his autocratic style and as a result, in 2006, he left the organization he created.

AH Somjee concurs - In building India's dairy industry, he had a lifetime fight with the bureaucrats of New Delhi. Till the very end, they created hurdles and tried to bring him down, but they did not succeed. He knew how to play the game of beating down the bureaucrats of New Delhi, and practically every other week he was in New Delhi, pleading his case. As greater and greater success came his way, his critics dwindled. His last few years were not very happy. The people of Gujarat had matured, and wanted to know what was next after the dairy business. In addition, he had no answer. Curiously enough, living in the west, some of us felt that Guajarati’s had moved beyond dairying, but we could never convince Kurien of it.The death of Tribhuvandas, the Congress’ demise in Gujarat and the failure of the cooperative movement to sustain the democratic process led to a scenario where the cooperative is no longer a movement.

On the local political front, Kurien never got along well with Narendra Modi unlike Amrita. He got on Modi’s wrong side when he said "At the time of Gujarat's formation in 1960, there was only one CM and seven ministers. It is important to reduce the size of the government because a government is best that governs the least."Modi retorted -The people (Congressmen) with whom you (Kurien) have been for years, are responsible for this". Soon Modi was CM and his government was working hard to ensure that Kurien was forthwith denied some of his well-earned privileges like a cook, his car and a security guard.

Kurien's detractors have often said he could never let go of Amul and that he was not prrepared to allow the next generation to run the show. A former GCMMF senior executive says Kurien should have left in a dignified way. He could have still contributed in the capacity of an expert. "But Amul is his life. His baby. It was impossible for him to walk away from something he made. The coup to remove him, however, is unfortunate, given the work he has done."

Mitu Jayasankar - a student of IRMA recollects - His name was taken in reverence, in awe and in fear. He was a tyrant and a dictator, and he was extremely proud of IRMA’s beauty. We were ordered not to walk on the lawns, or go near the flowerbeds because Daddu (as he was called on campus) didn’t like it. We were told not to dry our clothes on the balconies because he hated that. He liked order and discipline and the price of breaking that was severe. This year in January as our batch headed back to the campus for our 20th reunion, we noted that IRMA’s beauty had faded. The grass didn’t look so green, and the campus looked a bit run down. Dr Kurien had long retired and although his presence on campus could still be felt, it was very feeble now.

As things turned out, Kurien now advanced in age and showing signs of Alzheimer’s, the man who preferred to wear a "Chaudhary slippers" and short half sleeved shirts, was utterly and bitterly alone, not how it should have been for one created for us the utterly butterly butter. By 2012, he has left the world, after problems with his liver and kidney.

Thribhuvan Das retired as Amul Chairman in 1970, he passed away in 1994 after even more philanthropic contributions to his farmers and the women of Kheda.HM Dalaya originally from Karachi, Kurien’s friend and a Tech whiz, passed away in 2004, it used to be said that if Mr Patel was Amul's Father, Dr Kurien was the Son and Mr Dalaya the Holy Ghost! Kurien said then – “My role was mainly in marketing, external affairs and handling politicians, bureaucrats and other establishment people. The internal and technical affairs of the dairy was entirely with Dalaya”.Not a lot is known about the last days of Pheroze Medora, but Dara Khurody a Parsee, who but naturally had strong Parsee connections, went on to join Voltas and the Tata’s. He is still doing the lecture rounds. Eustace Fernandes the creator of the Amul girl passed away in 2010.Amrita Patel, Kurien’s protégé has just announced that she will be soon retiring from NDDB. Perhaps the events have caught up with her!

Molly Kurien, his life partner left the world in Dec 2012, a few months after her husband, after being the bedrock in his life. Nirmala their daughter works for the Taj and Siddharth his grandson with the corporate financial sector.

The Amul girl however lives on, the cute little girl in polka dots, created in 1967 as a response to Amul's rival brand Polson's butter-girl. This little girl in polka dots, literally helped Amul butter win over an entire nation and became the country's darling.

The Amul moppet has featured in hoardings for almost 43 years, making it the longest running ad campaign ever in the world. The hoardings display one-liners that constitute a veritable commentary on contemporary political and social events, with each week featuring a new theme, captivating Indians of all ages. Sylvester da Cunha, the then managing director of the advertising agency, ASP, states - "The Onida devil died away, the Liril girl did not live long and we don't really know how long the Air India maharaja will live. But innovation, in the Amul girl's case, was never really needed. We never had to really play on the way she looked. Because along the way, she became the country's darling."

People still snigger looking at India’s scrawny cows & buffaloes, who are allowed much freedom, and India is now the world’s biggest producer of milk with production close to 130 million tons while the US is the next biggest, producing around 85 million tons.

The cows and buffaloes of Kheda don’t care about all these things or the people fighting and dying over them, they munch their grass, chew their cud, moo often and live on serenely while continuing to provide ample milk in return, no questions asked!

References

The Amul India Story – Ruth Heredia

I too had a dream – Verghese Kurien as told to Gouri Salvi

Milkman from Anand – MV Kamath

Various newspaper reports – Hindu, Indian Express, FT, BS, Onlooker etc acknowledged with thanks

"There are always opportunities floating by. Grab them, all of them. You can drop them later if they don’t turn out well.” - Kurien

Dear readers – Wish you all a very happy Onam……

That it certainly was, for though the week’s weather was a bit glum and grey, the Friday evening was spent watching a fascinating drama in space with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. With the accentuation of the experience in IMAX and 3D, and superb music by Steven Price, watching ‘Gravity’ was money well spent. And with that done with, we flew westwards to Ohio where Anu and Sabu had arranged a concert with the fascinating 32 year old Stephen Devassy from India and three competent young singers.

Both Shoba and I have been following the rapidly rising career path of Stephen for a few years now and enjoyed his musical support for the Indian Voice program as well as a few others, and it was after a span of some 6 years that I was seeing him again in person. The first was at San Diego and I had written about that event, a time when Stephen had provided accompaniment to the famous Hariharan.

Stephen has progressed famously since then, and the village boy from Ottapalam had indeed travelled a long way, performing across the globe and in front of many a luminary. Some of you may not know Stephen, so a little bit about the young musical genius.

This young lad burst into the music scene with dreams to arrange and perform the music he composed. Starting early with just a keyboard, he quickly anchored himself firmly in church choirs and gospel music, and started solo performances when he was in the 8^th standard. As he progressed to college, he decided to divert his interests fully into music and that was when the famous vocalist Hariharan beckoned, with which Stephen’s world travels started. By 16 he had completed his exams on the Piano at the Trinity College in London scoring very high marks. Soon he immersed himself in the film world as a music programmer, working with many a musician, music director and singer, not only in the South but also the North. He still is one of the busiest programmers now settled in Mumbai, but then with the hectic style he has chosen, he also jets around the world doing many a stage program. His heart however is in creating original music and performing with his bands.

And that was how we met Stephen at Cleveland, the hallowed center for rock and roll and Carnatic music in the USA (recall my article about the Thyagaraja Utsava?). For those who raise a quizzical eye, that was where Moondog (Alan Freed) the DJ popularized a new style of rhythm and blues music calling it rock and roll and then went on to promote the first ever rock and roll concert. Freed was also one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame following which Cleveland warmly embraced rock and roll, making it a center for record-buying, radio stations and live concerts. Stephen, if you are not aware yet, is a keen western music enthusiast, while fully at home with all the Indian genres. Gospel comes to him readily, but funk, rap, rock and blues are no strangers and we were soon to witness his genius at impromptu jamming.

Stephen was very easy to get along with and as a simple and humble man, shared many a tidbit of the world he comes from, but at the same time was inquisitive, sometimes almost childlike, about the life of an ordinary American Malayali. He had traveled alone for this event and getting ready for the next day’s event was prime in his mind and a few electronics items were needed. Stephen incidentally, is pretty adept with tools and taking apart his musical machines if so needed, for he had discovered that his Keytar had suffered some minor damage. Once he had repaired it, his mind was at ease, and soon we were off to the musical superstore Sam Ash nearby, something Stephen does when he is in the USA. This was a place where he just gets lost, browsing the latest tools of his trade and comparing experiences with the specialists there, and Cleveland has a really big store. Sam Ash describes itself -Visit any Sam Ash Music Store at any time and you’re guaranteed to see somebody making music. After all, making music is what Sam Ash is all about and they mean business. Playing the incredible selection of instruments is not only allowed, it’s encouraged. You’ll find people of all ages, from novice to pros playing guitars, keyboards, drums or brass and woodwind instruments.

It was after Stephen finished selecting the hardware he needed that he spotted a serious looking gent rapping

away near a keyboard. We could easily make out was that this singer was quite good and Stephen decided to play with him. The experience listening to the duo-ensemble was well, nothing less than unique.

Dinner and conversation followed at Anu’s and Sabu’s home, and it was great fun, chatting about music, Stephen and his interests, life and so much else. Simi was busy with the preparations to host the show for some 400 people the next evening and Jishnu and Vinod, with all kinds of activities related to the dinner, the other hall arrangements and so on, and I will agree that the efforts were very painstaking, just look at the place holders the ever so efficient Simi made for each dish.

Stephen was fighting the drowsiness creeping in with the jet lag as he had come in directly after a hectic show in Dubai. You think we would have let him drift off to sleep? No way! For the charming threesome of children were making a bedlam while the young ladies were getting the dinner ready. And thus we heard snippets from Stephens’s busy life, his new pad at Bombay, his married life and events around his life and his many friends…

One of the events he remembered was the performance he gave at my alma mater, NIT Calicut. For him,

interaction with his audience was a must and the performance at NIT is something he always remembers, eyeballing the hyperactive audience in the front rows of the auditorium. But the story about his experience with a senior instrumental maestro during another extended tour, about having to massage the feet of this person, who had a fall into the orchestral pit during a passionate practice session, had us all in splits. We joked that he power in his fingers came from the maestro’s feet.Music has really taken him places, and he considers himself lucky to have performed before dignitaries like three of the Vatican Popes (a total of five performances) as well as the Dalai Lama.

The Keytar liberated him in stage shows, and allowed him to move around and interact with the audience, and he showed how as the concert started, making a grand entrance, fingers furiously playing a peppy tune, while his eyes were taking in the audience and occasionally at the keys. Stephen said in a recent Hindu interview - Till then the keyboard or piano was treated as a backup instrument. But when I was given a chance to do unplugged versions of chartbusters or jam with contestants, people started noticing me and the instrument. As a Motif artiste (he endorses the Motif series of keyboard synthesizers) of Yamaha, Stephen knows quite a lot about his keyboards and is up in the league (or even above in my opinion) of Loy Mendoza and Louis Banks. But whatever said and done, Stephen agrees that it was reality TV, shows like Indian Voice that took him to the hearts of millions in Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as many others in India and abroad.

He had appreciative opinions on every new singer and sees only the good in everybody who sings, talking reverently of the greats like AR Rahman and Hariharan with whom he has performed often, of the great fun he has jamming with his pal Sivamani and his friendship with MJ, Karthik and other singers. And of course, we discussed things other than music, like food (he loves the porridge kanji!!) and he told us about something I am looking forward to eat – the Dindigul Venu Biryani at Coimbatore, something both Stephen and Sivamani love.

How many of you know that he worked with Colonial cousins, the twin set of CD’s Hariharan and Leslie Lewis made? Termed sometimes as India’s Jazz pianist or the South Indian Mozart, he has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra. He has done over a couple of thousand concerts and is totally at ease on stage and even takes pains to ensure that his co-artistes are at ease. His concept in his own words - It’s very simple. Music should be enjoyable. Listeners should be able to satisfy their tastes. Music relaxes us, rejuvenates our mind and helps us escape from the stresses of hectic life. I try to make waves among youth with music, because I represent them.

His performance at the concert was electrifying, and his endearing vibrancy on stage enough to get the audience involved. Remixing old tunes, and introducing new melodies interweaving western, Carnatic and Hindustani, he served us a heady mix of music for a couple of hours.

And the vocal accompaniment was equally good, with many a popular song sung by Bhadra, Shalini and Thahseen. Each of them is a competent singer with many shows behind them. Bhadra, the lovely lass continues to brings us art from the family of thespian Thikkurissy Sukumaran Nair, being his grand-daughter. She sang a number of peppy and melodious numbers, warming the hearts of the audience while the charming Shalini Rajendran anchored in with a number of ever popular songs. The third singer was somebody I knew from the blogger’s world and somebody I had corresponded in the past, in fact it was a surprise meeting him at this concert, the somewhat serious looking Thahseen Mohammed. We had shared notes on stalwarts dead and gone in the Malayalam music world, people like Mehaboob and K Abdul Khader. Thahseen weighed in with a few Rafi numbers and Malayalam songs. With Stephen supporting, all three gave us a lovely mix of Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi songs, and in the gaps Stephen would take us away into another sphere with his keyboard pieces.

Stephen, who loves Mozart's Symphony was inspired by Yanni (In fact it was playing Yanni’s ‘Nostalgia’ that got him entrance to Fr Thomas’s Chetna school many years earlier), the Greek musician, in making his musical compositions. In fact we spent many a minute discussing the Yanni show I had attended some time ago. He also recalled watching the Celene Dion show at Las Vegas and hoped that someday he could also be part of such mega events! From the new musical lineup, he likes Michael Buble and Michael W Smith. Interestingly he believes that he may have picked up the Sitar if it had not been the piano. But all said and done, audience interaction is important for him in a concert. In fact in an earlier interview, he explained "My early training on the piano was restricted to Western classical music, and I played Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin to audiences in Ottapalam and Thrissur who could not much appreciate it," recalls Stephen. "As I played my pieces fast, they seemed impressed. And when I began to introduce tunes - drawn from local films and folk music - the change was dramatic. They applauded, because they enjoyed what they heard."

And so that was how he got the audience to their feet – when he paid tribute to the most popular romantic tracks of the past years. He got the crowd to do the vocals for Thumbee vaa, Ayiram kannumai, Anjalee anjalee, Pehla Nasha, Kal Ho Na Ho, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and so on among others. The crowd happily sang along, like we did…remembering the scenes with Prabhu, Shahrukh and all those actors.

A sumptuous dinner catered out from Chicago followed with many a mouthwatering Kerala dish prepared with meticulous care. The dishes were attacked with gusto and consumed amidst animated conversations with Anu’s and Sabu’s Cleveland friends. Stephen was happy that the weather in Ohio was mild, for he hates the cold weather which is tough on exposed flying fingers. Gloves, he says, don’t help with the speed and dexterity needed, so he tries his best to schedule programs during the summer days. But he was surprised seeing so many people from Ottapalam at Cleveland, he mentioned that so many people walked up to him to mention they were also from Ottapalam. But good things have to end and soon, it did…..

Again, it was a week end with so many happy surprises, I met my friend from my Ambika Nivas Triplicane days, Babuji and his wife, after all of 33 years!! All in all, those three days were so nice, meeting so many young people like Jishnu and Simi, Saju and Bhadra, Vinod, Anup, Kannan, Shalini and Thahseen and so many others. The hours we spent talking about Calicut, for Bhadra and Saju also studied there (Shalini too hails from Calicut), common relatives and so on till the wee hours of each morning made us want more than the available hours in a day. And so, we all agreed to remain in touch, as new friends…… And for all that, once again, thank you – Anu and Sabu…….

Stephen has a studio and sound technology college in Chennai which we have decided to visit, the Muzik Lounge, and perhaps we will meet Stephen the musician again there, arranging music.Or who knows? We may come across him again, somewhere, sometime, someplace and enjoy more music….

Photos – Courtesy Jishnu

A movie and a concertA movie and a concert

Part 2 Life and times in the USA - 1921-1946

In Part 1, we got to know briefly the character of Syud Hossain, the man exiled from his shores to fight for

his nation’s independence. Syud Hossain, that was how his name was spelled and Syud was very clear about it from the very beginning, correcting people who misspelt it as Syed. However even Vijayalakshmi would spell it wrongly in her memoirs! In this section, we will run through his 25 years stay in USA and his final days in the limelight, before fading into obscurity.

Move to USA

The world congress of religions was then holding a conference in New York and using the influence of Agha Khan and Mr Chotani, Syud managed to get across the Atlantic to the new world. That he needed special help to travel is clear due to the simple fact that his passport had already been impounded, effectively ensuring that he could only remain where the British wanted him, far away from India.Thus it was in 1921, that Syud Hossain arrived in USA to lecture in New York and here he remained to report the Washington disarmament conference as a press representative for India. After this event, he continued to network with the few Indians rooted to American soil and inform about the land of India and her peoples, talk about the person called Gandhi, correct much disinformation spread by the British and also change the public opinion of the normal American. If one were to stop here, take a breath and think about that enormous task, any such person would just balk. But Syud had to do just that and survive only with the remuneration from his lectures about his far away land, his convictions and some good will.

Since that period, he was virtually the non-accredited Indian Ambassador to USA, until Asaf Ali took up the first formal position and later Vijayalakshmi Pandit herself took the job.

Together with Haridas Mazumdar, Dr. Syud Hossain and Dr. Anup Singh, he was a member of the second generation of Indian exiles, establishing close interpersonal links with religious pacifists and civil rights activists in the United States

Early years 1921 to 1934

Those were the days when the British sponsored negative opinion about India was spread about America by writers like Beverly Nichols who wrote that ‘Democracy in India had about as much hope of surviving as Scottish heather in the desert of Thar’!! He went on to equate Gandhiji with Hitler and state that Gandhiji was an ugly, vain, narrow, ignorant and supremely arrogant dictator. If he did peep from his present abode somewhere up above or down below, and see the world’s largest democracy called India, he would at least squirm. And there was the grotesque misinformation spread by the book Mother India written by the infamous and notorious Katherine Mayo about which I will write separately.

One of Hossain’s early contacts in America was Mazumdar. His first attempt at publishing on American shores was a magazine called Ars Islamica, expounding the various contributions of the Islamic community to Math, Art, Music, science and so on (perhaps this is when he crossed roads again with Ozai Durrani, the minute rice man?) during the renaissance. Soon he was to get associated with the Orient magazine, a popular publication in New York.

The New Orient magazine

THE NEW ORIENT as was described then, provided a meeting place for the keenest, most sincere, and most sympathetic minds of East and West. It was the magazine of the Orient society and soon Hossain had become its secretary in New York.

The magazine started in 1923 with Hari G Govil as the Orient edited by Govil and later edited by Hossain (Hari went back briefly to India came back and joined IBM) as New Orient and continued until 1928 after which Hossain left. The society arranged a number of social gatherings, lectures and entertainment and the magazine was widely popular and had a good readership showcasing many an Indian politician and writer (anybody desirous of studying his association with the Orient as well as his editing and writing styles and how beautifully he engaged readers is advised to read the book by Fedirka).The aim was of course to use the written medium to show how wrongly stereotyped India and Indians were was in the western eye. Later after Govil returned, it became the Oriental. Tagore, Gandhi, Gibran, Noguchi, Coomaraswamy, Wadia, Sarojini Naidu and so on were contributors. And there were many a western contributor too, like Einstein, HG Wells, Blanche Watson and many others. Not surprisingly it had a global reach even at that time, but for monetary reasons the magazine was running into difficulties and as it was soon to go under, Hossain took to other avenues to sustain his mission and himself, notably legal work and lecture tours.

And that was how his first association with the National committee for Indian Independence with Anup Singh evolved. It was the emergence of what eventually was informally named as the Indian lobby in Washington, the group that penetrated the higher echelons of the American leadership, the senate and the white house.

It is difficult to separate the next two decades of Hossain’s life between lecture tours, work at the University of South California and the India league activities in Washington, for Hossain was in those years, here there and everywhere.

Hossain went on to speak for a number of events and club meetings, as well as in churches and other prominent places. Detractors do mention that he projected himself and as to how wonderful a person he was (in typical American style, outspoken, be they philanthropists or outright capitalists) and how great a help he would be to the Indians of America, leading their cause against the British. The speaker bio’s or pamphlets provided about Hossein quoted praise from papers, eminent personalities and the various gentry. But his lectures attracted audience. One report even mentions that he collected over a hundred thousand dollars in 6-7 years, a stupendous sum. During these years, he lived in the best hotels and presented himself in immaculate attire. Hossain himself remarked ‘Saints and I do not get along together’ and Mazumdar also affirms ‘ Austerity and Hossain never went together’.

Soon tongues began to wag. Hindus in America felt they had no reason to pay a Muslim to live in five star luxuries while they slaved in burning fields of Stockton California. By 1930, the lecture contributions had started to dwindle and Hossain contemplated returning somehow to India.

It was also the time when the few Indians in America had lots of legal problems and Hossain represented their cause on a number of occasions. Soon it was apparent to him that his major client base was far away and in the west coast of USA ( though there were a few in New York, Chicago and Michigan), not only as clients, but as sources of funding for his as well as the Indian leagues activities. But as is well known, Hossain brought the word of Gandhi to America, in the most appropriate manner. Importantly, he was fiercely anti-communal, opposing figures like Jinnah or their advocacy for Pakistan.

And soon, his activities were under the British secret service folders – Check if you can the following for details. Dr Syud Hossain, journalist: activities in USA and Canada IOR/L/PJ/12/247, File 646/25

Interestingly he found a lot of women supporters due apparently to his immense sex appeal. Many of the glowing articles written about him were by women. His circle of admirers and friends included people like Jacques Marchias, where their common link was interestingly, understanding Buddhism so much so that in 1933, Jacques Marchais helped him organize the "Roundtable of Contemporary Religion" in New York.

1931 – Move to California, USC

I obtained a better party understanding of Hossain’s days lecturing at the University of South California from the memoirs of the famous nuclear physicist Piara Singh Gill, a person who was nurtured by Syud Hossain in many ways and who is remembered by Singh fondly. Piara Singh was a pioneer in cosmic ray nuclear physics and party of the famous Manhattan project with Oppenheimer. Later on he returned to India, with Syud’s help and worked with Nehru and other famous people like Homi Bhaba starting up or working in many of the organizations like TIFR AEC, CSIO and so on.

Singh states that he first met him when he came to lecture in California in 1923 where all Indians attended to pay their respects to Hossain. It was the time of the great depression, and Singh was finding it difficult to support himself and his studies. His first observation was how Hossein decried the collection drive for Muslims affected in the Hindi-Muslim riots of Bombay with his stance that such fund raising becomes seed for further riots. How prophetic!! Anyway Hossain singles out Gill and gives him a lot of advice, asks him to forge on with his research even though times were bad and a shoulder to lean on should life become intolerable and unsustainable for Gill. This was to become an everlasting friendship.

Somewhere in 31 or 34, Hossain moved to USC Los Angeles. His courses were on the ‘Civilization of India’ and ‘The civilization of the Near East’. The dean even went on to recommend that every new student take one of Hossain’s courses and the net result was that every lecture of his was packed to the full. Gill would meet Hossain at the cafeteria and Hossain would educate him on Nehru, Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu. Their intellectual association was to continue until 1935 when Gill, moved to the University of Chicago for higher studies. A few years later in 1940, he decided to move to India and as expected Hossain offered to connect him up with the highest authorities and the great mentor he was, did exactly that allowing Gill to finally chase his dreams, in his own homeland, while he observed wryly from afar, from exile.

Even during these days at USC, he continued with his lectures. He spoke at town halls, churches (on themes ranging from Budhha to Gandhi), he spoke without any religious leanings, fiercely supporting secularism much to the disgust of people like Jinnah. Clubs advertised his arrival and contents of his speeches. Take a look at this for effect - BRITISH RULE IS STARVING INDIA - Syud Hossain Declares 60,000,000 Get Only a Handful of Boiled Rice a Day. DEMANDS THEY BE FREED asserts Washington Conference Is Futile While Fifth of the World Is Being Oppressed.

Visit to India 1937-9

Not much talked about, Syud did visit India briefly, spending time at Dacca and meeting up with Subash Chandra Bose.

The Indian Lobby 1939-46

Dr Gould, a great friend of India and lecturing on such matters even today, provides a beautiful commentary of those days and I am only using tidbits from the tantalizing chapters of his wonderfully lucid book ‘Sikhs Swamis Students and spies’.

Anup Singh, Mazumdar, Sridharani, JJ Singh and Hossain were the first participants of an organized effort to obtain US support for Indian independence. Three or four times a year, they would meet in Washington and hold debates marshaling public support. Syud used his connections in UK and India to get inside information to expose people like Churchill and their duplicity in Indian matters. Many an American intellectual was roped into the ring, and significant in her presence was the great Pearl S Buck and such meetings would always have at least one member of the American congress.

Imagine, the first meetings of the India league were held at the Ceylon India Inn, the only Indian restaurant in NY! Soon JJ Singh, who was until then somewhat of a playboy businessman dealing with Indian textiles, was to take a leadership role in the India League and make it the focal point of all lobbying efforts. It also appears that he was friendly with President Roosevelt’s son Jimmy. This was not to the agreement of some others and so Syud Hossain and Anup Singh formed a parallel organization called the National committee for Indian independence in Washington DC, supported by the businessman Watumull.

By 1942, in the middle of the world war, the Churchill sponsored propaganda wars started in the US, so also the quit India movement and the efforts of other groups such as the east west association of Pearl S buck. Americans were by then in India, at the CBI Theater and able to obtain much local insight. The Indian lobby meetings started to attract large audience much to the alarm of the British.

Durga Das provides an example in his memoirs - One of the most telling ripostes to the British propaganda was delivered at a time when Churchill was in Washington for one of his frequent consultations with Roosevelt. Some Indians and their American sympathizers booked a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post. Churchill was breakfasting with his host at the White House when the Post was brought in. Roosevelt was unaware that the paper contained the ad, which had been prepared by Syud Hussain, Chairman of the Committee for Indian Freedom, and was a biting indictment of British rule in India.

He passed the paper to Churchill, who opened it and saw the ad, captioned "What About India?" Churchill threw the paper down angrily. On learning the cause of his ire, Roosevelt calmly observed that the ad had obviously been paid for, and buying newspaper space for propaganda purposes was not unusual in the US.

Nevertheless, the days 1942-44 were filled with some amount of wrangling between Hossain and Singh. JJ Singh was better connected and more in the news and prevailed in the League. Eventually after some years of concerted efforts Hossain returned to South California as a professor, commuting regularly to Washington while JJ Singh and the India league continued their work. Matters, events and relations were strained, but still gathering steam…fate you see, was to intervene and bring a measure of relief.

Hossain continued to thunder in the lecture halls – he said in one meeting “Indians are not trusted with arms and yet hundreds of thousands of Indians are systematically taken across the seas to various parts of the world to fight nationalists not yet brought to the same state of servitude as themselves and to help to reduce them to that state. And he pushed even harder for independence "India is changing and changing very rapidly. The spirit of self-assertion and self-confidence manifested either in platform or in silent plans of works no doubt reveals the dawn of a new era in India”.

Vijayalakshmi comes to New York

The equations were soon to change as fate brought the two people together in December 1944. As the World War 2 was raging in Europe and other parts of the world, Ranjit Pandit passed away and it was decided by the congress to depute Vijayalakshmi Pandit to the US as a goodwill ambassador to marshal even more support. Since she had no formal approval to travel, she flew to US in a military plane, in a bucket seat, to the USA. Her children were then in the US studying at Wellesley by then and so as fate decided, the paths of Syud Hossain and Nan Pandit crossed again. As Dr Gould writes – This was of course a sentimental moment for Hossain and Madam Pandit because they had not met since their brief love affair back in the early 1920’s. He also mentions their meeting to be filled with tender reminiscences, though there were no overt resumptions to their old relationship for too much water had flowed over the dam.

Dr Hossain naturally headed the steering committee for Vijayalakshmi’s attendance at the UN San Francisco conference, speaking on behalf of the national committee for Indian independence rather than the Indian league. Sadly the event passed without fanfare and the next few years were also lukewarm as far as support for India was concerned, even in relation to the food shortages, perhaps due to internal issues and the rebuilding after the war.

Shortly before the conference, Roosevelt passed away, a covert but not overt supporter of Indian Independence. And later, Churchill gave way to Atlee.

During this period Gandhi received letters from several Indians in the United States complaining that Syud Hossain was following Vijaya Lakshmi everywhere like her shadow. Early in September 1945 Nehru received cable from Syud.

Request to Nehru

It appears that Syud Hossain finally (1945) took the decision to request permission to return home, perhaps after discussions with Nan Pandit. He cabled Nehru (excepted from MO Mathai’s book) – Thinking Coming India to help toward Hindu Muslim Unity on basis clarification fundamental issues. Could run for central election as Muslim nationalist if necessary. Please cable your opinion regarding usefulness feasibility such course….

Nehru replied, after consulting Asaf Ali and Gandhi – No chance running for central election owing technical difficulty absence name from electoral registers. Your return India helpful especially in Bengal if stay long though results inevitably slow in present conditions and your long absence. Difficult say where your usefulness greater. Gandhiji thinks you can do more important work in America.

Syud Hossain was once again thwarted, this time by his own people perhaps it was Nehru’s plan to keep the two of them apart.…

Lobbying for citizenship

For years Indian nationals continued to suffer many hardships, partially because they were not allowed to obtain citizenship of the US. Joan M. Jensen, historian and author, described the plight of Indians as follows:

“Excluded from immigration, persecuted for their political activities, threatened with deportation, excluded from citizenship, denaturalized, excluded from land ownership, and regulated even in their choice of a mate in the States, these Indians now formed a small band of people set apart from Americans by what truly seemed to be a great white wall.”

One of the persons who lobbied for support was Hossain. Indian community activists, J.J. Singh, Dr Anup Singh, Syud Hossain, Krishanalal Shridharani, Haridas Muzumdar, Mubarak Ali Khan, Taraknath Das, and a few others relentlessly lobbied with the elected representatives of the American people for granting of civil rights to the nationals of India who were already in the US. Fortunately in 1946, President Truman took special interest in the passage of Luce-Cellar bill which was finally approved by both Houses of Congress restoring the rights of citizenship of Indian nationals in the US. It was a great triumph for the Indian community leadership when on July 2, 1946, President Truman signed the bill in the presence of Sardar J.J. Singh and Anup Singh allowing Indians to become naturalized citizens and 100 Indians to immigrate every year. Saund was the first Indian in the entire western world to get elected to a major political office. In the US, he will be remembered as the first Asian to attain that distinct honor. J.J. Singh, Dr Anup Singh, Syud Hossain and some others who actively lobbied for equal rights for Indians never applied for US citizenship. They went back to live in free India.

Khalil Gibran

In 1924 his work on ‘Arabic canons of eloquence’ appears in Cairo and a year later he is invited by Syud Hossain to contribute articles to the New Orient Magazine, an international publication seeking to encourage the meeting of East and West. During his association with the journal he submits several articles for publication.

Return to India

1946 Amritsar

As is well known, Hossain was secular and never supported the formation of Pakistan. Jinnah was not happy with the way Hossain had projected Jinnah and Pakistan in US. As a result, Syud’s relations with Jinnah were cool and in fact Jinnah even accused him bitterly of defecting to the enemy camp, i.e. India during the pre-partition juncture. With this backdrop, let’s revisit an event.

Excerpted from Gills memoris - Oct 21^st 1946 Syud Hossain was traveling from Lahore to Delhi by the Frontier mail, sharing the compartment with a man, his wife and their 3 year old child. When the train pulled into Amritsar, an angry crowd of 500 Muslims armed with sticks and daggers were waiting to pounce on Syud Hossain. They broke the windows of the compartment and neither the police nor the railway staff intervened.

To save the lives of his fellow travelers, Hossain exited the compartment. Perfectly composed, he demanded the attention of the crowd in a commanding voice. Telling them that he was not in the least afraid of getting killed, if this was their intention, he added – You cannot coerce me to do anything against my conscience. For 30 years, I have been fighting for India’s independence and for Hindu-Muslim unity. I am doing so even today, if in all these years, the British have not been able to coerce me or tempt me away from the path of my convictions, certainly threats of personal violence could not do so.

He kept the crowd spellbound until the train pulled out of the station to the accompanying shouts of ‘Long live - Syud Hossain’.

That was how his mother land received him during his short stay, but he could never stay, for soon he was deputed to Cairo.

At Cairo 1947-49

Staying at the famous Shepheard hotel in Cairo, he ran the first Indian embassy at Cairo, by now a distinguished diplomat, and well suited for the job with his knowledge of Arabic and other languages and the deep knowledge of the region and Indian ideals. He did well in representing India’s side of the difficult Islamist issues with respect to Kashmir and Hyderabad, in the Arab league.

Two years later he was no more, dead of a heart attack at the Papayoannou Greek hospital in Cairo. The Egyptian government gave him a state funeral and a marble tomb in Cairo. A road was named after him. As is said, his friends in Cairo swore he died of a broken heart.

Horniman’s appreciation

Syud Hossain did the forward for his mentor’s 1918 book ‘A friend of India’ which without doubt Benjamin Guy Horniman was. On the eve of Syud Hossain’s deputation to Britain, Horniman made a farewell speech from which the following is excerpted

Continuing, Mr. Horniman said the absence even for a short time of Mr. Syud Hossain was for him a great personal wrench. There were several reasons for that, the first of which was that Mr. Syud Hossain was his oldest friend in India. He might have said that about ten years ago he discovered Mr. Syud Hossain, but as that claim had already been put forward from another quarter, he would desist from making that claim himself, and would say it was Mr. Syud Hossain who discovered him about ten years ago …. And though for long they separated·, one having gone to another country than his own and the other also being in another country than his own, they had been together for the last fifteen months in Bombay", and during that time his respect for Mr. Hossain as a politician, as a publicist, and as a fearless honest and straightforward fighter (applause), had continually increased. But more than that they had been associated together in connection with a certain public institution which he would not specifically name (laughter), and Mr. Hossain had been to him a colleague of more value than he could adequately describe. His loyalty and devotion to him in all times of stress and in every description of trouble-and trouble of a kind which did not ordinarily fall on journalists, was beyond his power to express. He had been as devoted and loyal a colleague as any man could possibly expect to have. He was sure that all were undergoing a personal sacrifice in allowing Mr. Syud Hossain to go to England, for during his absence they would not have the ecstatic delight of listening to Mr. Syud Hossain, when he belabored his opponents with his rhetoric; but they did so with all good will and real pleasure in another sense, because they knew him so well that they were sure they were sending the right man to England, (Loud cheers.) The speaker next referred to Mr. Gurtu's qualifications, and concluded by saying that Mr. Syud Hossain and Mr. Gurtu would be second to none in their devotion to duty and in their determination to do what they were asking them do viz., to put the plain and straightforward issue of Home Rule before the British democracy.

Those who missed the first part read it by clicking this link Dr Syud Hossain – A true patriot

References

Sikhs Swamis, Students and Spies – Harold Gould

Up Against Odds: Autobiography of an Indian Scientist By Piara Singh Gill

Colonial Displacements - Paromita Biswas

Toward a Locational Modernism - Sarah A. Fedirka

My Days with Nehru – MO Mathai

Communications and Power - Milton Israel

Dr Syud Hossain – A glimpse of his life, Speeches & Writings – JN Chakrabartti

Roosevelt Gandhi Churchill – Venkatramani & Srivastava

Tail note

Sometimes reputed and knowledgeable people in the business of writing ask if I really read all these books to pen such articles. Well, I do refer to related sections in each and every one of these listed books, while admitting that I am particularly fortunate to even lay my hands on these rare books. For that I owe all my gratitude to the great library system of the USA, especially my home library the NC State Hunt and the DH Hill library. I must also thank the US - Rice for books scheme of 1964 which transferred so many great books about India to the USA, where they are carefully preserved and made available for nutty characters like me who ask for them.

Sometimes the librarian says ‘like, wow! – “You are the first person to lay your hands on this 1948 book”! The other day, it was the inauguration of the robot operated Hunt library, and the librarian mentioned that they could perhaps introduce me as their most dedicated patron, even though he may have remarked so in jest!

And all I can do is smile, sad at the fact that nobody else has the slightest interest or inclination in such matters but at the same time happy that I can retell some of those stories to all of you in a simpler fashion. Maybe they are not appealing to the broad public, but some day, somebody looking for some specific information will stumble upon articles like this, with gratitude.

Syud Hossain’s finest Speeches

The paradox of civilization – Look at this excerpt –We human beings are a class in ourselves. Any animals, wild animals, savage animals – brutes as we call them – if they kill, they usually kill for purely biological reasons, they kill for food. No animal ever kills with any calculated motive of malice, no animal ever kills with all the abominable refinements of torture and premeditation and calculation. That is a special quality and attribute of ourselves - humans.

Popum Aanayum Vathikanil…….

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I am quite partial to elephant stories like most Malayalees and I do like the pachyderm a lot. Earlier I wrote about Murugan in Amsterdam, Suleiman in Vienna and this time it is about an elephant that lived in the Vatican. It is a story detailing the attachment between a fun loving Pope Leo X and his baby white elephant which hailed from Cochin. The story is fun, it is sad, and is a story of the times, with politics, satire, romance and all kinds of stuff attached to it. It even has three greats hovering on the fences, the genius Leonardo da Vinci, another stalwart Michelangelo and the great artist Raphael, as well as a couple of Malayalees, perhaps the first residents in the Vatican area. The time period of this story is 1509-1516 and Vatican did not exist then, it was just the sanctified area of the Holy See, the apostle palace and the Belvedere.

First some perspective - The Columbus discovery of western lands in 1492 started a new argument between the Spaniards and the Portuguese, both jockeying for control over new lands discovered by their enterprising voyagers. It was finally on May 4, 1493, at the urging of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, that Pope Alexander VI issued a bull clarifying the rights. To settle this feud, the Papal bull of 1493 divided the world commercially between these two nations, leaving most the Americas to Spain and giving Portugal what is now Brazil and all lands in Africa and Asia. Alexander's papal bull was ironically a continuation of what is now called the Doctrine of Discovery and was formally known as Inter Caetera. Following this, many a voyager set his sights to the western shores of India and Malabar and the first to find success is as you know, Vasco de Gama in 1498. He came and went, and then it was the turn of Cabral and many others. All their stories can be read at my historic alleys site. The Portuguese were ensconced in Malabar, but soon enough, Magellan discovered Mallacca and a question arose about the territorial rights. Would it come under the purview of the Spaniards or the Portuguese? A new quarrel erupted and some clarity was needed from a higher authority, from whom else, but the pope? To ensure that the pope sided with the Portuguese, King Manuel of Portugal put together a careful strategy of first dazzling and then effectively bribing the incumbent pope, with exotic gifts from the orient.

As you would have expected, the story starts in Cochin in 1509/1510. Two elephants had been procured, one a mature elephant – the gift from the Cochin king and the other a baby procured from somebody else, perhaps the lord of Nilambur, for 101 cruzados. The young elephant was specially trained to perform tricks and fed very well, with intent to make it a worthy gift. Special orders were passed about its treatment and feed and two Nairs were put in charge to ensure that. The Nairs were to accompany the two elephants on separate voyages to Lisbon and not only hand them over to new owners in Lisbon, but also remain there and train them properly before seeking a return to Malabar. Food of one para rice plus butter as well as daily oil anointation was ordered by Albuquerque for the baby elephant.

The story now shifts to Rome, the Holy See, in the year 1513, where a youthful 38 year old pope Giovanni de' Medici had just been elected to the papacy. Renamed Leo X, the pope was quite fat, shiny, possessed an effeminate countenance and had weak eyes which protruded from under a close-fitting cap. His unwieldy body was supported by thin legs, he had rheumy eyes and constantly used a magnifying lens to read, had sluggish movements and perspired heavily, to the distress of the bystanders. But as they noted, when he laughed or spoke, the unpleasant impression vanished. They also say he had an agreeable voice, knew how to express himself with elegance and vivacity, and his manner was easy and gracious. "Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us", he is said to have remarked after his election. He went on to become so infamous for wasting money, that a contemporary said, "Leo has eaten up three pontificates, the treasury of Julius II, the revenues of his own pontificate, and those of his successor. A report of the Venetian ambassador Marino Giorgi in March 1517 indicates some of his predominant characteristics: "The pope is a good-natured and extremely free-hearted man ……..To the virtues of liberality, charity and clemency he added the Machiavellian qualities of falsehood and shrewdness, so highly esteemed by the princes of his time.

Back in 1509 or so, it was L Varthema who wrote a lucid description of the Indian elephant, rousing curiosity in the hearts of the placid Roman commoner, for oxen and horses were the biggest beasts they had come across. It was after this that King Manuel started collecting ‘elephants of state’, following examples of the Zamorin and the Cochin king and had about five already in his stables, as this story starts. When the new elephants reached him in 1511, Manuel was happy that he had found a solution to his vexing problem about Malacca. For a while he played around with the new elephant as a portrait testifies to. But this gift was meant for the new Pope, who had a history of fondness towards animals, for in fact, his grandfather had his own menagerie. The gift that Manuel picked for Leo X was thus well chosen, the grey white albino baby elephant that could by now perform tricks too. The decision made was to send not only the elephant but also many other Indian animals (goats, parrots, horses and rare dogs) and other items of great value together with a group of emissaries headed by Tristao da Cunha and his sons. They thus started out on a long voyage from Lisbon to the Italian shores. But to get all of these people and the animals to the Vatican gates in Rome did not prove to be that easy, for an apparent romantic interlude interrupted the proceedings, though not directly involving the four year old elephant.

The keeper, trainer or mahout (in many books mentioned as Moor or Saracen– but more correctly the Nair

sent from Cochin) who had accompanied the animal to Lisbon had by then spent two years there. As was rumored at that time, he had fallen in love with a Portuguese girl and had no intention to leave for Rome, whether his new master was the Pope or not. He thought deep and hard and decided to seek help from the Elephant. So as the incredible story goes, he explained to the elephant about the miserable situation in Rome, the long and arduous voyage etc. and convinced the animal (who it seems understood Malayalam pretty well), that he should resist. As time came for the elephant to board a ship, it balked and refused to move forward. King Manuel was provided details of the situation by a helpful vassal and he decided to sort out the impasse himself (The first meeting between a Malayali and a Portuguese king??). Summoning the Indian, dire threats of imminent death were pronounced and a three day ultimatum was given. The shivering man, fearing for his life, promptly forgot his lady love and had a hurried whispered conference with the elephant(promising that it and he will soon return to Lisbon), who then gingerly stepped onto the boat without further ado. And thus they left Portuguese shores, headed for Rome. So much for the love affair, or perhaps not, as you will find out if you read on (take the story with many a pinch of salt!!).

As reports put it - The huge luxurious embassy of one hundred and forty persons, headed by Cunha made its way through Alicante and Majorca, arriving at Rome outskirts in February 1514. They walked the streets of Rome on March 12, 1514 in an extravagant procession of exotic wildlife and wealth of the Indies, with many dressed in "Indian style". The elephant carried a platform of silver on its back, shaped as a castle containing a safe with royal gifts, including vests embroidered with pearls and gems, and coins of gold minted for the occasion. The pope received the procession in the Castel Sant'Angelo. The elephant knelt down three times in reverence and then, following a wave of his Indian mahout (keeper), aspired a bucket of water with his trunk and splashed it over the crowd and the Cardinals.

In that crowd, even greats like Leonardo Da Vinci perhaps stood, craning their necks, admiring the great animal. Medieval Rome had never seen an elephant (though ancient Rome had and Pliny mentions them). Da Vinci was later to write a couple of pages about the animal in his notebook, and it is guessed that he got the information about the pachyderm first hand through his friendship with the elephant’s Italian keeper Branconio (Raphael was also Branconio’s friend). The elephant however was not in good shape, it had sore feet walking on the hard and cobbled roads and having to endure muddy tracks and rain during the long trek from the port to the Vatican area. It had also got a name by then; the Italians called it Annone after hearing the mahout use the Malayalam terms ‘aana’ and ‘aane’… often. In later accounts this changed to Hanno, the Anglicized version of Annone. For the rest of the story, we will also call it Hanno. The pope was flabbergasted with these new sights, and of course immensely pleased. So much so, that he had new quarters built for Hanno right next to the papal palace so he could visit it every day. Two new jobs were created to take care of the elephant, one held by the papal chamberlain Branconio and the other by a man named Alfonso. From pictures and accounts it is clear that the mahout and the Malabar keeper remained in the vicinity to take care of the animal.

The bribe had it effect, for Leo X soon passed more bulls to help the Portuguese hold on to Malacca and plunder it to their whims and fancies. Many a return gift was sent by Leo X to King Manuel and they remained good friends after the event. Cunha returned after a few months to Lisbon. The Malayali mahout and keeper did not (to ensure that the valuable elephant did not get upset, a single master principle was adopted).

Leo X soon became much attached to the pachyderm and participated in all sorts of events, with the exotic beast. But then trouble was afoot, the French were threatening the Romans and there were heretics to be kept at bay. The Turks who had overrun Istanbul were knocking on the doors. The pope who could hardly walk, and required two people just to raise him from his bed every day, found the next few months tiring and stressful to say the least and was terribly disturbed by the heresy and schism. Finances were also in a poor state and Leo had to borrow immense sums from all kinds of people and nations to keep the Vatican running. But we will not get to all of that, for it suffices to note that in the early years, he went often to his elephant to take his mind off weighty matters. Perhaps he learnt a word of two of Malayalam, though I would not bet on it, but they had a good time together and people have testified to seeing the rollicking twosome of the Pope and Hanno, in the stable. Two years passed by and the happy couple were talked about, written about (sometimes with contempt – a Pope who wasted his time with an animal) and painted or sketched for posterity. Hanno participated in many Roman festivals delighting crowds, sometimes becoming the reason for stampedes and so on, but never causing any harm to anybody. The Mahout in the meantime was perhaps a little worried that his newfound Portuguese girlfriend had found new suitors in Lisbon and pined after her, though it is only my guess. The Via dell Elefante was named so after Hanno and an inn appeared soon after, Casa del Liofante (though some others say the Liofonte family were famous innkeepers). In fact Clement 3’s horoscope has Hanno in the center.

Problems with France erupted and it appears that there was some heavy hearted plan by Leo to gift Hanno to the French monarch. By this time the talk about corruption in the Papal palaces was also rife. Leo X spent even more time on astrology for he was very superstitious, looking for answers, but without success.

It was an observant heretic that ultimately brought sorrow to those days of joy, and his name was Fra Bonaventura, a Franciscan priest of the 4^th order. Bonaventura calling himself the angelic pope with about 20,000 recruits landed up in the region in May 1516 and went about making fiery sermons. In his speech at Rome, he proclaimed that he had excommunicated the reigning pope and his cardinals and urged people to join him and the King of France. He thundered that the pope, five cardinals, the elephant and its keeper would die by Sept 12^th 1516. The pope already depressed with the death of his last relative his brother and suffering from malarial fever and various other ills such as multiple anal fistulae, became even more worried with the fear of imminent death. He quickly imprisoned the priest Bonaventura, much to everybody’s consternation. But the action proved right and the disturbances soon passed with the dissipation of Bonaventura’s followers.

Nevertheless, the clairvoyant’s prophecy proved somewhat right. Hanno soon took ill, suffering from severe breathing problems and acute constipation. But what was its illness? We do not know. Perhaps it was overfed wrong food (though accounts mention it was fed hay and vegetables and cost 100 ducats per month to maintain), perhaps it lost heart in life. It was found to be in great pain, lying in his pen listlessly and unable to move. It was getting ill for the first time and Leo X was doubly worried not only about the elephant but also about his certain death. Other people started to murmur and Leo had not a clue on what to do, for nobody had any idea how to treat a sick elephant (veterinary medicine did not exist in those days). He announced that no cost was to be spared and all efforts were made to treat it like a human. The pope spent all his time next to the ailing beast. Hanno’s urine was checked; they let its bad blood out as was the practice and decided to give it a purgative to relieve the constipation. But the dosage was a problem, what amount of laxative? Typically purgatives of those days were laced with gold and so a stronger dose was calculated. The dose given to Hanno had 500 grams (half a kilo) of gold. They hoped for the best.

What could have happened? The worst, for the elephant died soon after, on June 8^th 1516. The whole of Rome was enveloped in grief and the pontiff inconsolable. Soon after, perhaps on the very same day, just as the monk had stated, the local keeper Alfonso also died. The seven year old elephant had spent all of two years, two months and twenty six days in Vatican. Rafael the painter was summoned, taken off his other tasks and asked to create a life sized mural befitting the animal. Many other monuments and facsimiles were ordered to be made and the pope himself wrote the first part of the epitaph for his beloved Hanno. In the meantime to make matters worse, two of the five cardinals named by Bonaventura also died.

Now it is time to get to know another person who got embroiled in the Hanno affair. Perhaps you have not yet read a fine book called 48 laws of power by Robert Greene, and it is something to look at. He introduces the satirist Pietro Aretino and how this hitherto unknown writer’s aspirations came to fruition after he released a caustic work of satire with Hanno’s death as the plot, not sparing any of the big names of Rome. It was titled ‘the last will and testament of Hanno the elephant’ and targeted all the supposedly corrupt bigwigs of that period. It ended by stating that it would be wiser to be friendly with Aretino, otherwise more of such disastrous releases would be seen. I will narrate now you a few parts of the satirical will – just for effect

The Indian elephant, which Emmanuel, King of Portugal sent to Leo X - Pontiff Maximus, having lived in Rome approximately 4 years under the supervision of Zuan batista Aquilan (Barnconio) has become ill either from the varying temperature and air of Rome, or as a result of the avarice of the said Zuan Batista, and considering that no matter how great our prudence, nothing more is certain than death, the elephant inasmuch as he is infirm in body has deposed on me various legacies and last wishes…

You are to give my hide to Leo, supreme pontiff, in order that he can stretch it over an elephant constructed of wood of my size, so that at least my shape can be recognized until the arrival of another new elephant to take my place………….

My testi$%^s you are to give to the most reverend cardinal of Senegaia (known for his addiction to the pleasures of flesh) so that he will become more fruitful in his progeny and in the merry procreation of the antichrist with the Rev Julia of the nuns of the monastery of St Catherine….

You are to give my member (pe#$s) to cardinal de Grassi (who fathered several children with Adriana de Scottis of Bologna) so that he can become more active in the incarnation of more bastards with Adriane of Bologna. …

And so on….

Aretino was soon to be titled the ‘scourge of the princes’. The amused pope Leo X who had recovered by then and gotten back to playing chess, cards and concentrating on music appreciation, drafted Aretino to papal service according to some, but others explain that he had to flee Rome and head to Venice, the seat of all vices, where he became a friend of Titan, Michelangelo’s rival (In fact he even tried to threaten and blackmail Michelangelo before he left).

Greene using Aretino’s example illustrates his principle which is – if you are small and obscure like David, find the biggest Goliath to attack. The larger the target, the more the attention you gain. The bolder the attack, the more you stand out.

But this brings us to the end of this elephantine tale. Raphael the person who immortalized Hanno lived on for another 4 years, Michelangelo who got tangentially involved in the Hanno fountain project lived to a ripe old age, until 1564, the caustic bard Aretino until 1556, while the genius Da Vinci died in 1519. King Manuel and Leo X went on to live another five years until 1521 (he died of an apparent cold and pneumonia after a hunting trip). Da Vinci was the biggest loser, for though he sauntered around the Vatican during this very period when Leo and Hanno frolicked in the Holy See courtyards, could never succeed in meeting Leo X and getting a papal patronage, unlike Raphael, much to his disappointment.

The Portuguese of course continued their subjugation of Malabar, Goa and other west coast ports of India as well as Malacca and enriched themselves. Whatever happened to the Malabar keeper and the mahout? Nothing is known about them. Did the mahout go back to Lisbon and find his girlfriend? I do not know. Did he go back home to Malabar? I do not know that either. Some learned grey haired people say that if elephants feel that they can never go back home, they lose heart and die where they are. Perhaps Hanno lost heart knowing that he will never get back to Nilambur or wherever he came from. But one thing I have read is that elephants prefer to go back home when death nears.

So was Hanno a cause for the reformation of the church? The late Silvio A Bedini, the author of the book

‘The pope’s elephant’ which I read, extracts of which I used for this article (with grateful acknowledgement and lot of thanks) thinks so. Why was that? Because Leo’s obsession with Hanno, reached such epic proportions that it became a cause celebre among the Protestant reformers, and thus this baby elephant played a part in precipitating the Reformation of the church.

Hanno was soon forgotten and Romans had other things to amuse them. Vatican was formally created in 1929. Many of the medieval treasures had however been carted away by the French and lost forever. The Hanno epitaph and the fresco were destroyed by Pius V who renovated the Papal palace.

But once again, albeit briefly, Hanno peeped out from obscurity and this was in 1962 when some digging work to improve the air-conditioning ducts were undertaken at the Vatican and elephant teeth were discovered. They belonged to our Hanno. It was also discovered that the two tusks at the St Peter’s basilica belonged to the same elephant. The rest of Hanno is perhaps still under the belvedere and hopefully somebody will give the young elephant a proper burial some day!!

That my friends, was thus the real life story of Hanno the Malabar elephant and Leo X the Pope.

References

The pope’s elephant - Silvio A Bedini

Asia and the making of Europe Vol2, Book1 – Donald F Lach

48 laws of power – Robert Greene

Those interested in elephants may read some of my earlier blogs listed below

Malayali andthe Pachyderm

Iyer &the pachyderm

Soliman the elephant

Murugan inAmsterdam

Six blindmen and the elephant

Note: The sketches of Hanno do not show its tusks or if they do, show very small tusks- It is believed that the pope wanted to ensure that it was always projected as a gentle beast and so it was made to look benign.

The man who walked into the bank slowly made his way to the glass encased cashier’s cabin. Not many noticed him, nor were they interested. But the security man who waved him though and knew him, did make a spectacle, standing at over 6 feet in height, with a magnificent drooping mustache that reminded one of a great pathan soldier from over two centuries ago, only he did not wear a turban. If they had stopped and looked at the rifle he held to his side, especially one who knows about guns, they would have reason to snigger, for it was an ancient break action shotgun which at first sight made you feel that it would do little harm to even the mongrel dogs lounging under the tree across the street. It was not loaded and the four or five reddish colored cartridges on his belt looked ancient, scratched up and distinctly unusable. The only time the gun was loaded was when they brought in or took out money from the bank and the same bullets were loaded into and unloaded from it. But then again, ninety nine percent of the people knew nothing about guns and did not care. In fact most thought this security gamut was all a sham, meant to fool the public into believing that their money was held in this secure and solid fortress, protected by heavily armed guards. All the bank wanted was the deposits and if a mustachioed guard helped, why not? It was also incongruous, for the guard had nothing to do with Afghanistan or North India and he was just an ex-serviceman from Kerala, a place where men grew large mustaches and fired no guns.

Before the reader wonders what a security guard has to do with this story, let me veer away and get back to the ‘uncle’ I had started with, for he is the hero of our story. He was as all could see, thoroughly unhappy about all of this, the floor was too smooth for his creaky leather sandals, the lights were too bright and the people in the bank (except for the security guard) too young for his liking. His gait was slow and careful, and eventually he made it to the counter where Dolly was busy making entries into her computer and keeping some of the papers in order, for future filing and audits. This branch had been renovated and modernized from the older one where ledgers and files rested in dusty heaps and piles as officers, clerks, peons and patrons did their snake and ladder moves through them to get to the work they had planned for the day, if at all something was done. The oldies were gone and well attired youngsters took over the counters and computers running the new banking system. But our ‘uncle’ who was more familiar with the older branch that he had grown up with had no choice but to adapt to this change because his niece who worked in America had convinced him that he learn new ways.

Nobody smoked in these offices, nobody chewed pan, and the people who worked were well dressed. They hardly talked amongst each other, or at least that was what our ‘uncle’ thought. He was not in tune with social media, chats and so on, and his world was not virtual. He did not really know that the young actually maintained a facade of efficiency but in the meanwhile tapped away into their hidden world using their fingertips and eyes. That was what they called multi-tasking.

Now it is time to get to know our ‘uncle’ better. Atmakur Venkat Ramayya, that was his name and he lived nearby, not far from the bank. In fact he lived in property that had passed to him by his parents which he held dearly on to, not giving in and selling it away for millions. Banjara Hills had progressed from a hilly forest and happy hunting ground for the Nizam’s to a huge commercial center with towering buildings like the Laxmi cyber center. Just imagine what goddess Laxmi would have felt looking at the building that bore her name, for in the old days they had temples and mansions named after her, now they had these monstrous skyscrapers. Perhaps Laxmi smiled too much and maybe that resulted in the creation of such huge edifices! Many a tear ago, his forefathers had acquired a small plot and built a traditional house. Venkat lived there with his wife, in fact that had been his home during his child hood and now where he relaxed, after his retirement. He had been resisting pressure to sell to the people who wanted to buy his place and erect an office complex, and large amounts had been offered if he wanted to sell.

And of course I have to introduce the second person in the story, none other than Venkat’s wife, BalaSaraswati. A stately woman, who must have been a stunner in her youth, still holding on to her looks as she matured, like a pricey burgundy from France. She was a favorite of the neighborhood and had many friends, was part of many a group working for the good of the society - which others in the same society had in the meantime labored hard to destroy. While Bala (I will call her that for the rest of the story – just as Venkat calls her) had aged well and remained in good health, and looked like – hmm for want of a better example, like the gorgeously aged Nafisa Ali, with steely grey hair and a lined face showing character, Venkat who was once upon a time a chatty, confident manager in Parry’s Chennai had become somewhat grumpy and had acquired a little stoop. His head, once a mop of thick black hair now looked like the spinning cricket pitch at Chepauk stadium, with just a few blades of grass here & there. His midriff had accumulated some fat and his legs and eyes had become rheumy with the passage of time.

Venkat rummaged in his checkered shoulder bag, something not in tune with times (they were popular in the hippie 70’s and signified scholarly pursuits) and came out with his passbook which he extended to Dolly together with Rs 212.00 in cash. He asked her to make a deposit into his joint account and write out the entries into his passbook. Dolly knew the routine, in fact she had been his teller on a few previous occasions and always kept an eye for the well natured, pleasant person whom she had developed a sincere liking for. He would come every week to make these deposits and interestingly they were always less than Rs 300, but never round figures. Sometimes in cash, sometimes transfers from his pension account. She used to wonder why he did this every week or why he deposited them weekly and not monthly. But well, people are people, and they had their own reasons – who was she to ask? She took in the money, made the required entries on her terminal screen and took the short printout. She turned to Venkat and asked ‘Venkat sir, why do you want to make the entry in the passbook? You can always log in and find your balance, and these books are not used anymore.’ Venkat replied as he had, to many others in the past that he had no interest in computers and online banking and that the passbook had been used by him for so many years as could be evidenced by the entries and balance. Dolly looked at the current passbook and was raised her eyebrows at the savings account balance, and asked Venkat if he kept all the old books. Yes, he said – he had many of them for he had been maintaining this account for years even before this bank branch, which was once a small bank had been acquired by a multi-national and converted to this computerized glass and steel office. But she did not ask any further questions and if she did she would be transgressing bank rules. She was a new employee and did not want to get into any ethics issues, all she wanted was to work for some more years here and try to migrate or get a transfer to the bank’s offices in New York.

Venkat made his way out, nor forgetting to stop and have a few words with Raman Nair at the gate, the only constant in that bank for many years and somebody he knew from the past, for Nair had been a security guard in that branch even before it was acquired by the multinational. He made some comments in broken Malayalam and Raman Nair in return replied in knowledgeable Telugu adding that that was always how it would be, for Malayalam is not something a Telugu man could master, save the great Janaki Amma, the singer of yester years, or Sharada the actress, both revered by the people of Kerala. How were Raman Nair’s children? Venkat was reassured that they were doing well, one son was in the army while the daughter was married to a fella in Dubai.

The chore over, Venkat made his way back home and sat back in his easy chair and swung forward the leg rests. He leaned back on the cane woven chair and tilting his head back,reached out for the newspaper and his reading glasses. It was a hot day and the GEC fan whirred overhead, cooling him off. He picked up the days ‘Hindu’ newspaper but his eyes were heavy and soon he dropped off into a short slumber, glasses perched tardily on his nose bridge. While Venkat’s sleeping brain hovered around the past, the present and the future, the little air moved by the fan failed to trouble the odd morning mosquito searching for a blood vessel or the housefly from hunting for leftovers.

A little while later, the front bell rang, Bala was back after a particularly tiring session with some other housewives. Their new task at hand was to try and find a way of reducing the trash heaps in the colony they lived in. Even with all the business establishments taking over housing properties, there were still a few of the old timers living in the locality and they did not have the luxury of trash disposers that companies had.

Bala’s arrival woke Venkat. In fact he had been, as always, looking forward to her arrival, and the love he had for his wife of 40 years could be seen in his eyes. She was as everybody said, his better half and without her, his face had that stupidly grumpy expression that most oldies seem to carry. Now that she had come, there was some purpose to the balance of the day. Many things had to be done, they had to reply some letters from older members of their respective families, sadly these letters were dwindling and it was mostly wedding or death notice cards, and Venkat imagined that the postman would soon be out of work. Children today never wrote, for they called or emailed or texted, in this new generation. In fact they had no children to do even that, they had only each other. But they had one person who occupied their thoughts, the girl in America, their niece Sujatha. She called sometimes at ungodly hours, but her infectious enthusiasm took away any worries they had. She had so much news to convey, yesterday it was about some kind of government shutdown in America. It seemed that their president Obama could not come to any agreement with republicans who always seemed to be opposing his plans. So the government went on an extended two weeks’ vacation. Imagine, if that happened in India, but then come to think of it, they were on vacation all through the year anyway!!

Venkat ambled to the dining table where his wife had already taken a seat at the head, and they went over their accounts and made some handwritten replies to some of the invitations. They had no plans to travel, and none of the invitations were local anyway. Venkat liked writing to the couple, and he wrote a few lines in his cursive hand, with the Pelikan Tradition M20 pen Sujatha had presented him, during her last visit. What a pen that was, and it worked beautifully with the Quink turquoise blue ink that he used. In fact even the stationery supplier he went to was telling him to stock up, for nobody used fountain pens any longer and he had no intentions of bringing in new stock. Only Venkat purchased a bottle, that too once a year!

Even the telegram service had finally stopped after 163 years, and in his earlier days, he could go and say greetings 16 or 17 to the postal clerk and a telegram would reach the receiver stating ‘May Heaven’s Choicest Blessings be showered on the young couple’ (16) or ‘Wish you both a happy and prosperous wedded life’ (17). Now that it had stopped, he had to buy a card from the local Archies and write out short text, but he enjoyed it. As he sat and wrote out the words laboriously and carefully, in calligraphic style, with a bit of his tongue sticking out, Bala watched with contentment. What a simple predictable person Venkat was, always dependable, and never went astray even once in his life. No, she recalled, that is not right, he did once, that was some 20 years ago, when he met his old village flame Rajalakshmi at that wedding in Vijayawada. That was the only time, when his eyes went wistful, remembering some earlier romantic moments they had shared. Bala was terrified during those two days, wondering what was to come. Nothing happened actually, other than those longing looks that passed. They had returned without much ado and well, was it three, no it was four years back that woman Rajalakshmi had passed away.

The replies were done, the Pelikan M20 capped and stowed away in the writing table and soon came the words that Venkat was waiting for. Bala suggested, as she had for the past 20 plus years “shall we sit for a few rounds?” Now reader, don’t assume that they were going to uncap a bottle of some alcoholic beverage, not that they never indulged in such matters, but it was not the time for beverages, it was the time for a few rounds of rummy. With enthusiasm equaling that of Tendulkar waiting for a Bret Lee bouncer, Venkat laid his elbows on the dining table as Bala reached for the well-worn pack of plastic coated cards and shuffled them expertly first with normal cut shuffles and then the riffle shuffle. Venkat remembered the first time Bala insisted that she be taught how to do the riffle like the men did, while none of the women had mastered it. Soon she was an expert, be the cards be the cheaper paper ones or the new plastic coated ones. In fact Bala had become so good at cards and reading his face that Venkat had no chance whatsoever in the many thousand games that followed, and so his ambition was to find some way of beating her often, if only to escape her taunts about his regular losses. Well as you can imagine, wins happened but rarely.

As usual she dealt out his thirteen cards and he picked them up with much consternation and then cut out a Jack as a joker. Would today be the day? The hand he got was not so great, he had two jokers, and a run, but no natural sequence or triplets. A few possibilities were there, and so he got on with the game, only to see the obvious, that it was not his day. They played a few more games as was the norm in that household. After each game, Bala would take out her account book and write down the points and date. The deal between them was that each point was 10 paisa. Bala won the six games hands down and accumulated 286 points that day or ₹28.60. Bala looked up and castigated Venkat “How long have I been maintaining this, do you know that you owe me lakhs of Rupees?” Venkat just smiled as he always did neither agreeing nor disagreeing and quickly changed the topic. Of course Bala knew the standard response, so she allowed the topic to change, and they discussed the American government shutdown for a few minutes.

In fact whenever Sujatha visited them, she used to question the routine, asking why Bala always wrote accounts down and why nothing came out of it. Bala explained it was just that she had been taught to keep accounts, be it purchasing groceries, maintaining the monthly budgets or organizing family functions. She did it very well, tallying income and expenses and insisting on accuracy. Sujatha secretly believed that Bala expected Venkat to pay someday and Venkat adroitly managed to slip out of it. This had been going on for more than 20 years and by now Bala had a pile of 20 or so ruled note books with columns and dates showing the money owed to her. Of recent, Bala had even started to add the new rupee symbol ₹ in front of the numerals instead of the Rs she used previously. And so, they continued to play every day and Bala kept on adding to the tally in the account book of hers.

That done with, Venkat got back to reading a book that he had always wanted to, Muddapalani’s Radhika Santawanam. As Bala got to watch the latest weepy episode of ‘Bade Ache Lagte Hai’ and mopped tears forced on many an Indian housewife’s eyes by Jumping Jack Jeetendra’s clever daughter Ekta Kapoor who owned the airwaves, Venkat was lost in the days of the Devadasi. The book had been banned by the British and a recent republication resulted in the availability of that brilliant book laced with many an erotic interlude. Venkat moved with the author’s text, connecting up the background story of the complex relationship between the devadasi courtesan Muddapalani and the king Partapsimha. He thought hard about the lady who brought this treatise to the world, another Devadasi named Nagaratnamma. He dwelt long on the opening paragraph and thought about the lives of those fascinating Devadasis….

Which other woman of my kind has felicitated scholars with gifts of money?

To which other woman of my kind have epics been dedicated?

Which other woman of my kind has won such acclaim in each of the arts?

You are incomparable, Muddupalani among your kind.

The day passed by with Venkat trying to decipher Muddapalani’s life while Bala spent hours trying to fathom what Ram Kapoor and Sakshi Tanwar (What a gorgeous woman she is!) would do next or if they would ever live happily ever after or if Ekta would kill her off and change the storyline.

The days went on, the weather in Hyderabad turned sultry and there was talk of a typhoon hitting the coastline. Yet another girl, this time an IT techie got gang raped, the political scene got steeped in turmoil and the movie scene heated up with new movies. There was talk of a new mars mission at ISRO and talk of Hyderabad born Satya Nadella becoming a future Microsoft CEO. Some others were wondering if Deepika Padukone would show more of herself other than her meter long midriff in the upcoming movie Ramleela. Life as you will agree was taking quite a natural course, from an Indian viewpoint.

As fate would decide, a day, exactly a week later, would turn this very orderly routine topsy turvy. It was not something they had imagined would happen, it was as somebody explained later, one of life’s vagaries. Andhra Pradesh was in the grips of a new agitation related to the creation of Telangana and many a procession and dharna followed.

Venkat went out as he did, on his weekly rounds. On Mondays, he would go to the public library, meet some old friends, then to the coffee house for some plantain bhajjis and Tamilian filter coffee which he loved, and finally closer to lunch time, stop over at the bank. He stopped at the door and had some pleasant words with Raman Nair. But today he noticed something different. There was a small cuboid truck in front of the bank, it was the truck that delivered and collected cash from the branches. As Friday had been some local holiday, the event was taking place on Monday and Raman Nair seemed tense. But naturally, thought Venkat, for they had to carry bags of money across the floor to the waiting truck. And as this happened, it was Nair’s heightened responsibility over security that made him nervous. These days there were talk of all kinds of armed attacks on banks. Even though a lot of transactions took place over the data links and at ATM’s, much currency flowed though teller windows. A few crores were going to move between the truck and the bank vaults that day. The truck had its own security team and one of them was at the gate providing company to Nair.

Venkat went about his usual routine, he went to the teller, it was not Dolly, and deposited ₹ 356.00 into the savings bank account. Sometimes he transferred the money from his own savings account to the said joint account, sometimes he deposited cash. It was mostly transfers from his pension accounts though. The testy girl made an entry and filled up the pass book, telling Venkat that soon, they will stop the passbook rigmarole and that he will have to download statements through the internet. Venkat replied with a smile that he would then have to close his account and start keeping money in his store room. The girl replied that he would not have to worry and that she would soon give him printed statements, it was just that the passbook would not be there anymore. Venkat shrugged his shoulders and started back to the door.

The trouble makers had chosen their time well, they had planned their moves and were waiting to strike. As the trolley with four bags of currency was moving cross the floor, the two armed youngsters pounced on the trolley bearer. That they like everybody else in the bank were being recorded on camera did not pose a problem, for they would soon disappear in some remote part of India. It was revealed later that they were part of some dissident movement. Their plan was to use the element of surprise, nab the cash and run, not very clever as it turned out.

The lights went out, and in a flash each picked up a bag and ran to the door with pointed revolvers in hand. One of them shot the security guard from the truck and he was on the floor clutching his stomach in agony. The security guard Nair had not planned for this though he had loaded a cartridge in his shotgun, was slightly slow in reflex but soon had the shotgun to his shoulder and fired. The burst hit the fleeing robber mostly on his body but as beastly luck would have it, much of it also caught the slow moving Venkat on his chest and shoulder, as he was in the way. Both fell to the ground. A pause would have shown a stricken Raman Nair, looking at his falling friend and the robber, while the other robber crossed the door and fired back hitting Raman Nair and wounding him too. An almighty din could be heard in the background, the banks security sirens, the screaming bank personnel and a few bystanders, and the echoes of the shotgun shot. As Venkat fell, his bag spilled its contents on the floor and somebody else in law enforcement was to later make a record of the contents.

The police report stated that the bag contained a Pelican M20 pen with turquoise ink, a passbook in the joint names of A Venkat Ramayyah and Bala Saraswathi showing a balance of ₹3,46,000/-, a bottle half full of drinking water, a hand kerchief, a Hindu newspaper, a collection of poems by Muddapalani titled Radhika Santawanam. The policeman who wrote the report looked through the book and wondered what this old man was planning to do reading erotic tales by a devadasi, he had seen everything, but not this. The policeman was also surprised that Venkat did not possess a mobile phone.

That afternoon, when Bala got back home, she found the door locked and uncharacteristically, no sign of Venkat. For a moment she wondered if he was upto some mischief, but opened the door with her keys and switched on the TV. Going to the bedroom, she changed to home clothes and sat on her side of the bed, ruminating about life, for a while. Idly she picked up her account book and looked at its last entry, noting that the balance her husband owed her was ₹2,99,800/-. She smiled, for the whole rigmarole was nothing more than a joke, and wondered why she maintained an account and why Venkat kept on playing enthusiastically even though he lost most of the time.

That evening the police came home and handed her Venkat’s satchel. For a while she was stumped, and at an absolute loss of words as the policeman was mouthing the story of the bank robbery with grim deliberation. He hastened to add that the second robber was caught soon after by some youngsters who were outside and who gave chase, disregarding the brandished weapon and a few fired shots. The youngsters of today did not cower when faced with adversity, the policeman said, and that is good for the society.

When the monologue was completed, Bala stammered Ven….kat? The policeman smiled and said that even though he was seriously injured, he would survive and then he handed over the satchel and the passbook. When Bala saw the passbook and the account names and balance, she knew in a flash what it meant and the tears that she was holding back gushed out in a torrent. That silly man had really been paying her wins every week….

Epilogue – Venkat is fine now, though his left hand is virtually unusable and the shoulder is damaged with torn muscles, tendons and ligaments. The surgery to remove all the pellets took some time and injured his innards further. Raman Nair had a flesh wound, and the bullet passed out through his body. He recovered soon enough and is now a regular visitor to Venkat’s house. Sujatha came the other day for a visit and met up with the couple, she says that they are doing fine and continuing to play cards. The bank gave Raman Nair a good reward and took care of Venkat’s hospital expenses. But they also retired Nair with an ample pension and replaced him with a Gurkah holding a folding stock pump type shotgun. Nair’s shot gun holds a place of pride in his showcase at home.

Now that Venkat’s secret is out in the open, there is no more talk about old debts and Bala is of the opinion that he has been losing deliberately all these years, but when she says it, you can detect a hint of moistness in her eyes. Her love for Venkat has increased even further, I suppose. Venkat’s Pelikan M20 still writes a few lines fluidly, held in his moving fingers and he is living proof that cursive writing is not dead. He has finished reading Radhika Santwanam and is now reading a couple of translated Manipravalam (early Malayalam) works, called Chandralokam and Leelathilakam. It seems Raman Nair has some proficiency in these matters and he is helping Venkat on some of the Sanskritized Tamil words. Venkat now plans to write an article about the Devadasis of South India

The people of Banjara hills continue on, with their day to day activities.

This is just a story – nothing more, nothing less and I must thank my dear friend Annu Garu for jolting my brain with a glimmer of an idea which as you see, resulted in this ‘rummy tale’.

Rummy – A British usage for odd, strange, or dangerous, also a card game, played in many variations, in which the object is to obtain sets of three or more cards of the same rank or suit

I can assure you my friends, that if you want to open your mind and your senses, you have to travel. A trip to the east is always rejuvenating, and in our case it involved over three countries and a travel itinerary covering some 22 days. As my wife and I spent the days moving through land and air between Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia, I could only marvel at the ways the trading Indians had established bases at Malacca, Pinang, Bali and at Siem reap amongst other places in the far east. These early South Indians stamped their practices and their varying religious ways at all these port cities starting roughly from the 9^th century. Today the astounding temples, mosques and buildings in many of these places are testament to their varying fates and glorious lives and we had the good fortunes to see so many of them. But it was not all related to history for we spent a good amount of time with our friends Anju and Anand and also attended a nephew’s ‘interesting’ wedding reception at Teluk Intan as well as refreshing our taste buds with many a dish at all of these quaint locales, be it from the Malay, tainted Indian, Balinese or Cambodian cuisines.

This time I will use less words and more pictures for each of these places for the stories of their connections to India would take separate articles, perhaps better attempted in future and so this will serve only to make a quick intro.

Malaysia is a veritable delight and there is so much to see and experience there, and it was our second visit after more than a decade and a half. The country is very accessible though I must mention that vegetarians would find the search for something to suit their appetite a little tiring while others would find the use of anchovies or Natholi in most dishes a little overpowering, but the amount of sights one can see there is a large number. You have the very important medieval port of Malacca which was founded in the early 15^th century and frequented by the famous Chinese admiral Zheng He, enroute Calicut and later overpowered and colonized by the Portuguese and the Dutch. Eventually it went on to become part of the English Crown colony and provided many a consignment of spices to the peoples of the West and the upper east.

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur the capital is a vibrant, crowded but modern city teeming with huge skyscrapers like the Petronas towers, super-sized modern malls and guaranteed to drive you crazy with its snarling traffic choke up’s, jams and erratic drivers. The bars in Bukit Bintang, the shops in the Little India and China town areas provide an interesting aside while the restaurants that abound cover virtually every cuisine you can imagine.

And when you sit in the 57^thfloor Marini’s bar adjoining the Petronas twin towers and look out at the teeming city, sipping a cocktail and enjoying the company of marvelous friends like Anju and Anand, you cannot be happier. Wandering on, taking in the humongous Murugan statue at Batu caves, the monkeys that pester unwary tourists, and the last remnants of British colonial life, you see a country with determined people on the move. But well, you also see the ugly sides of some arrogant expats who expose colonial and racial instincts that their forefathers practiced vigorously. We did not pass up the opportunity to gobble Tamilian inspired food at Kannas, Saravana and Betel leaves, finally topping it up with some North Indian fare at Passage thru India, but not without sessions eating Malay food like Mee Goreng and Nasi Goreng, as well as the many fruits including Rambutan, Durian and Duku.

Penang - Malaysia

Penang was an experience, and our friends Shyama and Ramani introduced it to us, and assisted by Dr Ko, we had a quick rundown through the vibrant and ancient trading capital city - George Town, another jewel in the British colonial possessions. I doubt if Francis Light who founded it in 1786 could have imagined that the sleepy little port with some 10,000 humans would go on to become a bustling city, housing over 800,000 people. The Kek Lok Si temple, Kapitan Keling mosque, the Khoo Kongsi temple and so many more wonders keep you engrossed, but it is seeing that elusive bit of street art makes you jump up in wonder. It is something that you have to see standing upfront, for no photograph does justice to those marvels on Armenian and Ah Quee Street.

And then we were at Teluk Intan to spend time with family who had come from India to attend Sujit’s wedding reception thence celebrated in grand style, complete with a Bollywood style story line, some acting and lots of music. This was a city created by the people who fled when the Portuguese invaded Malacca, is now home to the word’s second leaning tower built in a Chinese pagoda style, originally as a tank to store water. Once a vibrant town, the economy declined after the Perak River silted and the younger population moved to bigger cities. It is also home to a large Indian population originating from Andhra and Tamil Nadu, people who came to work in the nearby rubber and palm estates. It was fun to meet up with the younger generation and many of my Malaysian cousins, exchanging news and tidbits and partaking in the splendid reception ceremony.

Bali - Indonesia

Bali in Indonesia, where we spent close to a week, is quite Hindu based and was breathtaking, be it the beaches or the noisy and boisterous Kuta area. The Niko resort at Nusa Dua where we lived was lovely and the daily tours to the Hindu temples left us wide mouthed with their beautiful architecture, though the slant eyed characters of the Ramayana and Mahabharata were a little difficult to stomach. The Tanah lot temple complex was the most beautiful of all, though most of the other temples were also lovely structures, but used only for festivals. Most old homes had temples within, with ancestral worship very much in vogue and the Kechak dance depicting scenes from the Ramayana was something to see. Interestingly all invocations are still done in Palinese Sanskrit. The trip up to see Mount Bator, an active volcano reminded me of the Mount Rinjani eruption which I had written about earlier. But the rides through villages, seeing the making of Kopi Luwak or animal coffee from the Civet excreta, lives of ordinary people, the handicrafts they made etc was certainly interesting. There is so much to do at Bali and the lovely food as well as the pristine beaches and the renowned massages make it worthwhile to take a trip all the way across the globe, as we did.

Siem Reap - Cambodia

But if you ask us, we simply enjoyed the days spent in Siem Reap at Cambodia, home to the famous Angkor Wat temple. Be it the astounding but horribly poor floating village at the Tonle Sap Lake, or the hustle and bustle at the pub street or the many temples that you will see at Angkor Thom and Angkor wat, each presented a unique experience, and it would be so as long as you have an open mind and some knowledge about the Hindu epics depicted there. You hear frequent mentions of the Indian and European restorers at the temples as well as Angelina Jolie and her adoptions and movie shot there, but you will for sure like the simple people and their food. The Somadevi Angkor hotel was more than adequate. Surprisingly we came across another Malayali wanderer from Cochin and we saw a Kerala restaurant in the pub street run by a chap from Trissur. Angkor Wat will take your breath away and unless you have read some history you will be left to wonder why the Khmer Hindu kings Jaya Varman and Surya Varman even created these massive temples in the middle of Cambodia between the 9^th and 13^th centuries, where there was nothing else. But the trip up to the Kbal spean – where you see a 1,000 (let’s redefine it as quite a few) Shiva lingas on the river flowing down the slopes of the Kulen hills, is astounding though a little tricky to climb (1.3km) even if you are healthy and fit. The temples at Banteay Srei, Ta prom and so many others get you a little tired and sometimes remind you of an extended pilgrimage. Once you leave the city the country is relatively poor and people around use batteries to power their homes, charging them, once or twice a week, mainly to run TV’s. Mobile phones ensure communication though. The town is also dotted with massage parlors and tons of tourists.

Back home at last, after clocking close to 25,000 miles back and forth and with aching limbs, a lingering jet lag and a torrid layover at New York with winter and holiday related flight delays (the return trip took close to 42 hours), but a good days rest will get me going, before office restarts tomorrow.

Finally try to take a stab at guessing what these three pictures above are about….

So it will be a trip to remember, thanks again Anand and Anju..... Perhaps I will cover some of the details of these locales in forthcoming articles…..

Until then, here’s …..Wishing you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year

The very mention of the name brings up a wistful smile in the countenance of most Malayalees. Many hearing it would have something to say if not about the music, about that period when melody was king and quickly drift away into a nostalgic and melancholic mood. Some of us know his music and we all believe in his genius, but how many of you know the person behind the music? You may have seen an odd documentary or tribute, you may have read an article here or there, and a rare enthusiast may have chanced upon a book or two about him.

Well, he was indeed a genius without parallel. Such was the endearing quality of this great musician who gave us so many gems to remember that even the new generation happily pick up his songs without hesitation. Interestingly, even his name, Babu which eventually went on to become Baburaj or fondly as Babukka - a household name in the 70’s, was never a given name, but an adopted name, adopted for survival. A study of his life is also somewhat of a study of the times, of a period when Kerala itself was in the throes of change, culturally, socially and when the films themselves had started to move away from mythical, religious themes to social themes, and the common man and his woes started to appear on the silver screen. The music in those movies were either built up on a heavy Carnatic classical base, or based on Kerala folk music but by and far were also inspirations from Hindi and Tamil films. The trio of G Devarajan, V Dakshinamoorthy and K Raghavan were ruling the roost and it was time for a breath of fresh air. That responsibility of bringing in a renaissance fell on the young shoulders of Baburaj, then just 26 years old. But his trek until that point was one filled with a lot of struggle, sadness and many a day of struggle amid abject poverty.

Let us now head to Calicut to see how the man eventually reached the Kodampakkam film city in Madras.

Calicut in the 1920’s was a place which can at best be called turbulent. The Moplah revolt of 1921 had created deep fissures between communities and the separated factions were struggling to make ends meet in a depressing period where jobs were scarce, where oppression by the British rulers was also fomenting a freedom struggle amongst the masses. The Moplahs in search of an identity, especially when it came to music settled on their own Moplah folk music and also promoted Hindustani music from the North, as they were unable to come to terms with the Carnatic and Kerala folk styles in vogue then. Their social gatherings and weddings were replete with mehfils where food and music went together. In those sessions or in specialty music clubs such as the Everest club near the beach, they, especially the wealthy Moplahs would invite Hindustani singers and musicians. As events would later demonstrate, in tune with the healing in Calicut, this caught on with non-Muslim families as well and it was not uncommon to see such impromptu music sessions even at Hindu functions.

Calicut thus became a favorite landing place for such wandering minstrels from the North and got accepted as a place where nontraditional music was appreciated. By 1950, there were so many music clubs, radio shops, musical instrument shops and many a cinema hall where all types of movies were shown. The restless youth seeking an outlet and many hundreds of enthusiasts would troop to these gatherings as well as the movies. Communism was slowly taking root in the state and there was also a hum amongst the socially and economically downtrodden and eagerness to attend cultural events organized by the party, especially thematic Dramas by KPAC and local troupes. Such events were replete with musical openings to get the people to settle down.

One such Hindustani musician who landed up in Calicut specializing in Ghazals and Quawalis was named Jan Mohammed, hailing from Bengal. He soon became a local favorite and as it happened, he got married to Fatima hailing from Akode near Vazhakkad. Mohammed Sabir (a.k.a Baburaj) was born to them in 1929, but Fatima passed away after childbirth (or a few years later) and pretty soon after, Mohammed moved to neighboring Tellicherry and married Rubiabi while serving at the Arakkal palace functions. We now come to know that Sabir had a brother named Majeed (I am not sure if Baburaj’s brother comes from Fatima or Rubiabi) and that they were inseparable throughout their life, though nobody has any idea what happened to Majeed in later years. Sabir continued his life in Chirakkara and studied there until the age of 8 or so, getting trained in both the harmonium and Hindustani basics by his father every evening between 5PM and 8PM. As opportunities dwindled, Jan Mohammed slunk away to Calcutta one fine day leaving the family in a lurch, and I guess poverty eventually overtook the family. Soon after, we see the boys in and around Calicut, wandering around, with Babu (a name the young Sabir adopted) singing Hindi songs and Bhajans in trains and on the street, accompanied by later day actors like EP Moideen Kutty. After a while, he settled down in Tirur and worked for the Rahman studio, which did lighting and photography for weddings, but continued to sing and play the Harmonium, more so the latter, when an opportunity came by.

As it happened, a benevolent Police constable – PC 353 Kunju Ahmed happened to see the 13-14 year old boy’s street performance near the Police quarters in Calicut. Soon the boy was adopted by this great man and taken home. There their relationship flourished, Babu found a home and a friend as well. That friend was none other than watch repairman Leslie from SM Street, whom we talked about in the past, the person who went on to become the great Kozhikode Abdul Khader. Leslie would sing and Babu would provide accompaniment on the Harmonium. This went on for a while, and then we hear that Babu has disappeared from Calicut. Perhaps it was when Leslie went to Burma and after a period got back to marry Kunjuahmed’s sister. It is said that Babu went to Bengal and many other places in search of his father, but whether he found him or what happened in those nomadic days is not known. Nevertheless, when he got back, he had acquired proficiency in various styles of Hindustani music.

The 50’s in Calicut was a period of resurgence for the party and Khader a member, was greatly respected as a lead singer. All major meetings were opened with strident songs sung by Khader and Machad Vasanthi, with Baburaj providing the accompaniment. I believe he also sang at times. They were in great demand and things were going satisfactorily till he and Vasanthi were approached by a North Indian to do a concert trip (Silver Jubilee show) in Ceylon and North India for a good compensation of 3 lacs. As it transpired, they were royally cheated and got nothing at the end. But that was always Baburaj’s problem, he did not know how to insist or fight for his rightful compensation. It is said that he was cheated by other producers many a time and Baburaj would always forgive and forget, because he simply believed any person who expressed helplessness, right or wrong. Just imagine, a person who never had a bank account in his life and one who never received compensation of even Rs 5,000 per film for his music direction. Well, those were the days when masterpieces were created for a pittance and a time when each song Baburaj created was perhaps mirroring his own life experiences!!

Baburaj is still in Calicut and with Khader, doing mehfils and other local events, but was soon to become a family man, he married another sister of Constable Kunju Ahmed and they had two children, but as his miserable fortune decided, his wife and two children died soon after to sickness. Nevertheless, lady luck had to smile at him sometime, and I guess it was time for that, for one day P Bhaskaran a film director and lyricist, then working with the Calicut AIR came to Ahmed’s house and remarked that he was somewhat stuck with the accompaniment for a song in his upcoming movie Neelekuyil. Baburaj it seems provides the solution and the grateful PB kept it in his mind. It was thus in the mid 50’s that Baburaj started getting opportunities to assist with music direction in films. In 1957 he eventually created music by himself, for the film Minnaminungu. As expected, he had his friends Abdul Khader and Vasanthi doing some of the songs in it and repeated them in later ventures.

The 17 or 18 years which followed, created his legacy. Song after song came off his fleeting fingers rapidly feathering the white and black harmonium keys, film after film established his credentials, and soon he was on the top of popularity charts. He is credited with bringing in the nontraditional Hindustani current to Malayalam music and firmly establishing melody in the minds of the ever critical Malayali. To recreate those scenes, which sadly nobody put to film, is not easy, but if one were to put it in words…

Cut to Sekhar (Swami) lodge Madras.

The film people usually book most of the rooms in the lodge and Baburaj always had his favorite. There he was, dapper as always, freshly ironed cream colored shirt and pants, hair slicked back with brylcreem, do I spot a Rolex on his wrist (perhaps! I would not know the difference, but I cannot discount the possibility), filter cigarette in his fingers, sitting on the floor and the harmonium in front. Do I smell some alcohol in his breath? Yes, I do, through the stiff scent of Eau de cologne he has used in liberal amounts masks it somewhat…but that seems to have not affected the creativity for Babu is enthusiastic, and has a number of ideas today. He seems to be in a rocking mood and like always, he is twisting his lips to a side when he is concentrating. He is now playing furiously, checking a few tunes, the lonely fan whirring overhead and the room full of another 5 or 6 sweaty men and a couple of women. I think they are trying out a song for Janaki to sing, was it Vasantha Panchami Nalil? Can’t remember!! A Vincent is there, P Bhaskaran is there, a few others, then there are Babu’s assistants, there is Muthu, there is RK Sekhar (AR Rahman’s father) and there is Bhairavan babu’s favorite tabla player. It took a good 10 minutes for babu to read the fine poetry, for he is not too good with text. Babu’s eyes are now closed and he comes up with a great tune and as his fingers fly over the keys, the tune wafts out of the bellows, but P Bhaskaran is not happy. Babu is upset, he believes that was a good tune, and many others in the room agree. No problem, he is at it again and after a couple of new tunes, wow! This one is fantastic…everybody agrees. He looks at Majeed his brother and raises his brow – Majeed is his best critic and he nods. A few hours later the tune is perfected and Janaki tests out a few bars in rehearsal, for the recording is tomorrow. Everybody claps and shout out their wah wah’s. Baburaj stands up, raises his collar and proclaims looking at somebody who was originally critical and doubtful – (Athanado Baburaj!! In typical Calicut style) That is Baburaj for you, the greatest!!!! They all split off to Central station Buhari to have a well-deserved Biryani…

Listen to the song today and anybody will agree, a masterpiece of a song created in a hot, humid and sweaty room, jam packed with enthusiastic people. Today nothing remains, except the song and the fan that whirred softly overhead, which mutely witnessed the event….

Many a stalwart remembers him from those hey days, Yesudas insists that nobody could set a Hindustani tune to Malayalam words and phrases like Baburaj. He could do it beautifully, without splitting a word. Jayachandran fondly remembers accompanying Baburaj who would go back every two weeks to Calicut even when he was very busy in Madras, to partake in mehfils and wedding ceremonies, or to help his friend Khader and his functions. In those days he could effortlessly create 5-6 tunes for any song and lay it out for the producers to decide. Such was his mastery in his field, done without computers and memories or slicing and dicing. His harmonium and his fingers did it all a 600 times, for roughly 100 films, not to mention the countless Moplah songs and drama numbers. “Baburaj was a much more versatile composer than he was given credit for. He was a self-taught genius. Sadly, he never got his due. Imagine the man never got even a State award!” says K.P. Udayabhanu who has sung a few unforgettable songs for Baburaj, including ‘Anuraga natakathin…’ in a Hindu interview. Jayachandran adds - It was he who showed me Kozhikode city for the first time. When he auditioned my voice for the first time I couldn't sing as I was literally shivering. He is one of the best music directors of all times, he had a style which was combined of both Hindustani and Mappilapattu."

Time sped by and we see the man slowly sliding off the peak. Hits are lesser in number, his own focus has reduced and he is keen to get back to Calicut than hang around in Madras in misery. Contemporaries say that the proud MSB had an inflated ego, like most artistes and that he would not go looking for opportunities, instead choosing to relax in Swami’s lodge, waiting for them. P Bhaskaran, his godfather has moved on to other music directors. Something is troubling him, as his fingers feel stiffer. The doctors mention some kind of arthritis (or was it the after effect of a stroke?). Baburaj decides in 1975 to slow down and go back to Calicut with his brother Majeed. His pockets are empty, all the money he got has been spent on food, cards and booze in those 15 years, and all he has left is the house in Kallayi where by now he has a second wife and 9 children. The children are Gulnar, Shamshad, Rosina, Sabira, Shamna, Jabbar, Zulfikar, Farhan and Samila. All these years they have been well taken care of, but his brother in law and friend Abdul Khader is not doing well. As you can imagine, Babukka is a lost soul.

To sustain himself and his large family, he has to work and there were no calls coming from Madras. Eventually he decides to get back to his roots and with that firm decision, the dejected man joined the music troupe of VM Kutty as a guest singer. The next two years are spent crisscrossing Malabar for countless mehfils and performances, some good, some terrible, for Baburaj’s mastery over the harmonium is in a decline, his fingers don’t obey him anymore and even a few drinks before each program don’t help anymore. Some of his friends like singer Mehaboob and his greatest supporter Abdul Khader had already left this world. And there was another issue, his face had started to look a little disfigured with arthritis taking its toll, something that affected the once dapper man a lot, but he toiled hard to support his family as a simple harmonium player in those final days.

It is 1978 and Baburaj is feeling a little better, the speech impediment is better, though the fingers are still unyielding, but his mind is full of new ideas. He has just been contacted by director Hariharan to do music for his film Yagaswam and the eager Babukka has even decided to ask Hariharan for a new harmonium in return.

Cut back to Madras – Hariharan is waiting eagerly to meet Babukka, for it had been his life’s desire to get the great man back on track and do his film. At Ashoka hotel, he is looking forward to seeing Baburaj, who according to him was recovering from a stroke, looked haggard, but still had that lovely smile on his face. The composition started, Muthu was there to help, and Baburaj asked Muthu to handle the keyboard, not touching it himself, for his fingers are still unyielding. Hariharan insisted that Babukka play the harmonium, but the scene becomes pathetic when baburaj could not and found the going difficult, nevertheless, the song is completed.

Not much later, Baburaj suffers his fatal stroke at Madras. He is hospitalized in the general hospital which does not have too many facilities. The film fraternity rushes to his side, and MGR personally intervenes to get an advanced X-ray machine to the hospital for diagnosis. But 4 or 6 days later he is lost to this world, just 59 years old, on Oct 7^th, 1978.

Did his family carry on the legacy? One of them took to playing the tabala, his son Zulfikar. His granddaughter (Daughter Sabira – Sabutti’s daughter) Nimisha Salim is a budding singer and in the news these days. But the airwaves continue to play those timeless melodies from Baburaj, and of recent we have come across recordings in his own voice which testify that he was a good singer himself. The grateful singers who sang for him, such as Yesudas with 118, Janaki with 117 songs and so on outlived him and are doing well. Many of them and friends like Devarajan still provide monetary assistance to the family and mention him in their memoirs.

For many of his contemporaries, in the mehfil and Moplah song circuit, only one image remains - As the chicken and fish biryani or ghee rice and curry were consumed, as bottles were opened in various dark corners beneath the shamiana, as others puffed away or chewed various forms of tobacco, and as others gossiped or quarreled, their minds were quickly put to flight, to a musical paradise, taken there by the fingers on a harmonium keyboard and a heavy voice laced with sadness, that of Babukka…

Strange, sometimes, I think back and wonder, for I used to be in Calicut in the 74-79 period. We frequented the same areas, near the P&T office, wheat house, park, SM Street, stadium and so on, would we have ever crossed each other? Who knows? I would not even have known him then. These are people you wished you had met and known, simple down to earth people with a soul.

Others also remember the maestro Babukka of Calicut, like the many who frequented the Calicut music clubs, people like Babu of Calicut harmonium works who maintained MSB’s harmoniums, the many singers who were newcomers introduced by Babukka and who are great today, there is Hydrose Koya who mentions the tidbit about Babukka visiting the Republic hotel to listen to music over the expensive Murphy valve radio. PK Ajitkumar in Hindu sums it all up rightly - Baburaj introduced to Malayalam cinema the delicate charm of Hindustani music. No composer, either before or after, has given Malayalam cinema such refined ghazals. His melodies were silken; as gentle as a breeze.

As I end, let me record my gratitude and indebtedness to Mustafa Deshamangalam who painstakingly interviewed many of MSB’s friends and colleagues to create a nice compendium of interviews and established a biographical base for singer musician Baburaj. Another source I used and wish to thank is Ravi Menon who has written so many eminently readable books on music and musicians. I also thank the owners of the photos I used to make the attached collage, photos provided in Googleimages. I was hoping to get Bicha Baburaj’s memoirs, but it is still not at hand and I will made additions or corrections if any after I read it.

Some of his great songs

Akale akale neelakasam – what an endearing tune that is, with the voices of Yesudas and Janaki soaring and sinking, one after another, with such perfection that it is an unparalleled melody. Thane thirnjum maranjum... My wife who simply loves (she sings it beautifully too) the song, and I, are in total agreement that the Baburaj version is better than Janaki amma’s film version, and that the version sung by Roopa in Amrita TV Superstar global is the all-time best.….Anuraga ganam pole – What a superb song it is, a personal favorite of Jayachandran who sang it.. Kandam bechoru kottane – A lovely song sung by Mehaboob, and I had written about it earlier. Only Mehaboob could sing such songs though he was capable of much more. But his was another story (seehere for details) He was right there with Baburaj from the first film and was a regular, while there was another who always remembered him, Machad Vasanthi.

So many others jump to my mind……each better than the other…… Ponnaram chollathe, Pranasakhi, Oru kochu swapnathin, Talirtta kinakkal, Ekanthathayude apara theeram, Thamasamenthe varuvan, Vasantha Panchami naalil, Eaaran uduthum kondu, Innale mayangumbol, Suruma ezhuthiya mizhikale, Pottatha ponnin kinavu, Anjana kannezhuthi.

But perhaps the most poignant one is – Anuraga nadakathin andhyamam rangam kandu…..

Regarding his inspirations from the Hindi film world – SeeAnuradha Warrier’s much discussed article

For his full discography look here

History has many an interesting character but there is only one person whose name is synonymous with spying, espionage, intrigue, and sensuality, it is none other than Mata Hari, a purported German spy who was executed by the French during the First World War. This gorgeous, 5’10” feet tall woman could be easily described as the most famous or for that matter, the most talked about spy in the world after James Bond. But there is one large difference; she was a real person, a horizontal agent as Toni terms her, unlike Mr. 007. What would you think looking at her name? Variously explained as sunrise, the mother of Vishnu or eye of the day by just translating the Hindi or Sanskrit words, she was an exotic dancer with a very interesting life story. From the depressing streets of Pre-World War 1 Holland, she moved to sunny Java and back to Europe to set a blazing trail through the night club scenes of Paris, Germany and Holland, and sharing her bed with scores of bigwigs along the way. From Paris she moved to Germany, then to Holland as the First World War descended but doubled back to Paris after a few dull months. That was her undoing, for with a few months she faced death in front of a firing squad, after being summarily convicted of treason, spying and death of many thousand Frenchmen.

Why not spend a few minutes learning the reasons for her mystique and how she claimed to be a woman from Malabar? It will be but a brief account of Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle, ‘the horizontal agent’ who warmed the bed of many a military man on both sides of the war and through to her eventual death. But was she a spy? That has always been the million dollar question and most are inclined to believe today that she was just foolish but never a spy…But people still pore over a few hundred articles and books about her and new ones continue to be written as you read this, this shows you her everlasting appeal

When she started her sensuous dancing show career in Paris, she announced…

I was born in the south of India on the Malabar Coast to a Brahmin family. My father was calledAshirvadam, known for his piety and pureness of heart. My mother was a dancer who died giving birth to me; she was only 14. The priests who adopted me gave me the name Mata Hari and I was raised in the great underground world in the temple of Shiva.

As time went by, a few variations crept in as time went by…in which her origins moved to Jaffna Pattanam in Ceylon. And her mystique grew and people crowded her shows to see her (I had been to Indonesia and Cambodia recently and saw the version that Mata Hari adapted, it is more like the Apsara dance in Cambodia which does have some Indian dasiattam moves, steps and actions. In fact her dressing and head gear is quite close to the Apsara costumes – the Robam Tep Apsara) and her version of the seminude oriental dance which was not Indian in any way, but purported to be Indian. In a clever way she manipulated the eagerness people had, to learn about the hidden secrets of India, perhaps magnified in the writings of the English who returned to its dreary shores. The French newspaper Le Journal, taken in by her declarations, declared Mata Hari as the very symbol of Indian culture: “Mata Hari personifies all the poetry of India, its mysticism, its voluptuousness, its languor, its hypnotizing charm … rhythm, poems of wild voluptuous grace” The critic as you can see compared India with female attributes, notably as one writer explained, those which elude the rational mind such as voluptuousness, hypnosis and mysticism.

The biggest difference from the Apsara dance of Cambodia was Mata hari’s dress or the lack of it. She sometimes wore a body stocking, sometimes nothing other than a padded breast piece or Cache-sein (she usually refused to uncover her breasts in public or in private as most reports go – they say that she was rather shameful about their inadequacy, but then Mata Hari did dance bare-breasted more than once, and her topless performance as Salome in 1912 brought her acclaim. Perhaps she knew that concealing a small part of the body while exposing the rest had an exciting effect).

I will provide you a very quick overview of her life before she hit the Paris streets and the limelight, for without it the story will not be complete. It was in Java that she learnt about the mysterious Malabar, where the Portuguese and later the Dutch colonized Batavia and other islands to form the Dutch East Indies. Perhaps she heard about how Rama of Mahabharata dispatched Sugriva to look for Sita in Java, perhaps not, she must have just learnt some of the dances out of boredom and acute depression. Why so?

When she was 13, Margaretha’s father Zelle's business went into bankruptcy (in 1889 at Friesland) and her misfortunes started after her mother’s death. By the age of 18, she had become conscious of her power over men and her overt sensuality and soon put it to use, perhaps without much thought. First it was the headmaster of her teacher’s training school and this resulted in her being moved out to relatives in Hague. That was when a boorish 39 year old alcoholic and heavily mustachioed Rudolph Macleod, back home in Holland on leave from Java put up a matrimonial advertisement. The bored Margaretha applied and they met, soon to get married and enter into a nightmarish world of unhappiness, violence and sadism. They had two children in quick succession, but the elder boy Norman died due to apparent poisoning (or syphilis) as Rudolph’s career went into a tailspin. The girl Non survived and the couple returned to Holland in 1902 where the now 26 year old Margaretha applied for divorce which ended with Rudolph keeping custody of Non. All Margaretha was left it was her knowledge and powers over men as well as a bit of dancing that she had learnt in Java. That is how she decided to seek a new career as an exotic dancer and a high class paid courtesan with a story (which was her Indian origins) and a new name, Mata Hari. Her initial performances were at Musee Guimet. The dance was called the Les Danses Brahmaniques. In fact Guimet was the person who suggested that she add an exotic name and thus Mata Hari was born to dance a sometimes writhing, reptilian dance form, slithering over the floor and eventually into many an arm.

Though videos of her dances do not exist anymore, vivid descriptions such as this provide a good idea of her cabaret performance - One of the descriptions in the Neue Wiener Journal from 15th December 1906 entitled Brahma Dances in Vienna, the critic reviews her performance at the Viennese Secession Hall thus: The auditorium was steeped in mystical darkness. Covered blue, green, white lights. A Brahma-altar, surrounded by a blossoming fruit tree, has been erected at the front side of the room. Steaming incense burners augment the almost solemn atmosphere of the small auditorium. Then the Hofburg actor Gregori enters the room ... he improvises a little introductory speech. [He says] Mata Hari’s dances are like a prayer ...the Indian people dance when they venerate their Gods. Mata Hari herself enters with measured tread. A Junoesque apparition. Big, fiery eyes lend her noble-cut face a peculiar expression. Her dark complexion [...] suits her marvelously. An exotic beauty of first order. A white, gathered veil envelopes her, a red rose adorns her deep black hair. And Mata Hari dances ... That is: she does not dance. She performs a prayer before the idol, as a priest performs a service [...].[Then] Mata Hari dances the budding love of a chaste girl. A while veil – the slendang – serves as a symbol of chastity. Beneath the veil, the beautiful dancer wears on her torso a breast ornament and a golden belt ... nothing else. The audacity of the costume is a minor sensation. But without the slightest trace of indecency ... What the artist reveals in dance is art. Each muscle of the upper body is engaged. The dance ends with a victory of love over restraint ... the veil drops [...].Finally the dance of Siva, the destroyer. The priestess, in a passionately engaged dance, sacrifices every piece of jewelry, so that He hears her prayer. One veil after another drops until in the end she stands in her pure, undressed beauty [...]. The priestess sinks, unconscious, to the floor in front of the feet of the stern god [...] Stormy ovations …………

The major attraction of Mata Hari was, of course, her brazen novelty in the prudish prewar Paris. She converted stripping into an artistic, exotic and acceptable format, now cloaked inside a Hindu religious dance form as though it was always the norm in Malabar (while the concept of Dasiattam was very much in vogue in Malabar and the Tamil speaking Kongunadu, stripping was not a custom though some classes of women were uncovered above their hips - in contrast, Mata Hari always covered her breasts). The general consensus in those days was that Mata Hari made you feel that you were actually satisfying your desire with her. That was her allure and the allure took her far and high, earning her a fortune which she spent freely. But as you know, the heights don’t just make you giddy, they were also precarious perches from where you could have a great fall.

Her story started to change as days went by, and in later dances she said that she learnt the dancing from her foster Indian mother who dedicated her to Lord Shiva and that was how she, aged 13, danced for the first time in the nude. In fact this mystery and cloak and dagger act completely masked her poor dancing skills. But as legends go, she was quite vigorous on the floor and off it, and the lighting and special stage props as well as her beautiful eyes and amorous expressions made it very enticing and original. The next few years were her high times, where she ruled the revue floors and minted money while at the same time warming many a bed. But imitators started to appear on the scene and the dancer Mata Hari and her dance was becoming a bit jaded.

To make her private parties and dances even more authentic another person and his troupe was

roped in. The group was named ‘The Royal Musicians of Hindustan’. When I first read about this connection, I was taken aback, for the person heading it was none other than Inayat Khan the founder of The Sufi Order in the West and the father of the famous English spy code named Madeline a.k.a. Noor Inayat Khan or the princess spy (Many a year ago, I had written a somewhat inadequate article about her). Inayat left India in 1910 to come to the West, traveling first as a touring musician and then as a teacher of Sufism, visiting various places along the way, France and Netherlands included. It is in France that Mata Hari and Inayat met.

The Royal Musicians of Hindustan performed with Mata Hari, providing live accompaniment for her dances, before Inayat moved on to Russia and fathering Noor with Nora Baker. Their pairing was opportune, for the group came to promote Indian music and Mata Hari was of course was the self-proclaimed pioneer of oriental dancing in the west! The photographs (from her garden in Neuilly) of them together in a British society magazine is striking with Matahari looking every bit an Indian, this time fully clothed and demonstrating some typical Indian dance moves. The timing of their collaboration seems to have been between 1912 and 1913. Her announcements and press releases as well as witness accounts state that the troupe were Indian Brahmin musicians (Interesting that a Sufi Muslim propagator went along with this)! By that time, Mata Hari’s birth place had moved from Malabar to Jaffna pattanam in Ceylon and in 1914, it was placed at the banks of the Ganges!! The storyline also changed that from there she went on to become a Javanese court dancer. The public lapped all of it, for the lady did ample justice by providing a good amount of eye candy. But what could have got her into the world of spying? That part of the story is the last act of her life and desire to be among officers.

Times were soon to become more difficult for the ageing Mata Hari and her repetitive dances were reducing in number. Her body had not much left to reveal, and the upper society had already sampled her. Her ways became more erratic and to keep up with her high living she started to become non selective and soon she was noticed at kinds of seedy places with men. She now decided that the dance routine had to be changed to something Egyptian and this perhaps took her to the German town of Berlin.

And that was when the war clouds started to form and her bank accounts got frozen. Fleeing Germany in 1915, she went to Holland and here the Germans contacted her asking her to spy for them for a sum equivalent to about $61,000 and by giving her a code name H21. She agreed to do so and collected the money, but actually planned to do nothing. From there she went to Paris to sell her stuff there and collect some money. On her way, the British M05 interrogated her and placed their suspicions on record. Between the years 1914-16, her travels are well recorded and so I will not get into details of her purported spying. And then she came back to Paris and soon after fell in love with an injured Russian soldier much younger to her named Vadime - Vladamir de Massalof, and later offered to spy for the French. Her love for the uniform had taken her places, but soon it was to be the reason or her downfall.

It was in the summer of 1916, that a Captain Ladoux heading the French counterintelligence, requested her to become a French agent. Not understanding the complexities of what she was doing, she agrees and is soon caught in a spider web of intrigue. The war is not going too well for the allies and the French and some affirmative action is expected from Capt Ladoux who has started to believe that Mata Hari is a double agent. Bouchardon’s (the prosecuting lawyer) investigation on the matter looked dead and the Allies’ war was going disastrously. A scapegoat was needed to save face and the Germans wanted her ‘burned’. As it happens, a set of messages sent by Germany provide information on agent H21 and these are sent in a code that the Germans knew were broken by the allies. Perhaps they wanted to fix H21 when they found out she had agreed to spy for the French, perhaps, they did what Ladoux wanted since he was involved with the Germans himself. Ladoux’s testimony at the trial based on German inputs confirming that she was H21, connected her to espionage

He sets out to get her and soon Mata Hari is arrested in Paris on 13 February 1917 and sentenced to death as a pro-German spy after a dubious trial ( as somebody said – one where there was not even enough evidence to flog a cat!). On 15 October 1917, she is executed by firing squad. . Interestingly, soon after Mata Hari’s execution, Ladoux and others were arrested later, as German agents!!

The death is well reported, so also the trial and it is stated that Mata Hari faced death bravely,

though no longer a beauty, walking proud with her head high and refusing a blindfold. The fire order was shouted out, the shots rang their death knell, and Mata Hari was gone. As was recorded, an unnecessary, coup de grace was also completed, with a French officer emptying his gun into her ear. No one claimed her corpse which was finally taken to a medical school to be used by students there for study on the dissecting table. Her body thus continued to be for public view and as a public property. In 2000, it was discovered that her head had disappeared. Now no one knows what happened to it or to the rest of her body.

Shipman writes - It was men who, like witch hunters, built the case against her, driven by prejudice not fact. And with France gripped by anti-German spy mania, few would stick their heads above the parapet to defend her. Britain's fledgling intelligence service, MO5 (soon to change its name to MI5) also helped dig her grave with, as we will see, the dodgiest of dossiers. All because Mata Hari said and did what she wanted, with her life which was - I wanted to live like a colorful butterfly in the sun, rather than in the calmness of the inside of my room. And then again, she was convicted not for espionage but for her lack of shame."

EK Mahon concludes - So why was she accused? Both Bouchardon and Ladoux could not get past the fact that Mata Hari was a beautiful woman who loved men, and gave herself freely to them, no matter the nationality. As far as they were concerned, she was a promiscuous and immoral woman, and for that alone she should have been condemned. Mata Hari's fatal mistake was that she loved officers, no matter what the nationality, not a good thing during wartime.

Mata Hari thus lived the life typical of an Indian Nautch girl or devadasi. She was as they said, justly famous for her true talent which was exotic dancing and pleasing men, not espionage. The only person she loved, the Russian officer Vadime let her down completely by claiming that all they had was a fleeting affair. And it is not that Mata Hari did not know her limitations and strengths – she said “I never could dance well. People came to see me because I was the first who dared to show myself naked to the public. I prefer to be the mistress of a poor officer than a rich banker. It is my greatest pleasure to sleep with them without having to think of money. I have said yes to them with all my heart. They left thoroughly satisfied, without ever having mentioned the war, and neither did I ask them anything that was indiscreet.

Was she ever a double agent? Perhaps she was, of that I am still not too sure as she was circumstantially involved in some cases. Rudolph her husband, died in 1928. Jean Louise ‘Non’ Macleod, her daughter died in 1919, somewhat mysteriously, the day before she was to board a ship to Java, in her sleep.

De Marguérie’s a high ranking official in the foreign ministry, one of her patrons and rare defense witness during the trial concurred - It was a great relief to spend three days talking of philosophy, Indian art, and love with her. It may seem unlikely to you but it is the truth." Without being asked, he volunteered, "Nothing has ever spoiled the good opinion that I have of this lady."

References
Femme fatale – Love, lies, and the unknown life of Mata Hari – Pat Shipman
Sisters of Salome – Toni Bentley

Femme fatale - an irresistibly attractive woman, esp. one who leads men into danger or disaster

Photos

1. With Inayat courtesy Fries Museum
2. Others from Google images – with due acknowledgements to uploaders

Some weeks ago I delivered a short talk on this subject to a few friends in our music group and as it involved some study, I decided to write an article around it. We enjoy these Sunday afternoons trying out some songs under the watchful eyes and ears of our much beloved and patient teacher Sunitha and at times we go over a little bit of theory and history. With that backdrop, let’s get started and go over the matter presented in that short talk, not to be considered in any way an exhaustive treatise on the subject.

The Carnatic has variously been described as the land to the south of the Vindhyas or the land between the Krishna and Kaveri. While Carnatic music should simply mean as the music of the Carnatic, this blend of Indian classical music has also been defined using the various meanings of Kar and Karna, with the word Kar meaning old, black, or that which pleases the ear. So it could be music of the old, music that pleases the ear or music of the darker skinned people. All debatable, but well, a separate topic for those hard core enthusiasts I suppose.

Indian Classical music has its origins attributed to Vedic times and also celestial beings like Narada, but the form familiar today was originally popularized during the 13^th and 14^th centuries by Purandaradasa (the pitamaha or grandsire), Bhadrachalam Ramadasa and Kshetrayya in the Kannada rajya while a senior contemporary Annamacharya also composed and sang his songs in praise of the Tirumala Lords. The most luminous of the composers and originators of the Carnatic style of music was Pundarika Vittala. The Haridasa bhakti tradition popularized songs sung in praise the celestial and Purandaradasa codified and consolidated it by evolving several graded steps such as sarali, jantai, thattu varisai, alankara and geetham.

This music flourished with the patronage of the powerful Vijayanagar kings. Patronage as you can imagine was a prerequisite, for music did not fetch any revenues for the singer or composer and thus they had to find support from royal courts to survive. The above named composed many thousand songs, but while some of those lyrics remain, the musical parts of many of them was lost and it is believed that this was mainly due to a stoppage in propagation of their teachings due to an absence of a formal student teacher (Guru Shishya parampara) tradition. Two events were to affect the growth of this musical form in the year 1565, one being the death of Purandaradasa and the second being the battle of Talikota where the Deccan Sultans routed the Rayas of Vijayanagar.

While all this confusion was going on, the township of Thanjavur, at the delta of river Cauvery or Kaveri was under the rule of the benign Tanjore Nayaks. Tanjore or Tanjavur as hoary legends go, derived its name from Tanjan (another of those indigenous kings termed asura or demon in later days by Aryan scribes) who was killed by one Anandavalli Amman and another Neelamegha Perumal. Tanjan's dying request was that the city be named after him and his request was granted. The town was very famous for the Bhrihadeeswara temple built by Raja Raja Chola in1010. In later days it was also the seat of the Tyagaraja Cult which became popular with Saivites after the Chola Murugan cult lost its sheen. The Somascanda (Shiva+Uma+the child Murugan) based Tyagaraja cult had its seat at Thiruvavur. As time went by, a number of Smarta Brahmins from Mulakanadu relocated from Kannada and Deccan to Tanjavur and they were the people who popularized the Carnatic music form in the centuries which followed. The kings of the region, both the Tanjore Nayaks and the Madurai Nayaks were of Telugu origin and the court language was Telugu. Many of the compositions of that period were therefore either in Telugu and Sanskrit. We will now trace its popularization first by the Tanjavur Nayaks and later by the Maratha Bhonsle kings, all fortunately patrons of music, art, and dance, not to forget literature of all kinds. The ambience was also there, with many a temple, royal patronage and the various annual competitions held every year to attract hordes of scholars, composers and musicians from neighboring regions.

Carnatic music had by the 16th Century thus shifted to Tanjore, where under the benign rule of the Nayaks and later the Maratha kings, it flourished as a major art form. As you will see, many of the kings were composers and musicologists themselves. Attracted by employment opportunity and the stability, several Bhagavathars from Kannada and Andhra regions moved to Tanjore and its environs. Interestingly while the Cholas promoted Tamil literature and arts, the Nayaks brought in the Telugu art forms and later it was upto the Marathas to continue to work with these accepted forms and also add in a Marathi touch. Not only that they also went on to codify Dasi dances and introduce western touches to the Carnatic music world.

Tanjavur Nayak period – 1530-1674.
The main contributions during this time came from the three kings, Achyutappa, Raghunatha and Vijayaraghava, all of whom patronized Carnatic music. Even though plagued with skirmishes and wars throughout their reign, they found time for the arts.

Achyutappa (1560 AD-1614 AD) Achyutappa (the son of a betel leaf bearer Sevappa Nayak of Achutaraya) spearheaded the promotion of music by granting asylum to those Brahmin families fleeing from the Kannada regions after the loss of the Vijayanagar kings and by resettling them at Unnathapuri (Achutapuri or Melattur). The composer who really got things going was Givinda Dikshita who oversaw the resettlement of the families on behalf of Achutappa. Govinda Dikshitar it appears, had the Unnathapureeswarar temple renovated and extended, created the various agraharams around it and constructed the pond in front of the temple, named after Govinda Dikshitar as "Ayyan Kulam".It was in Melattur that the great poets Bharatam Kasinathayya and his disciple, Veerabadrayya were born. In fact it could be summarized that the move of Govinda dikshita from Vijayanagara to Tanjore shifted the center of Carnatic music to Tanjore.

Raghunatha (1600 AD-1645 AD) by all records was termed as a gifted scholar in both Sanskrit and Telugu language, and a talented musician with his court crowded with poets and scholars. Raghunatha takes credit for not only writing several books on music and Telugu literature, but also compositions. Raghunatha created new ragas, talas, and melas like Jayanta sena (ragam), Ramananda (Talam), Sargita vidya and Raghunatha (Mela). Maduravani and Ramabhadramba were famous poets in his court, whereas Sudhindra and Raghavendra were two famous Madhava gurus patronized by him. Govinda Dikshita continued to be a minister in his court as well and Raghunatha’s Sanskrit treatise on music, Sangita Sudha opened the intricacies and secrets of music to the public. The later scholar Venketamakhin however states that the Sangita Sudha was actually authored by Govinda Dikshita.

Raghunatha also composed kavyas and dance-dramas and popularized the 24 fret horizontally held Raghunatha mela veena or the Saraswati veena (a.k.a Tanjore veena) which is staple to Carnatic music today. It was during Raghunatha's reign that a palace library was established and it was in this Saraswati Bhandar is where the manuscripts from Raghunatha's prolific court scholars were collected and preserved. Raghtnatha Nayak specifically mentions in Sangitha Sudha that he undertook the task of simplifying classical music so that there was no variation between the defined and the actual recitals. His aim was that people should recognize the ragas simply by listening to the songs once and that it was his aim to open the secrets of music to all.

Vijayaraghava(1634 AD-1673 AD) Vijayaraghava's stable and somewhat longer reign witnessed a good amount of literary output both in music and Telugu literature. Vijayaraghava’s court was also filled with a number of poets and literary scholars and he is credited with more than thirty books in Telugu and the great Venkatamakhin, Govinda Dikshitar’s son, served his court, so also Chengalvakala Kavi and Yagnanarayana Dikshita (Venkatamakhin’s brother).Venkatamakhin later authored the Chaturdandi Prakashika, which is probably the most important treatise in the Mela era and one that codified the melekarta scheme. Venkatamakhin also composed many geethams and prabandhas, as well as 24 ashtapadis in praise of Lord Thyagaraja of Tiruvarur. Following Venkatamakhin, his descendant Muddu Venkatamakhin is attributed to have authored the Ragalakshana (early 18th century). A later scholar, Govinda, further refined this scheme in his Sangraha Choodamani and it is his nomenclature that survives till date.

And what is evident in this period is the solid guru shishya parambara and the natural passage of music forms from teacher to student and movements across regions, locales and generations.

The Maratha period 1674-1855

The Maratha rulers of Thanjavur were major contributors to musicology including Shahaji who authored the Ragalakshanamu (1684 – 1712) and Thulaja who authored the Sangita Saramruta (1728 – 1736). The Marathas had differing food habits, different gods, differing language and different dance and music forms, but Venkoji (Ekoji) the Maratha ruler and his successors did not impose any of that. They adapted Telugu, Sanskrit and Tamil, and continued with their patronage and support to existing traditions, but also allowing new art forms to enter the scene. This 200 year span as the Bhonsles of Maharashtra ruled is considered to be Tanjore Carnatic music’s and Tanjore Natyashastra’s golden period. Neighboring regions Kumbhakonam and Mannargudi also benefited under the administration of the Maratha rulers.

How Sambaji (credited with our staple curry Sambhar!!!) and Venkoji a half-brother of Maratha warlord Shivaji landed up in Tanjore and displaced the Tanjore Nayaks is an interesting story for another day, but to start this part, Venkoji was invited to support the last Tanjore Nayak Alagari’s war efforts when the latter was threatened by the Madurai Nayak. Venkoji or Ekoji as he was called chose however to remain and take over the kingdom, partly due to his not being paid promised remuneration, and also because of differences with his brother who had taken over parts of the Mysore kingdom. This was to benefit the people of the region, as we look at that decision today, for all practical purposes.

Even though their reign was dotted with many wars with various other local rulers and later overtures by the English, these rulers provided unstinted support to the musical and dance forms of the region, and remained great lovers and patrons of art and literature. The Saraswati Bhandar became a library of repute and is the Saraswati Mahal of today. Their courts supported many a composer and musician and we see the results from the prodigious output of the famous trilogy of Thyagaraja, Shama Sastry and Dikshitar. But before we get to them, let us start with Venkoji or Ekoji, the first of the rulers.

Venkoji (1674 AD – 1684 AD) was a great follower of Carnatic music and is important because he not only allowed the continual use of Telugu as the court language, but also patronized the cultural and musical traditions of the erstwhile Nayaka kingdom. He promoted the culture of Sadir or court dance in Tanjore courts, while Dasiattam was already prevalent in the temples.

Shahaji (1684 AD-1712 AD) was a scholar both in music and literature. Around thirty works consisting of dramas, Padyas and Kavyas have been ascribed to him. Scholars of Tanjavur bestowed upon him the titles of Abhinavabhoja and Navina bhoja. He donated a village Shahjirajapuram (Thiruvisanellur) and resettled 46 Brahmin pundits there. He wrote the Raga Lakshanamu, a treatise on rare ragas (perhaps done by Muudu Lakshana - grandson of Venkatamakhin) and went on to author over 208 padas and ashtapatis with the mudra Tyagesa and popularized the usage of the name Tyagaraja.

Saraboji 1 (1720 AD-1728 AD) followed, he created the villages or agraharams of Mangamatam (Tiruvenkadu) and Sarabojirajapuram (Tirukkadiyur), endowed many Brahmins and promoted the work of poet Giriraja kavi who invented many ragas (Tyagaraja was his grandson) and worked in his court. He was titled Vidyabhoja.

Tulaja I (1728 AD- 1736 AD) who followed was the one who authored the musical treatise Sangeeta Saramrita. He was also to become the promoter of Sadir and Bharatnatyam styles of dance and wrote a few yakshaganas. Interestingly the Tanjore Veena was named Tulaja Vina during his times. He was well versed in Jyostishya, Ayurveda, law and politics. Ghanasyama Pundit and Manabhatta were composers in his court.

Ekoji 2 (1736 AD - 1737 AD) followed at the age of 40 during a period when Tanjore was beset with a lot of problems over accession, and composed over 86 padas called Ekoji sahityamu. The famous dancer Muddamanga danced in his court.

Pratapasimha(1739 AD-1763 AD), who was more a Marathi writer and an able administrator, was less a musicologist compared to the others, but promoted many composers & poets such as Melattur Veerabhadrayya. Notable in his court was Muddapalani whom I briefly introduced in a previously posted short story. More on her and her work Radhika Santawanamu on another day.

Tulaja 2 (1763 AD – 1787 AD) was the reason for the renaissance in Carnatic music mainly due to his building the framework for the success of the Tanjavur trio of Shyama Sastri, Tyagaraja and Muthuswamy Dikshitar. The reasons are very interesting. His court had eminent musicians such as Sonti Venkataramayya (Tyagaraja’s teacher), Pachimiriyam Adiyappaiah (Syama Sastri’s teacher). His building a temple Bangaram Kamakshi temple made Syama Sastri’s father settle in the region. Similarly Ramabrahmam, Tyagaraja’s father was appointed by Tulaja to take care of the Tulajamaharajapuram and Hariharapuram agraharams. Ramaswami dikshitar was appointed by Tulaja to compose and formalize the songs for the dasis of the Tiruvavur temple. As you can imagine the progenies later grew up in Thiruvavur in this cultural atmosphere and were well trained by the proficient gurus of the court. Tyagaraja incidentally was the grandson of Giriraja Kavi, a Sanskrit poet in the Saraboji I’s Court. Subbaraya Oduvar the father of the Tanjore quartet also served in his court.

Amarasimha (1787 AD-1798 AD) An uncle of Serfoji 2, and stepson of Pratapasimha ruled over the kingdom since the young Serfoji II was a child and still under the care of Rev Schwarz. He was also a good patron of art and literature and it is said that several musicians and poets of repute adorned his court. But he spent much of his time plotting to kill the young boy and the Westerners, especially Rev Schwarz took care to ensure that he did not.

Sarabhoji 2 (1798 AD- 1832 AD) was perhaps the biggest of the patrons of art in Tanjore. His childhood and story of arrival is quite interesting. The doctrine of lapse was being imposed strictly by the British and Tulaja’ children had all died. So he rushed to Satara to adopt a Bhonsle boy and that was the great Serfoji 2. It was to prove to be a wise choice. The young boy was sent to St George School in Madras under care of Rev Schwarz, a Danish missionary. Schwarz helped Serfoji survive in peace when surrounded by Hyder Ali on one side and the British on the other. You will also recall that his uncle was trying his best to get him killed. Eventually he took over Tanjore but soon after, gifted his kingdom to the British in 1798. A food and fun loving person with many wives and 25 odd concubines, he had all the time in the world for art and music and he did well to promote it.

During his time Muthuswamy Dikshitar and his brother Baluswamy came to his court leaving Madras, and the Tanjore quartet also came into prominence. While they excelled in fine tuning the art of Bharatanatyam, they also authored a number of varnams and Kritis. The brothers Chinnayya (1802–1856), Ponnayya (1804–1864), Sivanandam (1808–1863) and Vadivelu (1810–1845) were employed in the Tanjore courts initially, after which they moved to Travancore to work for Swati Tirunal who incidentally was a good friend of Serfoji. Serfoji himself was a composer and writer. As Radhika explains - Serfoji's works can be considered as a milestone in the growth and development of the theory and practice of the Sadir dance. Apart from these works on classical music and dance, the royal composer is said to have authored a Kuravanji nataka as well as a lavani, a Marathi folk musical form. Another great composer, the Christian convert Vedanayagam Sastriyar who wrote over 500 kritis and 133 books served in his court. Scholars like Subba Dixit and many others thrived in his court, but slowly they were starting to consider other locales for nationalistic reasons and monetary benefits to Ettayapuram and Travancore.

Serfoji was not just a great music and art lover, but also an avid reader as evidenced in the thousands of books and scriptures he hoarded and left (over 80,000)in the Sarswati Mahal, most of them with his scribbles on the pages. He also made huge contributions in the field of medicine and technology not to mention yeoman service in the field of dance by defining and promoting Bharatanaytam with the Tanjavur quartet. The navavidhya Kalanidhi Salai was started by him.

And of course he was well taught in western music, later creating the Tanjavur band as well as ensuring the introduction of the violin, piano, flute, guitar, clarinet and so on to the music scene. Varaha Payyar served in his court, and it was with his support that many a western instrument got added to the chamber music orchestra. A number of English notes or Nottuswaras (see my previous article on M Dikshitar and his nottuswaras) were also composed during his period.

Thus we see that the Nayaks and the Bhonsle’s preserved and promoted Carnatic music in Tanjore, till eventually British ascendancy in Madras resulted in the poets, composers and musicians moving slowly to the new center at Madras from the various principalities. The music form also changed with the passage of time. With the advent of Maratha rule, Marathi style Bhajans were introduced to blend with the Ashtapadis, Tarangam, keertans and other forms and compositions. Harikatha and yakshagana were popularized and the use of western instruments like the flute and the violin promoted. Purists however complained that the Carnatic style was getting diluted, becoming populist and simpler, but that was development, I suppose. And as we saw the dasiattam or nautch dance which had attained a bad name (and was banned by the British) evolved into the flowing dance form Bharata natyam that we see and enjoy today.

All of this took place at the Sangeetha mahal or the royal hall of music in the Tanjore palace. Quoting a Hindu article, the hall, a rectangular hall with a vaulted roof, used to have four punkahs that spanned the breadth of the room.The design of the hall is such that it would have helped in balanced absorption and deflection of sound waves. The chandeliers and other decorations must have helped in sound dispersion. The many perforations would have ensured that excess amplification was avoided. There used to be a pit in front of the stage, which would be filled with water. This too must have helped in proper deflection of sound waves to the upper gallery. But as we all know good things come to an end, the Sangeetha Mahal that had seen all these stalwarts (except perhaps Tyagaraja) perform since the 1600’s became a godown and a government office during the British rule and even after Independence.

As always these things change with time, in fact there are people who now feel that places like Cleveland, the birthplace of rock music may soon become another new center for Carnatic music with a growing number of listeners, wealthy patrons, annual concerts and a steady flow of teachers on demand. That then would be a passage across time and the oceans….

References

Development of Sadir in the court of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832) of Tanjore – VS Radhika
The Reception of Western Music in South India around 1800 - Takako Inoue
From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy - Lakshmi Subramanian

Maddys ramblings

NottuSwara – Muthuswamy Dikshitar’s European airs
A Rummy Tale

Padnichare Kovilagath Manavikraman (Ettan) Raja, Zamorin of Calicut.

The period following the accession of the British over Malabar was a time when the Zamorins of Calicut, those suzerains who ruled over vast swaths of territory in Malabar for over 500 years, had descended into holders of simple titular positions with just a small privy purse from the British Government. Gone were the days of pomp and splendor, gone was the palace and fountains in the middle of Calicut, burnt to cinder or carted away by merchants. All they were left with was some property and oversight of temples, but with little malikhana income. The administrative staff and the Nair pada they once commanded was no longer in the payroll. The cheer that you see mentioned in a formal report quoted below was notably absent.

Quoting law journals - In 1792 Tippu ceded Malabar to the East India Company and ever since it has been under the rule of the Government of India. On the cession, the ruling powers of the rajahs and the chieftains were taken away from them. They were not deprived of the possession of their landed properties, but they were compelled to pay land revenue in respect of them and consequently became mere holders of land held under ryotwari tenure. Upto 1806 the deposed rulers were allowed to collect the land revenue and retain for themselves one-fifth of the net income, but in that year the East India Company itself undertook the collection and thereafter the Government granted to the deposed rulers annual allowances (malikhana) for the maintenance of themselves and their families. The malikhana was liable to forfeiture on proof of disloyalty or mis-conduct.The only ruler with whom the East India Company entered into an agreement in writing in respect of the payment of malikhana was the Zamorin (the Rajah of Calicut).It is only fair to add that the Zamorins, having loyally accepted the great change in their destinies, have ever since cheerfully and faithfully discharged their obligations to the Power which supplanted them just a century ago.

The Zamorin family after losing their territory first to the Mysore sultans and later the British, were mostly wrestling with court cases and arguing over property with the new owners, who had opportunistically taken them over or in some cases, just assumed ownership knowing that the Zamorin families had no power to do anything otherwise. Even the temples, previously a large source of revenue were languishing and the regional economy in a state of shambles. The succession structure of the Zamorin family was as always quite complicated and involved selection of the senior most person from the three kovialkoms or ancestral palaces – Padinjare (West) Kovialakom at Mankavu, the Puthiya (New) Kovilakom at Panniyankara and the Kizhakke (East) Kovialkom at Kottakkal.

Ettan Thampuran and Ambalakkat Lakshmi Amma

It was in those days that Manvikraman Thampuran, the Ettan Raja, went on to grow up in the Mankavu Padinjare Kovilakom and right from his childhood days found security in the world of music, literary works and the study of Sanskrit. There was no dearth of it in the vast home, as well as the temple complex of Thali nearby. The annual Revathi Pattathanam was still in vogue where a large number of Pundits attended, but not held often enough. While we do have some idea of the general situation, not enough of specific information is available about his younger days. In fact we do not even know when he got married, but I would peg that roughly at 1870. Around that time, he got married to Ambalakkat Lakshmi Amma, the beautiful lady you see in the photograph. That friends, is my great grandmother on my father’s side. They had four children among whom the youngest was Ambalakkat Karunakara Menon, a leading advocate of Calicut and a congressman. The eldest was Ambalakkat Gopala Menon, my grandfather, the Calicut registrar in those days. So now you know my connections to a Zamorin from the Padinjare Kovilakom i.e. the Padnichare Kovilagath Manavikraman (Ettan) Raja, Zamorin of Calicut 1912-1915, otherwise called the Vidwan Ettan Thampuran or the Kerala Bhoja.

I delayed writing this article for a period of time for want of information, but it is interesting to confess that it was this person who started my interest in Malabar History many years ago, years after the people who could have given me firsthand information, like my father and his sisters had passed away from this world. It was a painstaking process to gather whatever little information I could unearth on this very interesting stalwart, famous for his literary and poetic skills as well as the personal support and grooming provided to budding writers who went on to become big names, like Vallathol Narayana Menon and VC Balakrishna Panikkar. Later I went to the Padinjare Kovilakom to see if I could find somebody there and to get some inputs, and it was Mr Virarayan who got me started by showing me the place where he lived and by providing a booklet on the Kottichezhunellath and some more details. He also gifted me with a book Samoothiriyum Kozhikodum written by PCM Raja….As I sat in those hallowed but now dilapidated premises and took a moment to imagine the days when my ancestors sat at that poomukham listening to poets or making compositions, I could feel an occasional shiver down my spine, as I drifted off thinking about their lives and better times.

Ettan Thampuran

Anyway let us get to the interesting persona my great grandfather was. That he was a writer of repute is mentioned often in history texts. In fact he was one of the early nonfiction writers in Malayalam, and his travelogue Kasiyathra charitram (travel in 1896, published in 1903), only the second to be written in Malayalam (First was Romayatra by P Thoma Kathenar). I will try not to do too much of a eulogy here as some others have worked on lengthy doctorate theses on the very subject of Ettan thampuran’s contributions to Sanskrit.

A great scholar poet, titled Vidwan Samoothiri (rare in the line of Zamorins), he was instrumental in publishing many works in Sanskrit during his time. He became the Eralpad (2^nd in line) in 190 and the Zamorin in the year 1912, and the various ceremonies are documented in the book of Duarte Barbosa (ML Dames) with a good amount of details (VET provided the specifics to collector AC Thorne who translated it for the book).

Mankavu Padinchare Kovilakom - Poomukham

A quick overview of some 40 or so of his works in Sanskrit includes three dramas Odanavaneswara vijaya, Lakshmikalyana, and Samskrita Lakshmi kalyana, a translation of the Malayalam Social play Lakshmikalyana by KC keshava Pillai. Then there was the Dianadayal paracampu based on a Hitopadesa fable, a Shloka in praise of Nemam Subramanya Iyer(now sung as a kriti in raga Kapi set to Adi tala), Vishakhavijayollosa, Parvathi Parinayam, a collection of essays and poems including – Sringara manjari madana, Rana singuraja charitra, Dhruvacharitam, Pratisrudha dasaka, Kerala vilasa, Bhikshu gitastava, dhatu kavya, Jnana pradipika, Champu bharata, Parvathi Swayamvaram, Prethakamini and finally Kasiyathra Charitam in Malayalam – covering his own trip to North India in 1895 and detailing amongst other things prosperity seen in North Indian cities. Keralavilasa incidentally contains 105 verses based on Keralolpatti. A few of his ragamalikas are also mentioned here and there. Manavikrama samutiri charita is a historical kavyam by Vasunni Musat which gives the life history of Ettan Tampuranas well as one throwing much light on the period. People say that it is highly useful in understanding the period, but I have not been able to find this anywhere.

But more than anything else, he was a patron and teacher for others interested in the field of music and literature. The Padinjare kovilakom at Mankavu at the turn of the 20^th century was the place where sahridaya sagamam meetings were held and poets like Vallathol and Balakrishna Panikkar were groomed. Vallathol, in one of his poems, has recalled how the Ettan Tampuran sought his company at poetry recitals, music concerts and literary discussions. Lt is written that in their company, Vallathol went about with his meagre resources, composing slokas in Sanskrit. Vallathol gratefully mentions Ettan thampuran as the 'reincarnation of the great ‘Bhoja Raja. Ettan raja was also well known as a convener of regular literary meetings attended by great South Indian writers and poets. He was the main sponsor of the Kerala granthamala which published many works of Kerala writers.

V Unnikrishnan Nair and NV Krishna Warrier writing in the Calicut souvenir state that he was the third Zamorin who contributed much to the literature of Malabar and was a great patron of budding writers and poets. They list people who regularly attended the Sahridaya sangamam as Punnaseeri Nambi Neelakanda Sharma, Kaikulangara Rama Warrier, Mahakavi Kunjukuttan Thampuran, Vellanasseri Vasunni Mussad, RV Krishnamacharya, Telappuram Narayanan Nampi, Vallathol, VC Balakrishna Panikkar etc and state that Ettan Thampuran was known as the Abhinavabjoja Raja amongst the Sanskrit pundits in India those days. Balakrishna Panickkar VC, as CHF wrote was the pioneer of the Romantic Movement in Malayalam Poetry and composed Manavikrameeyam, a treatise in verse on alankara shastram, dedicated to his guru. Pundit Gopalan Nair who translated the 10 volume Sreemad Bhagavatham in Malayalam was a favorite disciple of Vidwan Ettan Thampuran.

Ettan Raja was also responsible for the Thunchath Ezhuthachan memorial. A conference of eminent writers and leaders of society was held on October 17, 1906 to formulate a scheme for the construction of a memorial and it was this Samoothiri, Vidwan Manavikrama Ettan Thampuran who took the initiative. He was also instrumental in supporting Punnaseri Nampi with the establishment of the Pattambi Sanskrit College and continued to put in efforts in elevating it to college status. He also made a proclamation stating that there was nothing against Sanskrit being taught to everyone sitting together, irrespective of caste and religious distinction (1914-1915).

He was also very keen about the propagation of Ayurveda, and in 1902, the first ever congress of the Ayurveda Samajam was convened at Chalappuram in Kozhikode in the presence of Manavikrama Ettan Raja and Ramavarma Appan Thampuran, the 6th prince, the Kunjunnithampuran of the Kochi state. At this first annual meeting, the name "Keraleeya Ayurveda Samajam" was introduced, 55 years before the state of Kerala was formed.

Though a person who made sure that everybody could be literate and learn languages like Sanskrit, and study in schools and colleges patronized by the Zamoirn, he was also a person with many firm and traditional opinions. Talking at the Malabar marriage commission meeting, he (Fawcett – Nairs of Malabar) informed the Commission that "It has been ordained by Parasu Rama that in Kerala, Marumakkatayam women need not be chaste" and he quoted a shloka in proof that there should be no such thing as chastity excepting amongst the Brahman women. But well, it was a testament of the times I suppose.

It is said that he was a reluctant Zamorin and that administration was not something he enjoyed. Literature and poetry were his life and I also heard that he was close to abdication of the position during his last years. The main reason was that the Zamorin’s estate at that time was in an abject state of penury and his inability to find monetary resources, a huge burden on his mind. The figures are mind boggling, 39,970 acres of land were registered in the family name and an equal amount of unregistered land was apparently held, but all this produced only a gross income of Rs 3,64,000/-. With a family count in the three Kovilakoms of well above a thousand or more people, the income meagre. The estate was eventually taken over by the British court of wards with JA Thorne as Collector. Ettan Thampuran’s death occurred soon after the loss of Guruvayur temple to the court, this turning out to be his greatest disappointment (He would have been happy to hear that it went back to the family 12 years, in 1927). On many occasions he had to request the court of wards for monies to tide over expenses and this weighed his mind greatly, a testimony to the sad state of affairs following the many triumphant years till the Mysore Sultans systematically tore up the fabric of Malabar.

A full account of some of the royal ceremonies "The Eralpad's Kotticchelunellattu", whose Ezhunnellattu as Eralpad is vividly described in this Malayalam account with many interesting details. Mansell Longworth Dames – version of ‘The book of Duarte Barbosa’, Appendix II, JA Thorne’s translations refer to data from the original Malayalam article ‘Ariyittu vazcha’ provided by Vidwan Samoothiri, while reigning as an Eraalpad as well. Noteworthy is the fact that when his portrait in the book was taken, he was in his one year Diksha or mourning, hence the heavy beard (Another interesting fact is that the bust on his right is the Kochi Rajavu – If you will recall, the two families feuded for centuries). Ettan Thamburan, the late Zamorin, was the first to visit Cochin after those turbulent times. He was given a right royal reception by H.H. Rama Varma the Ex-Raja of Cochin, who was then ruling Cochin.

The Kasi trip (Varanasi - Benares pilgrimage) travelogue is pretty interesting – and as you peruse it, you see the country through the eyes of an inquisitive traveler. You can read the views of a deeply religious and middle aged person traveling in an entourage which curiously included just one woman - my great grandmother, proving to be a great eye opener of the times. I found the para comparing a bathing ghat to the manachira tank in Calicut quite amusing and the use of certain Malayalam words archaic. His amazement seeing Bombay and appreciation of the facilities rendered by a Gujarati Seth from Calicut named Vrindavan quite apparent in the words and description. Perhaps someday I will translate this work together with some of the others - who knows! Regretfully I could not find the part 2 of that work and part 1 only covers the journey until the group reach Kasi.

Vallathol of course went on to become a famous writer and poet, established the Kalamandalam and today we can all sit back and see Kathakali the way it should be seen and remember the great poet. And of course, you can go to Kottakkal for an Ayurveda massage to relax those tight tendons or seek relief for some ailment that cannot be cured…

I also recall the meeting with the late Puthiya Kovilaguth Manavedan Kunjaniyan Raja and how he remembered Ettan Thampuran. He was mentioning to me how KVK Iyer got most of his book’s content from Ettan Thampuran’s ‘Agnivamsa rajakatha’, an account detailing the legendary history of the Zamorins of Calicut.

Finally I have to also detail KV Krishna Iyer’s pivotal role in all this, and I am sure you know that he lectured history at the Zamorin’s college in Calicut and taught the rudiments of Malabar history to so many students. A quirky person, KVK Iyer belonged to Pallavur in Palghat where my maternal side of the family lived. KVK Iyer was a good friend of my uncle, a student of history and Iyer’s proximity to the Ambalakkat house and the Padinjare Kovilakom resulted in exchange of matrimonial proposals which cemented the relationships between the two families.

It would have been quite interesting I suppose, if we could meet across generations to discuss matters of common interest, but well, in Kerala that is why a number of families still do ancestral recognition poojas in places like Palghat. They have a ceremony where the food liked by that karanavan is kept and some poojas done. What could be done for this gentleman? Something to think about.

Additional input from Mr CK Ramachandran at Calicut Heritage Forum, gratefully acknowledged and posted below

Incidentally, we at CHF had mentioned the patronage provided by Vidwan Ettan Raja to the young and indigent poet, V C Balakrishna Pillai . We feel this is the appropriate place to place some more interesting tidbits concerning Vidwan Ettan Raja and his proteges.

It was Vellanasseri Vasunni Moosad (you mention him as one VET's friends) who took the young Vallathol to the Mankavu sadass. Vallathol was then passing through a difficult stage in his life. The young man of 24 years had fallen in love with Madhavi, his uncle's daughter (murappennu). But, as the poet himself complained in his 'Bandhanasthanaya Aniruddhan', the course of true love never runs smooth. There were some initial opposition and finally he was to marry on a certain day,and had travelled from Tirur to Ponnani only to be informed that because of a death in the family, the function had been postponed. A dejected Vallathol travelled back to Tirur and sought solace in the company of Vellanassery Moosad. The very next day, Moosad took him to Mankavu as he thought the young lover deserved a change of scene. He spent some unremarkable days there and returned to Ponnai to get married. His second visit came later after he had made a mark in poetry and prose. Returning from Kadathanatt kovilakam (Udaya Varma was another great patron of literature) in the company of Kavikulaguru Krishna Varier, Vallathol visited Mankavu . The benevolent VET enquired of Varier about the financial condition of the young poet. Varier explained that the poet (who had by then become father of a girl) was in dire straits and could do with some assistance. VET gave two offers : he would write to some 20 respectable persons to contribute Rs.50 each (totalling Rs.1000) as capital for any venture that Vallathol may undertake. He guaranteed these loans and even hinted that most of these would be non-returnable loans. The second offer was equally tempting - a job as Malayalam Munshi in the Zamorin's College.

Vallathol rejected both offers. According to his biographer, there could have been two reasosn for this rejection: Vallathol was confident that if VC B Panicker could start his own publication in Trissur, so could he. Secondly, he could not stand VET's antipathy for Kathakali which Vallathol adored. VET had observed that the use of loud instruments like Chenda and Maddhalam and the dinconnect between the songs and the mudras did not appeal to 'modern' tastes. Vallathol who had inherited his love of Kathakali from his father, found that he could not compromise his taste, although he was ever grateful for the offer of assistance made by VET.

Another great figure who enjoyed the patronage of VET was the great scholar Punnasseri Nambi Neelakantha Sharma. You had mentioned about VET's work 'Sringaramanjari'. It was in fact one of the five shatakas (100 slokas) which he had published by the name Panchamrita Shatakam. Each of the five works had 100 slokas . There was some criticism ( by some scholars from Tamil nadu). Punnasseri put up a spirited defence of this work, and this was his first published work also. Another contribution of Nambi is worth recalling: VET had been writing Sanskrit letters to many scholars. It was Nambi who compiled these letters and published with an introduction by himself under the title, Lekhamaala (1898), in his own printing press called Vijnanachintamani. The next year saw Nambi establishing a Sanskrit pathshala and named it Saraswathodyothini. The school which blossomed into the famous Sanskrit College in Pattambi would not have survived its initial years of troubled existence, but for the generous assistance provided by VET.

VET's generosity towards many other poets and writers who became famous, will fill volumes. We hope someone makes a serious study of the contributions of this royal patron.

Further input from Mr Veerarayan at Padinjare Kovilakom

1.       EttanThampuran’s mother was Sreedevi thampuratty (1822-1902) born on Malayalam era 997, month Kumbham. Star Karthika at kunnahur Kovilakam near Kallada river, Kollam, while members of the padinchare kovilakam was residing there during Mysorean invasion. Returned to mankave kovilaklam in her 6^th year of age.

Father – Appan Namboodiri of Thottappaya Illam near Trissur
Brothers – Eralpad Anujan Thampuran & Ammaman Thampuran (auther of INDUMATHEE SWAYAMVARAM, the second novel in Malayalam)
Grand uncule – Poet Manaveda Eralpadu Raja, a great schjolar, astrologer, social reformer etc.. author of VILASINI ( a work on sukha sandesam
2.       Ettan Thampuran was the driving force behind the then Zamorin Maharaja P.K.Kuttiyaettan Raja in his effort to establish Zamorin’s College in 1877.
3.       Took over the management of Padinjare covilakam estate in his 27^th year of age when his mother became the Valiya Thampuratty (Senior Rani) of the Kovilakam in 1872 and administrated the affairs of the kovilaklam for 30 years.
4.       After the death of Valiya Manavikraman Raja (friend of pazhassi raja), the landed properties in and around Kalladikode and nearby cherpulasseri were lost to local janmis . a litigation to get back the properties was initiated VET with the help of his wife’s relatives Ambalakattu Raman menon and the attempt was not fruithful.
5.       After entrusting the Zamorin’s Estate administration to the Court of Wards, he returned to the palace of Pallippuram and breathed his last in 1915 there.

References

Duarte Barbosa - An account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their Inhabitants – Mansell Longworth Dames

Calicut corporation souvenir – 1966

Kasiyathra charitram – Ettan Thampuran (Those interested can download or read it here)

The Eralpad's Kotticchelunellattu - Ettan Thampuran (provided by Mr PK Veerarayan Raja)

Samoothiri vamshavum Samsrita sahityavum – Dr K Kunjunni Raja (Bhaktapriya April 2012)

Notes

Thanks to my cousin Balagopal Ambalakkat, a fine photographer in his own right, for kindly providing a scanned picture of the young Ettan Thampuran. My great Grandmother’s picture was also provided by the Ambalakkat family and though the beautiful lady’s picture had been touched up by a zealous photographer recently, you can make out how pretty she was.

The older Zamorin’s picture comes from the archives of the Cornell University Library – Originally Provided by JA Thorne (ICS, Collector- Tellichery) & printed in Duarte Barbosa’s 1918 translation of – An account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their Inhabitants. The original of the same picture which I have at hand, is a little bit damaged at the top and edges.

Once again my heartfelt thanks to Mr Veerarayan for assisting me with whatever information he had. He is in the process of making a long family tree chart of the Zamorin's with many details and I hope he completes it to the benefit of interested historians.

The Padinjare Kovilakom pictures which you see is the handiwork of Dr Harimohan. I combined three of them to create the Poomukham picture.

Barbosa book photo extract

If anybody can contribute more details on Ettan Thampuran, his works or any other details, please do so with a comment or write to me.

Her life, poems and a bit about her days at Feroke - Calicut

There was a short period of time when a British couple lived in a bungalow in Feroke. The eminent Col Malcom Nicolson, once ADC to Queen Victoria was that person, and he and his wife spent an idyllic period enjoying the lifestyle of Malabar in retirement, but had to move soon after to the Dunmore house Madras, due to medical issues. He died soon after, following a messed up prostrate operation. To exacerbate matters, his wife Adela who loved her days in Malabar, killed herself shortly thereafter by drinking perchloride of mercury. She was just 39 and she is the one we are going to talk about.

Adela had been publishing a number of sensitive poems under a famous male pseudonym Laurence Hope. Laurence Hope incidentally was the sister of yet another notorious writer with a pseudonym Victoria Cross. After her death, Adela became even more popular and is today studied by many people and oft quoted. Her list of admirers continue to grow day by day and in her time, one of her admirers was Somerset Maugham who wrote his short story ‘Colonels Lady’ loosely based on her experiences. Thomas Hardy was her admirer too and wrote about her. Kamala Das often mentioned her and the influence this poetess had on her. If you want to peruse her style of poetry, you can find all of her works easily on the internet.

Some of her poems are related to her time in Malabar. What intrigued me is Madhavi Kutty - Kamala Das’s cryptic comment to Merrily Weisbord. She said – ‘Poet Laurence Hope had many lovers, including a lowly boatman’. How did she come up with this idea? It took me a good amount zigzagging through her life across continents, England, India, England, South Africa and finally back to India to get to know Adela. Now we get to an account of her life and times which started in India and ended in India.

It all started with a chap named Malcolm Hassels Nicolson (1843–1904), whos pent hi slife and times in India fighting so many wars in India. After the war and following various promotions, he became an aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria, being promoted major-general in the latter year and lieutenant-general in 1899. General Nicolson was an expert linguist in the NWFP languages and Farsi, I do not know if he learnt a smattering of Tamil or Malayalam, but finally chose to retire after all these exertions, to Calicut, in the year 1904, a place that was farthest from all his exploits. Perhaps he read the accounts of Edward Lear, who believed Calicut was the Garden of Eden. Or perhaps his wife, who had a poetic bent, had read Lawrence’s book or Shelly’s commentsabout Nairs. But let us now see what she was made of.
Adela’s story starts with her father Arthur Cory, an army man who arrived in India in January 1849. His marriage perhaps followed the Fishing fleet tradition which I wrote about earlier, and I presume that is how his to be wife Fanny Griffin, came to India. Isabel was their eldest daughter. Even though they lived in Lahore, Adela Florence was born in England in 1865, near Bristol. Annie Sophie the younger daughter was born in 1868. After retirement in 1877 he joined a newspaper in Lahore, the Civil and Military Gazette, aimed at the British community in North India. He returned to London, and interestingly Rudyard Kipling, son of his friend took his post. By 1884 Cory must have returned to India, for he took over the paper’s Sind edition and turned it into a new journal, the Sind Gazette, published twice weekly in Karachi, eight hundred miles south-west of Lahore. He died in England in 1903. Adela’s education was completed in England and returned to Lahore at the age of sixteen, around 1882, just before her father’s retirement from the Civil and Military Gazette. Isabel, Mrs. John Tate, succeeded her father as editor of The Sind Gazette. Ann Sofie as time would tell went on to become the notorious erotic writer Victoria Cross.

Adela married Colonel Malcolm Hassels Nicolson in April 1889 in Karachi. As you can see, the colonel was 46 years old with a great drooping Walrus moustache, and Adela just 24, virtually half his age! Was "Violet" as she was called by friends, destined to follow the traditional path of the British Army wife, horses, parties, ayahs and so on? We find that in 1897, when Violet was in a prestigious position as the General's wife, a Scottish writer called Violet Jacob whose husband, the Irish Major Arthur Otway Jacob, was posted at Mhow from 1894 to 1900, wrote thus of her: 'a tiny fair very strange woman, vilely and impossibly clothed. I always found her rather interesting, though of course everyone mocks at her, and I can't help doing it myself... sometimes at the really absurd figure she makes.

The Nicolson’s married life can also be gleaned from contemporary sources as testified by this report, Croquill writing for ‘The writer’ in 1909 - Mrs. Nicholson loved to dispense hospitality to her chosen friends. She was of a peculiar, unconventional nature, which is reflected in her poetry, and only those who were of the same mind appealed to her. She loved the world of books, occult science, and strongly sympathized with the Mohammedans. Those friends chosen for their brilliancy of mind more than for their material wealth found in her a warm, ardent, generous friend, extremely unconventional in her views, and a woman not at all fond of social gaiety in the usual acceptation of the term.

Adela took to wearing Indian clothes as time and writing poetry with a style reminiscent of the Sufi poets from the NW provinces (She was fluent in Urdu), and decided to get them published. It is said that while the substance of the poems was not drawn from identifiable Indian source, the exotic settings emphasized a passionate intensity which was seen as oriental. Her first volume of poetry, The Garden of Kama and other Love Lyrics from India, were published in 1901, but were not something Victorian and Edwardian England could accept from a lady and that was how they were published under the masculine pseudonym of Laurence Hope. The works were well received, though the somewhat explicit nature of the contents was hotly discussed. Generally reviewed as the work of a man, her poems attracted enormous attention at a time when DL Lawrence was still to become the buzz name, and was repeatedly republished every year for many years.

After retirement the couple briefly visited North Africa and then went to London, where they were drawn into literary circles including Thomas Hardy. But London and Africa were not to the liking of two people who had spent their entire life in India and so soon enough in 1904, the couple left London (after leaving their son London) in order to settle in Calicut. They found a bungalow in the hilltop overlooking the river at Feroke, a few miles off the town.

Feroke Circa 1905

Calicut then was virtually a stopover on the way to Ooty, with no real relevance. Gone were the days of pomp and it was a sleepy town, barring the Moplah related events. Eleanor Montagu visiting Calicut the place where the British had been present since 1615, while A Conolly was the collector in 1884, wrote “Every person who comes to Calicut in the wild expectation of escaping at once to a more genial climate, labours under a delusion from which he will only too soon awake, when actually here”.

The Feroke House

But that was not the case for Adela and Malcom, because for six months they lived very happily in a place they stated was paradise, just like Edward Lear termed it. Adela’s poetry writing continued and she blossomed into a new dimension. But as most people agree, her poetry was a reflection of those interesting but difficult times where there was a definite passion and obsession of forbidden love in the minds of the literate. As experts state the purely personal voice of the poet was now beginning to dominate. She loved Malabar and wrote a lot about the land and its people….From the poem Song of the parao

These are my people, and this my land,
I hear the pulse of her secret soul.
This is the life that I understand,
Savage and simple and sane and whole.
These are my people, lithe-limbed and tall,
the maiden's bosom they scorn to cover.
Her breasts, which shall call and enthrall her lover,
Things of beauty, are free to all.

But recurring health issues required a move to Madras for the General's medical treatment. A routine prostate operation went wrong and the general died on 7 August 1904 at Mackay's Gardens Nursing Home, Madras, and was buried in St Mary's cemetery.

Mary Talbot Cross provides details - His widow was taken in by friends, the Stewarts, and for two months she stayed with them at Dunmore House (a property they were renting from Eardley Norton, the noted barrister and champion of the Indian right to self- determination). On 4 October 1904, when her final book of poetry was completed, "Laurence Hope" confided to a friend in London her intention of exercising her own "right" to follow her husband, entrusted the letter to Sir Norman Stewart whose return to England was imminent, retired to her room and took poison. It was an English equivalent of sati, and fittingly her last poems were published posthumously under the title Indian Love. Finally and after her death the poems were published in her own name. Some say that Adela did this following a bout of acute depression. She was buried, like her husband, in St Mary's cemetery, Madras. Her only son, Malcolm Josceline Nicolson, subsequently edited her poems.

In her book Indian Love, she started with a poem dedicated to her departed husband, in the poem she said…

Small joy was I to thee; before we met
Sorrow had left thee all too sad to save.
Useless my love-as vain as this regret
That pours my hopeless life across thy grave.

This controversial poem addressed to her husband and a number of swirling rumors kept hope in the limelight even after her death. While one of the rumors was based on her relationship with an Indian prince, the second was about her purported lesbian relationship with Amy Finden and third about her numerous affairs with all kinds of people without any real basis. Let’s take a cursory look at them.

Somerset Maugham himself had experiences with India (especially the much talked about meeting in 1939 with Ramana Maharshi near Coimbatore, enroute Travancore). Well, as it so happens, his short story ‘Colonel’s lady’ is loosely based around Adela Violet Nicolson. In fact it is a story where the Colonel discovers that his wife has become a hotshot writer all of a sudden and her much talked about story about an affair with a younger man (not a prince as some people have mentioned!!), becomes one he cannot stomach. Eventually after much soul searching and discussions with his solicitor he concludes that he should do nothing and ignore it, after all he himself had been dipping his wick (a blond and luscious thing) now and then while in London!

But a newspaper article is emphatic about the relationship with the prince, though I found it rather vague and unconvincing – EC Keissling writing for the Milwaukee journal in 1968 states that Adela was in love with a Raja and as that would upset the apple cart for the English; they used to meet in secret with him dressed as a commoner and she as a dancing girl. One day he was caught and threatened by his father the Raja and told that his head would be shaved and he would be sent to the forests. So he broke off the relationship. Malcom heard about this while recovering from malaria (not prostrate operation??) and this news hastened his death!

Others said after Adela moved to India that the poems expressed Adela’s lesbian love for Amy Woodforde-Finden. It appears Amy wrote to Laurence stating that she had been trying out some of the songs and wanted approval. Laurence agreed and asked if they could meet – the rumor is that they did meet and they fell instantly and passionately in love, and embarked on a brief intense affair before returning to their respective husbands as propriety demanded. Amy (Kashmiri song) incidentally was known as a prolific composer of `eastern ditties,' which effectively captured the mood and morals of the period. But many believe that the two never met. Before this rumor heated up, Adela had shifted to Madras to recuperate following her husband’s death and that effectively killed the rumor.

Hope's Grave

Anyway the Nicolsons were gone and Adela’s poetry published first under the name of Laurence Hope and later in her own name survived. The St Mary's cemetery mentioned is the one below the Stanley Viaduct (Sriram kindly helped me out on this, thanks). The graves are somewhere there, though you can see above a photo of what that once was.

A lot of people are interested in the Dunmore house, one that was home to many an illustrious person (read Sriram’sinteresting article linked here). Muthiah explains that Keith Murray, son of the 4^th Earl of Dunmore lived at Dunmore House off Moubray’s Road between 1822 and 1831, when he was Collector of Madras. He also explains that the street leading to his gate became Murray’s Gate Road. The house itself vanished and was eaten up by the Venus colony where Venus pictures started a new dawn for Tamil cinema. A rare picture of the Dunmore house can be seen above.

Murrays road became Muresh road (I have no idea who this Muresh is)

As for the bungalow at Feroke – it is still around I believe, mute testimony to days long gone, but bereft of poetry in these times! Malcolm Josceline John Sinclair Nicolson, who was just four when his mother took her life, later went on to edit her poems and make it available to the public.

And now we come to Madhavi Kutty’s comment about the boatman. If you read this poem ‘Surface rights’ written by Adela while at Feroke, you can see the intensity and the passion in the poetry which Kamala Das would of course have analyzed through her writer’s eyes. Perhaps this was written after a personal experience, for such was the high passion of a certain physical relationship depicted in words. Poem - Surface rights

Drifting, drifting along the River,
Under the light of a wan low moon,
Steady, the paddles; Boatmen, steady,--
Why should we reach the sea so soon?
Sweet are thy ways and thy strange caresses,
That sear as flame, and exult as wine.
But I care only for that wild moment
When my soul arises and reaches thine.

Perhaps she met him while going to or traveling around Malabar in a boat. A clue comes from a letter dated from Nilambur in May 1904, she writes: We came here twenty-two miles through the jungle. The jungle was the jungle, but the hill climate was chilly, and there was a lot of grey in the sky, but here it is hot, it is India again. Do you know the name of Clogstoun? The tomb of Lt Samuel Robert Clogstoun (actually of 23^rd regiment), who was drowned in 1843 in the river here at nineteen, “generous, high-spirited, and full of promise," as the officers of his regiment (the 21st Madras Infantry) have it, is here. The tomb was in a scrub jungle and almost covered. I washed the stone clean last evening and wondered if there were any of his people anywhere.

This place is perfect. I only wish one had a thousand years to live, as there are so many things one will have to leave undone.

That last sentence, you will agree, was profound!

I would presume that Hope was left to her own thoughts after her husband’s death and somewhat depressed. What hastened her suicide or Sati or whatever else it could be termed? At an age of 39, she took this decision to swallow a horrible chemical that burns your mouth, lips, gullet and innards as it traverses through and hastens your departure from this world? Why the torturous decision? Was it guilt or a sacrifice to her husband, or for her lover prince or Amy or for that matter the boatman? Perhaps a question that will never be answered, so take your pick!

References
HinduArticle– S Muthaiah
Friday timesarticle
Fate KnowsNo Tears - Mary Talbot Cross (A novel, for those interested, I have not read it)
If you want to read about her suicide, read The Fin-de-siècle Poem: English Literary Culture and the 1890s edited by Joseph Bristow ( see chapter Death of the author by suicide – Holly laird)
The Idea of a Colony: Cross-culturalism in Modern Poetry - Edward Marx ( See chapter - exotic transgressions of Laurence hope)
Victoria Cross article
Putnam’s monthly – Vol II April – Sept 1907
Somerset Maugham 65 short stories – The Colonel’s lady
Montague Crackanthorpe’s article - Outlook may 1905

While not many remember Laurence Hope, some others benefited, A ‘Garden of Kama’ perfume marketed by Dubarry et Cie in 1915, (Garden of Kama by Dubarry: perfume launched in 1916-1919, but the bottle was created in 1914 by Clovis and Julien Viard and trademarked by Depinoix in 1914) presented in a squat round bottle with a figural stopper sitting in the lotus position, designed by the renowned French sculptor Clovis Viard remained as the only material connection to Adela, the poetess, albeit briefly.

Feroke - Laurence Hope

The rice-birds fly so white, so silver white,
The velvet rice-flats lie so emerald green.
My heart inhales, with sorrowful delight,
The sweet and poignant sadness of the scene.
The swollen tawny river seeks the sea,
Its hungry waters, never satisfied,
Beflecked with fallen log and torn-up tree,
Engulph the fisher-huts on either side.
The current brought a stranger yesterday,
And laid him on the sand beneath a palm.
His worn young face was partly torn away,
His eyes, that saw the world no more, were calm.
We could not close his eyelids, stiff with blood,
But, oh, my brother, I had changed with thee
For I am still tormented in the flood,
Whilst thou hast done thy work, and reached the sea

As I mentioned previously, I am not a great fan of the Mysore Sultans Hyder and Tipu; in fact I have scant regard for them and disagree vehemently with those who tend to bracket them as freedom fighters. My studies on them however, are far from complete, especially their violent forays and ‘padayottam’ (military marches) periods in Malabar. Nevertheless, I must at the outset make it clear that British accounts of the Mysore sultans were filled with gross fabrications made in order to prop up and legitimize Richard Wellesly’s declaration of war against Tipu and justify the capture of the Mysore kingdom. But then this is more a story of Francois Ripuad and his masquerade, how it unwittingly brought about the downfall of Tipu Sultan.

The English in India greatly outnumbered the French who were finding their plans of creating their own allies and possibly an empire, thwarted at every turn. They possessed but a few small pockets of territory while the English were slowly increasing their grip and making and breaking agreements with the various Indian rulers. The French were gamely trying and we have read about some of their forays into Malabar in other articles. But from the onset they had stronger relationships with the arch enemies of Malabar chieftains, the Mysore Sultans. The wars, intrigues and resulting treaties between the English and the French in Europe and America however tended to regulate actions in India during this time.

The third Anglo Mysore war had been fought over Travancore and Tipu was defeated by the English. The grip he had over Malabar was weakened and as spoils of the war, Malabar was ceded to the British. Tipu was smarting badly (considering also that he had to give away three of his sons as ransom) and he was trying to find out if he could marshal more support from the French to get back at the British. Until then he, like his father Hyder maintained a loose but cordial relationship with the French, and many French soldiers had worked in his armies as mercenaries and trainers including people like Lally and Bussy. But even so, these French commanders had let him down on crucial occasions, and Tipu was yet to learn a lesson.

So in 1787, seeing that he was getting boxed in, Tipu made a decision to contact the French King Louis XVI directly, by deputing three of his ambassadors. The intentions were not only to seek assistance from the French, but also to show the English that he had good connections with the French High command in Europe. While they were received cordially in Versailles, the threesome soon became a spectacle in France, more for their dressing and bearing. The French would not extend their hand any further as the treaty of Versailles had just been signed (act 16 stated that neither party would involve themselves in the internal problems between Indian princes) and they did not want the status quo upset. The French revolution had followed and the French were in no mood for deeper intrigues at a time when the Mysorean ambassadors arrived in France. Anyway the visit came to naught and by 1794, the hostages were also returned after Tipu paid his dues to the British. So it was time for Tipu to plan again and it was finally in 1797 that an event in Mangalore made Tipu raise his hopes (In fact he had one of his dreams in May 1796 which told him that a person of rank from France was to arrive soon, promising support with a 1000 soldiers!!). But before we get to Mangalore, we have to go to the Isle de France or Mauritius and get to know the next person in our story.

Ripaud

Mauritius came under French rule during the period 1715-1810 after the Dutch had abandoned it. During the Napoleonic wars, Isle de France became a base from which the French navy lead military expeditions to support French troops in India who were fighting the British. In addition to colonial trade and slavery, Mauritius was also home to a number of French Corsairs or privateers, a loose term synonymous with pirates. These Corsairs attacked British merchant vessels and looted their precious cargoes loaded in India and consigned for trading in Europe. One such corsair who took to that lucrative but risky trade was a failed businessman named François Fidèle Ripaud de Montaudevert who hailed from Brittany and had moved to the isles in 1773. In 1984, he married Jeanne Françoise Boyer also called Chounette, daughter of an officer of the militia of Bourbon and two years later their first child was born. But the peaceful life in the island of Reunion and farming was not befitting the character of this adventurer. It did not improve, by 1791, for a business venture together with his brother had gone bankrupt and so with no other opportunities around, he decided to become a brigand. The next six years were spent as a privateer, attacking the British shipping off Malabar. In 1797, he was operating in the Malabar Coast and continued his attacks on British shipping, but soon he had run out of ammunition and had no choice but to call in to the port of Mangalore with his ship.

The opportunist he was, Ripuad hatched up a plan to contact Tipu Sultan and announce himself as an emissary from France seeking Tipu’s audience. Whether it was of his own doing or whether he was set up to do this by Ghulam Ali, Lord of the admiralty of Mangalore (It is stated in various English sources that this was one for the 1787 ambassadors and thus he knew a little French, but I am not too sure as his name does not figure in the list of 3, he was actually the legless ambassador sent to Istanbul) is not clear, but Ripuad succeeded in meeting a suspicious Tipu, who had been altered by his ministers that this Frenchman was an imposter. Ripuad had stated that he was number two in Mauritius to Governor Malartic and that he had arrived to pass on the message that a large contingent of soldiers were waiting in Mauritius to disembark to Malabar and fight the English alongside Tipu. Even though Tipu had been altered, he took the chance and after first imprisoning the Frenchman, later getting swindled in the process of purchasing Ripaud’s boat twice, he decided to retain Ripuad as his Vakeel or advisor.

Boutier explains – Tipu’s minister of commerce had said, "This Ripaud, that is come, God knows, what an ass he is, whence it comes and for what purpose." To shake off such suspicions which led him to prison for some time, Ripaud tries to give visible proof of his official status. Thus, every Sunday, after mass, republican rituals are celebrated, evidently to restore Tipu's confidence and legitimize Ripaud's claims of being "representative of the French people besides prince Tippo."

Ripaud then organizes meetings and sets up the so called Jacobin club (a disputed issue discussed at length by Prof Jean Boutier in his paper listed under references), plants a tree of liberty in Seringapatanam and confers the title of Citizen Prince to Tipu, who formally becomes a member.

A French paper was found in Tipu's Palace in 1799, entitled 'Proceedings of a Jacobin Club formed at Seringapatam by the French Soldiers in the Corps commanded by M. Dompart. A Scotsman, Capt W Macleod, attested to its authenticity. The Paper listed by name 59 Frenchmen in the pay of 'Citizen Tippoo'; it described the gathering of a Primary Assembly on 5^th May 1797, to elect a President, Francois Ripaud, and other officers. The 'Rights of Man' were proclaimed, and Ripaud presented a lecture on Republican principles. Further deliberations and formalities followed before, on 14^th May, the National flag was ceremonially raised and a small delegation were formally received by Tipu. The 'Citizen Prince' ordered a salute of 2,300 cannon, all the musketry and 500 rockets, with a further 500 cannon firing from the Fort. A Tree of Liberty was planted, and crowned with a Cap of Equality, before Ripaud challenged his co-patriots: 'Do you swear hatred to all Kings, except Tippoo Sultaun, the Victorious, the Ally of the French Republic - War against all Tyrants, and love towards your Country and that of Citizen Tippoo.'‘Yes! We swear to live free or die,' they replied.

Dr Soracoe explains the move - Against the wishes of the rest of his court, Tipu agreed to move forward with plans for an alliance with the French, and began preparing an embassy to travel to Mauritius. Tipu's desire for revenge and desperate search for allies against the British Company appear to have overridden more sensible judgment and led him into this poor decision. The contemporary Indian historian Mir Hussain Kirmani wrote years later about how sometimes Tipu would act rashly and without thought, refusing to listen even to his most faithful servants, and cited the interactions with Ripaud as one such example of poor judgment.

On one side this led to the British conjuring up an international Jacobin plot, touching the distant tip of South India while on the other side Tipu was now determined to obtain the required support from France through the isle of France and prepares a new Secret embassy of two or three persons to sail to Mauritius with Ripaud. This is of course downplayed by various writers taking the ‘Tipu is a martyr’ line - Some leave out this entire Ripuad chapter from their accounts of the glorious Tipu, in fact one even goes on to say that Tipu actually sent his emissary to obtain artisans from Mauritius! Well that was a tall tale, in my opinion, taller than that narrated by Ripaud when he landed in Mangalore!

The idea was to make a new alliance proposal to France which briefly covered in five articles the following - After two preliminary articles of friendship, Tipu asked in the third article for 10,000 French soldiers and 30,000 French sepoys, to be provisioned for and commanded by Tipu's officers. The fourth article detailed how the Company possessions were to be divided; Tipu wanted half of the British territories, taking Goa for himself and leaving Bombay and Madras to the French. The fifth article stipulated that both alliances partners would also declare war on any native princes that sided with the British Company.

Port Louis Mauritius

Ripaud and party sailed out to Port Louis in Jan 1798. It is said that the trip to Mauritius was not very pleasant for as soon as the ship had set out, Ripuad changed colors, ill-treated the Mysoreans and proceeded only after making sure that the secret treaty papers from Tipu did not speak ill of him. General Malartic received them cordially but at the outset made it clear that Ripaud had nothing to do with the French officialdom and that Ripuad was nothing but a privateer and an imposter. He then proceeded to make public disclosure of the treaty proposed by Tipu Sultan (which was immediately conveyed to the British in Madras by English spies!).

Malartic

Malartic then explained that he himself had no soldiers to spare but could of course advertise for volunteers, which he did. They also sent ships to France asking for support on the basis of Tipu’s entreaty. In a public proclamation and advertisement it was made clear that Tipu desired to form an offensive and defensive alliance with the French and was waiting for arrival of French troops to declare war against the British. This again is disputed by others , and some say that there was much dillydallying going on about what words to use and to keep it all neutral, but only to mention an alliance between Tipu and the French. Tipu’s plan was to check out the French and only form a military alliance if Ripaud's promise of tens of thousands of soldiers proved to be true. A few people decided to travel to Mangalore and as it finally turned out, fewer than a hundred French volunteers returned to Mysore together with the ambassadors (The party included two generals, 35 officers, 36 European soldiers, 22 colored troops, and four shipbuilders all under the leadership of L’Hermitte). Those who support the ‘Tipu is a martyr’ theory may take note that Tipu clearly had plans to enrich himself further and affirm his own safety, also to bring in the French at the expense of the English and the Marathas and the Nizam, nothing about all this to free India of foreign dominance or the British yoke.

And that brings us to Lord Mornington, the third player in the drama which followed. Richard Wesley (he always used the archaic Irish usage - Wesley, never the modernized usage Wellesley which his brother Arthur changed to) was known as The Earl of Mornington from 1781 until 1799. Wesley became the new Governor General of India in the spring of 1798, replacing John Shore, and arrived with a burning ambition to implant British superiority on these distant shores and perhaps to snuff out any French ambitions. As he learnt about the activities concerning Tipu, Ripaud and Malartic in Mauritius, he saw a window of opportunity and wanted to attack Tipu’s stronghold rightaway.

Wesley

Wesley heard about the Malartic Proclamation and immediately resolved to invade Mysore, believing that it provided sufficient rationale for a preemptive war of conquest. But in Europe, Britain was involved in an ongoing war against France and there was no enthusiasm for further military expenses and conquests in India. They generally decided to take a wait and watch attitude. Wesley was asked to, adopt a cautious approach, safeguard the EIC’s investment and await further instructions from home. Mornington however taking preemptive steps, went on a war footing and planned for an eventual war with Mysore. The first step was to disband French troops working for the Nizam of Hyderabad. In addition, a flurry of correspondence ensued between Tipu and Wesley made it clear that they knew what was going on. Various offers of peace were discussed, but Tipu curiously took little notice, sidestepped the serious issue and went on acting as though nothing had happened.

Richard Wellesley on the other hand took to exaggerating the issue with London. He made a big noise about the threat posed by Tipu's supposed French alliance, and implied that British India was in far more danger than actually existed. Then again the news of Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition and plans about India made the British even more nervous. Wellesley was quite aware that the French soldiers in Egypt had little possibility of reaching India without adequate supplies, but then again, he led the EIC management and the larger British public to believe just the opposite by linking Tipu to the whole fracas.

The war of disinformation was quickly started with the British overstating Tipu’s purpose and instead of accusing the French made it look as though Tipu was about to attack the British. Tipu of course made matters worse by his own vacillation and foolishness. Tipu’s reputation, his forays into Malabar and other places were overstated by the British and he was soon portrayed a tyrant of the worst kind. The correspondence between Tipu and Wesley touched on various topics, and when Wesley mentioned the French, Tipu replied that it was nothing and that some 40 people had come from France in search of employment, adding that all the rest were malicious rumors parlayed by the French. In reality, when Mornington complained to Tipu that he was harboring hostile Frenchmen in his court, the Sultan diplomatically remarked that Ripaud had drifted to Mangalore in a ship during a storm at sea. "I am having no discussions with him at all” wrote Tipu to Mornington "In fact my sincere wish is that the French, who are of crooked disposition and are enemies of mankind, may be ever depressed and ruined."

But in Jan 1799, Mornington played his hand, and mentioned in clear terms that Tipu had violated the treaty and demanded that Tipu meet with Gen Doveton and accept reparations and new arrangements or face dangerous consequences (It was exactly the game Hyder had played on the Calicut Zamorin). Tipu still did not realize that his adversary had no interest in diplomacy and replied in the most bizarre fashion – he stated that he would receive Doveton as an envoy later, as he was proceeding upon a hunting expedition for the moment.

By then it was all too late, Wesley had already given the order for the EIC armies to invade Mysore on 3^rd February, which was before receiving Tipu's response. His brother Arthur also participated in the onslaught. A quick and decisive war was fought, Seringapatanam was stormed and Tipu met his cruel end, justly so (for he was indeed a tyrant in the eyes of us, the people of Malabar). Richard Wesley did not do well in later life, though his brother did. Richard continued warring and racked up huge debts for the EIC and was called back in 1805, but only after converting the EIC business into an imperial colony.

In 1809 Richard was appointed ambassador to Spain. He started getting occasional and inexplicable "black-outs" when he was apparently unaware of his surroundings. He was also deeply hurt by his brother's failure to find a Cabinet position for him (Arthur made the usual excuse that one cannot give a Cabinet seat to everyone who wants one). They were soon estranged though they made up much later. Not satisfied with just an Irish peerage, which he contemptuously referred to as a "double-gilt potato, Richard passed away and is remembered by the Township of Wellesley, in Ontario, Canada which was named after him. Arthur Wellesly known Duke of Wellington continued on his marches in Malabar and Madras, became a British prime minister.

Thus we see that the primary causes of a decisive war in India, and the ruin of Tipu Sultan's ill-gotten empire and power, was all due to the accidental circumstance of Ripaud's cruise to the Malabar Coast and his playing with Tipu’s ego and false pride. That was Tipu’s folly.

But we have to tie all loose ends up, so let us now see what happened to Ripuad and the hundred odd Frenchmen who ventured out to Mysore. Well Ripaud left India (not clear if he came back) and went back to Reunion to continue the fight against the British, while at the same time arguing with French authorities about some war titles. He finally got the titles in his 50^th year, after 30 years of fighting the British, perhaps being one of the few who fought them the longest.

The British took over Isle de France in 1810 and the island was ceded to them in 1814 to be renamed Mauritius. As part of an agreement all Frenchmen would be sent back to France. Thus François Ripaud returned to France after thirty years of absence. He landed there with his sons (one of them, a soldier who served under Napoleon, was killed in Russia). Ripaud continued fighting the British. He next assumed command of the frigate La Sapho and was injured mortally in 1814.

As for Citizen Chapuy and his 150 Frenchmen, from whom much was anticipated by the Mysore Sultan, well they hardly participated in the war it is said that they had locked themselves in a dungeon, during the siege according to a British chroniclers. The more neutral account states that Colonel (Brevet) Louis Auguste Chappuis led a group of 450 soldiers. These men, and others already serving in Mysore, fought with distinction in the final campaign; however, their numbers were too small to make a significant difference to the final outcome.

Anne-Joseph-Hippolyte de Maurés, Compte de Malartic, father of the Mauritius colony died of apoplexy in 1800. A memorial was erected at Champs de mars in France. The Canadian town of Malartic is named after him.

After Tipu was defeated & killed in War, his family (4 wives, 16 sons, 8 daughters) was exiled to Calcutta in 1806 & his son Ghulam Mohammed Sultan Khan (the fourteenth son) was recognized by the British administration as head of Mysore family & successor to Tipu and knighted in 1870. Their possessions in Calcutta apparently included the Royal Calcutta Golf Club and Tollygunge Club which were worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but the present day descendants don’t seem to be doing well.

References

Les lettres de créances du corsaire Ripaud - Jean Boutier
Widows, Pariah’s and Bayaderes – Binita Mehta
Historical Sketches of the South of India – Mark Wilkes
Tipu Sultan and the re-conception of the British Imperial Identity 1780-1800 – Dr Michael Soracoe
Ripaud’s Bio

Notes –

1. Wiki definitions - A privateer or "corsair" was a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign vessels during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend treasury resources or commit naval officers. The actual work of a pirate and a privateer is generally the same (raiding and plundering ships); it is, therefore, the authorization and perceived legality of the actions that form the distinction.
2. Gautier article on Outlookindia mentions that Ripaud made mentions in his diary of the atrocities against Hindus in Calicut. This is not quite correct. Even though I am convinced that they took place, it was impossible for Ripaud to have seen them for they were perhaps carried out in 1783-1784, decades before Ripuad set foot in Mangalore.

Newspaper and news headlines these days are full the Malaysian plane MH370 and its unfortunate last journey. But this is a not about that event and is about a flight that took off in 1937, piloted by one GP Nair.

On 10 February 1929, J. R. D. Tata was awarded India's first pilot license in India, Pilot License No.1 by the Federation Aeronotique International and signed by Sir Victor Sasoon on behalf of the Aero Club of India and Burma. He was the first pilot licensed in India, though he was not the first pilot of Indian origin.

But without doubt Govind Parameswaran Nair was the first Malayali to become a licensed pilot in the British Empire. History is replete with stories of winners, even gamblers. But not too many of them are about people who have tried and lost. GP Nair was one of the latter and for a brief period, his name was splashed in many a newspaper all over the world, posthumously. Who was he and what was his story? A Mathrubhumi article and some uncharitable responses about the person, made me check this story out.

GP Nair said – One’s life must be complete with heroics and one who shies away from such acts will reach nowhere! But why did this person who had spent a few months in jail after conviction for embezzlement charges, desire redemption? Well, let us take a look at his story and get a flavor of the times.

HINDU FLIER AIMING FOR SOUTH AMERICA IS KILLED IN FRANCE - ROUEN, France, Oct. 28. G. P. Nair, Indian flier, who left Croydon shortly before noon on a projected South Atlantic flight in his aeroplane, "The Spirit of India, was killed today when his craft crashed near Forges - les - Eaux. The tragic end of Nair' dream of flying to South America and returning across the North Atlantic came "at 1 p.m. when his plane plummeted to earth and was completely destroyed.

Forges-Les-Eaux is near Rouen, about twenty five miles inland from La Havre, on the English Channel, and about 350 miles short of Nair's goal, Marseilles, first stop on his projected flight. Indian well-wishers showered Nair with yellow flower petals for good luck before he hopped off. His plane, 'The Spirit of India," had been blessed by a Hindu priest at Croydon. The ' Daily Herald" says that a desperate desire to atone for his past drove Nair to his death. He was seeking by the proposed flight to redeem, his name and remove a slur on his native country. Nair took off against advice "Don't worry," he said "I will come back" But watching pilots muttered, "He’ll kill himself". Nair was sentenced in London seven years ago to five months jail time for obtaining money and jewels by worthless cheques. He felt that a flying achievement would vindicate him.

As you can see, all news focused on the Hindu background, his moral character and the lady priest who blessed him. His wish to atone for his sins was also highlighted. Subsequently this crash was brought up in parliament due to questions on how and why he was allowed to fly and how he got his ‘A’ pilots license. As it is no longer possible to get to the bottom of the embezzlement charge (I assume it was a bounced cheque), we will leave it at that and assume that it was the case.

What we do know from a Western mail and South Wales news article is that GP Nair had come to study law and politics at Cardiff University in 1930. We note that he was arrested in 1932 on a cheque fraud and served five months jail time. We also know from that report that he hailed from Travancore and that he had planned at first to fly from Britain to India and spend time with his aged and ailing mother. The report also stated that he used to own and publish a newspaper named ‘Republic’ at New Delhi before he ventured out to Britain for higher studies (Some other reports mention he ran a newspaper in England). Perhaps somebody reading this will provide information from the Indian end.

We know that the Committee of the Royal Aero Club London met on Wednesday, November 11, 1931, and delivered an aviators certificate # 10176 to Govind P Nair, who had incidentally been taught flying at the Reading Aeronautic club. A few other Englishmen who had learned flying with him at Reading also got similar certificates. A total of 61 certificates were granted on that day (I believe the certificate course cost £15). I also noted from the Wales report that Nair initially trained at the Brooklands flying school and was taught the basics by Capt E Johnson.

His plans to fly from Ireland to Trivandrum in 1932 in his own plane came to naught as the air ministry refused permission. It appears from the Wales report that he was desperate to get to Travancore quickly to see his mother, perhaps she was in a bad shape and that indicates a potential reason for the check fraud to quickly obtain some money. Whether it was for a plane purchase or other form of travel (P& O steamer ticket) to India is not clear. He blundered and spoilt his name, and wanted badly to vindicate himself after the sordid mess. What more than an Atlantic crossing?

Early aircraft engines did not have the reliability, nor the power to get the lift with so much fuel. Then there was the difficulty in navigating over vast expanses of water without any landmarks and changing, unpredictable weather. In June 1919, British aviators Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight after an American Navy sponsored flight had done it in May 1919, but with multiple stops. Charles Lindbergh and the "Spirit of St. Louis" crossed over to Le Bourget Airport near Paris in May 1927, completing the first solo crossing of the Atlantic. In August 1932 Jim Mollison made the first east-to-west solo trans-Atlantic flight; flying from Portmarnock in Ireland to Pennfield, New Brunswick, Canada.

So why not have an Indian do a solo ‘double crossing’ across the Atlantic? That was GP Nair’s thought, flying through the day and night, back and forth. A reader could sigh and say, well - he had guts and others might say – what foolish bravado! I believe he tried next to get permission to fly from Ireland to Newfoundland, but that was also refused, perhaps due to his inexperience. So he set his sights next on flying to France and from there to Brazil and New York. Well, if he had succeeded, he just might have become one of the first Malayalees to step on American soil!!

What else do we know of the flight? Let us get to the flight and its preparation, information gleaned from the parliamentary discussions in UK in 1938, after the death of Nair. Was he planning a suicide mission, perhaps a kamikaze attempt? Try or die – Perhaps?

One report says - Mr. Nair, who was more or less a novice pilot, with only 200 flying hours behind him, had said: "I am making the flight for the sake of my country. I am the first Indian to attempt an Atlantic flight." He was a former Cardiff law student, and came from Travancore. As it appears, he had written for Indian papers and had run one of his own in England.

He had originally requested permission to fly across the Atlantic to New York, but did not receive it. So he filed flight plans to fly some 15,000 miles from Croydon to Marseilles, then to Algiers, Oran, Casablanca and to Dakkar West Africa on the first leg. Then it was the long hop across the Atlantic Ocean to Port Natal-Brazil. From there he intended to fly to New York and then to Newfoundland and eventually return to Ireland and back to Croydon in Britain. From the looks of it, the whole attempt was foolhardy.

We note that a oriental looking lady, termed a Hindu priest and named Mme Hari Prasad Shastri (In reality there was an Acharya Hari Prasad Shastri living in those days in London, the one who started Shanti Sadan, so this must be somebody connected to him), blessed him and showered yellow Chrysanthemum petals on him before takeoff at 1130AM. We also note that in 1937, the year he died, he was just 32 years old.

Oct 1937 flight magazine - By way of helping to put India more firmly on the map in the field of human endeavour, Mr. G. P. Nair is to attempt a solo crossing of the Atlantic. He will fly the specially tanked Miles Hawk Major, with a range of about 3,000 miles, which was originally made to the order of Mr. J H. Van and which has, until recently, been lying in the Phillips and Powis shops at Reading. Mr. Nair was due to leave Croydon on Saturday, but the weather conditions were not favourable. On Wednesday of last week a reception was held by his fellow-countrymen at the Caxton Hall, Westminster, when various representatives of, Indian organisations over here wished him the best of luck. The chair was taken by Mr. M. S. Ramaswami, and one of the speakers was Mr. Frogley, of the Herts and Essex Club, where Mr. Nair has carried out some of his more recent “refresher" flying. Although we are not in favour of such a project, particularly now that Caledonia and Cambria have, with suitable equipment, made the crossing so often and with such comparative ease, we can but wish Mr. Nair success in his venture.

His plane was a Miles M2S Hawk Major duo prop plane duly certified, but modified to hold extra fuel. Its call sign was G-ADLH, CN 194. It was sold by JH Van of Boxbourne to Govind Parameswaran Nair in 1935. This was the long-range 3000 mile version powered by a 150 HP Blackburn Cirrus Major engine. The Miles Hawk’s were made at Philips and Powis’s Reading unit. The original company was founded by Charles Powis and Jack Phillips as Phillips & Powis Aircraft after a meeting with Fred Miles. The company was based on Woodley Aerodrome in Woodley, near the town of Reading and in the county of Berkshire. In 1936, Rolls-Royce bought into the company and although aircraft were produced under the Miles name, it was not until 1943 that the firm became Miles Aircraft Limited when Rolls-Royce's interests were bought out. The company produced 55 Miles Hawk M2 planes. These planes flew at about 150mph, not so much faster than today’s cars. They could climb to 20,000 ft at the rate of 1000 ft/min. For many the Miles Hawk was an obsession, and a great plane. For Nair, it was to become a vehicle to certain death.

Some records indicate that Nair purchased the plane ‘with monies subscribed by his compatriots in Britain’, on 21-08-1935. Perhaps it was done so, after his own attempts to raise money through other means failed. The rough cost for such a used plane in 1935 would have been £600 to £700. The plane was aptly named ‘Spirit of India’.

It was 28^th of Oct 1937. The take-off from Croydon airport was very poor, and many spectators though that Nair was going to crash there and then. He took off into the wind, left the ground, bumped down again, left the ground a second time, and bumped down again. Then he managed to get the machine off, but wobbled about in the air, and at one time his wing-tips nearly touched the ground. When he eventually reached a good height he flew off somewhere in the direction of Liverpool and disappeared in the clouds in that direction. He must have corrected his course and flown back across the Channel, but he was not seen to recross the airport.

Nair's machine stalled while banking above Pommereux, near Forges-les-Eaux, and lost height. For a moment it seemed to recover as it was just above a hedge, but it hit an iron upright (telegraph pole) in the ground and crashed into some trees. The machine was smashed to smithereens and Nair was killed instantly, according to a Reuter report. It was approximately 1PM, under two hours after he departed.

As it seems from the report, the machine stalled. Perhaps a better aviator could have brought the M2S under control, but Nair could not do much, it crashed.

In Nov 1937, the Royal Aero Club reported as follows – After covering less than 200 miles of the 10,000 which he had planned, Mr G. P. Nair, the Hindu airman, crashed and lost his life at a point some 30 miles south-east of Dieppe. He had intended to fly to Dakar, across the South Atlantic, and back across the North Atlantic. Those who knew him were quite certain that he had neither the experience nor the qualifications to succeed in such an ambitious project, and could only hope that the inevitable failure might not have involved his death. His plan to leave Marseilles aerodrome, which is neither very large nor very smooth, with full tanks and an overload of 1,000 lb. on a machine with which, as his take-off at Croydon last Thursday showed, he was not familiar, alone meant almost certain disaster. He was licensed and the machine was his own property, but it is a pity that nothing could have been done to discourage him from the attempt.

The post mortem of the event started in Dec 1937 in a parliamentary committee meeting.

Lt Commander Reginald Fletcher asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he was aware that, prior to the departure of Mr. Govind P. Nair on his fatal flight, the Air Ministry had received communications from instructors and other authorities that Mr. Nair was not fit to hold an "A" license. Lieut.-Colonel Anthony Muirhead replied that although doubts had been expressed in certain ‘unofficial quarters’ regarding Mr. Nair's flying capabilities, there were no adequate grounds for preventing the flight in question, as the pilot had already satisfied the requirements for the grant of a Class "A" pilot's license, and the flight did not infringe the regulations. He added that it was Ministry policy to allow private pilots the greatest possible measure of freedom provided they fulfil the prescribed regulations. Fletcher then implied that the official requirement of just 3 hours of solo flying a year in order to retain the "A" license was perhaps the cause for accidents like this.

Fletcher again brought up the issue in 1938 and provided more details. He said - He went up in this machine (after purchase of the plane) with Mr. Hackett, who is the instructor of the firm in question. On landing after this flight, Mr. Hackett told Mr. Nair that he certainly could not fly the machine. In spite of this, Mr. Nair insisted on going up alone for a solo flight, and at once proved that Mr. Hackett was right by crashing, after which he spent three weeks in hospital. On coming out, he gave orders for the old machine to be repaired or for a new one to be built for him. Mr. Hackett again told him that he could not fly, and I understand, although I am subject to correction on this point, that Mr. Hackett communicated with the Air Ministry and asked them if they could do anything to take away the "A" license which Mr. Nair possessed, or somehow stop him. Mr. Hackett found that the Air Ministry could do nothing. The Reading aerodrome authorities, who also appear to have behaved very properly, refused to allow Mr. Nair to fly the machine away from the aerodrome but he got a friend to fly it for him to Croydon.

It seems that Cinque Ports Aviation Company, Limited, with whom Mr. Nair at one time had business relations, also tried with the Air Ministry and with Croydon aerodrome to get Mr. Nair stopped from attempting the Atlantic flight as they also knew that he must infallibly and inevitably crash if he undertook it. Apparently Croydon airport could do nothing about the matter except to stop him taking off with an overload of petrol (The plan as you saw earlier, was to fill up at Marseilles). Everybody concerned with this matter knew that the flight must end fatally if it were attempted, and they made every representation they could to this end to the Air Ministry and to other authorities. But nobody it seems had any authority whatever to stop Mr. Nair from setting out on this flight.

Muirehead replied stating that Mr. Nair obtained a licence some five years ago and in accordance with the provisions, sufficient time had elapsed to require him to re-qualify with the full qualifications when he obtained, a second time, a licence in 1937. It is quite true that we were notified through what I would call unofficial sources. We had opinions expressed as to Mr. Nair's incompetence to fly this particular aeroplane. An aircraft that is granted a certificate of airworthiness has possibly certain restrictions, and there was no such certificate of airworthiness in this case for the performance of the Atlantic flight.

The Indian pioneer JRD Tata had once pointed out that the greatest adventure of his life was the flying experience and that nothing else could equal that. He added in an interview that when one is on your own in that little plane at the controls and without an instructor, and while the plane speeds on the runway and finally takes off into a space, one is finally and totally alone…..

And so Govind Parameswaran Nair took off on a risky venture, with little training and all alone. Why he did it and whether he was courting certain death is not clear, but it was a suicidal mission in the eyes of many. He took off, labored on for 200 miles and clipped a telegraph pole to crash and die. Perhaps it was an engine failure and ended the mission in vain.

And when GP Nair was alone in the cockpit, I wonder what his last thoughts were….Of the backwaters in South Kerala, of his mother and family, of his wasted life…

But then again, Life is like that!!!!

References

Flight International, Volume 32 - Oct 1937
Straits times’ article
Mathrubhumi article
Parliamentary sessions 1& 2
Various Newsarticles
Plane registration details
Air Power review Vol 11 2008

Notes

Pioneers in flight
Jeejeebhoy Piroshaw Bomanjee Jeejeebhoy became the first Indian to enter the Royal Flying Corps in 1916, but had to relinquish his commission as they did not want colored people holding leadership posts. Krishna Chunda Welinkar, applied for a temporary commission in the RFC on 22 November 1916, and died in action in 1918. Erroll Suvo Chunder Sen was the third, but he was rejected as underage the first time and succeeded in 1917, was shot down and became a POW until 1918, He downed 9 enemy planes and was by far the most successful pilot. Laddie Indra Lal Roy joined in 1917, did well and was killed in 1918. The fifth was Hardit Singh Malik and he started flying in 1917. One more person has the right to join these pioneers. That was a onetime railway coolie who went to Britain, and joined the British forces fighting the WW1. Dattu - DL Patwardhan who called himself D Lacman Pat and was a British air force bomber pilot in the First World War and honored after. He served initially in the Kings Royal Rifle corps. I understood that in the latter part of the war, around 1918, he was transferred to the RFC.
Sarla Thakral was first Indian woman to fly (just imagine, she wore a sari while flying these planes!). Born in 1914, she earned an aviation pilot license in 1936 at the age of 21 and flew a Gypsy Moth, solo.

The first Indian Jumbo 747 pilot was KM Matt Mathen, from the Kandathil (Malayala Manorama) family. His story is reserved for another day, especially fascinating stuff like how he had to delay landing in Delhi so that Mrs Jacqueline Kennedy could get her coiffure set!!

Moorkoth Ramunni was perhaps the first pilot from Kerala in the Royal Air Force (later Indian Air Force).

And without doubt Govind Parameswaran Nair was the first Malayali pilot. If I am wrong, please let me know..

Profiting from death

In those days, the glorious 90’s, I was living in Turkey and enjoying the sojourn amidst a whole lot of lovely people, both in the office and outside. The place was great to live in, the ambience and weather perfect and with a young family in tow, the expatriate life was proving to be satisfying. Mustafa Sandal had made it big with his song ‘Araba’, Hulya Avsar was still omnipresent on entertainment TV and Tarkhan riding the top of the waves after ‘Oynama Sikdam’. Tansu Ciller the PM had slipped out of the limelight, and Erbakan who took over was making merry, while the army generals were sweating. But there was also a dark horse breaking through with a song - that was Murat Kekili with his hit ‘Bu Aksam olurum’ …after years of being sidelined…That was the setting in Istanbul, the Constantinople of old.

On one such calm Saturday, as the story over the burning ship at the mouth of the Bosporus was making headlines, I got a telephone call. The call by itself should not have been worth mentioning in the first place, except that the caller was speaking in perfect clipped English accent, though not quite an Englishman. He announced himself as a financial manager and wished he could get a few minutes of my time to meet and perhaps discuss a matter of mutual interest. As the introduction was going on, alarm bells started to ring in my head stridently warning me to terminate the call. I should have listened. What made me think twice, urged by my keen intellect (or the lack of it) was his mention of a pension account I had planned to associate with. I asked him right over so that I could get the discussion done with and as he was also living on the European side of Istanbul, where most of the Expats lived, it would not mean a delay.

Now readers not quite clear about Turkey and Istanbul should note that Istanbul is one of those huge cities, perhaps the only city that lies on two continents, Europe and Asia, home to some 20 million people in the metropolis. A vast majority of it called Anatolia is the Asian side and a small part, the imperial Constantinople, is Trakya (Old Thrace) or the European side. Obviously the well-heeled expats live on the European side, much to the envy of the hard working but lowly paid Turkish counterpart. But you know how it is, these things are like that, enough said on such matters of inequality for that is not core to this tale. The strait of Bosporous (Oh! how long I could wax on about the days spent sitting on the hill side of Bebek and watching the boats and ships crossing the serene waters of the Bosporus, and of the characteristics and features of the lovely ladies walking on the shores….)separates the two land masses. A number of stories are connected to this geographical formation, in fact it is even said that the black sea was the result of the biblical deluge and that is how Noah’s ark landed up atop the Ararat Mountain near Van.

But I must not digress, for our visitor, that man with the English accent, is here. I hear the bell at the door and opening it, come face to face with a man of African origins and dark complexion, definitely an incongruity in Western Turkey. Of very pleasing manners, he quickly seated himself without being told to, and opened his leather briefcase to take out a sheaf of papers. I am a bit put off, for introductions have still not been made. Not to worry, for our man has soon held out his hand to offer a firm handshake while at the same time announcing his name to be John Walker (why did the bells not peal again??) from Camden, a suburb in London. Had I met him a decade later, I would have been able to detect the lack of what they call cockney accent, for I had by then added a couple of years of working in the UK under my belt, but at that time all I could figure out was that he was an Englishman, though not exactly the Englishman I had pictured in my mind.

He represented a financial company in England and dealt with financial instruments. I had no clue about such matters, my money or the little bits of it saved, went into a simple NRE account in India. As I was wondering what these financial instruments were and as to why this bloke was sitting on my sofa and why I was wasting a perfectly good Saturday on such nonsensical matters, a thought came to my mind. I asked him if he had heard of Krishna Menon. Thrown off course, Walker looked at me like I had let loose a loud fart or something. Feeling some heat on my brows, and a couple of drops of perspiration, I hastened to add that I was talking about an Indian freedom fighter named VK Krishna Menon who used to represent Camden. The blank look on Walker’s face made it clear that he had not the slightest idea of what I was talking about and made me wonder why I made that wisecrack in the first place. I hope I can tell you about Menon and Camden some other day, if you let me.

The handshake was followed by a few minutes of mutual introduction when we talked about our respective backgrounds and worldly travails. Without any further forays into more hospitable terrains such as a cup of tea and so on, Walker launched into his presentation. We went through a couple of pension policies, basically mutual funds administered out of UK, and promising 5-10% returns at best, based on annual deposits. They did not look very appealing, but was something to consider for the long run. As we talked of the long run, Walker asked if I were interested in Insurance policies. When I said that all I had was a paltry policy started long ago by my father in India, he said he had another proposition for me. I was not too sure, but curious and so asked him to explain to me what it was.

He started out by announcing that he had a superlative offer to make, something that would make me very rich. From the corner of my eyes, I could see that my wife who was sitting on her sofa with an air of total disinterest, now looking quizzically at me. But soon seeing that smile on my face, which so irritates many a person who knows me (they say it is ‘that’ sarcastic smile), she was satisfied I was not yet taken in by the glib talker across me. Little was she to know that things could take a wild swing to the realms of the unknown, and very soon, at that!

Walker was by now hitting his stride; he got to the specifics and explained that what he had to offer concerned investment in an insurance scheme of sorts. I was a bit alarmed hearing that, wondering what kind of a scheme this was going to be , a pyramid scheme or something and how I could get rid of the chap quickly, if I had to. Well, he quickly administered a second shock; it involved life insurance and terminally ill people. I was definitely perturbed hearing this and seeing my nervous demeanor, he passed on the perfect antidote in such situations, the reward aspect. He quickly added that he will be glad to provide as much detail I wanted and that it was all kosher and above board, not to mention that the individual takings could be to the tune of $100,000 or more. Well! Well! That figure got my attention, not necessarily due to avarice, but the sheer magnitude mentioned. You must agree that at the very least I was being curious enough to find out what this was all about and see where the discussion went.

The scheme as explained sounded thus: There in the West existed a place called America where a number of people lived loose and fashionable lives with what little money they had, like there was no tomorrow. They lived life to the full. Soon, these lives, much like long gone the Roman days, spiraled into difficulties, especially with the onset of new sicknesses. But fortunately many of these large hearted people had taken very large (Walker paused here to lower his voice and substantiate the size) insurance policies. As time went by some of the unfortunate souls found that they were facing imminent death with the onset of a new and incurable disease they had acquired, called AIDS. It was an irreversible situation, but some bright financial whiz kid found a winning business enterprise firmly entrenched on this terminal malady.

That the person was going to die was as clear as day and night, that he had a year or two at best was also clear, since the doctors had certified so based on their very expensive tests and hospital procedures. That upon their death the large amounts of insurance monies had to be paid to their worthless offspring or other equally fortunate nominees was also definite. In the balance of economics, we had on one side the losers being the insurance company (what is not mentioned of course is the fact in the large picture the insurance companies never lost money!) and the ill person and on the other side, the gainers being the medical industry and the nominees, especially the latter who did nothing to earn those monies. It was on this economic bedrock that this viatical scheme was born. Some newly formed financial companies (like the one that deals with such instruments, and now represented by Walker) took over the policy from the terminally ill person for about a third of its value, to thence present a winning solution to new parties.

The insurance policy is signed off and given to the new controllers, being the financial company in return for an immediate sum amounting to a third of the policy face value (Let’s assume $300,000 in this case). But the intention of the company is not to wait till the man dies, it has to book and revenue the amount quickly. So it has to find other takers and walk off the case. The instrument is now sold to a number of new investors who go on to buy a share of the policy. What they did not tell me, but what my erudite mind (ha!) worked out was the math - As the financial company has to cover their 100K investment plus earn say 100K margins per policy, the policy document has to be sold off for a minimum of 200K. So they find 5 people who fork in 40K each to total 200 K who then play the waiting game to get their share of the $300,000 when the man dies. The policy now has five new nominees, people the original holder has never seen or heard of. In fact the person may be continents away like in this case. The financial company has walked off the case, and Walker has made his commission of 10% per sale.

The terminally ill person walks off with the moolah to Florida or some islands or Thailand so that he can get on with his good life such as sailing boats and doing even more things in his bucket list till he died - all now financed by a sudden injection of financial resources. After some days he dies, and is of course decried by his descendants who suddenly understand that they have nothing to gain from the geezer’s death.What the new policy nominees get in return is 60K each, a 20K profit in one year! Walker makes 20K. All of them are thus winners right? The insurance company makes a debit in the appropriate column of their ledgers and closes the books.

This discussion took an hour and the figures were dizzying. I was impressed with Walker, but you know me, I am a tight fisted lad from Kerala and not one to get easily taken in by such hair brained schemes. My snigger (in Malayalam they have a word for it – Smona!) remained on my face right through, even as I was industriously calculating the figures in my mind.

Walker was now ready for the sucker-punch. Realizing that this was a tough nut who did not quite believe the whole thing and that the fishy odor was quite evident (but not from the nearby Bosporus straits), he changed tack, and took his briefcase. I could not but help admire its fine leather craftsmanship and the solid brass buckles. The Italians certainly knew how to work with leather. The guy opens the clasps with that solid click and pulls out a copy of a policy issued by Aventura insurance Inc, Delaware favoring one John Doe.

John Doe’s story is interesting. He was not more than 38 years old at that time and carried a good insurance

policy paid out of debits from his meaty monthly salary. He worked for a Silicon Valley company that was minting money so to say, in those days. Unfortunately for him, a number of members in his gay community, including himself got afflicted with the dreaded HIV virus and in his case it had become full blown AIDS. Doe decided to live his last years in Key West Florida and that is how he decided to seek a viatical settlement, very legal and a done thing in the USA since decades.

The papers looked quite authentic. Walker suggested that if I were interested, I should check through my own contacts about the legitimacy of the policy, perhaps by employing a lawyer. He then pulled put John Doe’s medical certificates certifying that he was now in an unfortunate terminal phase of life and pronounced his days in this world limited, but not listing how many. Walker, taking a deep breath suggested that I use the same lawyer or other methods to check that this certificate was genuine and that Doe was indeed close to the bucket and with uplifted legs….. to kick it (Walker meant so - though not using these words, I must admit that I exaggerate at times for effect). Walker also provided BBB certificates for his company implying that it was above board, honorable and a pleasure to deal with. All he needed was my check for 40K and I would be one of the nominees. It would also be notarized immediately so as to be legally binding.

The arguments were quite fine, and at that time it looked legit and appealing, but I was still not convinced. For one, I did not have a 40K to give to Walker, and then again, even if I begged or borrowed the sum, it did not sound right to invest money on somebody’s impending death. Why should I spend every night, fighting sleep, wondering if and when Doe was going to die? What if by miracle Doe survived for another 10 years? All that hard earned money would be lost for ages. What if some of the deceased’s survivors sued? I chickened out, much to the disgust of Walker. I did not become a nominee of Doe’s policy and so continued to be an employee drawing a meagre salary and nothing more, nothing less.

But a story is not a story if it ends here, right?

After a couple of years we left Turkey and moved to the US. The last days were a little chaotic, we had a massive earthquake in Istanbul, Mesut Yilmaz did not do too well as PM and a singer we had met named Baris Manco died. Bulent Ecevit rose again from the ashes to take over the mantle of the Turkish government, he was a man I greatly admired after Mustafa Ataturk. Tansu Ciller had retired, never to make a comeback. Our closest friends had left Turkey and moved elsewhere, and so it was a signal for us too to move. We moved to Florida and got into new circles, new neighborhoods and met new people. The Bosporous and our Istanbul days were consigned to a corner in the deep recesses of the brain, but always there for delivery of a quick anecdote at parties. We attended the Turkish annual days in the area with great fervor and Walker was totally erased from my memory.

I heard the next part of the story entirely by chance, many a year later, while lunching at a restaurant in London. No, do not let your mind go on an overdrive, for I did not meet Walker in London. In fact I met a person I had known very briefly in Istanbul and he had strayed in to the same restaurant in London, purely by chance. His name was Hanumant Saxena a.k.a. Hanuman, he used to be a mild mannered nerdy accounts executive in a Middle Eastern firm doing business in Istanbul. Hanuman was not the happiest actually meeting me, it was like I had revived some bad memory in his mind. Anyway we got talking and soon the cat was out of the bag. We now go back to the day Walker came to my house.

After he left my house, Walker the financial instrument salesman, who incidentally hailed from Zimbabwe, but became a naturalized Brit, meandered into the house of another expat who wisely or unwisely suggested that he go to yet another’s house and thus it was that he landed up at Saxena’s house.

Hanuman fell for the pitch and when the mathematical calculations fell into place and as the paperwork looked solid, his accounting mind simply took over. The problem with Hanuman was that in his naivety, while he saw relatively complex figures with great clarity, he could make out little of the devious ways of the world outside his accounting statements. The Arab owner who employed him was not paying him a great salary and the cost of living in Istanbul pretty high, so when he saw the godsend opportunity, he put in all his earnings plus more into the deal. In fact some of it was quietly siphoned off, albeit temporarily from the company books which he had access to, out of opportunistic avarice. He got a lawyer friend to help him out with the paperwork for a decent fee. He paid the money, got his nomination done and waited for John Doe to die. Walker got his commission. Not wanting to share his good fortune with anybody else, Hanuman kept mum about the matter.

He waited, and waited and waited. Walker had gone a walkabout, not to be seen in the expat circles anymore (rumor has it that he went to Singapore next for the next milking run) and the investment company asked Hanuman not to trouble them for they had done their part, which was to get his nomination entered into the policy. They were not very forthcoming or helpful. Of course they continued to bill an annual maintenance fee. So Hanuman went to UK and visited the investment company, not getting any information there either. However a kindred soul in the office informed him that while most cases had been straightforward and executed as planned, John Doe just did not die.

One year turned to two and the exasperated Hanuman who had a horribly negative cash flow ran afoul with his employer who had discovered that his trusted employee had siphoned off some money from his books. But the man being an intrinsically nice person had the good mind to forgive Saxena and in the end just threw him out, after he had heard the full story and castigated him for playing with the will of Allah. Saxena now tried to get a job in the USA so that he could track John Doe. It was the Y2K period and so not too difficult to get one and that was how Hanuman landed a job with a credit card company with an administration office in Miami. Hanuman flew across the oceans, not on his own as his namesake did while going to Lanka in search of Sita, but in an Air Lanka plane, in search of John Doe. Look at the irony of the situation!

Saxena took a long swig from the Kingfisher bottle in front of him, and the food at the Rasa restaurant was really good. Sridharan had done a good job with this Rasa chain, and I was happy that a person from Tellichery had made a good name in the blighty (Krishna Menon was another from Tellichery who also went on to become a big wig). The thali was not too much or too mildly spiced and the crowd perking up. As we started to munch the Badusha (an Indian dessert), the last item left on the steel thali, which had otherwise been cleaned up with gusto, Saxena after a long pause narrated the last part of the story.

GRID or gay related immunity disease got renamed AIDS and soon as we all know, the disease acquired a stigma of its own. So John Doe left California and fled to Key West. He got on to an AZT treatment regime and eventually joined a club which provided him smuggled in antiviral mixtures and peptides to survive, and lived well under the radar. The insurance company was happy, but the people who had become shareholders to the potential proceeds were not, Saxena included.

But what happened to the viatical arrangement? Herein lies the crux of the story and the unfortunate luck of Saxena. When the whole scheme started, it was based purely on chance and no fraud was planned. As news of AIDS cures started to come in, the alarmed viatical company started fraudulent activity, something they called clean sheeting (cleverly hiding facts). In addition they took to other lucrative areas like laundering drug money with the proceeds so as to pay the more insistent investors. As far as lay investors like Saxena were concerned, they were fobbed off with various excuses. Soon the billion dollar industry came under the scrutiny of the authorities and one fine day the culprits were nabbed. The entire scheme collapsed and the viatical company was shuttered. Saxena being out of the country could not sue the company as the affected investor; he extricated himself, cursed his bad luck and forgot the matter. The money he made as an IT consultant keeps him comfortable. John Doe died many years later, living a calm life in Florida after a full remission of his symptoms and problems, but the policy itself lapsed due to nonpayment of premiums in those years after the company was shut down.

Sadly, while the fact of the matter is that many people made money off this scheme, Hanuman did not and I thank my stars that I never did get involved. Viaticals continues to be big business in USA but is well regulated these days, though a certain amount of speculation still exists. In fact they have different names like life settlements, Accelerated death benefits etc siding with the holder more and the speculator, less.

Note: There is no Hanuman Saxena, no Walker or John Doe. All these people are strictly imaginary persons and have nothing to do with any person dead or living or yet to be born. Any resemblance is purely coincidental and this is nothing but a story loosely formed around events happening in the expat community. The story and just that, is not based on exact facts or correct math but is loosely woven around such schemes of the 90’s. A lot of fictional license has been applied to make it readable. In fact, friends of mine happened to attend a seminar in Singapore where a somewhat similar enterprise was hawked and I was appalled at the guile and magnitude of these things. I thank Shankar and Usha for giving me details of the scheme they heard while living in Singapore. What I heard found its way into this story, which I hope you enjoyed.

An interesting account of its history.....

Many years ago, in fact it was some 123 years ago that the name Lakme rose into prominence. Well, all of you will agree that the native version, the name of Goddess Lakshmi was prevalent centuries before that. But Lakme was brought to print and western minds during the late 19th century. It was the name of an opera composed by the French composer Léo Delibes in 1881 based on a story ‘Les babouches du Brahmane,' by Theodore Pavie. But in the modern Indian mind, Lakme has always been associated with a line of pioneering beauty products and fashion shows from the house of Tata.

Nevertheless, let us first take a look at how the French play was written and what it was about. If you recall, sometime back I had written about Mata Hari and how she performed her oriental Indo –Balinese dances to titillate the public some years after. Well, she saw the business sense in all that and working on the mysteries of the orient to her benefit. But this was perhaps the dance opera which showed Mata Hari the potential of yet another kind of Asian spice in the West. The play Lakme as it turns out, included an array of characters, most specifically Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest Nilakanta living in a temple situated in the Bengal sunderbans. It went onto become a very popular opera and was played over a 1000 times in Paris during the years 1883-1931. And it continues to be played even today in various theatres. Of course it also included a retinue of western characters, especially British officers enamored by the mystery and allure of native traditions and the magnetic lure of forbidden love.

The story of how the play got conceived by Delibes in the first place, is equally interesting and for that you have to study Thordore Pavie and how he got to writing the book on which the play is based. This gent was an Orientalist and deeply involved in the study of foreign languages. During the period between 1835 and 1839, Pavie pursued Sanskrit under Eugene Bournouf in Paris. In 1839 he found an opportunity to travel India accompanying a British Chief Engineer on an inspection tour of Calcutta. That was how Pavie spent two years in India drawing, taking notes, and collecting stories. After going back, he published several of these stories a decade later titled ‘Scenes et recits despays d'outre-mer’. Many of the characters of the play Lakme come out of these tales. Philippe Gille, who was reworking the script for the new show to open in Angers after its successful reception in Paris met up with Delibes and that was when Delibes asked Gille the origin of Lakme. Gille told him that the idea arose after perusing "Les babouches du Brahmane," a story taken from a book whose author was apparently a man named Pavie. Alarmed that they had never sought permission from the author, the playwright rushed to meet him and well, as the story goes - complimentary tickets were the only royalties ever paid to Theodore Pavie, whose work had been the inspiration for the successful opera.

And that was how Lakshmi became Lakme and ended up in France, but ironically, the character in Pavie’s book was named Rukmini!! And so, the wife of lord Krishna remained in India while Lakme, the queen of wealth, went to France.

But how did Lakme find its way back to India from France?

As the popular story line goes - In the first flush of independence, Nehru had written to JRD Tata of his concern over the loss of valuable foreign exchange due to the import of perfumes and cosmetics. He urged the industrialist to explore manufacturing these products in India. Naturally, then Tata

executives turned to France, as it was renowned for its perfumeries. Naval Tata was given the job of developing a division of TOMCO (Tata Oil Mills) that would produce perfumes and cosmetics. But what would they call this division? At that time, there was an opera playing in Paris, which had an Indian theme and in which the Goddess Lakshmi’s name was invoked. Someone who had seen the play suggested Lakme — the French pronunciation for Lakshmi, so the company was named Lakme, as a tribute to Goddess Lakshmi!

So it seemed, but a slightly deeper study suggests that the name was arrived at after great deliberation at the Tata Sons offices at Fort Bombay. In fact, other versions also exist about there being a popular cabaret dancer from India names Lakshmi in Paris and her anglicized name Lakme came to being imaginatively used by Simone Tata for the cosmetics line, which remains to this day, one of India’s most trusted brands.

But the real storyline is not exactly as popularly stated, though pretty close. That story is as interesting as is the person who was at Lakme’s helm from the very start, none other than Simone Tata, the wife of the ‘other Tata’ – Naval Tata. French by birth and of Swiss upbringing, she is even today considered to be the Cosmetic Czarina of India. Brought up in Geneva, Simone graduated in Arts from the Geneva University. As is oft mentioned, she was fond of travelling, and came to India as a tourist in 1953, where she met her future husband, Naval H. Tata. They were married in 1955 and she settled down in Bombay.

How she came to control the cosmetic line making powders, compacts, lipsticks, creams and all that which go on to hide the many blemishes and highlight the lovely features of an Indian lady, is the story worthy of attention. It tells us about the times and the way India struggled after independence to create its own identity. In fact it was as heady as it was turbulent for the new bureaucrats and its inhabitants. With numerous hurdles to cross, not knowing friends from foes in the geopolitical scene, enmeshed in the grip of poverty, but seen as a major player in the world stage, the young India carefully took the first steps led by Jawaharlal Nehru. Today a lot of people find fault with him and Krishna Menon about why they did not ensure the wellbeing of the Indian army and why it was never equipped and trained. But what they do not know, arguing vehemently in the aftermath of the Chinese debacle, is that fluid money was not something India possessed in required quantities then. The tax revenue system hardly existed and the government as well as big Industries struggled to make ends meet.

Lakme was born during such a period. It was also a period when high society obtained its beautification products by import from the West. Lakshmi or the goddess of wealth was most certainly not smiling on her own country in those days and in jest one could remark - perhaps because she was in France!

As the story continues, Indira Gandhi, Vijayalakshi Pandit and Padmaja Naidu rose up in arms representing womenfolk and decided to ask the government what they planned to do with the increasing demand for cosmetics which had until then been imported and were now in the banned list. An angry delegation led by Indira Gandhi was finally met by Nehru’s PA, MO Mathai who was asked why these things could not be made in India, if imports were banned. (Mathai’s recounting of the story is quite hilarious as to how Indira stopped talking to him for a week when he questioned her about the percentage of affected Indian women. According to him, they then waylaid Nehru himself! Not to stop there their offices were flooded with telegrams from irate women lambasting the Finance minister . Finally MO Mathai was spurred into action and contacted Naroji) MO Mathai got in touch with NAD Naroji (then local director for Tata’s in Delhi) of the Tata’s (Even though the Tata’s themselves were not in good favor with the socialist leaning government and the Industrial policy resolution of 1956 was not auguring well with the industrialist), got Nehru’s approval (and a prime ministerial carte blanche to get the project up and running without any bottlenecks) and that was how Lakme was created by the Tata’s with some French collaboration and a government nod and support.

And now the storyline takes a steep dive down India, to the Southern city of Cochin where Tata’s had previously started TOMCO or Tata Oil Mills Co at Tatapuram. JRD’s friend Padshah had met an American named Thompson who was pressing copra for oil in the Philippines and that was how the idea of an oil plant in India was born. He explained to Padshshah that the US needed the coconut oil and that it made great business sense. But the Americans had in the meantime invested heavily on coconut plantations in the Philippines and to protect this investment levied huge import duties on coconut oil from India. As it looks, Thomson in the meantime became TOMCO’s advisor and misspent the huge capital invested by the Tata’s in buying machinery and things like boats and boathouses for himself. He took the Tata’s on a right royal ride, till they saw light and fired him. But Tomco was a reality and quickly diversified into making ancillary products using oil, like soap (Soap John or PT John was the man behind this). Competition with the British manufacturer Lever’s was stiff though the market stabilized however after a price cut attempt by Lever’s failed. Tata’s 501 and Hamam became popular.

But what has TOMCO of Cochin got to do with the fragrant Lakme? Lakme eventually started as a 100% subsidiary of Tata Oil Mills (Tomco) which was part of the Tata Group. Later, Tata Oil Mills decided they needed a Managing Director for Lakme.

Simone on the other hand, had left war-torn Europe and it was in India that she found peace and her future life partner. Was she meant to play the role of the society wife of a well-heeled businessman? Well, as matters turned out, she was contacted by a director at Tata sons and asked if she could join the board of Lakme after it was formed. She was told that it was a small time job, a couple of hours of work every three months. Not long after she realized that it was much more, when she found it a demanding job, though it was an unpaid one, for Lakme had no money to pay a salary. Interestingly when the MD post of TOMCO was offered to Simone, Naval was the first to say No! No!, and Simone questioned him on why he was trying to decide on her behalf… Simone modelled the company around Revlon, evolving in methods as time went. Initially she used her pocket money to visit beauty parlors in Paris and learn the tricks of the trade, the various creams and powders. But then again, marketing it in India was not easy, so the first Lakme Lavender talc was actually advertised as a fabulous French fragrance. The Lakme vanishing cream was launched simultaneously. So that was how she went on to provide yeoman service and by hard work and dynamic focus, promoted Lakme to position it a prominent jewel in the House of Tatas. Since then it ruled the roost until 1986 when it was divested ironically to the same company Tomco had competed with, the Lever organization Hindustan Lever for over 200 crores. Simone continues her busy life immersed in the workings of the Westside stores and other philanthropic matters.

But let us get back to the opera Lakme one last time. Lakme in the story is more popular as a singer amongst her people though the British officer was enchanted by her looks. The costumes and posture of Lakme evoked some amount of curiosity, especially that of Lilly Pons in New York. Her bare midriff caused quite a sensation above an apparently original 200 year old Indian silk skirt which she wore. The play itself got a further boost when British airways picked up one of the songs to play in its commercial some decades ago. GK Bhoghal who studied the play opines that Delibes depiction of Lakme promote a category of female extravagance that surpasses current associations of excess with seduction, sensuality, insanity, promiscuity and sexual deviance.

Like I do sometimes, I have to leave a question at the end, much in the lines of the Canterbury tales, to connect up with the next topic. What connection could Lakme or Lakshmi have with Saint Sarah?

References

Exemplary CEOs: Insights on Organisational Transformation - Shrinivas Pandit

Tata: Evolution of a Corporate Brand - Morgen Witzel

The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century edited by Rachel Cowgill, Hilary Poriss

The Voyage to Excellence: The Ascent of 21 Women Leaders of India Inc -Nischinta Amarnath, Debashish Ghosh

Theodore Pavie's ‘Les babouches du Brahmane’ and the Story of Delibes's Lakme – Charles PD Cronin & Betje Black Klier

The Creation of Wealth: The Tatas from the 19th to the 21st Century - R. M. Lala

"Jeh", a Life of J.R.D. Tata - Bakhtiar Dadabhoy

Lakme the play – Synopsis by NPR

Lakme is set in British India in the 19th century. Nilakantha, a Brahmin priest, is bent on rebelling against the occupying British, who have forbidden him from practicing his religion. When Nilakantha goes to attend a gathering of the faithful, his daughter Lakme and her servant Millika are left behind. The two go off toward a river to gather flowers and sing the famous "Flower Duet." As they approach the water, Lakme removes her jewelry and leaves it on a bench. Nearby, British officers Gerald and Frederic are on a picnic with two young English girls and their governess. The girls notice Lakme's jewelry and want sketches of the pieces. Gerald agrees to stay behind to make the drawings. Lakme and Mallika return, and Gerald hides. Then Mallika goes off, leaving Lakme alone. When Lakme spots Gerald, she's frightened and cries out. But when people come to help, she sends them away. Lakme's heart is doing flip-flops over this young stranger, and he's taken with her as

well. But Lakme knows it's dangerous for them to be seen together, and she tells Gerald to forget he ever saw her. When Nilakantha returns, he's furious at finding Gerald with Lakme and says the officer will pay for his affront to Lakme's honor. Nearby, British officers Gerald and Frederic are on a picnic with two young English girls and their governess. The girls notice Lakme's jewelry and want sketches of the pieces. Gerald agrees to stay behind to make the drawings. Lakme and Mallika return, and Gerald hides. Then Mallika goes off, leaving Lakme alone. When Lakme spots Gerald, she's frightened and cries out. But when people come to help, she sends them away. Lakme's heart is doing flip-flops over this young stranger, and he's taken with her as well. But Lakme knows it's dangerous for them to be seen together, and she tells Gerald to forget he ever saw her. When Nilakantha returns, he's furious at finding Gerald with Lakme and says the officer will pay for his affront to Lakme's honor. Gerald is recovering in the forest, with Hadji watching over him, when Lakme arrives. They hear singing far in the distance, and Lakme tells Gerald it's a band of lovers going to drink from a sacred spring whose waters confer the gift of eternal love. Lakme wants to get water from the spring herself, and when she leaves, Gerald's friend Frederic turns up. He reminds Gerald that he's been ordered to a new post, far away. Gerald knows he must fulfill his duty and leave Lakme behind. When Lakme returns from the spring, she senses what's happening. Knowing she's about to lose Gerald, she finds a flower that's known to be poisonous and swallows it. Overwhelmed by her act of devotion, Gerald drinks from the cup of sacred spring water. Doing so is a holy declaration of love — a vow of fidelity that even Nilakantha can't revoke. The poisonous blossom takes effect, and Lakme dies in Gerald's arms as her father looks on.

Operation Longshanks and the Calcutta Light Horse

The Second World War had gripped almost the whole world in its vise like grip. Some countries entered into the war arena with a good amount of confusion and trepidation, some were forced into it, some watched from the edges, affected though by the fall out. Indians as a whole were not too fearful about the whole thing except when the Japanese planned their incursions through the North East. Most of the Indian populace were more interested in wresting themselves away from the British yoke while some served the British forces in faraway lands, fighting somebody else’s war. Some supported the Germans and the INA’s activities in Japan. Of course there were some tremors when the axis ships passed by shore lines, though some stopped for some refueling, R&R or some such thing as Ruby recounted in her book on Cochin. Up in the North East, a lot was going on though that story is still not very well known to Indians, like this story. Some months ago I decided to work on uncovering the CBI Theater in the North East and one event that surfaced was the fascinating story of Ehrenfels. It was the fodder for a book called The Sea Wolves (Boarding Party) and an insipid movie by the same name, starring Gregory Peck, David Nivien, Roger Moore etc…

India on the whole was well under British control in those years, and in 1939, when the 2^nd world war started, Europeans were in the thick of it and many a war theatre was played in those lands. The British bureaucracy in India were considering what their future would be after the war and some of them were planning their future in India or completing their travel back to Britain or other locales like Australia. The estate folks in Assam continued their laid back lives and visited Calcutta at times, meeting up and enjoying colonial life, and a few of them had some years back formed the Calcutta Light Horse in 1872, after the Anglo Boer war becoming a Cavalry Reserve in the British Indian Army. But before we get to these folks, let us see what triggered all these events.

There were a few places in the Indian mainland which were independent and beyond British Jurisdiction, examples were Goa, Mahe and Pondicherry. While the former was Portuguese territory, the latter were French. As the world war erupted, the Portuguese were considered neutral and as Decosta notes ‘from the British perspective, Portuguese non-belligerency was essential to keep Spain from entering the war on the side of the Axis’. As the war progressed, British sea channels were severely affected by an effective and aggressive Nazi U boat force. The cargo ships plying raw material and personnel between the distant theatres and supply centers in India were attacked incessantly by these U boats which Churchill considered alarming "The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril”. Anti-submarine tactics were still to become effective and it was a period German submariners considered “die glückliche Zeit" or "the happy time.

But just as the war clouds darkened, on 28^th Aug 1939, a German vessel named ‘Ehrenfels’ which was heading out from Bhavnagar towards Bombay, instead, slipped hurriedly into the Marmugao port of Goa for its own security, as was stated. The next day another German ship ‘Drachenfels’ which had actually left Goa bound for Rotterdam returned to Marmugao port and docked there for good. Three days later, the ‘Braunfels’ headed to Calcutta from Djibouti also berthed at Goa. Roughly a year later, in June 1940, an Italian ship ‘Anfora’ docked in Goa. The story of these four ships and their crew is what this is all about and one which was kept secret by the British and Indian governments until 1978. Interesting, right? Well, that it certainly was and as we unfold events around this story, we will travel down from Assam to Calcutta, then to Cochin and finally north to Goa. We will meet many nationalities, Indians, Germans, Brits and what not. As events turned out, the previously introduced motely group called the Calcutta Light horse were to get connected to this somewhat important operation of the SOE in India.

As the German U boats became very successful, British politicians got more nervous, war leaders got unsettled and it was discovered that these U boats were being led to their prey, which were the well laden British cargo ships headed out of to India by somebody, a spy perhaps. Without precise coordinates of their prey the U boats would be lost in the vast ocean. How did they get information every day and with such precision? Through bursts of high frequency radio transmission at predetermined times when the U boats surfaced. Where did the transmission originate? From one of the ships docked at Marmugao - Goa. Who delivered the information? An nationalist Indian spy network which risked their lives to get the information regularly to the Nazi transmitter.

The Nazi admiral Karl Doenitz’s chess game in the oceans had just started and the first two groups operating out of France sunk a number of ships in the waters off Africa, some 166,000 tons of it. The next group was supported by an intermediate supply ship and were directed by the abovementioned Indian spy ring operating out of Bombay and Goa, with the help of the transmitter on one of the 4 docked ships. With just the loss of one U boat (U197) they destroyed 31 allied ships totaling to 168,000 tons.

How did the Germans get up-to-date information from around the world? Well, it is said that they had their sympathizers amongst the INA spearheaded by Bose, but it is also stated by Ralph Bergstresser in his book on Nikolai Tesla that many of these spies were equipped with a special wrist watch based on tesla’s invention which could transmit to 900 miles (I am not sure about the veracity of this, as nobody else has mentioned it, but I do believe that Tesla was so far ahead of his time, and won’t be surprised that he had patented such an invention, the world transmitter!) and that he saw it with some German spies in India. Anyway the Indian (Bengali) sympathizer provided information on departures, speed, cargo and timings to the captain of U181 through the Ehrenfel’s secret transmitter by their radio officer named Pollard (who spoke 7 languages and was also an engineer and code decoder – it is also rumored that an Enigma coder was used) in code. In fact the Japanese had withdrawn to the Bengal seas and left the Arabian to the Nazi’s because they had better access to the Indian spies. The Indian spy network was run by Trompetta or Robert Koch from Goa.

Why could these ships in Goa not be taken? Because they were in Portuguese territory. If a publically visible preemptive strike was launched, who knew what could happen to the Portuguese alliance? It may even tip them and the Spaniards into the Axis lap headed by the Germans, so the situation was very dodgy. The British SOE were ordered to act. But note here that by now it was 1942 and three years had passed since the war started, so the determination that this was indeed the case took quite some sleuthing.

Going back to the 1939 time frame and Goa to retrace the steps of the crew of the four ships, we see that they were in a pitiable state indeed. Many of them deserted, some of them sought asylum in Goa until the war ended and they also complained to the International Red Cross that they were being ‘interned’ by the Goan authorities. They had no resources and little stomach for this kind of life. In fact one Mr JA Rikil of the IRC was even sent for an interview with some money by the Germans. Many passed time doing little with limited funds and whiled away time painting lizards that visited them and all kinds of other silly antics.

Well, in the meantime, the SOE, later known as Force 136 had set up shop in India. That by itself is a great

story and we will cover it in more detail separately. Its purpose supposedly, was to incite, organize and supply indigenous resistance forces in various enemy-occupied territories and sensitive areas. The Indian mission was set up in Meerut by a former businessman, Colin Mackenzie of J. and P. Coats (remember Coats thread?), a clothing manufacturer and the organization was called GSI(k). As it happens, the responsibility for covert action to take out the hidden transmitter aboard the Ehrenfels was given to one Col Pugh of the Indian Police (an SOE member), who was also a honorary member of the Calcutta Light horse, a group of motely middle aged or even older men who mainly lounged around in the Club drinking gin tonic and talking about the fortunes of the allied forces. A meeting held in SOE’s offices in Meerut was overseen by Mackenzie, Stewart and Pugh. Initially he and Stewart hatched an ill-founded plan to first kidnap the spy master, then bribe the commander of the ship. Stewart and Pugh made their way to Goa, posing as representatives of a trading company, secured Tromepta (Koch) the spymaster and his wife in Dec 1942, and placed them in protective custody in British India. Shortly afterwards the transmissions began again, so it became clear that a new conduit had been found to get the information to the ship. Then it was decided that an attempt must be made to meet Roeffer and bribe (this was presumably operation Creek) the German captain (with a sum of £20,000) of the Ehrenfels to desert. This attempt failed.

Eventually the SOE acted on its own, and18 men were chosen to move against the ships and its crew. These men of course had no idea about the objectives, but it remained on Col Pugh’s shoulders to get them weapons trained in time. They had no official backing, not even funds to mount the attack, but well, for many of those tea estate type retired guys, it was a heaven sent opportunity for adventure and a fine way of showing their patriotism. They all agreed, even though it was made clear that they were on their own, and that no recognition, no medals or even a mention would be made of the event. In fact their mouths were also sealed, until 1978!! Each of them took leave from their jobs stating they were going for a training course in Goa and started getting ready for the mission, by now named Operation Longshanks.

Pugh set about finding a vessel which could be made available to transport them to Goa. In the end he managed to obtain the use of a hopper barge ‘Little Phoebe’ with a Bengali crew, a ramshackle tug which had been commissioned in 1912 and had a maximum speed of less than nine knots. In this smoky barge, Stewart, Pugh and a selected group from the Calcutta Light Horse led by Grice were taken to Goa after going to Cochin by train, with plans to split into three groups and board the Ehrenfels, one to take control of the bridge, another to destroy the anchor and the third to destroy the radio.

Their comments about Cochin are funny. Reaching Cochin from Madras by the mail, we read Leasor’s comment. “Our destination is Cochin. Cochin? That sleepy little hollow, a one horse town where even the horse left years ago”. Well they stayed at Hotel Malabar and the Harbor house. They lounged near the pool or went cycling around the town and they spent four uneasy days in Cochin, waiting to board Little Phoebe.

As this was going one, Jock Cartwright another Calcutta Light Horse member had been sent to Goa overland. His task was to lead away as many sailors and crew of the Ehrenfels and other ships. Cartwright bribed a brothel-keeper in Goa to offer free services that night to those seamen. He also managed to bribe a Goanese fidalgo to throw a party and invite the many port officials and ships officers. He finally made sure that as the party ended there were no taxis available to take the officers back to their ships.

March 9^th1943- The boarding party headed by Col EH Grice met with little opposition, and the Ehrenfels's radio transmitter, which was the principal target, was quickly put out of action, while the captain of the ship Roeffer and four semen were killed in the light action which followed. But Roeffer who had foreseen that this would soon happen had already instructed their crews to prepare for a possible attack by the British, and plant charges in all ships which could be exploded quickly so as to scuttle their ships rather than allow them to be captured. As the boarding party from the Phoebe seized control of the Ehrenfels, it was assumed that this was the beginning of the British attack and the charges were quickly exploded. The ships were soon racked by the explosions and sank one by one. The people onshore aghast by these quick happenings were led to believe that the nervous crew fearing an attack and out of depression, drunkenness and despair had set fire their ships. Little Phoebe quietly slipped out of the harbor during the melee but also with a fear that one last transmission might have alerted the U boats which was probably on their tail. But nothing of that sort happened and all the British made safe return to their home bases. I will not go too much into the complete storyline and events and you are welcome to get that account from the book by Leasor.

Newspaper reports (Times of India) announced that the ships were scuttled by the drunken crew and though it had a good amount of truth, the fact that it was all started by Pugh and his men after they boarded the ship was never ever leaked out for 34 years following the incident. In fact even in 1978 it was assumed that the British were just trying to make a claim and that they had nothing to do with it.

But while all of this follows Leasor’s demi fictional writing, what was the real outcome of the boarding? Both the Cruickshank book and Dr Shirodkar’s study provide clues. You must recall that Capt Roeffer had already a good idea what was going to happen, in fact he had been told so by the SOE agents who had previously attempted to bribe him to sail the ship out of the harbor, and he knew they were coming. Also Koch had been kidnapped and so it was a matter of time. While the barge neared the Ehrenfels, it was never lit up as usual dark and was presumably awaiting the attack. The barge was apaprently hailed in English and before much could be done, the charges on the ship were starting to go off. Soon the other ships also caught fire and sank. It was by pure luck that the blame was laid on the ship’s crew for their scuttling and the SOE as well as the British escaped any recrimination from the Goan’s and the Portuguese and an international wartime scandal with severe recriminations was miraculously avoided.

The transmitter was of course destroyed and the shipping losses dropped drastically. But how much of it was due to the light horse men boarding the ship? That is a question which real historians have not satisfactorily answered though Leasor believed otherwise. The British SOE records roundly declared the Operation to be a disaster and McKenzie did get into trouble for clearing it (only the bribery plan had been approved, not the call for direct subversive action or any sort of violence). SOE’s chief Gubbins met up with Colin Mackenzie the one legged SOE station chief of India, as the latter was recalled to London to account for his apparent disregard of orders over the operation in Goa. Gubbins was quite impressed by him, as it appears and did not accept his resignation but Mackenzie was severely reprimanded.

More of the public and the press had in the meantime accepted that the Germans had mutinied and scuttled their own ships and the SOE actions escaped detection. In fact the Goan court found the Germans guilty for disturbing the tranquility of the Goan port and sentenced. 111 seamen out of which 34 were Italian were detained. 12 Italians and 21 Germans were obviously on shore partaking in the festivities, so they escaped jail. I do not know when the detained seamen were released, but the matter was laid to rest though the affected parties continued to appeal and complain of travesty to justice.

People may wonder why the operation was initially called Longshanks, well it was due to Stewart’s long legs. As for Lewis Pugh he was promoted to Major General with a CB, CBE and three DSOs. He retired from the Army to the family estate at Cymmerau in 1961, and lived in the house and developed its gardens, together with his wife until 1978, and thereafter at Wonastow House, before dying in 1981.Shipping losses reduced to single digits after the operation and life went on at the Calcutta club as before. The Light Horse Bar, located at the Saturday Club (Calcutta) in Wood Street Calcutta, named after the regiment did brisk business.

The waters and mud of the Goa harbor were not going to swallow the wrecks. Ehrenfels was salvaged in 1950 and scrapped later. Drachenfels was sold in December 1948 and scrapped in 1950. Braunfels disintegrated in the waters and Anfora was raised 1948 and scrapped in Bombay 1949. Some of the German men continued to reside in Goa after the war ended. Fritz Dimsak, one of them ran a watch repair shop near the Panjim. The others, Karl Tiegel and Karl Breitkopf set up some businesses in Vasco-da-Gama after marrying locally and raising families there.

The U181 or its ‘wolf pack’ did not get any more messages from Indian spies, and its commander Wolfgang Luth spent only a few more months captaining it. The U boat after a successful run, sinking 27 ships worth 138,000 tons and was transferred to the Japanese navy as I501. It was finally scuttled off the coast of Malacca after the war, in 1946.

An SOE report stated - Operation LONGSHANKS was an SOE effort to capture Axis shipping in the Portuguese colony of Goa. Although the mission was a failure, the Germans scuttling their vessels before they could be captured, three anti-Nazi German seamen took the opportunity to surrender to the British. These men served on SOE's strength in India they were repatriated to Germany and rewarded at the conclusion of the war in the Far East.

Who were the Indian German spies? One of them is stated to be named Ramdas Gupta, a friend of NSC Bose, however I have not been able to make much headway into his involvement. He was apparently part of a network of informers at the shipping offices in Bombay, and organized by the German spy master Koch a.k.a Trompeta resident in the neutral Portuguese territory in Goa. It is also rumored that as the barge reached Cochin before the mission, wild statements were bandied about that it would leave for the ocean to capture a submarine. One can perhaps assume that these rumors reached the Ehrenfels before the barge with the boarding did and that was why Roeffer was ready with the plan to scuttle the ships.

The members of the mission got back to Calcutta, rejoined their jobs. Interestingly, one of them, Jack Breene, an insurance partner discovered that it was his own company which had underwritten three of the ships which he helped scuttle. He did not utter a word, but of course.

And thus a movie was made with an impressive star cast, Gregory peck, Roger Moore, Davis Nivien, Mark Zuber and so on, but it was somewhat less explosive on screen than the story itself, though doing reasonably well at the box office.

References

The Sea wolves – James Leasor

Sea wolves - the movie

World War II in the Pacific: An Encyclopedia edited by Stanley Sandle

SOE in the Far East -Charles Greig Cruickshank

CLH Blizkrig in Mormugao harbor – Dr PP Shirodkar

Pictures - courtesy of Arnhemjim

And how Annie hall road got its name

Annie hall road – why was it called so? During my College days, Balan’s book lending library used to be situated on that road. My friend Venu used to go there often, me not so often, but I used to borrow books from Venu and read them at College. Most would have thought it was a name given to the road by the British and some of the older folk would have connected to Annie Besant. As I spent a while thinking about that memory flash from the past, I decided to delve deeper and check up on Annie Besant’s stay in Calicut. That was how I got sidetracked into studying Manjeri Rama Iyer, yet another doyen of yesteryears who was widely ignored in the annals of history barring a few mentions, mainly because he supported and promoted the aspirations of lower castes of Malabar. In fact there is not even a biography written about him to date while lesser mortals have voluminous books written detailing their smaller claims to fame. And then again, I also recalled my earlier promise to cover this illustrious person soon, so got on to the task in right earnest.

To meet him, you would have to go to the Calicut of the 1900-1950 time frame. I tried to recreate the feel and flavor for the place in my mind, from mentions my father and various relatives made, by reading sections of a poignant autobiography by an interesting soul named AR Subramaniam and from recalling Pottekat’s books. As they say in Hindi – who bhi ek zamana tha, or as shall we say, athum oru kalam ayirunnu. And as you will find, Ramaier was not just a freedom fighter fighting for Indian freedom from the British, but was above all one who helped large masses of people in Malabar and Kerala obtain freedom from the many social evils of that time.

Yes, in the 50’s, Crown Theater existed but was owned by Cherukandan Maistry who also owned a hospital on Annie Hall road. That was the time when rikshawas and jutkas plied the various streets and Kallai road which was broader and busier intersecting Annie hall road had shops and vegetarian hotels which many remember, punctuated by the strident horns of a rare car that passed by or the tinkle of a cycle bell pedaled by an industrious peddler. Sometimes you could see a koya with his striped lungi pass by dragging his filaria afflicted leg or an Ithatha with her head demurely covered, quickly flitting by with her wares. Nair’s with dhothis and an ever present towel over their shoulders, clerks with shirts on, and Menon’s with a turban could also be seen often. It was just another day in that town which once upon a time was the cynosure of the medieval world’s eyes, the capital of the spice industry and a bustling entrepot. After the multitude of wars which decimated its treasuries and hastened the decline of the Zamorin’s the town was just a sleepy and muggy place, where the British could no longer be seen, barring an odd sayip like Bolland or Thorne or Evans. Imagine, this was where it all started, the colonial sagas of the Portuguese and the English.

But in the 20’s, life was changing and people led by the leaders in the North were clamoring for home rule and self-governance. Local leaders were being talked about and one of them lived in the very location we are at, the Annie hall road. Days passed to months and years, they all fought their wars and private and personal demons, they all strived for change and in 1947 India finally became independent.

Fast forward to the 1950’s - Houses on Annie Hall road were mostly built on a higher elevation from the street, and if one were to look down, you will see what ARS Iyer saw and wrote about. He says ‘Annie Hall Road where our home Janaki Vilas stood was also home to a famous son of Calicut and his residence was less than 100 yards from our home. He was Manjeri Rama Iyer, lawyer, social worker and founder of the Theosophical Society in Calicut…… I have often watched the venerable old man walking on the Road clad in the skimpiest of clothes past our home picking up or pushing with his walking stick garbage on the road, a routine gesture of keeping the environment clean.’

Many of the landmarks of today existed, like the SM street, Radha theatre and Parsi temple, and people as we see even today, hung around at the Mananchira maidanam. What we miss are the news hawkers that Pottekat used to write about, the man shouting at the top of his voice that day’s important news - the one who was selling the Mathrubhoomi – those days the daily evening newspaper. The Anjaneya Vilas Brahmins and Modern Hindu Hotel are gone, but the public library existed in the corner and still does. Hawkers were selling and yelling about all kinds of things and well, like in London’s Hyde park, there were people also exhorting about religion and politics in that very corner where Pottekat’s statue now stands serenely looking on into the street which he so beautifully described in Oru theruvinte katha. That was also the time (this was earlier - Pre-40's) when there was no electricity distribution and one left the locale before it became too dark. There were lamp posts with kerosene lamps, and the fascinating chapter by ARS Iyer explains – “In those days the lanes and bye lanes were not lit well after dark and we normally make it home before it gets too dark. The lanes which we normally take as short cuts to reach home were dotted with lamp posts with only kerosene lamps encased in a glass container as electric street lights were a rarity in those days. A municipal worker carrying a tin of kerosene, a few wicks and a cleaning cloth and a ladder on his shoulders would stop at each of these posts to fill in kerosene in the lamps, change the wick if necessary and wipe clean the glass case of the lamp. He would lit the lamp by sun set every evening which would burn throughout the night giving light to people to walk safely. I have often watched these men at work fascinated by the clockwork regularity with which they provide the lights to the common man.”

You may wonder why I mention these things instead of talking about the person we set about to rediscover, Mr Manjeri Ramaier (that was how he spelled his name, not Rama Iyer). We will, worry not - but you see, to experience something properly, you have to be mentally there, you have to understand the ‘mahol’ and if it is Calicut - my dear little city, well I will use some extra literary license in describing it at least for my sake, if not for the uninterested. So now that was done, and also assuming that you have tried to follow the accounts of the Moplah revolt, the 1921 rebellions etc. which I talked about at length in ‘Historic alleys’, I will get to the topic, which is all I could gather about the erudite Manjeri Ramaier, lawyer, social worker and politician of Malabar. Much more than all that, he was simply a nice man, one I would have loved to know and meet.

He was born on July the 5^th 1877 to Sundaram Iyer and Lakshmi Ammal, passed his matriculation and FA with distinction from Manjeri and went on to do his BA in Madras Christian College, passing in 1896 and later, his Bachelors in Law in 1898. So we see him as the century turned, back at Calicut, making a decent living as a well-known criminal advocate in Calicut living at Annie Hall road.

Manjeri Subin SundarRaj, his great grandson explains - It was from Kallingal Madathil Rarichan Moopan, an affluent landowner and chieftain of Kozhikode that Manjeri Rama Iyer bought the land where Annie Hall, the home that later became Besant Ashram and till recently the State Committee Office of Mujahid Centre is situated. The Kallingal Madathil family’s Kallingal Bhagavathi Temple, which later attained fame through K.N. Ramadas Vydiar and nalluveedu paramba which lay opposite and where Manjeri Rama Iyer’s house was situated, were all owned by Rarichan Moopan. There was a special room for Dr. Annie Besant atop Manjeri Rama Iyer’s house. Bishop C.W. Leadbeater, close friend, associate and member of the Theosophical Society too had stayed at Besant Ashram. It was during their stay at Besant Ashram that Dr. Annie Besant and Leadbeater authored the book ‘Invisible Helpers’.

M Rama Iyer

One thing the reader should understand that those early decades of the 20^th century were not like today. There was no equality, the caste rigors were stringent and the Moplah unrest at its nadir. There was less amity and more enmity in Calicut, and Calicut in the past was always famed for its amity between cultures. In these depressing times, the principles of Theosophy started by Mme Blavatsky, the Russian émigré and propounded by Anne Besant from Madras were influencing the educated masses enmasse. While VK Krishna Menon embraced it at Tellichery and headed off to Madras leaving Malabar for good, people like Manjeri Ramaier and many other Malabar nationalists who were part of the Malabar Congress committee, took it up seriously. C Sankaran Nair, G Parameswaran Pillai and Dr TM Nair were also among those who took up the cudgels in addition to congress political activities and rose against the Brahmin and upper caste issues plaguing Malabar then. Exhorting people to think rationally and propounding Vivekannada’s teachings, Rama Iyer took on Buddhism and became a theosophist. In his efforts since 1911, he was joined by an equally famous character named Mithavadi C Krishnan. They started a struggle against child marriage, untouchability and many other social evils present then and even created the league of liberal Brahmins or the Bharat Samaj. But well, for eating and living with untouchables, he was soon out-casted from his community.

At Calicut, the Tilak brand of home rule did not find favor and after 1915, Rama Iyer was the fiercest proponent for the Besantine Home rule league. He championed it vigorously spearheading the local chapter of the 27,000 members working for fruition of Besant’s vision. Perhaps he too stood at the Town hall or Mananchira corners exhorting people to support self-rule. Ramaaier soon became the President of the Home rule league in Malabar while KP Keshava Menon its Secretary. Not only were self-rule aspects discussed, but also other issues such as sanitation, elementary education for all etc.

M Kumaran

Mitavadi (Murkoth Kumaran picked this name up from a speech of Gopalakrishna Gokhale) or ‘moderate advocates’, a weekly-handwritten pamphlet airing such matters was started in 1907 from Tellicherry by Murkoth Kumaran but was later shifted to Calicut (Kumaran resigned owing to a silly fight with Sivasankaran – an event which was a tragic loss to literature and an active press) to become first a magazine and later a daily, by Krishnan vakeel. The articles of C.V Kunhiraman, Manjeri Rama Iyer, Ramavarma Thampan, Mooliyil Kesavan and so on figured prominently on the pages of Mithavadi.

In the meantime, we see that Ramaier had adopted Buddhism and renamed himself Angarika Raman. His friend Mithavadi Krishnan vakeel did likewise by converting to Buddhism. Opposite the Connolly Park, there existed a well-stocked library and a Budha vihara with a Buddha statue brought from Ceylon by CC brothers. A couple of Bodhi trees and the Vihara were the handiwork of Ramaier and Krishnan vakeel (see the picture of the tree – courtesy Hindu May 26th, 2013). Govinda Menon, Ayyathan Gopalan, Appu Nedungadi (Kundalatha author and Nedungadi bank founder), Manorama Kunhikrishna Menon etc were all his friends or ‘team’ as we say in Calicut. Their next action was the well-publicized Tali temple entry. But first some background.

The biggest issue in those days was getting people to unite in the midst of caste inequalities. Then again, the nationalist movement in Malabar during the Pre-Gandhian era was led and maintained as an upper caste organization. The Tiyyas stayed away and something had to be done to break the impasse. The Tiyya reasoning was that the British had actually helped them obtain a better standing in society, so they did not want to go against them (as explained by Murkoth Kumaran- Ente jeevithakatha) and secondly they feared that upper caste dominated Congress might revive caste-ism if they won. The Tiyyas formed a 'Passive Resistance League' and decided to launch agitations against the social separatism promoted by the higher castes and demanded representation for Tiyyas in the elected bodies. This was also the period when certain roads and temples were closed for such polluting castes, and one of them was the road leading to the Tali temple. Another problem was education and so another demand was to open Zamorin’s college to all castes.

The Annie hall group however, in the true spirit of a theosophist participated in many activities designed to highlight such problems and bring warring factions together. They travelled in the company of polluting castes; attended their marriage ceremonies and convened ‘Mishrabhojanam’ of mass lunches at Annie hall. And thus we get into the Tali agitation incident.

C Krishnan Vakeel

A noticeboard was hoisted in the Tali samooham road to restrict the passage of the polluting castes and this provoked political activists of Malabar like K.P. Kesava Menon and Manjeri Rama Iyer enough to join hands with C. Krishnan in defying the order. The new Zamorin’s manager JC Thorne had earlier forwarded to the District Collector F.B Evans, a memorandum signed by more than a hundred upper caste persons requesting him to prevent the lower communities from using the Tali temple roads. Evans did not accept the petition and went on leave for two months, but coincidentally JC Thorne was appointed as acting collector. On 1st November 1917, with this authority, Thorne had two notice boards installed on the Tali road announcing ‘no passage of lower communities’. The notice said that ‘since the untouchables like Thiyyas, walking along the steps of this temple and along the roads around the temple pond is against civility, the above communities should not use those roads henceforward, and is hereby informed that those who breach the notice would be responsible for all the expenses incurred to the temple and would be punished as per law’.

Manjeri Ramayyar did not waste any time in breaching this law and so he and his Tiyya friend C.Krishnan travelled along the Tali road in a horse cart on the same day when the board appeared. After the act, he wrote a letter to Thorne, “…since your notice limits the rights of a major section of the subjects of His Majesty the Emperor, we have immediately utilized our right by walking along the Padinjare Samooham Road (Western Samooham Road), one among which has been mentioned in your notice. We would be thankful to you if you take immediate action in this case of violation of law.” Neither the Zamorin nor Thorne reacted strongly, they thanked Iyer for his letter and the matter was judiciously dropped while the Tiyyas celebrated their success, but the act did not result in any great change other than bringing larger awareness.

In between all this came up the issue with the Gibraltar confinement. At a meeting in Madurai during February 1918, George Joseph commented that for achieving Home Rule, people should agitate within India and recommended that representatives be sent to England to demand self-government for India. George Joseph was one of the three members of the first batch of Home Rule Deputation. B.V. Narasimha Iyer and Manjeri Rama Iyer were the other members accompanying George Joseph to London. This deputation set out for England in two batches on 10th March and 18th March 1918. Before reaching London, they had a halt at Gibraltar. At Gibralter, their passports were seized and cancelled by the British, so they had to turn back to India. Syud Hossain whom we talked about earlier was also a member of this unfortunate group.

The next case again involved Manjeri Ramaier and Dr K.V Choi, a Thiyya, who walked along the temple tank near Chalappuram in 1919. The temple authorities filed a criminal case against Choi in the Sub magistrate’s court, Calicut. The New India of 22^nd February 1919 reported it as a sensational case of pollution and this was the first case of its kind in Malabar. C Krishnan recommended that Choi request his close friend Manjeri Ramaier’s help and Iyer defended Dr.Choi to win the case.

As we head towards the 20’s, we can see that a split was starting to come about those who supported the Montagu Chelmsford political reforms and those who did not. The former, the Besant-ites which included Ramaier were for home rule and the latter the Gandhiites were for full independence. The cracks were evident in 1919 when Besant was rebuffed in a meeting at Manjeri in spite of strident speeches by Ramaier and support from the Nilambur Raja. KPS Menon, Rangaswamy Iyengar and Raman Menon supported the Congress independence moves and a miffed Annie Besant walked out. Soon after, the Khilafat movement started and it was finally time for Ramaier to slowly leave the scene, which he reluctantly did, but all the while remaining a theosophist.

The situation became ominous by the 1920’s. This was when the Malabar Moplah riots destroyed the calm in the region and set many self-rule actions back. The British blamed the congress and the ‘fanatical Moplah’, while the affected general public laid all blame squarely on the Moplahs. Manjeri Ramaier reacted strongly by stating that the sword that was used to cut human throats in Eranad was to be in fact directed against Mahatma Gandhi and Khilafat leader Shaukath Ali. Iyer was not just a supporter of the Hindu downtrodden, but also the affected Moplah. The Mappila Muslims, were subjected to extreme tortures under the British military expansions to Malabar in the early 1900’s. Manjeri Ramaier is quoted to have said as follows, “There were no provisions to win bail for a detained Mappila Muslim. No recommendations worked out in favour of him. None among the witnesses dared to give statements in favour of a Mappila Muslim, while they were trialed under riot charges by the British. When somebody came up to give statements in favour of the Mappila Muslim detained under trial, he too was made a culprit under similar charges. Once the Mappila Muslim gets detained under riot charges, he was obliged to prove his innocence on his own rather than the one’s making accusations proving him guilty”.

The Bodhi Tree

During 1928, the Simon commission was passed and a meeting was held in Malabar to boycott it. The Malabar conference was held at the Townhall Calicut, and Dr. Annie Besant organized it exhorting people to object and conduct a hartal as they arrived in Calicut. P.K. Kunhisankara Menon Manjeri Ramaier, K. MadhavanNair, P. Ramunni Menon, U. Gopala Menon, P.Achuthan and K. Madhava Menon did the required propaganda supporting public demonstrations. So on 3rd February 1928 as the Simon Commission landed in Bombay, a successful hartal was observed in Malabar, as in other parts of India. Students abstained from attending the class, lawyers did not turn up at the courts, shops were closed Black flags fluttered everywhere. At various public meetings resolutions were passed protesting against the Simon Commission‘s visit. It was stated to be a success.

Manjeri Ramaier then took up the initiative in promoting Khadi and the boycott of foreign clothes. On 9 November 1929 The Kerala Yuvak Sangh was organized at Calicut with Manjeri Rama Iyer as president. The sangh was to carry on active propaganda for donning Khadi, prohibition of liquor and starting again the traditional Kalari system. As expected, this organization was declared unlawful through a notification in the Fort St George Gazette in 1932.

Meanwhile, Ramaier continued on with his work to spread Besant’s ideology. The Mangalore theosophical society owes its success to Margaret Cousins and Manjeri Ramaier. But by 1930 Ramaier formally left Congress and in the Payyanur conference even opposed Nehru’s resolution of Purnaswaraj.

Returning back to Annie hall road and the fourth decade (I must apologize for not spending more words on Annie Besant and Leadbeater’s work in Malabar, which I promise to make good in a forthcoming article) Iyer took to journalism and law, having left politics. As Manjeri Subin Sundar Raj, his great grandson explains - Sir C.P. Ramaswami was brought to Kozhikode by Rama Iyer and at Besant Ashram he was entrusted with the vakalath to defend Annie Besant upon allegations propagated by renowned philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurthi’s father, that her people had kidnapped Jiddu’s brother Nityananda. It was the result of admiration and a sense of innate closeness with Dr. Besant that made Manjeri Rama Iyer named his house ‘Besant Ashram’ and the adjoining lodge ‘Annie Hall’. The Municipality widened the existing narrow lane and it was rechristened ‘Annie Hall Road’. He continues - At a point in history when inequality and abhorrent customs were rampant, Besant Ashram was the platform where strong voices were raised, revolutionary ideas were born and radical actions were taken against such oppression.

I still recall going to the Sreekandeswaram temple grounds to listen to an S Janaki concert and later another where my wife had sung. At that time, I did not know that this was the handiwork of stalwarts like Ramaier who wanted a temple for everybody, to be built in Calicut (Sree Narayana Guru had, I believe, come for the consecration event).

Manjeri Rama Iyer who was ostracized by his own community for his affinity towards the downtrodden and the lower castes, never looked back. He held the position of Diwan for the Nilambur raja after leaving congress and in 1937 for a while after which he became an ascetic. He sporadically continued with journalism, writing and editing for West coast spectator and Santhana Dharma and with Manjeri Ramakrishna Iyer (Secretary -Buddhist theosophical league) wrote the first guide book on Buddhism called Buddhadharmam. He continued with his social work until he died in 1958, aged 81.

His children, especially his daughter Kamalamma (Kamalambal) followed in his footsteps, working with Annie Besant (not to forget, Iyer’s wife was also very much involved in uplifting women’s inequality matters). She was the first president of the Malabar branch of the Women Indian Association. She passed away, just 9 years after her father. She merits an article on her times and interestingly, I started my own life in Calicut attending kindergarten in her personally managed school, the Balavrindavan, at Chalappuram. And look at it - here I am sitting and wondering how small this word is, as I see how our mundane lives crisscross at some point or other!

An example of his oratory and conviction can be seen in this simple utterance - Ramaier’s precondition for Home Rule was to break the shackles which bound us. He said in the 1917 Calcutta annual convention - "This resolution calls for social freedom by which we shall shatter the shackles that bind the lower classes. They are the foot of tile nation and if you and I would climb the hill of Home Rule, we must first shatter the shackles on our feet and then and then only will Home Rule come to us. You cannot be political democrats and at the same time social autocrats. Remember that a man, a social slave, cannot be politically a free man. We all have come here to see the vision of United India, not only politically united but united all along the line. Therefore, let those of us, who are Brahmins, who belong to the higher castes, go to our villages and shatter the shackles of the low castes, people who are struggling against our own men, the social Bureaucrats of our own land."

Sadly, people like Rama Iyer cannot be found anymore, perhaps our creator Brahma is on an extended vacation…………………

References

Manjeri Rama Iyer and Home Rule Agitation in Malabar - TP Sankarankutty Nair
Manorama Article – translation by Manjeri Subin Sundar Raj
ARS Iyers autobiography
Social and religious transformation of Kerala with special reference to Brahmananda Sivayogi – VN Sujaya
George Joseph and the national struggle for freedom – R Renjini
The Quest for Social Justice: Malabar, 1882-1947 – PM Ismael
Women In public Life in Malabar- 1900-1957 – V Vasanthi
Print and public sphere in Malabar: a study of early newspapers (1847-1930) - Stella Joseph
Neo Buddhism in Kerala: The Legacy of Mithavadi C Krishnan

I apologize for the length of this article, for it far exceeds the attention span of a lay blog reader. My hope is that this will interest somebody someday.

Pics – Ramaier (KFCS Souvenir 2013), Bodhi maram (Hindu), M Kumaran (wiki),

The King, the Fugger and the ‘perdido’ nau….

The India run was like no other adventure. The sailors on that Carriera da India which left out from Lisbon March 1533 on the 30 meter long Nau Bom Jesus were a motley collection of priests, sailors, soldados, degredados, nobility and officers, totaling to 250 or so. Only two sets of natural phenomena separated them from life and death on the voyage, not to mention disease. The natural phenomena were the summer storms near the Cape of Good Hope, South of Africa which they would round and then slingshot off in a tangent to ride the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea heading to Cochin and Goa. The distance of 12,000 miles separating Lisbon and Cochin was remarkable in the sense that it not only tested man’s valor and courage, but also his persistence and health. The voyager’s intention was not just to procure all the black gold of Malabar they could lay their hands on, but also make riches in trading the goods their carried on their carrack. The Estado da India was already in conception and a robust trade was in place. And so the Portuguese braved these terribly long voyages, financed by their king and his friends, some of them who were immensely rich, like the Fugger’s of Germany, who by themselves could decide the fate of many a monarchy in Europe.

On the other end of the route, they dealt with rich Indian middlemen. Let it not be understood that the ships came empty and returned full to the brim, in fact they were heavily laden both ways, as trade progressed into the second decade of the 16^th century.

The regimento (sailing directions) from the Casa da India situated on the mouth of the Targus were straightforward in the case of the Armada of 1533, a measly set of just seven ships. Round the cape, and proceed to Cochin and Goa. The departure was as planned, in March and the naus or carracks were to berth at Goa by September. I am sure most readers would have assumed that riding monsoon and storm winds was not for the faint hearted, and it was not like one of the modern cruise liner trips. The journey was at best, one which could be termed violent and filled with nightmares of all sorts, one the fear of the unknown brings in. Sailors thus reported of dragons, huge snakes, people with many heads, mermaids and so on, brought about by delusion and intense boredom coupled with the vigorous swings of the ship’s floor and horible sea sickness. Beating drums or playing tambourines as mandated did not quite help, nor did confessions to the priest and telling taller tales. In fact many a priest after hearing the violent confessions was reduced to shaking caricatures in cassocks. Handling some of the mutinous types and violent quarrels between soldiers were but natural activities that any experienced captain had to handle. He had to be tough to handle punishments like getting the guilty walk the plank, subjecting them keel hauling (dump them with a rope tied to their waists and drag them along the waters for a period of time) or pinning the worst offender’s hands to a mast with a deep knife thrust. Four hour watches had to be kept and if one had to relive himself, he had to enter a lavatory cage suspended over the rails, where the wary would look down with terrible consternation at sharks and dolphins and other animals swimming under, in the hope that the creature above was prey. On stormy days, they went down to the bilges at the bottom of the ship to relieve themselves and that make the voyage a very stinky one indeed, even after vigorous cleaning by the ships boys.

The crew ate only one hot meal a day, usually around noon. Because there were as yet no galleys aboard ships, meals were cooked over a fire kindled in a box of sand on the open deck. When it rained, food was eaten cold, but hot or cold, a sailor’s diet was monotonous. It consisted of salted pork, a bit of cheese, some beans, onions, and the staple of all nautical diets, ship biscuit. Supplies, stored in leaky barrels, soon went bad. The meat putrefied and weevils attacked the biscuit. Antonio Pigafetta described the food Magellan’s crew subsisted on: “They ate biscuit and when there was no more of that they ate the crumbs, which were full of maggots and smelled strongly of mouse urine.” When even the crumbs gave out, men captured the ship’s vermin and auctioned them off as food. Pigafetta reported that “a mouse would bring half a ducat or a ducat. To wash down their unappetizing meals, the crew had water and wine, both of which quickly spoiled in their wooden casks. The wine turned to rancid vinegar. The water became so foul and smelly that sailors held their noses while drinking it.” So do you envy the Portuguese sailor?

Those six months on board an ‘Indian Run’ Nau were hell. Many a sailor wondered why he endured it, some of course for the adventure and prospective riches, some for deliverance from their prison sentences and some for glory. Some others just got pulled along. The Portuguese even had a proverb “If you want to learn how to pray, go to Sea!!” Scurvy, thirst and all kinds of things were braved, for the king and the lord! And I must now bring one fact to your notice. If you look at merchant ships worldwide today, a good number of the sailors and officers hail from Goa. Well, after all some of them could just be descendants of these early sailors. Every year an armada sailed out with goods and came back laden with riches a year later. There were some losses, but manageable in the scheme of things and after all, it was an era where human life was expendable (not that it is not these days!). The profitability was quite high and the riches at Lisbon accumulated, as the Estado Da India and the Casa Da India (India house) kept becoming bigger and more bureaucratic.

The winds of trade were however more predictable. The monsoon was a southwesterly wind (blowing from East Africa to India) in the summer (between May and September) and then abruptly reversing itself and became a northeasterly (from India to Africa) one in the winter (between October and April). The ideal timing for a ship getting out of the cape was to catch the late summer monsoon to India, and return with the early winter monsoon, minimizing its time at sea. But then again, winds die and the ships would wallow in the sea waters where sailors went crazy of thirst, hunger and malnutrition. Perhaps it was better to follow words of wisdom and leave in February, but it was not always possible to outfit these ships by then. Anyway as you can see it was critical to reach the East African coast in time before the SW monsoon. The ships would then stop at one or more staging posts on the African East coast, fill up with rations and catch the monsoon at the equatorial line. If they were late, they had to take a diagonal cut into the wide ocean to slingshot the monsoon, but this as you can imagine increased the mortality rate owing to riding the violent storms without rest, coupled with malnutrition and sickness. There were so many more things to consider while putting together the regimento, but let us not clutter our mind with such things for it will dull your senses and put you to a sleep before I complete the story.

But I must not forget to tell you about the doldrums. Well, today the word means different, but it had much to do with winds or the lack of it near the west coast of Africa south of Sierra Leone (Let not your eyes widen, we are not talking about Sunny Leone the damsel who is popular for other matters, this here is a place in Africa…). It is a low pressure area where the oceans are still and only a skilful or lucky captain could steer a sailing ship through it using little breeze and the ocean currents. Get past it and you have passed your first obstacle enroute India. The next few weeks would be straightforward sailing to the cape of storms or the Cape of Good Hope as it was more properly called, riding the Brazilian current. But as you hit the tip and cross it, the next obstacle presents itself, the contra Agulhas current on the east coast which speeds down to collide with the Brazilian current. Stay away and cross it courageously, but not in a fleet or as an armada, for the losses, god forbid, could be huge. Spread out, and converge back to the East coast past the eddies, that was the advice of the experienced or so they thought, for it was easier said than done, as not only the currents, but also the winds created havoc, well actually whirlwinds. You also had to stay clear of coral reefs and shoals around Madagascar. If they got through, they stopped at Mozambique for repairs and for picking up more items for the India trade, namely elephant ivory, gold, coral and pearls.

By now it has been close to four months already, since the ship had left Lisbon and it was time to head north and turn eastwards at the Seychelles islands for the final burst to India with the monsoons. If they could not manage it they headed to Malindi and remained there for a year. Goa, with its better harbor and greater supply base, served as the first anchorage point of Portuguese armadas while Cochin, with its important spice markets, remained the ultimate destination. Yes, riding the monsoon winds also required skill, but the additional pilots from the African ports provided the required skill and guidance to the Portuguese.

Who were the people who decided the destinies of these brave or foolish people who fought through their destinies and tussled the sea gods? They were of course the traders and the merchants who wished to profit. In reality they were the ones who actually decided the fates of the people who rode the ‘carriera da India’ and what these merchant ships carried or not carried. We have the merchants in India, we had the merchants in Portugal and Germany and we had the conduits or middle men like the Zamorin and the King of Portugal. And so if you walked around the streets of Lisbon before the dammed 1755 earthquake, one could hear statements ending in a sigh like “I am neither an Indian merchant, nor yet a Fugger, but a poor boy like yourself” (Gusman d’Alfarache).

Recall also that the very first armada that set out with Vasco Da Gama was in 1497 and once the flood gates were opened by him, many followed with regularity though many a ship was lost near the cape. It is approximated that some 806 naus sent on the India Run between 1497 and 1612. Of those, 425 returned safely, 20 aborted their voyage and returned, 66 were lost, 4 were pirated, 6 were destroyed, and 285 remained in India.

But let us get to the period of the story, for the year was 1933. Oh! What a year that was for mighty and rich Anton Fugger, who decided to go into self-exile. Jakob the rich of Augsburg had already passed away and the riches were left to his nephew Anton. They controlled vast copper and salt mines in Europe and provided finance to the nobles who traded with the East. In fact their efficient banking and supply chain ran like clockwork. But life is never simple and the envious did not leave him or his family alone, and as the Fuggers were Catholics in a Germany that was swiftly embracing protestant Christianity, the rest of the people ganged up against them. Marx Ehem and Anton Fugger ended up in a tussle on Ascension Day in May (this was after the ships left, but gives you a feeling of the times) and Anton was locked up in church for a day as punishment and released after he paid bail or compensation. The furious millionaire left Augsburg and went into exile to his village of Weisenhorn (As years passed, matters improved, but that is another story). Anyway, the Fugger’s had by them become immensely rich and had far more creditors than they could manage. They were also venturing out into the newly discovered South America where Anton got the Spanish license to colonize Chiel and Peru!

Lisbon had been suffering too with floods, sweating plagues and pestilence (there and in Europe) since the late 1520’s and the earthquake in 1531 added to its miseries (Perhaps the curse had come from Malabar which they were raping in the meantime!). The Spaniards were seething in anger as the papal bull was broken by the Portuguese when Magellan ventured into Spanish waters. The king Joao III or John III was proving to be a bad manager of his finances, racking up huge debts in his Moroccan and Indian ventures (Imagine a two million cruzado deficit during 1522-1544). This coupled with the problems Anton Fugger was going through, perhaps resulted in the smaller Armada in 1533, just seven ships.

And so the armada readied itself for the Carriera da India. The Nau Bom Jesus was one among them and all of 400 or so tons in displacement. That the Portuguese knew how to build sturdy ships is clear, but you must also understand that the life of such a ship was not more than four or five years. Usage of nails, galagala caulking, lead in the seams, and a final black coat of pine tar from Germany gave these ships a sinister look. The heavy guns and cannons they carried for defense made them difficult to confront. The crew comprised a captain major, a deputy, a captain, a record keeping clerk (the royal agent – like our Barros or Carrera), a pilot and a deputy pilot. Then came the master, the boatswain, ships boys, pages and the sailors or seamen. We can also see chaplains, German bombardiers, stewards, specialist technicians like carpenters, caulkers and barber surgeons in this group.

The armada comprised the Flor delamar captained by Jaoa Pereira, Santa Barbara captained by Lourenco Da Pavia, Santa Clara captained by Diogo Brandao, Cirno (Cisne) captained by Goncales Coutinho (perhaps he was the guy who first sighted Mauritius!!), Sao Roque captained by Simaoa de Viega, St Barthalomeou captained by Nuno Furtado da Mendoca and Bom Jesus captained by Dom Francisco de Noronha.

Noronha was not feeling right as he twiddled about with his shining astrolabe, and something told him that this would become a major ordeal, call it a sailor’s hunch or intuition. The rusted astrolabe discovered 475 years later would prove him right. In India the Portuguese had decided to move north from Cochin. Goa had been taken and the Portuguese were settling down, Vasco da Gama was back but died soon after and after a few mediocre administrators, Nuno Da Cuhna took charge. A large amount of finances were demanded from Lisbon, so also guns to secure their foothold. The 1533 armada perhaps was loaded up for this very purpose with copper and gold. The Moghul king Baber had passed away in 1530 and Humayun had taken charge, and the Shah Bahadur of Cambay was toying with the idea of signing a treaty with the Portuguese to keep Humayun at bay.

The Bom Jesus was loaded with 18 tons of Fugger’s copper and 4 tons of tin and pewter ingots for trading, with this heavy load serving as ships ballast. Elephant tusks were also loaded in large quantities, and large amounts of gold (20,000 coins), copper and silver coins (Personal effects such as syringes and mercury used to treat syphilis, astrolabes, charting dividers, pots, pans, plates and so on) as well as cannons and guns, muskets and swords. We know that Indian trade was done only in cash and little barter, and that was why a lot of cash was carried in gold, the tusks were sent so the craftsmen in India worked on it and finished goods were sent back to Portugal. The ship must have been armed with some 180-200 small iron and copper guns (some later ships had as many as 366!). What was the copper doing in the holds? Well, they were melted down to make coins by the Indian kings. The profit in the sale of copper was quite large as a quintal of copper costing 4.5 Cruzados at Augsburg would be sold in Cochin for 14 cruzados. The freight and handling cost was 4.5 cruzados, so the profit was 5 cruzados per quintal. Cherina Marakkar at Cochin was one would buy a lot of it and it would go on to be sold to make coins and other.

As the ships crossed the doldrums, it was winter time in the African south. Six of the ships got through, one did not. The fate that befell the Bom Jesus was simply announced as ‘ship lost’ – Perdido!!

But to get to the ship’s story, we have to speed through to the year 2008, a full 475 years later and go to a place called Orangemund in Namibia situated on the west coast of Africa. After completing a huge sand seawall the Diamond Mining Company De Beers were carrying out a surface-mining operation when a geologist found a spherical rock in the sand to realize it was a copper ingot. It became clear later that this was Fugger’s copper ingot for it had the trident trademark on it. Other evidence quickly pointed to a Portuguese shipwreck. Mining was halted excavations were started and soon the 1533 Portuguese wreck was uncovered by April 2008. Treasure hunters were kept away as it was one of the world's most zealously guarded diamond mining area. Perhaps it was worth even more than the diamonds that could be mined in that area!

The ships of the armada which sailed down the Tagus River were built for the voyage and two of them were brand-new and owned by the king himself. One of these two was the Bom Jesus (Good Jesus) captained by Dom Francisco de Noronha. How do we know that the ship dug up at Orangemund was Bom Jesus? As we saw from previous studies, the Casa Da India and its records were destroyed in the earthquake and the fires, but some papers survived. In these old Portuguese navy annals, the following critical epitaph is provided. The Cirne and S Roque will arrive in Goa in September, not the Bom Jesus. Periera is still in Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope. Noronha’s ship capsized near the Cape and nobody escaped, perhaps by his carelessness at the critical moment while the other nau’s scattered and escaped.

This shows that the tragedy occurred near the Cape in the winter storms and the ship was blown backwards and further north to the Orangemund area. Everything points out that the vessel is the Bom Jesus of the fleet of 1533 that didn’t succeed to pass the Good Hope Cape and that turned back and sunk near the sands of Namibia. We also read that the combination of thick fog, strong winds and heavy swells make the Namibian coastline quite a hazardous area for ships. Just how risky the area is, is clear since some 300 shipwrecks have already been located, with a further 200 relics that cannot be identified. The cold water of the Benguela Current is also dangerous for shipwrecked sailors, for death can result after five hours after exposure to water of 15°Celsius or less. As the Bom Jesus would have capsized offshore, most if not all of the sailors must have perished in the freezing waters and strong currents that make swimming very hard. Of the 21 Portuguese ships lost on their way around Africa to the east between 1525 and 1600, only the Bom Jesus was recorded as being lost near Namibia. And so the Orangemund became its graveyard. - Diogo Affonso who captained the Santa Clara also states that he saw the Bom Jesus founder off the Cape of Good Hope.

We also note from studies by Roff Smith about the intriguing pointer to the Bom Jesus from a letter unearthed in the royal archives. Dated February 13, 1533, it reveals that King João had just sent a knight to Seville to pick up 20,000 crusadoes' worth of gold from a consortium of businessmen who had invested in the 1533 fleet that was about to sail for India. As he concludes, “Spanish investors, it seems, had an unusually large stake in the 1533 fleet."

As Smith explains, It is easy to envision what might have happened next: The storm-battered ship was caught up in the powerful winds and currents that surge along the southwest African coast and was driven helplessly northward for hundreds of miles. As the windswept scrub of the Namib Desert hove into view, the doomed nau struck an outcrop of rock about 150 yards from shore. The shuddering blow broke off a big chunk of the stern, spilling tons of copper ingots into the sea and sending the Bom Jesus to its grave.

Did anybody survive? We cannot say for no human remains have been found save some human toe bones in a shoe found pinned beneath a mass of timbers. Did some of them walk on, surviving in the wild or did they intermingle with the Kaffirs as they called the natives? It is possible as we saw in the case of the crew of the Grosvenor. Perhaps, we may never know.

References

Convicts and Orphans: Forced and State-sponsored Colonizers in the ... Timothy J. Coates

The Fuggers of Augsburg: Pursuing Wealth and Honor in Renaissance Germany - Mark Häberlein
Indo Portuguese trade and the Fuggers of Germany – KS Mathew
Relação das náos e armadas da India (page 49)
Bom Jesus picture – Thanks to linked site
Thos who wish to see the wreck pictures click here

Annaes da Marinha Portugueza, Volume 1 By Ignazio da Costa Quintella

Maritime Archaeology and Trans-Oceanic Trade: A Case Study of the Oranjemund Shipwreck Cargo, Namibia- Shadreck Chirikure, Ashton Sinamai, Esther Goagoses, Marina Mubusisi, W. Ndoro
Livro em que se contém toda a fazenda & real patrimonio dos reinos de Portugal, India ... - Luiz de Figueiredo Falcão (pages 156, 157)
Shipwreck in the Forbidden Zone – National Geographic - Roff Smith
The 16th century Portuguese shipwreck of Oranjemund, Namibia - Francisco J. S. Alves
Decay or Defeat? Ernst Van Veen

Pics – Courtesy Wikipedia

Notes

1. The Relação das náos e armadas da India, Livro Contem toda as well as AJR Russell Wood (the Portuguese empire 1415-1808) states that another armada of 12 caravelas redondas and One galleon (bigger nau) sailed to India in 1533 under the command of Dom Pedro de CastelaoBranco in Oct 1533.

2. There is a paragraph about the sailor’s food extracted from a paper where the author's name is not provided. I do not know the author of that fine paper, but thank him for the contribution and would be pleased to add his name here if he gets back to me!

Nehru’s Red Rose

At New York and Flushing Meadows

India's milkman - Kurien and Amul

Another weekend to savor

Dr Syud Hossain and Indian independence

A Pope and an Elephant

A Rummy Tale

A Far-Eastern sojourn

MS Baburaj – The legendary musician

Mata Hari the femme fatale and Malabar

Tanjore and its Carnatic music legacy

Vidwan Ettan Thampuran – My Great Grandfather

Adela ‘Violet’ Florence Nicolson (Laurence Hope)

Tipu’s folly

GP Nair and the ‘Spirit of India’

A Viatical Arrangement

Lakme

The Story of Ehrenfels at Goa

Manjeri Rama Iyer – A Social worker and freedom fighter

The last voyage of Bom Jesus