Maddy's Ramblings

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Pardesi and the Malabari Jews around Cochin were a reasonably content lot. But as days went by and as the only country which never persecuted the Jews, became independent from the British, the entire Jewish community of the region started to leave on their Aliyah or calling. Today there is less than a handful left. Books have been written about them, anthropologist studies have been completed and films have been made. People who arrived in Israel wrote books of their past in Kerala and their present, while others wrote about them and a few still trickle back to see their old homes in India and satisfy their last longings before they move on to the next world. Why did this all happen? Whatever happened to the people who left? We track regularly the stories of Indians who moved to USA, Europe and the Middle East Arab countries, but there are so few references about these Malayalees in Israel. Are we upset with them, perhaps the Malayali ego is still hurt? I decided to do a little study, armed with Ruby’s, Edna’s and Jussay’s books as well as scholarly articles from Nathan Katz and Ellen Goldberg.

First the reader should realize that there were two types of Cochin Jews, historically divided: the Black Jews, or Malabaris, the descendants of the original settlers, and the White Jews, or Paradesis, the fairer descendants of immigrants from various Middle East and European countries. There are also a few Brown Jews, or Meshuhurarum (orumakars), descended from emancipated slaves. That they all had problems with each other during their lives in Cochin goes without saying, and discrimination was rife. But it was something they lived with and somewhat minor in the larger context. (I must clarify now that when I use the term Cochin Jews, I encompass the Jews of Ernakulum, Mattanchery, Parur, Chendamangalam and Mala).

Cochin was their little Jerusalem, but it was clear that they did think about the bigger Jerusalem even though they lived a life of harmony, ensconced among the other subjects of benevolent Cochin raja. The British entrenched themselves and made sweeping changes implementing, a standard education system where all children studied. The Pardesi Jews soon found that the chasm between them and the poorer Malabari Jews was reducing, a sort of equality was creeping up and the caste distinction was being slowly broken up, with the imparted education. Also, Pardesi Jews, who had lucrative agency contracts with the Dutch lost out as the British directly took over trade and its administration. Within a few decades, the fortunes had reversed with the Pardesi Jews remaining where they were and many of the hardworking Malabari Jews becoming wealthier.

Also gone was the time when Malabar and Cochin were very important for the European settlers like the Dutch and the Portuguese as the trade once concentrated on spices and wood changed to other commodities. As the new metropolises of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta as well as Rangoon came up, the economic centers shifted to these cities and some of the first movers to these places were the Jews of Cochin, for they not only understood the trading systems, but also the languages, much more than the traditional Chettys and Gujaratis.

Those who migrated north to metropolises found easy employment amongst well-heeled Jewish businesses in those cities. But what is interesting is the observation by a few families that they no longer enjoyed the special favors which they used to get in businesses from the Dutch, and they found that the natives had started to get involved in general business, competing with them, after the fall of the feudalistic society. Both the Malabari and the Paradesi Jews suffered and interestingly the Malabari Jews proved to be more religious and interested in a potential Aliya to Israel. The petty traders faced difficulties, and all the affluent families had moved on. The community lacked intellectuals and entrepreneurs except for the Koders who created the first department stores, ran the Cochin electric company as well as the local ferry, and of course they provided employment to many members of their community. As this was a temporary situation of stability, the Malabari Jews started studying the possibility of lesser servitude and better entrepreneurship if they moved to Israel, now oft mentioned by their university educated offspring.

Interestingly the Cochin Electric Company, of which the Cochin royal family was the major shareholder, was the power suppliers to the Mattancherry and Fort Cochin areas up to Palluruthy, and was maintained quite well, with hardly a failure in distribution. If indeed power supply to a house or office was disrupted, the consumer could call Samuel Koder, the director of the company, directly and he made sure that power was promptly restored. Koder’s management was very liberal and none of the employees ever wanted for money, with the organization hiring some 130 people.

The Indian government’s nationalization drive did not help either when they took over the ferry service as well as the Cochin electric company run by the Koder’s. Land ceiling acts coming from the latter day communist governments led to loss of coconut and other farms held by these families. It soon became an islanded community though still capable and funded, if so required, by the more affluent. But the pride in their life had gone away and that was the crux of the whole matter. While there was the problem of shortage of offspring and the difficulties faced by families in finding spouses for their children, you would also hear about the curse. There was talk of this mysterious curse on the community, the Thekumbhagam synagogue curse is oft mentioned, but I won’t go too much into that other than state that the destruction of that synagogue in 1964 is attributed to a lot of problems among the Cochin Jewish populace. Was it because of the quarrels between the black and white Jews? Was it gods curse because of the silly discrimination the community followed, for decades?

Starting from the early 40’s import restrictions were tightened in India and the situation continued in 1947 with the imports and exports control act since the trade deficit needed strict control. The luxury goods import business conducted by the Cochin Jews were severely affected. Then came the Second World War, the devastating Jewish holocaust and the ideology created by the new state of Israel in 1948. The migrations which occurred after those periods and into the 70’s took away more than 90% of the Cochin Jewish population. Today less than a handful remain. The need to rebuild the Promised Land was primary in many of the departing minds, but was that really it? In India, they could do what they wanted, without fear of any form of persecution, why go on Aliyah to a land fraught with all kinds of danger? Was it also because of other hardships?

Leaders of the Cochin community had started to take notice of the Zionist movements early in the 20^th century, as evidenced by the enthusiastic letters of people such as NE Roby. He spread the word around to relatives in the metropolises too. Many of them felt the Zionist pull and took the decision to leave and join their brethren in Israel stressing that it had always been part of their daily prayers, so, it was but natural. Smaller problems such as lack of Jewish holidays and lack of possibilities in raising observant children were cited by some. Insecurity among the members of the community increased as their numbers continued to fall and as the more affluent Jews were the first to leave taking the figure down from 16,000 in the 19^thcentury to 1,100 in the 20^th and perhaps under 10 in the 21^st.

In 1948, the first wave started as a number of members approached authorities in Bombay stating their intention of selling off everything they had and emigration to Israel, enmasse, utilizing their own funds. Dr. Immanuel Olswanger, an emissary from Israel, visited these places in 1950 and met with the Jewish communities of Cochin, Ernakulam, Mala, Parur and Chennamangalam offering them the opportunity to help realize the Zionist dream. The Malabari’s were apparently more enthusiastic than the Paradesi Jews, the latter being the richer and owners of landed property which they were reluctant to leave behind or sell at low prices. The new Indian government had restricted the amount of money that could be repatriated from such a sale. A Cochin Aliyah fund was started money was collected and it finally took over 7 years for the 3,000 or so people to move to Israel from Cochin. A small complication rose when the Israel government restricted the number citing an incidence of filariasis amongst the émigré’s. It took a good amount of persuasive arguments from their emissary and representative AB Salem with Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion to secure their passage.

Dr Reitler was asked to formulate the appropriate medical treatment and the government made steps to ensure that these Malabari’s were settled in cooler and dry areas so that the disease would not be ‘perpetuated’ and that they would not become a financial burden to the fledgling Israeli government.

A 1969 newspaper report reveals a quote from Nappy and Elais Koder- Nappy who had by then become a engineer said – We want to say thank you to India and then Goodbye – Elias added that he was not happy in India, that they were taking too much taxes and that they would not let him expatriate his proceeds to Israel, restricting the total outflow to $5000. The youngsters interviewed by the newspaper complained of too few suitors and pointed out that the community was already too much intermarried and somehow related to each other. While the Bene Israel and the Cochin Jews moved to Israel, the richer Baghdadi Jews mainly migrated to Britain and America.

Now we move to Israel to track the stories of those who migrated. Starting from the 40’s some 25-30,000 Jews migrated from India. A vast majority, close to 20,000 were the Bene Israelis from Maharashtra. Some 3,500 were said to have come from Cochin. When they first reached the Promised Land, they came across communities run on the terms of the Ashkenazi Jews from Europe and struggled to make their own niche amongst them. Ruby’s accounts about these early days are quite poignant and by most accounts most of the Cochin Jews took to farming and horticulture. In 1954, the first 27 Jewish families from Cochin arrived in Israel.Majority of the Cochin Jews were settled at Yuval. House, animals and farming equipment were provided to the families to begin life afresh. This was the first contingent of the 620 people who today call the Nevatim moshav, home. These new arrivals now had a roof over their heads, but finding work presented a more difficult challenge. The men all started as day laborers for the Jewish National Fund; one day there was work, the next day there might not be. At one point, they had to remove rocks and the snakes that lived beneath them. Those years, until 1960, were the most difficult ones.

So as we see, their reception was not rewarding. The Indian Jews were among the darkest of all the new immigrants and experienced a kind of racism. Reuben Raymond, a Bene Israel community leader, explained (New Statesman 9-10-04) that the reality of life in Israel differed from what they imagined it to be. ‘In India, we never had to fight for our rights but in Israel we did, and this was something new for us,’ he says. ‘In the early '50s, people had a problem because of their color. They were subjected to differential treatment in everything. In employment, they got bad jobs and had less money’.

The Malabari Jews are known as the Cochinim and the Pardesi Jews the Cochinites and identified themselves with the Mirzachi or oriental Jews. The Cochinim were mostly settled in the cooperative farms or Moshavim. Five of them, where over 75% of the Cochinim can be found, are Nevatim in the Negev, Mesillat Zion, Taloz and Aviezer in the Jerusalem corridor and Kfar Yuval in the Northern border with Lebanon. Today the total community totals to some 4,000 people and many have moved to urban neighborhoods for different and better prospects. The Paradesi Jews on the other hand settled in small groups in Binyamina and Petah Tikva. Some Cochin Jews who emigrated from the village of Chendamangalam live at Givat Koach, near the Ben-Gurion airport.

The story of Eliahu Bezalel, 82, (quoting from the Hindu article) a widely recognized horticulturist, decorated by the Israeli government on various occasions, explains those early days where his life started after he got married to Batzion, from Mattancherry, who had arrived a year earlier. Initially Bezalel worked in road maintenance, forestry and as a shepherd, with both husband and wife taking turns to graze the 500 to 600 sheep while their child was sequestered in an inverted stool. The next stage, in 1962, was a turn to agriculture. Community members had to fight the bureaucracy to get the necessary allowances to enable them to grow vegetables, fruit and flowers.

Bezalel as his story continues, became part of Prime Minister Ben Gurion's farming vison and was allotted land in a village in Negev Desert, south of Israel where he started a rose farm. When he was conscripted in the army, his wife took over the responsibility of running the farm, looking after the children and paying the taxes. Later Bezalel studied techniques of growing flowering plants in greenhouses and set up Israel's first modern greenhouse, along with two other Indian Jewish partners, signaling the start of a virtual revolution in the field of horticulture. He mastered the technique called ‘fertigation', where every drop of water provided to a plant is supplemented with a proportional percentage of fertilizers. In 1964 he was awarded the Israeli PM's award for best exporter of flowers to Europe; in 1994, he was conferred with the prestigious Kaplan Prize for contribution to horticulture, and in 2006 India honored Bezalel with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman.

If you travel to Moshav Nevatim, the dust-blown, palm-tree studded community on the northern edge of Israel’s Negev desert, you can now see a humble little synagogue with that enormous past. The Kerala Synagogue, as it is known by, was built in the style of the synagogues of India’s Cochini Jews. And they made sure of one thing, no more intercommunity marriages, they all married outside linking up with Ashkenazi, Moroccan, or other Jews. The Bene Israel Jews, the bigger community, once liberated by their Cochin brethren in India, did not fare that well in comparison.

Some who remember their old abode mention a desire to live their last days in Kerala, still remembering lines from the Indian national anthem and a few old Malayalam film songs. It is said that most Cochin Jew houses have a curry leaf tree and other tropical trees, like mango and papaya. Some are proud to state that they are different in tradition, in food, ways of worship, in a few rituals and in the ‘look' of course. In the early days, they would regularly eat what is termed “traditional nadan food,”- like kootans, appam and add ‘vepala' in the curries. Among the other distinctions of the community is their wearing ‘white' at funerals as against ‘black' worn by the other Jews from elsewhere. Their lyrics and the music in their prayers are more Indian. Some of the earlier arrivals continued to wear ‘mundus' and saris but now women sometimes wears the ‘Salwar kameez’. Sometimes they celebrate festivals like Onam and of course, remember to popularize the food - Matamey Cochin (“Cochin delicacies”) is a business operated by eight local women between the ages of 55 and 65 who host Cochin-style meals in their homes or in the local hospitality tent. For more about this read the fine article linked here

And they meet once a year, in March, when they get together near the Dead Sea. They sing, narrate stories of their ‘motherland' Kochi, and share memories. Even though they are now a mixed race, Bezalel continues – “The trend is that no Cochin Jew marries another from the same group. None of us talk Malayalam at home so my children don't know the language at all. We are united by one language, Hebrew. It is mandatory for any emigrant in Israel to learn Hebrew for which the government even provides an allowance.” Sometimes they think back of the land they left, of the serene backwaters and the freedom they enjoyed. A place where planes don’t scream through overhead or rockets blow up, where they perhaps lacked the excitement, but where they were equals.

Ruby will always have the last word in this article – She said – Some people write that the Cochin Community of Jews is dying. They don’t realize that a root from that tree is shooting up in Israel and starting to blossom. As long as we keep up some of our traditions, I hope that this community will never die…

References

Ruby of Cochin – Ruby Daniel

Leaving Mother India – Ellen Goldberg, Nathan Katz

The Sephardi Diaspora in Cochin India - Ellen Goldberg, Nathan Katz

Daytona Beach morning journal – Jan 19, 1969

The Last Jews of Kochi by Joshua Newton - Jewish Journal

Women sing, men listen - Malayalam folksongs of the Cochini, the Jewish Community of Kerala, in India and in Israel - Martine Chemana

He made deserts bloom – Hindu article Jan 18^th2012

Kerala’s Cochini Jews Meld into Israel - Debra Kamin

Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, Volume 1 By Mark Avrum Ehrlich

The Cochin community in Israel video 1, video 2

Life in Kerala 1937

George Harrison and the sitar, the Beatles

Beatles remain a favorite of mine and I have always liked the perky number Norwegian Wood. The opening chords stayed stuck in my memory and the other day I was wondering about how this instrument got used for the song, assuming naturally that it followed from the much talked about visit of the Beatles to Rishikesh and George’s training sessions with Ravi Shankar. As I started checking it out, I found that the song predated their visit to India and that it had an interesting story behind it. So for those who like the song and the Beatles, here goes…

1964, The Beatles had a great tour in America, George Harrison the lead guitarist characterized it ‘every bit a knock-out’ and it was a time when they met equals like Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. Beatlemania spread in America and a second tour was announced for 1965. The last two shows at the Hollywood bowl were smash hits.

Just before they crossed the Atlantic once again, they finished shooting for their second movie tilted Help! It was a kind of comedy film with a crass Indian tilt, replete with multiple armed goddesses and Swamis played by non-Indians. The synopsis reads - An eastern cult (a parody of the Thuggee cult) is about to sacrifice a woman to the goddess Kaili. Just as she is about to be killed, the high priestess of the cult, Ahme, notices that she is not wearing the sacrificial ring. Ringo Starr, drummer of the Beatles, has and is wearing it; it was secretly sent to him by the victim in a fan letter. Determined to retrieve the ring and sacrifice the woman, the great Swami Clang, Ahme, and several cult members including Bhuta, leave for London. After several failed attempts to steal the ring, they confront the Beatles in an Indian restaurant. Ringo learns that if he does not return the ring soon, he will become the next sacrifice. Ringo then discovers that the ring is stuck on his finger.

On April 5^th and 6^th, The Beatles filmed the Rajahama Indian restaurant scenes for Help! at Twickenham Film Studios. The interior kitchen and dining scenes were filmed on a purpose-built set. What is relevant in this context is the Indian restaurant, where they had Indian looking waiters, people standing on their head and all kinds of silly stuff. The restaurant also had a live Indian band playing Indian instruments such as the tabla and sitar and the song ‘A Hard Day's Night’ is played by them as an instrumental. George Harrison watching the filming, was intrigued by the Sitar played by this Indian performer and took the opportunity to check it out, its sound and balance.

Harrison explains - We were waiting to shoot the scene in the restaurant when the guy gets thrown in the soup and there were a few Indian musicians playing in the background. I remember picking up the sitar and trying to hold it and thinking, 'This is a funny sound.' It was an incidental thing, but somewhere down the line I began to hear Ravi Shankar's name. The third time I heard it, I thought, 'This is an odd coincidence.' And then I talked with David Crosby of The Byrds and he mentioned the name. I went and bought a Ravi record; I put it on and it hit a certain spot in me that I can't explain, but it seemed very familiar to me. The only way I could describe it was: my intellect didn't know what was going on and yet this other part of me identified with it.

And so it was around that time that I bought a cheap Sitar from a shop called India Craft in London and it was lying around, I hadn’t really figured out what to do with it.

The Beatles did not particularly enjoy the filming of the movie (despite the fact that they were high on pot, for Ringo says - A hell of a lot of pot was being smoked while we were making the film. It was great. That helped make it a lot of fun), nor were they pleased with the end product and later in 1970, John Lennon said they had felt like extras in their own movie. Shooting was completed in April and the movie premiered in June 1965.

Actually it was 5 months later that he purchased the sitar and it took another month before he did something with it. It would take yet another before he used it for a song.

The second tour to America in Aug 1965 was also a hit and they returned to Britain a million dollars richer and had six weeks to rest and recuperate. Harrison decided to goof around with his Gibson J-160E guitar by moving its pickup from the neck to the bridge, for he wanted a new sound. Their next LP had to be released before Christmas and so they met again at Abbey road in Oct. to work on a project titled Rubber Soul. After the first song ‘Run for your life’ was recorded, the group started working on Norwegian Wood (This bird has flown).

The concept for the song came from Lennon, who wanted to include a comedy song in the LP, touching the topic of a one night stand experience of his. The real meaning is still being debated and both Lennon and others have professed different meanings and attributes, but it is an intriguing song.

The lyrics go thus

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me...

She showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian wood?

She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,

So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair.

I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine

We talked until two and then she said, "It's time for bed"

She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh.

I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bath

And when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown

So I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian wood.

As it appears, Lennon meets somebody (purportedly Sonny or Maureen) starts out a one night stand with her (or maybe not, he got miffed when she started to laugh and say she had to go to work in the morning), and went to sleep in the tub, to wake up in the morning and see that the girl had gone away. The bird is a girl, the Norwegian wood supposedly low cost paneling (has also other subtle meanings) and McCartney mentions that he was the one who suggested Lennon imply that he wanted set fire to the room as he left, not just lighting a fire for warmth. It is anyway, one of those unfinished and surreal ballads.

The rehearsals did not quite gel, and Harrison felt it needed something extra. The usual arrangement of two guitars, bass and drums did not give the right feel to this gobbledygook of a song.

He explains – It was quite spontaneous. I just picked up the sitar and kind of found the notes and I just kind of played it. We miked it up and put it on and it seemed to hit the spot. That was how the overdub on Lennon’s guitar riff after 9 days of hard effort made this song so unique with its nasal twang. Harrison had the sitar tuned to western notes.

The structure changed to 4 bars each of A, B and A on Lennon’s guitar followed by Harrison repeating the same on the sitar. It is explained thus – When the listener first hears the AB and then hears the second A, he expects a B to follow but instead this jumps to a third A, creating the complex ABA sequence followed up with the unprecedented sitar routine. After the instrumental opening, the song goes back to the BA chords.

But there is more detail to all this. In fact even though many people mention that this is the first time a Sitar was used for pop music, there is some error in the statement. Though it was the first time it was released in a recording, it was previously used by other musicians, namely Shawn Phillips and Donovan. Philips worked with the sitar as early as 1962 while at Toronto and had heard Ravi Shankar playing there. He was soon hooked to the instrument. His first commercial recording was in Dec 1965, two months after the Beatles had completed Norwegian wood. It then took another two years for ‘Sunny South Kensington’ to be officially released. Guitarist Big Jim Sullivan also played the sitar in the early 1960’s, influenced by Vilayat Khan in 1964 and learning the craft from Nazir Jairazbhoy, a music lecturer at OSAS in London. By 1966, there was a good number of rock Sitarists in London and this was to bring about the invention of the electric Sitar. Jimmy Page - Led Zepplin’s guitarist also played the sitar those days.

Then there was Kinks with their ‘See My friends’ recorded before Norwegian wood, while another group working with a sitar was the Yardbrids, recording their album ‘heart full of soul’. As it went, the Yardbirds manager Gomelsky approached the manager of their local curry house and were recommended an Indian troupe from Kenya. They decided to record these Indian origin musicians but hit all kinds of rough weather. The musicians could not play to the rock beat (timing of 4/4) and a lot of time was wasted. As the studio had a busy schedule, they decided to do away with the two Indian players and asked Jimmy page who was passing by for help. He concocted a manageable track with similar sounding chords using his mastery over the guitar but in passing purchased the sitar from the perplexed Indian, paying GBP25.00, complete with its cloth cover. Later Beck himself figured out a solution with the guitar and by bending the notes slightly off-key, managed to get his guitar track sound like a sitar. The aborted sitar version did come out many years later. "It was very hard to record [the sitar] because it has a lot of nasty peaks and a very complex wave form," said EMI engineer Norman Smith. "My meter would be going right over into the red, into distortion, without us getting audible value for money (but that was likely due to Harrison’s improper playing of the instrument and perhaps due to the wrong location of the pickup, according to Lavezzoli)

Many others started to use the Sitar for pop music compositions and the Coral electric sitar was developed by Danelecto in 1967, though finding few takers. The first one was gifted to Harrison, but he claims that it was hijacked by Spencer Davis.

Bellman explains the lead up - Harrison had recently bought a sitar along with Ravi Shankar’s albums Portrait of Genius and Sound of the Sitar. Harrison’s conversations with David Crosby about Shankar while they were tripping last August had inspired him. Also, when they arrived back to the UK from the States, the Kinks were at No. 10 on the charts with the Indian-influenced “See My Friends.” When the Kinks had toured Australia and Asia at the beginning of the year, they had a stopover in Bombay. Ray Davies said, “I remember getting up, going to the beach and seeing all these fishermen coming along. I heard chanting to start with, and gradually the chanting came a bit closer, and I could see it was fishermen carrying their nets out.”

Ian MacDonald adds - The Kinks’ song had no Indian instruments, but the band’s guitar imitated a tambura while Ray’s vocal whine and drone lent his singing an Indian quality. Author/jazz musician Barry Ernest Fantoni recalled hanging with the Beatles one night when they heard the Kinks’ song. Realizing Davies’ guitar sounded like a sitar, they discussed getting one for their next record

Back to the surreal Norwegian wood and now quoting Damian Fanelli writing at Guitar World - The

October 12 version of the song, then called simply "This Bird Has Flown," features the sitar in the intro and in the middle eight, as Harrison, sometimes clumsily, mimics Paul McCartney's harmony vocal. Also notable about the October 12 recording is that Ringo Starr is playing drums. Unhappy with the first version, the band attempted the song nine days later, when, on the fourth take, they nailed it. Lennon's acoustic guitar opens the track, and Starr, as he did for "And I Love Her," eschews drums completely, in favor of other percussive instruments, in this case finger cymbals and a tambourine. The first listeners of Norwegian wood equated the sitar sound to a guitar with a cold. As they say, that western tuning and playing in the diatonic scale did it, emphasizing the mark of a genius (as you can see, it matters less what you know than what you do with what you know).

In a Playboy Interview in 1980 Lennon states that the song was completely his and was suitably vague because he did not want his wife Cyan to know he was having an affair, and thus undertook a sophisticated attempt at writing Norwegian wood, through a smoke screen. Though he mentions that he does not recall who the woman was, others in the know allude to Sonny Freeman (she did have a wood paneled flat below John’s) while biographer Coleman sates that it was a prominent journalist Maureen Cleave.

Quoting Rolling Stone magazine - Lennon put it bluntly, "I was trying to write about an affair without letting me wife know I was writing about an affair. I was writing from my experiences, girl’s flats, things like that. As McCartney later explained, it was popular for Swinging London girls to decorate their homes with Norwegian pine. "So it was a little parody really on those kinds of girls who when you'd go to their flat there would be a lot of Norwegian wood," he told biographer Barry Miles. "It was pine really, cheap pine. But it's not as good a title, 'Cheap Pine,' baby."Lennon had however admitted to Rolling Stone earlier that "Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it's due." But according to McCartney, Lennon came to him with just a first verse: "That was all he had, no title, no nothing."

Looking back in the 1990s, Harrison described the sitar on "Norwegian Wood" as "very rudimentary. I didn't know how to tune it properly, and it was a very cheap sitar to begin with." But "that was the environment in the band," he pointed out, "everybody was very open to bringing in new ideas. We were listening to all sorts of things, Stockhausen, avant-garde - and most of it made its way onto our records."

There is also the incident of the broken string while Harrison practiced after the Western tuning. It appears that George Martin suggested he contact Ayana Angadi, the co-founder of the Asian Music Circle (AMC). Shankara Angadi, Ayana's son, recalls, "As luck would have it, we did have some sitar strings in the house, and the whole family went down to the studio at Abbey Road and watched them record, from behind the glass." (Quoting Cepcani – Biographer).

Ravi Shankar had by this time become a well-known exponent of the Sitar, after a stint with dancing together with his brother Uday. He later became an expert with the Sitar and Hindustani after sporadic training by Alaudin Khan, founded the Kinara music school in Bombay and his fame reached Harrison through the American group Byrds.

A report states that Harrison was introduced to Ravi Shankar by David Crosby of the Byrds at a 1965 party - Roger McGuinn, the founder of the Byrds, told the Telegraph how he had introduced the late George Harrison to Ravi Shankar's sitar music at a party at Zsa Zsa Gabor's Bel Air mansion in 1965. They were both on LSD at the time, he said, but the sound inspired Harrison and the Beatles to travel to India where they met Pt Shankar and took sitar lessons from him.

George continues – It (the sitar) just called on me ... a few months elapsed and then I met this guy from the Asian Music Circle organisation who said, 'Oh, Ravi Shankar's gonna come to my house for dinner. Do you want to come too?' That was how they met for the first time in June 1966.

In July 1966 the Beatles made an unscheduled stop over in Delhi and were stranded there for a week (after getting a rough sendoff following a Manila concert - due to not paying their respects to Imelda Marcos at Philippines). So they hung around at the Oberoi, and went to Riki Ram and sons to purchase new sitars and other Indian instruments, to take back to Britain. Harrison fell in love with sitar and India.

Following the group’s last live concert performance at Candlestick Park, San Francisco in August 1966, he travelled to Mumbai to study the sitar with Ravi Shankar.

George states -"I went to India for about six weeks. Ravi would give me lessons, and he’d also have one of his students sit with me. My hips were killing me from sitting on the floor, and so Ravi brought a yoga teacher to start showing me the physical yoga exercises. It was a fantastic time...," Harrison once recalled.

Ravi Shankar says -The down-to-earth quality in George was something I could relate to with such joy. He would crack up when I told him all my jokes; we had such fun! We always competed with each other in punning. When I told him that I was known as a "pundit" because of my punning, he said something hilarious, connecting the old Hindu scriptures of the four Vedas (Rigveda, Samveda, Atharvaveda and Yajurveda). He said: "Do you know the four Wether brothers? They are Ric, Sam, Arthur and George Wethers."

What did the master Ravi Shankar think of Norwegian wood? Shankar in a 1999 NPR ‘Fresh air’ interview with Terry Gross said - I never heard it before. And it was only much later on, my nephew and nieces, they played it for me and I thought it was terrible, in the sense - in the sound that was produced on the sitar. The song was nice. I liked the song very much but it was a peculiar sound. It didn't sound like sitar even. So he had had little lesson from a person in London who's a student of a student of mine, who is to be in London at that time. And I told him frankly that it's fine. People like it and you are happy but I didn't find it interesting enough because the very sound of sitar, it is something which we have developed since last 750 years. And - but I - he understood and that's why he wanted to learn.

George Harrison continued to be fascinated by India for the rest of his life, became a Hindu and remained good friends with Ravi Shankar, often collaborating with him musically. Later in 1968 the Beatles went to Rishikesh, spent time with the Mahesh Yogi learning meditation and so on but left after (getting bored or disgusted at the Yogi’s materialism?) and following a spat involving their use of hard drugs coupled with the Guru’s supposed act of impropriety with Mia Farrow.

Later on, many other Beatles songs were to feature Indian instruments and other Indian embellishments.

And that was how the Beatles ended up lapping up much of the credit with using a Sitar, eclipsing the works of Kinks and Yardbirds. But that does not really matter, does it? And, if you were to ask who was first to take Hindustani music and the sitar out west, look at my article on the femme fatale Mata Hari – It was Inayat Khan, the father of the princess spy Madeline – Noor Inayat khan. But Carnatic music had reached Europe even earlier, see my article on the Bayaderes who traveled west in 1838

And as I conclude, I wonder how many of the people I research individually, go on and get connected somehow or the other. As they say, a small world indeed…

References

Beatles Gear: By Andy Babiuk, Mark Levisohn, Tony Bacon, The Beatles

The dawn of Indian music in the West – Peter Lavezzoli

Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop - Mark Brend

The Songs of John Lennon: The Beatles Years - John Lennon

John Lennon: The Life - Philip Norman

Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties Ian MacDonald

The Exotic in Western Music - Jonathan Bellman

Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles - Kenneth Womack

Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now - Barry Miles

Song Take 2

Song Take 3

If you want to read all those interesting takes on what could have happened in the room, read this

Detroit free press interview

Ravi Shankar and George training Video

Mata Hari article

Bayaderes in Europe article

pics - google images - thanks to all the uploaders....

Other tidbits

Bob Dylan is supposed to have made a dig at Norwegian wood with his ‘4th time around’ which his fans state was made after Dylan thought Lennon had copied his writing style.

It is probable, listening to Ravi Shankar’s comments, that Harrison got his first sitar lesson from that grand disciple of Ravi Shankar who was performing for the AMC guys in the Help! Film. That person’s identity is alas not known!

Annu Malik’s Tumko sirf tumko- from Kuch Khatti Kuch Meethi was inspired by 'Norwegian Wood'

Dil Se Kya Sahi (Imaan) - In this R.D. Burman song, the line “Aaj Jhoomen Zara…” is an adaptation of the line “I Once Had A Girl…” from Norwegian Wood. Humne Kabhi Socha Nahi (Jeevan Mukti, 1977) is another adaptation.

That the movie Help! helped swing the Beatles towards mystic India is shown by another incident. While filming an outdoor scene on bicycles one day, the Beatles stopped for a short break. A Krishna devotee walked up to each Beatle and handed them a book on Hatha yoga. This was perhaps a precursor to their Maharishi Mahesh Yogi trip to Rishikesh.

Indian Music– How did an Englishman get so hung up an Indian music? When asked in a Detroit free press interview in 1966, George said

"A whole lot of things got me interested," he said. "The more I heard it, the more I liked it. It's very involved music. So involved. That's why the average listener doesn't understand. They listen to Western music all their lives. Eastern music is a different concept. "The main hang-up for me is Indian classical music. Really groovy, to pardon the expression, as opposed to the hip things in Western music which are opposed to Western classical music... Indian music is hip, yet 8,000 years old. "I find it hard to get much of a kick out of Western music. Even out of Western music I used to be interested in a year ago. Most music is still only surface, not very subtle compared to Indian music... Music in general, us included, is still on the surface."

"On 'Norwegian Wood' on the Rubber Soul album I used the sitar like a guitar. On the new album I developed it a little bit. But I'm far from the goal I want to achieve. It will take me 40 years to get there. I'd like to be able to play Indian music as Indian music instead of using Indian music in pop... It takes years of studying, but I'm willing to do that."

Those steamy, smoky and sooty days

Sometimes I sit back and think of some of those jolly train rides in the Indian railways. I have always liked them, and even though I could opine like most others that it is desirable that those trains be cleaner, punctual and efficient, they still cast a spell on you, from all the way back to the period when the role of the elephant was usurped by this mechanical beast. Today people are richer, are on their own, zipping through in their cars and bikes and planes, but it was not so long ago that a ride in the train was any day better and safer than on the fully laden Ambassador careening through our potholed roads. Or if you were on two wheels, consider the scene where you are perilously perched at an angle on a rickety ‘hand me down’ Bajaj scooter or hunched over, helmetless, on a roaring Jawa motorbike zigzagging through a mass of humanity and a collection of beasts on their two feet. Yeah! The train ride is in comparison so serene, and a great opportunity to study a cross section of humanity.

All that will soon be long forgotten, and I saw that India had just signed up for a Japanese designed bullet train between Ahmedabad and Bombay (I still prefer to term Bombay as Bombay, not Mumbai and Madras as Madras, not Chennai). I might, at least in my thoughts, still prefer the overnight Baroda express from Bombay Central, but then, I can still recall the steam engines from my childhood, till it was taken over by the trustworthy diesel and broad gauge as I entered high school. By the time I was ready for college, electric trains were becoming the norm. Meter gauge travel and steam engines were already considered dated, and conversions to the American gauge were well underway in the remote routes.

Of recent I have been perusing many interesting books like the ones written by Thoreax and Atiken. Vaidyanathan’s book is already in my collection and Venkatraman’s just at hand. The loud whistle, the whoosh of the cylinders letting steam and the boiler belching out dense coal-smoke in bursts as the engine strained to move forward…and the journeys that evoked romance and freedom in the past, only serve to spark nostalgic memories in most of the people today – Can you beat it?

We are a country of disparities and this is a classic one where a metric system, based on a meter width, the meter gauge was converted country wide to the older foot based system called the Indian broad gauge, where the gauge width is 5’ and 6” or 1.676mts. Ever wondered why? In America, we have this in Texas and San Francisco and is popularly known as Texas gauge.

How did it come about? At first around 1849, the railways in India were to be built on a four feet, eight and half inches gauge. Lord Dalhousie favored a 6 ft gauge while Simms, the consulting engineer favored the five feet and six inches gauge. The five and half feet gauge argument won and the first train which ran from Bombay to Thane used this so called broad gauge. The main technical reasoning was that this could provide greater stability during high winds and unpredictable weather, while also ensuring greater space between the wheels for bigger inside cylinders (older engine design). This continued for 12 years.

Lord Mayo the viceroy (following on the ideas of his predecessor Sir John Lawrence), however was a great enthusiast of the metric system and proceeded on that track. Of course we had some other widths too in India like the narrow gauge (hilly tracks) and the standard gauge (various metros). But in general India today is moving wider with the Unigauge project.

The advent of the railway in India did not take too much time actually, for it was in February 1804 that Richard Trevithick ran the world's first steam engine successfully on rails. The first goods train ran in 1825 and the one with passengers in 1830, in Britain. While there were some private fright lines in India as early as 1851, the first train ran in November 18, 1852, between Bombay and Thane. The commercial run took place on April 16, 1853, a Saturday, at 3:35 pm between Boree Bunder and Thane, traversing a distance just over 20 miles. The train, hauled by three engines -- Sindh, Sahib and Sultan -- carried as many as 400 passengers in its 14 coaches on its debut run. I had covered all this in an earlier article

While early steam locomotives were made in Britain, after the Second World War, a number of engines were imported from America and Canada. The WP 4-6-2 locomotive drew heavily from the experience drawn from the straightforward American/Canadian design of locomotives used during the war and was later built locally, totaling to some 755 units. The WPs hauled the most important mail trains in the post war era well into the early eighties chugging up to a speed of 120 kilometers per hour. Many of us would remember these from their unique whistle and the bullet shaped nose (smokebox cover). That was the original bullet train, the black beauty!!

As the risk of boring you over all these arcane technical details is pretty high, I will not get onto the stories of wood fired engines, diesels, electric and so on…Soon everybody will be talking about the bullet train anyway. But I will now get into some fun stuff (which a few railway men might remember) and take you into the days when the railway station was an architectural delight, when railway stations had bars, and as the traveler relaxed, found time to narrate a few tales, some tall, some short…

It was a time when the common got into the train wearing not his best clothes due to the risk of them becoming black by the time they got off, sweaty and smelly, It was a time when the engine driver had to use the spring of the expansion buffers to get started on a gradient, a time when animals were the risk on the rail and a time when engine drivers were considered demi gods. Do you remember how the bogie bathrooms used to run dry and it was only at an important junction that water was filled from the great looking overhead spigots? Today those are gone and you see hoses being hauled up or water pumped in through the side valves.

How many of you know the real meaning of the words shunting and humping? Well, aside from their sexual overtones, Shunting is not well understood, and if you wanted to know it was the method of moving the train into an alternative course. And what is humping? That was more related to freight train bogie sorting, using a man-made hill or hump. A switch engine gets these bogies or cars to the top of the hump, where the cars are uncoupled one at a time and then pushed down into the right track, to create the right goods train.

OK, now an interesting question. You as a passenger can amble up to the toilet and relive yourself, in a train, though there is some discomfort at times what with the neatness. Did you know that there was no toilet in any of the engines? In the old days the hapless driver had to wait till the train reached a station, then go over to the assistant guard’s compartment right behind the engine where a toilet is available. Or well, they had to use their ingenuity and available resources! I believe that the situation is being taken care of in new engines and also considering that we have women engine drivers these days!

But engine drivers are known to stop engines if they could get away with it. Such was the case of this driver who stopped his train so he could pick up fish (or something else) from his favorite shop on the way!

How many of you remember the VRR’s and NVRR’s (railway restaurants) in train stations? Each person will have a favorite. For me it was the VRR at Trivandrum, the food there was nothing short of excellent, during the 80’s. But before all that they had some very famous dishes which people remember and try to recreate even today. One such curry is the railway mutton curry with coconut milk, very similar to a Kerala moplah mutton curry with coconut milk. The railway omelet is what went on to become the Indian standard omelet with green chilies, tomatoes and onions and it is said that the longer lasting egg biryani was popularized after the railway packets containing them hit the stations.

Know what - while we did see them in some old steam engines plying the forest routes, the trains in the North always had cattle or cow guards (In America they are also known as pilots). Contrary to what you believe it was not invented for the Indian cow, but for the American cattle which roamed the tracks since the tracks were not fenced off. In the old days, the engine driver would run over cattle but after a few trains derailed, the cow catcher was invented and used for the first time in 1833 in the Camden and Amboy railroad (see that? we have ‘railroads’ in America but ‘railways’ everywhere else!) in their engine named John Bull. There was the Babbage plough type and the Dripps type cow catcher. The well specified cow catcher had to throw a 2,000 pound bull (wow! The measly Indian cow would weigh only a quarter of that!) a distance of 30 feet. Older catchers were made of wood but later substituted in iron. Though this heavy (half a ton) appendage weakened the engine, it was used often and continued till owners of cattle wised up or the cattle developed a better sense of avoiding the speeding iron animal.

I cannot help but quote this classic description by Victor Bayley of the usefulness of the cowcatcher- The slow-moving mind of a cow is quite unable to grasp the rapid movement of a train. Its bovine eyes stare uncomprehending at the smoke-spouting object that darts out from a neighboring cutting. In a moment all is over, the cow-catcher has flung the dead body afar. Many cases have also been reported of the cow catcher saving people who were lying on the rails with suicidal intent. But India is India, for there were reports of little boys and even men riding free on the cow catcher in those early days, out of sight of the engine driver!!

A classic story of the cow catcher being used for a slippery rail situation is recounted by Archibald Spens, dating all the way back to 1914 -We left Simla at one o’clock, reaching Kalka about a quarter to seven. For the greater portion of the time I sat on an improvised seat on the engine thus having an absolutely uninterrupted view of the gorgeous scenery, and enjoying all the manifold sensations of a motor run……We glided down mile after mile, through tunnel after tunnel, from our advanced position as smokeless and eerie as the tube from Piccadilly Circus to Trafalgar Square ; hooted advice to wandering sheep and overcurious cattle; till the descent was relieved from monotony by the engine refusing to drag us uphill to the station aforementioned. She was coaxed, fed and cursed in turn, only to retaliate by vibrating your spine and puffing furiously. At last, acknowledging defeat, a coal-black gentleman descended from the tender, climbed down on to the cow-catcher, tied a bucket of sand to a coupling, wound one hand round a stanchion and with the other sprinkled the contents of the pail on to the slippery line. This merely appeared to over-infuriate the mechanical lady, who shook herself into a perfect spasm of rage, until another member of the railway community joined his colleague on the cow-catcher, when both, with fingers all but touching the rails, poured handful after handful of sand upon the wheels and metals. And this, mark you, when we were vibrating with the force of a printing press in Fleet Street. Grunting and ill-humoured, she at last condescended to proceed, while a stoker opened the furnace, heaved shovelfuls of coal into the roaring flames and slammed back the door by jerking a long steel chain connected at the upper end with a cooler portion of her anatomy. And so we started off again, covering mile after mile in giddy crescents and circles and shivering gyrations, till approaching dusk and lowered temperature advised me to return to my toy carriage, soon thereafter to arrive at Kalka, and, later, Umballa, after a perfectly charming trip into the very heart of the Himalayas.

Time to leave the cows and the cowcatchers in peace….Let’s move on and I will not talk too much about tiger proofed windows, for that can be easily understood as a need in the North Eastern terrains…

There was a time when the first class compartment looked different – those early days when the palanquin and coolie, the bullock-cart and pony-post have long been numbered. William Sloane Kennedy explains - As a matter of course the cars are well ventilated, and the conductors rejoice in white jackets and tall pith helmets. On the long trunk lines, such as that between Calcutta and Madras, the first-class cars, which are the only ones that well to-do foreigners ever travel in, are so made that they can be converted into sleeping cars. Each car contains two compartments, and each compartment has a cushioned settee down either side, with a third crosswise along one end; the other end is occupied by a washing closet with shower-bath. Gentlemen always carry with them a counterpane padded with wool, and a small pillow or two. At night the settee is converted into a sleeping berth by the aid of the counterpane and pillows.

Now to the train whistle…So many mimicry artistes still remember that sound of the WP steam whistle, so distinguished, compared to the bleat we hear these days from the electric and diesel engines, so out of character. But did you know that there are formal codes used when the whistle is blown?

For example (see here for details)

3 short toots while running - Guard to apply brakes

4 short toots while running - Train cannot proceed on account of accident, failure or other cause

1 long toot on the run - Acknowledgement of guards signal

1 super long toot while on the run - Approaching level crossing or tunnel area

1 long, 1 short, 1 long, 1 short - Alarm chain pulled

And then again did you know there was something called MST or Madras standard time which was used by all of the Indian railways? IRFCA explains that Madras Time was a time zone established in 1802 by John Goldingham, the first official astronomer of the British East India Company in India when he determined the longitude of Madras as 5 hours, 21 minutes and 14 seconds ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. In the very early days of railways in India, local time was observed at each large city, in common with practice in most other countries at the time. Bombay and Poona, for instance, had their own local times differing by about 7 minutes. There were anomalies too, such as Ahmedabad which strangely observed Madras local time. Madras Time was, by 1905, effectively used for railway timetables over the whole subcontinent, across Lahore, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. Timetables for Bombay trains usually had the local times for trains printed alongside the Madras Time schedule, and trains arrived and departed according to the Madras Time schedule. Various stations remained synchronized through a 4PM telegraph signal until 1925 when new techniques came into vogue.

Nevertheless, just imagine, before IST came into being, a district administrator in British India had to deal with railway time, telegraph time, office time, cutcherry time, bazaar time and church time, all in the same locale!

There were incessant problems in adopting it, as the officials (RD Oldham GSI) explain - A more potent cause of resistance to the general adoption of the present standard time lies in the fact that it is Madras time. The citizen of Bombay, proud of being ‘primus in Indis ’ and of Calcutta, equally proud of his city being the Capital of India, and—for a part of the year— the Seat of the Supreme Government, alike look down on Madras, and refuse to change the time they are using, for that of what they regard as a benighted Presidency; while Madras, having for long given the standard time to the rest of India, would resist the adoption of any other Indian standard in its place.

The story of book stalls and pocket books in the railways is intimately connected to Higginbothams and AH Wheeler, and a time when they ruled the roost doling out newspapers and pocket books such as James Bond, James Hadley Chase, Nick Carter, Perry Mason and Enid Blyton!! They were just the kind of books to read, when you are all by yourself on the upper berth.

And there are railway stories, going all the way back to Ruskin Bond and Kipling. More recently, Bill Aitken relates the charming story where the colonial Saab snaps out an order in Hindi for ‘toast and marmalade’ to the turbaned railway waiter who vigorously nods, turns on his heels and arrives back through the gauze grilled doors a little later, with his perpetually large eyes and beaming face, carrying a cold greasy plate and with the announcement ‘toast and armlate’, which he gleefully plonks in front of the horrified saahib!!Oh, there are so many railway stories to tell, there has been an instance when a major railway scam ran its course, with 70 lakhs collected ‘to paint a section of rails’!

Many an English usage came from the railways such as ‘Full steam ahead’, ‘on the track’ and ‘drop the lot’. Remember the cockup story from Britain? Quoting Glen Hopkins - Class 150 multiple units in use in the UK have isolating cocks for doors and suspensions, located under the passenger seats in the saloon. On one occasion a driver, having suffered a burst air suspension bellows, asked a lady passenger, sitting on the seat in question, to open her legs, whilst he got to his cock! Then there was the railway stores guy who sent out a 100 soup plates because he had no ‘fish plates’ in stock, and there was the railway man who said to the hunter – when you were hunting and shooting, I was shunting and hooting!!

But some things happen only in India like the time when porters used monkeys, perhaps following the lead from a Ramayana retelling. Recently, the railway police in Calcutta arrested 25 porters and 28 monkeys after breaking up a train seat reservation scam. The officials explained that porters at Calcutta’s Howrah station had trained monkeys to jump through the windows of long-distance trains and plonk themselves down in any available seat. Passengers then had to pay the porters to have the monkeys removed. Initially porters occupied the seats and then sold the space themselves. Noww this was not legal, and when the porters were harried by the police for the wrongdoings, they resorted to this novel method!!

Time to wind up. It is sad that the children of today with their heads stuck into their Ipads will never hear the WP’s whistle, or recall sights of the engine driver with his kerchiefed head sticking out, the grimy fireman shoveling coal into the boiler or the glum looking guard riding alone in the last compartment, or the little coal breaker hunched over the pile of coals. And they will never experience the railway quarters and those lovely Anglo Indian families, especially the pretty damsels and their beaus on java mobikes….…Ah! Those were some days!!!

I cannot resist quoting this classic observation by Aitken – The journey back from Kerala was one of the most delightful train passages I can remember, with charming company, intelligent conversation and exchanges of genuine regard. But the moment we hit the Devanagari script, of N India, the cultural buoyancy of the south dipped and became progressively more submerged. As we neared Delhi, the compartment became crowded with interlopers, loud and nasally aggressive to prove that Hindi at least on the score of noise can claim to be one of the leading languages in the world. From being a spotlessly clean compartment, the litter and mess of Aryan culture soon asserted itself. The conductor had made himself scarce and the level of verbal abuse rose. Better dressed, better educated but pigmented to no advantage, the Kerala Company went into its shell.

Bravo, Bill…well said!!!

The ride is done with, the whistle still blows in your head, the steam whooshes through your ears as the wind rustles your hair, the bones ache after sleeping on the wooden sleepers, the fan took so many prods and spins with your comb to keep running, you keep one mudka (disposable tea cup made of mud) as keepsake in your luggage and you look like Oliver Twist after a chimney sweep, grime stuck all over, smelling of soot and looking bewildered… you are at the end of your journey, but that it was , a jolly good ride…

References

Exploring Indian railways - Bill Aitken

A trainload of Indian Jokes – KR Vaidyanathan

Indian Railway Stories -Ruskin Bond

The complete story of Indian Railways - Rajendra Aklekar (dnaindia-2013)

IRFCA articles

The WP's steam run for those who have no idea what I am talking about...

pics - from Google images, wikipedia - thanks to all uploaders

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a happy new year......

LAKSHMI Nandan MENON (1899–1994)

Few would remember this unassuming, khadi clad diplomat who handled external affairs for India during and after the Chinese debacle. She held together with great dignity, the fraying edges of the visible Indian fabric, the declining clout in the international scene and the last vestiges of the NAM or nonaligned movement. Lakshmi Menon was instrumental in a determined defense of the fort after the mood went south at Delhi’s South block, led by the downcast Jawaharlal Nehru, deeply hurt and depressed after the Chinese betrayal. Lakshmi who was in the thick of things, her words and actions deeply rooted in Gandhian principles, chose not to pen her autobiography, nor did well known colleagues and writers doting on populist figures, mention her in their writings. That was always what she was famous for, working quietly behind the scenes, trying to usher order amidst chaos.

Crisscrossing the world, meeting and hobnobbing with world leaders and dignitaries did nothing to her ego and she chose to let her work do the talking. An intense and skillful orator, she easily held her ground in parliament debates and rapid-fire but sometimes foolishly crude questioning by politicians of lesser intellect. Reading about her, my only feeling is the sadness that people of my generation and those in the future never saw people of stupendous character like her. In the end, sadly, history books and collective memory tend to leave out women of such superlative talent and ability, women like Lakshmi Menon, who carried on quietly and effortlessly with their path breaking work in that cacophonic Delhi world of politics.

As AIWC’s Shobana Ranade wrote, she was not only at home with the rich and famous but also well accepted by the lonely and the lost labor class women in her home state. Perhaps it was all these qualities which made the higher being bestow upon her a long 95 years in this world among us and well, she spent each of those years as one should, in selfless fashion and with strict honesty, whilst crusading for women’s rights.

Lakshmi N. Menon was a teacher, lawyer, politician and activist. Born in March 1899 at Trivandrum to the famous reformer, educationalist - Rama Varma Thampan and Madhavikutty Amma, the little girl lost her mother at the age of 6 and was brought up by her grandmother Lakshmikutty Amma.

Lakshmi studied at the Maharajas school in Trivandrum, continuing on at the Maharajas arts college to attain her BA in history in 1920, together with the University medal for proficiency in English. She then took to teaching at the Maharajas high school, while at the same time pursuing a master’s degrees in economics and social sciences, which she got in 1922. She then moved to Lady Willingdon training college, Madras and sailed across the seas to the Maria Grey training college London, acquiring high qualifications as an educator.During the 1920’s and 30’s, a number of luminaries influenced her thought, people like Annie Besant, Margret Cousins and Sarojini Naidu. She was in London when the ‘Mother India’ book furor erupted.

Lakshmi began her teaching career at Queen Mary’s College, Madras, where she taught till 1926 after which she moved to the Ghokale School in Calcutta. In May 1930, she was married off to the well-known Prof V.K. Nandan Menon, then a professor at the Lucknow University. She followed her husband to Lucknow where she taught at the Isabella Thoburn College until 1932 by which time she also picked up a law degree from the Lucknow University. She then practiced law till 1935 and picked up a diploma in French language from Paris in 1939. When her husband took a senior position at Patna, Lakshmi became the principal of the women’s training college in Patna 1951-53. She would always encourage community lunches cooked in one hour while teaching at the Patna College. In those lunches, they sang, debated, joked and handled more serious subjects. That was her method of team creation and empowerment of women and breaking student teacher barriers.

It was in London that Lakshmi Menon met Nehru for the first time, perhaps in one of Krishna Menon’s many gatherings at the India league. Later they travelled for a seminar together in Russia and it was while she was in Patna that Nehru who remembered the bright, intelligent and chirpy lady, convinced her to join politics and nominated her to the Rajya Sabha, getting her elected from Bihar in 1952. He later appointed her to the UN general assembly and as his minister for external affairs.

At the White House

Her exposure to the world scene started in 1948 when she was an alternate delegate to the UN general assembly 3^rd session. She then attended conferences in Beirut and other places, while continuing on her work with the UN. Overcoming initial reservations she served well, also attending to UN affairs a number of times as Alternate Delegate from India. In 1949-1950 she headed the UN Section on the Status of Women and Children. She started with the Indian government in 1952 as a deputy minister for external affairs, then as parliamentary secretary to Nehru 1955-59, continuing on as the Deputy Minister of External Affairs (Nehru was Minister for External affairs). She held the foreign affairs portfolio during the Chinese invasion and worked closely with Nehru to promote the concept of Panchsheel and the Non-Aligned Movement. Lakshmi was also involved in handling the American VOA installation issue and the problems which cropped up. In recognition of her services, the nation awarded her the Padma Bhushan in 1957, the second Keralite after Vallathol and one year before KPS Menon.

Nehru’s cabinet and working team was crowded with a number of Malayali’s and many of them are well known and much talked about. KM Panikkar, KK Chettur, VP Menon, KPS Menon, VK Krishna Menon, ACN Nambiar, NR Pillai, N Raghavan, MK Vellodi, TN Sheshan, A K Damodaran, KR Narayanan, Thomas Abraham (but I shudder adding MO Mathai to this list)... The list goes on and on. But Lakshmi N Menon, who is hardly mentioned, stood out as the lone serving female diplomat from Kerala. Nehru would often joke that the bureaucracy was afflicted with menon-gitis those days, but adding that jokes apart, they were always good at their work. In the periphery there were other women diplomats and politicians from Kerala, such as K Rukmini Menon, Ammu Swaminathan, Kuttimalu Amma, Leela Damodara Menon etc…

Following Nehru’s death, she also had a brief stint in LB Shastri's cabinet (though they had some issues when Shastri was inserted between Lakshmi and Nehru as External affairs minister while Nehru was sick) but left Delhi after Indira Gandhi took over, retiring to Trivandrum. Her stay at Delhi and as the president of AIWC (All India Women’s conference) is well remembered by all her peers and many recorded their memories, affection and immense gratitude in one of the AIWC souvenir publications.

It was in 1955 that Lakshmi Menon who had all this time been working for AIWC became its president. When reading about anecdotes written about her by her AIWC colleagues in the small booklet issued after her death, one would not miss the paragraph written by Lakshmi Raghu Ramaiah where she mentions how furious Lakshmi was during an excursion, when the men sat in one car and the wives sat in another car while setting out for a trip to see the Hampi ruins, tartly remarking that these were not the Ramayana days for such divisions.

She is often remembered as a great cook who took pains to cook special dishes with her own hands even in the middle of her busy schedules and when somebody visited her, and everybody noticed her humility- for example many remembered that even as a powerful minister with close association to Nehru, she would clear her own baggage at an airport and roll it out in a trolley herself. She was also remembered for her love for Bengali food and her promotion of simple Malayali cooking.

Another interesting anecdote is around Rajaji’s visit to Patna to speak at the university. He was met by Dr Nandan Menon, (Lakshmi’s husband) the vice chancellor at the airport, who was introduced by another local minister to Rajaji as the husband of Lakshmi Menon. Apparently Rajaji was annoyed at hearing this and in typical fashion he retorted that in Delhi, Lakshmi Menon was known as Mrs Nandan Menon. This of course went badly with the university students who demonstrated when he tried to speak at the senate hall.

At the UN

She is remembered as a tall woman with an infectious smile. She wore white khadi sarees alright, but when she went abroad it was a silk saree, as can be seen in the White House photo with Kennedy, (perhaps it was khadi silk). She would always look directly at the person she talked to and Leela Damodara Menon recalls an instance when Leela introduced herself as Mrs KA Damodara Menon (Menon incidentally was known to Lakshmi and was related to her). Lakshmi just smiled and asked her ‘But what is your name’? She was not a thunderous orator according to her peers, but logically clear in eloquence. Lakshmi was a voracious reader and a versatile writer. Her published articles are treasures, and if some of you ever get a chance to read them, as I have had, take the opportunity.

She always brought on new ladies into positions of power, though never mastering Hindi even after years in Delhi. Her dream was to see all Indian women literate by 2000 AD. Many narrate visiting her at her home at 13 Ashoka Rd., eating her home cooked food and recall the story of the establishment of the AIWC headquarters and the purchase of the building from the tough seller, after encashing her husband’s provident fund certificates (read the referenced Hindu article for the full story). People say she was a tough task master, a perfectionist, humorous, and never a ‘party faithful’ toeing any dictum. She always sent hand written replies, and never depended on a stenographer. All her friends refer to her as Didi, akka, kuttiedathi, amma or my friend, a true testament to a likeable and affectionate soul. As a minister, she did weekly AIR broadcasts on world affairs. Ask yourself, which minster does that today?

Another cause she campaigned for was prohibition, after seeing the many woes in Travancore. She was the Vice President of All India Prohibition Council along with Morarji Desai. She later took up addiction issues, and in 1988, along with A. P. Udayabhanu and Johnson J. E, established the Alcohol & Drug Information Centre (ADIC) and served as its President till her death. She also served as President of the All India Committee for the Eradication of Illiteracy among Women and also the Kasturba Gandhi Trust, New Delhi. After retirement from Delhi politics, she took to social work and writing, penning a book on Indian women. She helped found the Federation of University Women in India, and was behind the concept of Mother’s Day in India, appreciating the work of women at their homes.

With Mme Soong Chin Ling and BC Roy

She was also involved in setting up ISRO in her home state of Kerala. "On January 21, 1963, Lakshmi N. Menon, a Minister of State in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet, replying on his behalf to a question in Parliament, announced that India would be locating its first rocket-launching facility at Thumba, a fishing village close to Trivandrum."

Once she put up this poignant question while at Bombay - How can Bombay the most affluent city sleep with a conscience having Dharavi, such a slum, in its middle?

Nandan Menon

Vadakke Kurupath Nandan Menon, Esq., B.A. (Hons.) (Mad.), M.A. (Oxon.) her husband, was a luminary himself. He served as a professor in various universities and was Vice Chancellor of Kerala and Patna universities. Short statured compared to the tall Lakshmi, they made an interesting and wonderful couple. During the late 60’s Prof Nandan Menon spent some time at Honolulu, duly superannuated after his tenure at the IIPA, to the institute of advanced projects.

Lakshmi lost her partner and husband in 1974 and had no children, perhaps resulting from issues over an early miscarriage. Towards the end she got a bit depressed seeing the decline in true voluntarism and the demand of volunteers for compensation and positions, she even suggested that the election commission get rid of symbols on ballot papers forcing the illiterate to at least learn enough to read names.

Later in her life she was prone to falls and after one such fall in 1994, she had fractured her femur and got hospitalized. In fact her last appearance was when aged 95 to felicitate Election commissioner TN Sheshan with a Ponnada (gold brocaded shawl) at Trivandrum. Shortly thereafter, she had a fall in her bathroom. Complications arose during confinement at the hospital, she picked up a chest infection and succumbed to it. Perhaps it was time…..

Her house ‘Plain view’ located in the heart of Trivandrum was donated to the Sharada mission after her death. She also donated her late husband Prof. V. K. Nandan Menon's collection of over 4,000 books to the Trivandrum Public Library.

Until the end of her time, she had but one question and that was her main driver – why should women be denied things which are easily available to men?????

All I can do in conclusion, is to reiterate what one colleague mentioned - that she belonged to the vanishing breed, the last among stalwarts. Sometimes I wish I could listen to her speech and read her handwriting, and I will always remember her fondly, a person I got to know from reading many volumes and books covering the Nehru years.

That was Lakshmi Menon, yet another giant from the past, on whose shoulders we stand….

References

Profiles of Lakshmi Menon – AIWC publication 30-11-1995

Women pioneers in India’s renaissance – Ed Sushila Nayar, Kamala Manekar

Learning from Life – Dharni P Sinha

Hindu Article – CS Lakshmi

NB – It is said that Lakshmi Menon is one of the signatories of the constitution of India document, an 80,000 word document (signed by all 284 members of the constituent assembly) which you can see in Delhi. However I am not so sure about that since she was elected into the Rajya Sabha only in 1952. Perhaps she signed one of the later amendments.

The Indian Constitution incidentally is the longest written constitution that any sovereign country has. It has 448 articles, 12 schedules and over 100 amendments. It took the members of the Constituent Assembly two years, 11 months, and 17 days to draft the Constitution for Independent India. The original document of Constitution of India which was hand drafted in both Hindi and English language, contained approximately 80,000 words. The Constitution was signed by 284 members of the Constituent Assembly two days before it came into effect on 26^thJan 1950.

Pics

White house pics - Robert Knudsen, Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, AIWC souvenir

Some time ago, my pageviews crossed the million mark (this is after the google-stats came in, I had another counter whose stats I lost, midway). My heartfelt thanks to all the readers, those who came with a purpose and also those who stumbled by. Some continued on, some stuck to reading what they liked and some became my good friends.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart….

Operation - No name, No heroes

By now most of you would have seen the airlift movie and decided one way or the other about how the hundred thousand plus people were rescued from Kuwait. I watched the movie too and it took me back to those days when I was living in Saudi Arabia, just across the border, right through that war.

It all comes back vividly, starting with the dinner at ‘Rice Bowl’ in Brigade road Bangalore. I was to fly back to Riyadh the next day and the dinner tasted heavenly. But soon I was doubled up with stomach cramps and bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. The flight out of Bangalore to Bombay was at 8 or so in the morning and I was in no shape to make it, but my cousin managed to get find a doctor who was up early and I got a shot which stabilized things a bit. At Bombay, I had to wait until the early hours of the next morning to catch the Saudia flight to Riyadh. As I woke up in the transit hotel room and picked up the newspapers on Friday, August 3^rd 1990, I saw the big bold headlines – Saddam invades Kuwait.

At about 2 a.m. local time on 2^nd August, over hundred thousand Iraqi forces marched into Kuwait. Kuwait’s virtually nonexistent defense was overwhelmed, and the Kuwaiti populace fled. The Emir of Kuwait, his family, and other government leaders fled to Dammam in Saudi Arabia, and within hours Kuwait City had been captured and the Iraqis had established a provincial government.

Interrogations of Saddam by the FBI interrogator Piro many years later revealed that what really infuriated Saddam was the Kuwaiti Emir Al Sabah’s remark to the Iraqi foreign minister that he would not stop doing what he was doing (overproduction against OPEC recommendations even with the oil price in the dumps at close to $12 per barrel) until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute. According to former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, "every US$1 drop in the price of a barrel of oil caused a US$1 billion drop in Iraq's annual revenues triggering an acute financial crisis in Baghdad.

Back in our office, things were going on as usual, but there was much talk of what was happening in Kuwait. News trickled in from BBC radio, for we did not have any CNN or any kind of international channels in the heavily censored Saudi Arabia. Rumors floated around, of US Ambassador April Glaspie’s meeting with Saddam, Saddam’s anger at Kuwaiti slant drilling into Rumaila oil wells, Saddam’s inability to pay the 14b$ Kuwaiti debt, the low oil price and all that stuff. There was a certain amount of nervousness in the air and many a person thought that Saddam would target Saudi next. Others countered that Saudi was an American ally and so the Americans would protect Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless business continued on as usual, my family returned back after their vacation and life was back to a semblance of normalcy.

Operation Desert Shield was soon put into place, US forces were being sent to Riyadh by the thousands and there was talk of Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait. Across the Border, Saddam defiantly announced that Kuwait was Iraq’s 19^th province and settled a no-interference treaty with Iran, by sharing the waters of Shatt al Arab. Saddam then installed Alaa Hussein Ali as the Prime Minister of the "Provisional Government of Free Kuwait" and Ali Hassan al-Majid, as the de facto governor of Kuwait.

In Kuwait life had turned topsy-turvy. Kuwaiti’s became targets for the Iraqi army riffraff, and as the westerners flew out, Filipino and Indian expatriates wondered what to do next. The Palestinian and Yemeni expat worker threw their lot with the invader. Over 300,000 Kuwaitis fled Kuwait. Many of the Kuwaitis reached Dammam and Riyadh and an entire housing complex in Riyadh with thousands of empty apartments, as though waiting for them, was granted for their stay. A Kuwaiti government in exile was established at Taif.

The Indian in Kuwait was in a quandary. They were not targeted by the Iraqi, they did not invite their ire except for the reported rape of many Indian (and Filipina) housemaids who were left alone in the empty homes after their Kuwaiti masters fled. They could walk around freely, though remaining careful and humble of the gun toting teenager and visibly hyper ventilating boy soldiers. For once their color and countenance came to their rescue, and the darker Indian look ensured safety. So what was the expat worker and his family supposed to do? Leave, or stay and work for new masters or what? It was soon clear that there was no way out with a closure of ports and airports and the implementation of UN sanctions.

Many do not know why India and Iraqi’s were on friendly terms at that point of time. Starting with the “Treaty of Perpetual peace and friendship” in 1952 and an agreement of cooperation on the cultural affairs in 1954, Iraq supported the Indian government in almost all global fronts (except the Indian involvement in the Bangladesh crisis). Saddam visited India in 1974 and Indira Gandhi reciprocated in 1975. The trade relationship flourished with huge construction projects carried out by India and deployment of thousands of workers for a while but the Iran-Iraq war brought it down to a crash. The oil workers from India relocated to other gulf countries, but the relationship remained strong. Iraq had supported India’s right to conduct nuclear weapons on May 11 and May 13, 1988. In 2000, the Vice President Tahe Ramadhan’s visit to India and on August 6, 2002 President Saddam Hussein conveyed Iraq’s “unwavering support” to India over the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan.

And so, India was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2nd 1990. On the other hand, India was dependent on Iraq and Kuwait for 40% of its annual oil imports and in addition to a substantial trade relationship, an estimated 185,000 Indian workers were now stranded in the area of hostilities.Until then, India imported about 22 million tons of crude oil from Iraq, and 1.5 million tons from Kuwait. With the war, India had to approach Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Venezuela for making up the short fall. The sharp increases in the price of crude oil from US $ 14 to $ 30 per barrel resulted in a decline in India’s foreign exchange position and increased its oil import bill up to US $ 100 million. The remittances dropped by Rs 200 crores, exports dropped by Rs 360 crores and the expatriation costs were expected to be Rs 400 crores. The lost contracts worked out to Rs 400 crores and in total the balance of payment deteriorated by 3 billion dollars.

The ministers and bureaucrats faced a difficult situation - at least some of the older staff may have remembered a previous calamity when the government erred and hundreds of thousands of Indians died. That was Burma in 1942, as the WWII’s Eastern was intensified, and when close to half a million Indians died in their flight to India or in the death railway, due to Japanese callousness. The British Indian government led by an errant Churchill was more interested in feeding its army and British citizens rather than the famine stricken masses in Bengal or those in Burma. The death march to the Assam border on one side and the death railway in South east Burma on the other, decimated thousands to disease and malnutrition, let alone fatigue. Most of the victims were poor Indians, mostly from the erstwhile Madras presidency - Tamilians, Malayali’s and Telugu workers and their families.

The 1990-91 Indian government did not perhaps want a repeat of that horrible tragedy. A majority of these marooned civilians in Kuwait were incidentally, Malayali’s. Did they remember all this while preparing to act? I don’t know. If they did, did they do the right thing or wrong? In many ways the situations are somewhat similar. The Indian government was headed by the relatively inexperienced Janata dal ministry headed by VP Singh. IK Gujral was the external affairs minister. Arif Mohammed Khan’s team dealt with civil aviation and the surface transport ministry was with KP Unnikrishnan (with additional charge of Communications ministry). Unnikrishnan, incidentally, was not famed for fast action on any files which reached him.

Suresh Kumar Pillai in his paper mentions the total powerlessness of the Kerala state Government in

the Delhi power corridors, since the leftist party though supporting the central government had little bargaining power. He mentions that K.P. Unnikrishnan, the lone Malayalee member of the cabinet acknowledged to the press that even he, was not able to access the files that he needed from external affairs Ministry. And so, as the ministers and politicians wrangled in Delhi, the situation in Kuwait simply heated up. The rabble rousing Iraqi army made life miserable for the people still in Kuwait. Further problems ensued when Palestinian looters started attacking Indian homes.

Two weeks had elapsed after the invasion. The suave IK Gujral made his visit to Baghdad to secure support for the evacuation of Indians. He passed by Kuwait, irritated people with some unnecessary comments but promised that speedy help was underway and took back with him the very rich and famous Indians in what was infamously known as the millionaires flight, irritating the poor masses who felt horribly slighted. A sufferer recounts - When we asked Gujral what will happen to our investments in Kuwait, he replied, 'I told you for so many years to invest in India. You didn't listen to me. Now you will have to suffer.

A couple of military flights were arranged at first, with leaders in the Indian community working with the embassy to pick out the infirm, elderly, women and children to fly back. But once they had all returned to India, the government realized that military transport – which is much more cumbersome because of air space clearances – would not do the job.

Two sources gave me a reasonable idea of the situation in Kuwait during the next month. One is a book written by O Misbah about those terrible days as well as his flight from Kuwait to Jordan, and the other a very nice blog by Roji Abraham. I will summarize what they experienced and how thousands of Indians moved from Kuwait to Amman. They lived in fear in their own houses, sometimes friends lounging together in one of the houses to minimize cooking and to assuage their fears. Food was not impossible to come by if you could pay and basics like rice and spices were available if you wandered around. Offices shut down, airlines stopped operation, medicines were all gone, most shops and large Kuwaiti homes got looted. The Palestinians who remained professed support to Saddam and the Iraqis started a campaign of destruction of the Kuwaiti identity by organized looting and destruction of government records. Large posters and mosaic frescos of Saddam went up. Some Indians hoped to be rescued from Kuwait but others saw that it was best to join an exodus to Amman where it was perhaps possible to find a flight back to India, as food started to run out and as all the money they had in their person ran out.

The logistics problem was that Amman was directly across Iraq and to reach there the desert road trip transiting Baghdad totaled to some 1800 km. There were quite a few private buses run by Iraqis charging a hefty fee and most families took that route. In the process, they left behind whatever they had, traveling with bare minimum by way of clothes and secreting money (the dinars which they had were by this time were worthless) in their bodies. Some fortunately had dollars in hand and pooled it to help others in the bus. Both the bus drivers and gangs operating on the way boarded and robbed the passengers at will according to some reports. But by and far, the Iraqi soldier did not maim any Indians. The overnight trip brought them to Baghdad where they somehow managed their morning ablutions and picked up some bread and fruits before continuing on to the Jordan border. Their destination was the border crossing points of Jordan. This was the unorganized flight, based on the initiatives of individuals, using their money, courage and resources.

Was there some kind of organization which tried to help the unorganized? Actually there was .Was the Indian embassy closed? Yes and no, for the embassy was shifted to Basra, as ordered by Saddam, while a lone officer named Sen Gupta remained. Was a school used by the committee or some of the refugees? Apparently KTB Menon’s Indian school in Salmiya was. Indians crowded the embassy compound after supplies, especially water supplied by tankers for a price, were slowing down. The only item available freely and in abundance was the Kobus – or the pita bread of the Middle East.

The person who assumed leadership of the Indian citizens committee ICC, was the architect and well connected Harbajan Singh Vedi. He also took over as the defacto ambassador, since IK Gujral had authorized him to issue and sign passports and travel documents, and he played a pivotal role in the later initiatives. He formed a 51 member unofficial committee coordinating the events related to the organized part of the evacuation. Amongst its members were Sunny Mathews, Narindar Singh Sethi, N.V.K. Warrier, Abhi Varikad, Thomas Chandy, Roy Abraham, K.K. Nair, Ali Hussain and many others. Many of them had large investments in Kuwait and did not rush out, hoping for a settlement which never happened.

Sengupta the representative of the Indian embassy records that 80 buses would roll out every day to Jordan. He explains - We would do the paperwork for undertaking the journey in the morning before getting the list of passengers ready for the next day. The first challenge was to prepare over 100,000 travel documents. Delhi had initially sent two planes to Kuwait for evacuation. Ships began arriving a lot later. With nearly a lakh people stranded, I had to look at the alternative of bulk evacuation by road. Sunny Mathews, an extremely resourceful Indian working in Toyota, did a great job negotiating with private bus operators for evacuation via Iraq to Jordan by road.

Communication was a problem as the telephone network went down. A Malayali HAM radio enthusiast Shaji John Verghese came to the rescue setting up a link in the embassy. Verghese, using the call sign of ek-do-teen tango, called India, often speaking to the Ministry of External Affairs. He spoke through another HAM radio operator in Kerala in Malayalam just in case the Iraqis were monitoring the airwaves. But all he could do was get situation reports to Delhi and get the latest news of the events related to the war situation.

Buses organized by the ICC after agreement with Saddam, started shepherding those who wanted to leave through Basra, Baghdad and eventually to the Jordanian border. As the buses started their arduous trips to the Jordan borders, a number of people managed to escape through three freighter ships.

In September, 725 Indians managed to leave on the private freighter Safeer which had been stranded in Kuwaiit. Safeer (a freighter meant to carry 30 passengers) carried 722 passengers, including 265 women and children in a 48-hour haul to Dubai, no mean feat and a harrowing tale. While the owners of Safeer - tried to persuade officials in the shipping, defense and external affairs ministries in India for authorizations as it was a Panama registered cargo ship not supposed to transport people, Capt Modak negotiated with authorities in Dubai. Being a cargo ship, MV Safeer wasn’t legally allowed to ferry passengers. Life jackets and life boats were sourced in Kuwait, and temporary toilets made from drums with gunny bags to provide as a curtain around the makeshift toilets. It made the trip safely, followed by the ship Akbar with 1800 people. It was followed by Tipu Sutan which also ferried some 700 or so people to Dubai. Dubai’s Indian leaders organized to receive and repatriate them to India.

Whoever could flee, fled on road and finally some 20,000 Indians chose to remain in Kuwait. On November 7, after more than two months of bone breaking work, Sengupta relinquished charge of the embassy and left Kuwait. Now we move to the terrible border camps in Jordan where all these people in the bus trips landed up.

The Indian embassy/special office in Amman was manned by Gajendra Singh, a very interesting character whom I met many years later in Istanbul Turkey during a dinner. His own role in the airlift is stated as exemplary by some and circumspect by others. Nevertheless they were deeply involved and participating, all the way. The Indian embassy had moved early to rent out rooms at astronomical prices in order to house refugees at apartments and hotels. While some found refuge in these rooms (30-40 in a room!) till they were ferried out to camps and then out by airlifts, the vast majority went directly to and spent even more time in transit camps in the desert braving sandstorms and fistfights.

These camps, remembered as hellholes by the survivors were, Azraq, Shaalan 1 and 2, Mercy and a few others. The Azraq camp northeast of Amman, built by the International Red Cross, was somewhat OK, but the living conditions in Shaalan near the Iraqi border, were harsh. Initially over 40 percent of the refugees in this camp were without shelter and by mid-September, lacked food and water making the situation critical, with the temperature rising to the higher 40’s and dipping to chilling teens at night. Salil Tripathi and Ramesh Menon wrote about the situation (see linked article)

Those who have been able to leave have had to brave the desert, marauding greenhorn soldiers en route and scorching 50-degree heat. They have come in thousands: Egyptians in sweat-soaked dishdashes, Bangladeshis in tattered lungis, Pakistanis in dust-smeared Pathani outfits. And, of course, the ubiquitous Indians - Sikhs, Gujaratis, Maharashtrians, Goans, and Malayalees. They haven't eaten properly for days, their hair is rough and covered with dust, their skin parched, their voices hoarse, and their throats dry. Nearly 26,000 people, including around 2,000 Indians, cross Iraq every day and reach Ruwishied. Some camps had primus stoves and gave out sardines and rice to cook, but at others they had to stand in long snaking lines and collect Kobus and water, as and when the Red Cross trucks came. The toilets were primitive with tin sheets.

As the refugees piled into these camps on a daily basis, the pressure to get them out was terrible on both the Indian embassy staff in Jordan as well as the central government in Delhi. Soon the newspapers in Kerala started reporting through their reporters visiting the camps, of the sad plight of their compatriots in the desert, adding to the pressure cooker tight situation. Somebody had to act and the South block fingers pointed at the surface transport minister Unnikrishnan as well as the civil aviation minister Arif Mohammed khan.

Readers may wonder how a surface transport and telecom minister got involved in this international fracas. Well simply because he was from Kerala and because the vast majority of the Kuwaiti refugees in Amman were from Kerala. It was also probably because the ministry of shipping was under surface transport at that time, and the original plan may have been to use ships to bring out the big number of refugees.

In a 1991 interview Unni explained - "There was much anxiety back home about the fate of the Indians in Kuwait, especially in Kerala from where thousands had been working in the Gulf. Initially, there were some misgivings about the logistical and diplomatic constraints involved. But some of us convinced the Prime Minister and got the cabinet mandate to carry out the plans. I was entrusted with the task of overseeing the operation," he added. Unni was deputed to Amman with Khan, to oversee the situation on the ground.

Unni says "Having been authorized by the Cabinet, the first thing I did was to alert the Indian missions in West Asian countries. The first option was to seek the help of IAF. The Pakistanis and Iranians would not provide air clearances to the air force Ilyushin II -76 cargo and troop carrier planes, Iraq also refused. The IL76 planes fondly called gajraj (elephant king) could have carried large numbers of refugees directly to India, but the plan failed. Ships were not allowed into Kuwait and the UN embargo made it initially impossible and then as recorded by Unnikrishnan there was a bigger problem, some water lanes had been mined by the Allies.

Unnikrishnan and the Delhi think-tank had in the meantime hit upon an idea. Over 14 Airbus 320’s had been grounded after the fatal crash of IA605 at Bangalore just a few months earlier. The VP Singh government grounded the rest of the 320 fleet pending investigation. The evacuation team decided to use these Airbus A320 after necessary checks. But they were short haul planes with a capacity of just 180-190 seats. So the plan was to use them to ferry the Indians from Amman to Dubai and use bigger planes to get them out of Dubai and back to Bombay. It would also provide much training on these fly by wire planes for the Indian pilots with clear desert visibility.

Things did not go well originally at Amman when Unnikrishnan approached the Jordanian regents around the 26th of August, who, while extending moral support, said the country was not in a position to provide logistics. In fact when he went to meet the king and later the refugees at the camp, he was abused, booed upon, pelted with eggs and tomatoes and jeered by the suffering Indians at the camp. Thoroughly shaken but galvanized, he talked to VP Singh from Amman, to hasten the evacuation. KM Abduraheem also visited the camps with Unni to pacify the suffering humanity.

K.P. Unnikrishnan who met Saddam and got the approval for the airlift, termed the camp conditions "unimaginable". Dilip Bobb and Salil Tripathi explain - The situation was becoming terrible at the border camps - The teeming mass of humanity stretches as far as the eye can see. The strips of cloth the refugees have tied together as makeshift tents offer little protection from the hammering heat or the blinding sands. Jordanian authorities have named the makeshift camp Sha'alaan. The refugees, have christened it 'hell on earth'. Fights break out over a piece of khuboos (unleavened bread) or a bottle of mineral water. Here, out in the barren wastes, it is Darwinism in action: the survival of the fittest. Burly sardars surge through the crowds milling around water trucks, elbowing aside undernourished Gujaratis and Malayalis.

Meanwhile Air India’s pilots were wary of the airlift since some of their pilots had been held in Iraq and had no security assuraces. This was cleared up and a field office was set up in Amman with external affairs ministry’s KP Fabien, Air India’s Mascarenhas, others like GK Pillai, C Almayo, Rajeev Sadanandan, Ratan Sehgal and Anand Kumar, while refugees continued pouring into the camps, waiting for transport to India. “It’s not like we didn’t make mistakes," said Mascarenhas later. “We misjudged numbers a lot and, remember, we didn’t have mobile phones there. When people ask me how we did it, I say, I looked up at heaven and said, god help me. When we landed in Amman, there were already 5,000 to 7,000 Indians there and the numbers started swelling immediately.”

Out in the camps, the camp coordinators would publish lists of people who were to head to Amman, from where Air-India did the ‘airlift’. There were other mercy carriers as well, such as Emirates airlines, but Air India flew the maximum out. The first airlift took place on August 13, on the tenth day after the invasion and continued for 59 days until the last Indian wanting to return was back.

Shekhar Gupta records - Queen Aaliyah airport remained open through the war and most international airlines continued their scheduled flights uninterrupted. The then Civil Aviation Minister Arif Mohammed Khan was on board the first Air India flight to land in Amman for the Airlift and Telecom Minister K.P. Unnikrishnan spent almost two months in Amman helping out, particularly as a majority of workers were his fellow Malayalis.

The AI AB 320 flight’s increased their frequencies and eventually, Air India would go on to fly 488 flights over 59 days, carrying 111,711 passengers, still unmatched in the Guinness book of records. It was a stupendous task carried out with so little, by so few and so quickly.

Whatever said and done, ‘Airlift’ the movie brought attention to a sad 6 month period when thousands of Indians in Kuwait saw hell. Just so most people get the right perspective, I suspect that the character played by Akshay Kumar was the late HS Vedi who headed the 51 member ICC in Kuwait, though the individual also represents many others of the ICC such as KTB Menon, Sunny Thomas, KK Nair and so on, each who played his part in creating a semblance of order amidst the chaos of occupation and a desperate need to fly back home….

It is alright to be bitter, especially if you have struggled to save money in the gulf and lost all of it, and for that reason many were and are bitter, even today. They wonder how the westerner flew out while they suffered in indignity. They remember their experiences at the embassies and compare it to the others, and I tend to agree, having been to our embassies scores of times. I too truly hope that Indian embassies of the future become the faces of a proud country and not show themselves to be windows of red tape and corruption. But then again, consider for a moment, which embassy handles the kind of NRI volume like the Indian embassy or consulate, with so little by way of funds?

I met Gajendra Singh, the ambassador to Jordan, whom we talked about earlier, in Istanbul, some years later, but we did not discuss all this, we talked about the influence of Turkic languages on Urdu, a subject which he was a master on.

Nevertheless, we have to contend with the political horse trading in Delhi– even today, Delhi politics is regional and caste based just as KP Unnikrishnan once attested. Malayali’s are remembered in Delhi only when the central coffers need gulf money to prop them up or when somebody wants to bash Krishna Menon (who was actually less Malayali than any Malayali) and his Chinese war handling.

It is veritable horse trading at best. Now you may wonder how horse trading got such a reputation, right? I will tell you that story soon. Maybe AK Antony and Shashi Tharoor will recount their stories too, someday. Unfortunately it also teaches you the sad fact of life – To each unto his own….

As for me, well, I was one of the first civilians visiting Kuwait on the heels of the American and Saudi military forces participating in the Desert Storm. The four of us, a Swede, a Norwegian, a German and myself were sent out from Riyadh, behind the army, to do a damage assessment of Kuwait’s power grid and help get it back on. It was a hair raising trip, spending some two weeks in a city with no power or water, darkened and cold by oil smoke from the burning wells, little food and with arbitrary shooting between the allies and the Palestinians now and then. I did come across an odd Malayali now and then. Anyway, we were indeed lucky to make it out alive, after accomplishing our task. But that is a story for another day….

References

The Iraqi Occupation of Kuwait: An Eyewitness Account - Shafeeq Ghabra

India and Iraq - Kuwait Crisis - Dr. Md. Aminuzzaman

Strife of Decades – Odayam Misbah

India: A Portrait - Patrick French

At Large in the World: A Memoir - By Harish Chandola

Gulf dreams essays on Migration of Malayalees to Gulf countries– Suresh K Pillai

Roji Abraham’s story

India today article 1,2

Times of India article

Chicago tribune article

Times of Kuwait article http://www.timeskuwait.com/Times_August-2--Rekindling-faith-in-Humanity

Poor Refugees Wait And Hope At Border

Routh D’Souzas experience

Safeer’s story

Achayan’s diary

Gajendra Singh’s report

Notes

1. Harish Chandola is less charitable to Gajendra Sigh’s role white testifying to Unnikrishnan’s stellar role. He says that Singh never visited any transit camp and was busy writing reports. He also hints to Unnikrishnan unearthing a certain amount of embassy corruption, as the money sent from Delhi to help the refuges was seemingly misappropriated. I understood that Singh was punished for it, but the ICC in Kuwait testified otherwise (see this letter sent by HS Vedi and posted by Singh in his blog)

2. Kulbir Singh Babrah’s story is remarkable –He had difficulties boarding the mercy flights since his wife was a Filipina. This brave man then joined a 47 car convoy from Kuwait to Iraq and on to Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and through to India. That must have been quite a tale!!!

3. India submitted a claim of 3.3B$ to the UN compensation fund relating to these refugees. Originally all the people who boarded the airlift had to sign a bond promising to pay back the ticket amount, but this was subsequently waived.

Pics

To see how these camps looked like, see these images

How this mythical character galvanized explorers of medieval Europe into centuries of discovery is a story which will be retold many times by historians. Not many people know that Vasco Da Gama for example carried letters of introduction from his king, to this legendary Prester John, so that they could have a healthy discussion when they met in the Indian continent, which by the way was one of the locales this immensely rich Prester John was ruling over.

Vasco Da Gama did meet a king, the Zamorin at Calicut, in 1498, a story which we all know very well, and the Zamorin seemed curious meeting a voyager who had traveled so far and so long but brought nothing along, by way of gifts. During their second meeting he asked the empty handed Gama why he who claimed to be from a wealthy land had brought nothing. The embarrassed captain replied that his voyage was one of discovery and that he as an ambassador and explorer and had just a letter to deliver. The Zamorin then asked Gama if he hoped to discover stones or men and that if indeed the Gama had planned to meet people in an inhabited land, he should have brought something along to break the ice.

From the above we note that the famed navigator was on a voyage of discovery (which later went on to start an immensely profitable trade and establishment of many colonies) and that he was looking for the Christian kingdom of one Prester John. Who then was this Prestor John residing in the east and what was his huge allure to the Western world? The mere fact that this single character played such a tremendous role in the history of nations is something which continues to astound people and students of history.

Presbyter Johannes, for that was supposedly his name, came into the limelight in the 12^th century, just after the first crusade and the start of the second which was not going well for the Christians. He became a favorite of the clergy, who took to quoting his deeds, mainly because he was a crusader and a foe of Muslims. Was he a Mongol, Ethiopian, an Indian (In perspective, it must be noted here that India in those days was a vague term in the west, geographically covering much of the east, including Africa) king or none of those? Recall now that this was a period when the relations between the kings and the church was somewhat troubled, while at the same time, the crusades needed a united front and state support.

It all started with the visit of a person from the Syro- Malabar Church of Malabar in the 12^th century, a period when the first of the crusades were winding down. Stories of travelers were just starting to come in, and getting recorded, but were not circulated or well known as yet, for the art of printing was still many centuries away. The words of a man of the church on the other hand was therefore one of much credibility and when indeed a Priest, claiming to be the Malabar Prelate or Patriarch, landed up in Rome, it was a matter of some importance to Pope Callixtus II.

Many of you would know the fact that Malabar was a place of refuge for many troubled people since time immemorial. Persecuted Jews came to the land in the ancient times, so also a large number of Persian Syrian Christians. It is also the place where a large number of St Thomas Syrian Christians lived since the Apostle ‘Doubting’ Thomas or St Thomas came there in the 1^st century. Soon the group comprised the St Thomas Nazranis and the Syro Knanayites and many more. They were evangelically administered from Shengly (Shingly – Cranganore) and possibly Mylapore in Madras which gained some fame as the ‘See (seat) of Thomas’, for that is where the remains of St Thomas were interred. It was believed that the Metropolitan Bishop or Patriarch of the Malabar Church was located in Mylapore, but we will come to that a little later. The Bishop who decided to make a yearlong bone breaking journey from Mylapore or Shingly in Malabar to distant Constantinople was one named Mar John. It is not clear if he was a person from Malabar (I would assume so), a Tamil or of mixed extract. He was going to Byzantium to attend a ceremony recognizing his appointment as the Patriarch of the Indies.

While at Constantinople, some of the clergy from Rome were also there, in discussions with the Byzantine emperor, and taking a liking for this chap from a distant land, invited him to visit Rome and meet the Pope. That he did and what happened next is the precursor for the origination of the myths and legends of a fairy tale like kingdom in the Indies. The meeting as recorded in the Pope’s chronicle was quoted by a monk named Alberic as ‘De Adventu Patriarchae Indorum (on the arrival of the Patriarch of the Indians)’. The record was popularized later by Fredrich Zarncke and corroborated by an independent mention in a letter from Odo of Rheims who was a witness to the event. It is not necessary to get into greater details, for reasons of brevity and it will suffice to mention that it was nothing short of fantasy and full of mentions of all kinds of miracles. One could question if a serious man would say such things or if it was all concocted by others later. I find it pretty difficult to believe that Mar John said all this, but if one were to critically analyze the letter, you will find quite a few nuggets of interest. It is not my intention to revisit the St Thomas epoch or this meeting in greater detail, that I will do another day, from a historic perspective, but we will get to the times of Mar John, which is close to a nine hundred years after St Thomas.

We know for example that Mar John travelled a whole year before reaching Constantinople in 1122, to receive the Pallium (a woolen vestment of honor) from the Byzantine emperor where he learned from the Romans that Rome was the ‘capital of the whole world’. He then went on to meet the pope and live in Rome for a year. At the papal meeting, he narrated that he hailed from Ulna (or ultima) a heavenly utopian place inhabited by many Christians, full of gold and riches, filled with people of good virtues, totally free of vices and so on. Not far on a hilltop was the church of St Thomas around which there were 12 monasteries. There is also a mention of the pope’s disbelief hearing that St Thomas ( his body which is displayed in the St Thomas Church) opened and closed his hand miraculously to receive offerings, which the Bishop dispels by solemnly swearing on the holy gospel (according to the other witness - Odo of St Remy’s).

Did the copyist write the uttered sound correctly when he wrote Ulna or ultima? Was it Melia for Meliapur (now Mylapore which was considered Ultima Thule) or was it Adayar? Was it a location in Malabar such as Shingly, Kalikut or Piravom, some other ulnad (interior state)? Was it elsewhere, perhaps Urfa in Mesopotamia? Was it Kollam or Quilon? Was it perhaps the mythical kingdom of Mahabali which the Keralites remember even today? We will discuss all this another day, but suffice to say for now that Mar John filled the minds of the clergy in Rome with wonder and convinced them of the existence of a rich world in the South of the Indies.

We should now take note of the 1141 battle of Samarkand in Central Asia when the Seljuk Turkish sultan Sanjar’s forces were decimated by the army led by a Chinese warrior Yehlu Tashih, the Gur Khan al-Sini, a Buddhist. Otto of Freising who heard about this battle from the Gabulan Bishop visiting Rome in 1144, mentioned a Prester John in 1145 for the first time in his Chronicle or history of the two cities. In the Chronica, Otto reports a meeting he had with Bishop Hugh of Jabala, who told him of a Nestorian Christian king in the east named Prester John. In it is said that this monarch would bring relief to the crusader states: this is the first documented mention of Prester John (The rest of the article will shorten this to PJ).The PJ die was thus cast and the spin started.

By 1165 the Prester John story went viral as we say today, following the surfacing of a letter comprising many paragraphs, considered to be addressed to King Emmanuel of Rome. Arguments and debates ensued as to who and where PJ was located. As time went by, travelers returning from Asian trips added stories of this PJ to their own, embellishing them even more. Prester John even got a biblical connection as the descendant of Gaspar the Indian, one of the three magi from biblical lore.

The letter and its various translations and versions cover so much geographical ground that fingers can point anywhere in the east, which perhaps was the intention of the letter’s creator. There are subtle references to India and in the inputs from Mar John, see some examples below

And our land stretches from the extremities of India, where the body of Thomas the Apostle rests and it extends through the wilderness to the setting sun, and reaches back, sloping to deserted Babylon, near the tower of Babylon.Seventy-two kingships serve us in bondage, and of those but few are Christians and each of them has a king, by itself, and these are all tributary to us.

And there is this fantastic nonsense about how pepper is collected - In another kingdom of ours there grow all kinds of pepper, and they are collected and exchanged for wheat, and skins, and cloth, and men’s food; and those regions are wooded, as if thickly planted with willows, and all full of serpents. And when the pepper ripens, all the people come from the nearest kingdoms, and bring with them chaff, and refuse, and dry branches; and they kindle the wood round about; and when a mighty wind blows, they set fire within and without the wood, so that not one of the snakes may escape; and so within the fire, after it has been thoroughly kindled, all the snakes perish, save those that reach caves; and when all the fire has died out, all come, men and women, small and big, with forks in their hands, and fling all the snakes out of the forest, and make high heaps of them sky high. And when they have finished shaking that refuse, the grain that is gathered from among the fagots is dried, and the pepper is boiled, but how it is boiled no one from another country is allowed to know.

The palace wherein our majesty dwells was made in the form and likeness of that which the Apostle Thomas ordained for Wyndofforns, king of India; and its wings and structures are exactly like it.

In 1221, Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre, who returned from the disastrous Fifth Crusade brought in good news: King David of India, the son or grandson of Prester John, had mobilized his armies against the Saracens, thus connecting PJ again with India.

With the advent of printing, many copies of the PJ letter were circulated, and the supposed original in Latin was translated extensively. Since then some 250 versions of the PJ letter have surfaced, in various languages with purposes varying widely from entertainment to demonstrating the characteristics of an ideal Christian king. It also raised the hope of fatigued European armies in obtaining support for their crusades against Islam, from an experienced and immensely wealthy Christian crusader in the east. Hope was not to be lost.

Who then could have been the person who created and then leaked this PJ letter? And what was his

real role? Fingers pointed to Archbishop Christian of Mainz and Archbishop Rainald of Dassel at Cologne. An analysis of the letter started, the emphatic conclusion was that the literary origins stemmed from the Alexander romances and the various marvels come from it. The general conclusions was also that the purpose of spreading the letter was propaganda - to unite various warring factions of the clergy and the rulers, against a common enemy, the Islamic power and that help was not far, that it was arriving from PJ in the east.

Other inputs came in from worldly explorers, that the equator was passable and not burning hot, that as the pole star was hardly visible on the horizon, that the world was spherical, that monsters and one legged people did not quite exist. In the meantime, by 1291, the kingdom of Palestine had fallen to the Mamluks and the crusaders were busy bickering among themselves reaching nowhere after trying and failing to organize expeditions to get the land back. The time was ripe to go out and find the crusader Prester John.

Pope Alexander III took it upon himself to answer the PJ letter in 1177, and in imperial tones urged the king to embrace the true Roman faith and not boast about his power and riches. The carrier of this reply, one physician named Philip who set out in search of PJ vanished.

The location of the PJ kingdom had by now moved in popular imagination, from central Asia to India. By the 14^th century and after Marco Polo’s exploits were published, the location shifted to Abyssinia though moving to Tibet in between, but by consensus he remained in the jungles of Africa, never to be seen. He was in the third India (the Three India's referred to India Major, from Malabar through the East Indies, India Minor, from Malabar to Sind, and India Tertia, the east coast of Africa. It was perhaps close in fit to what is known in Chinese texts as Sanfotsi and among the Muslims as Zabag).

Many voyagers set out in search of PJ and his kingdom, some never returned back. Some discovered new lands and people, some saw that the lands which were considered prime suspects were not rich Christian kingdoms. Meanwhile the search continued in the Indies.

Igor Rachewilz states- There, in his new country of adoption, Prester John continued to play his subtle game, firing the imagination of Europe and attracting other adventurous men. It was, again, in search of the elusive Christian king and of his rich and fabulous country that the captains of Prince Henry the Navigator undertook those voyages along the African coast in the first half of the fifteenth century which led to many new and exciting discoveries.

Prince Henry who thought providence his guide, urged voyagers and explorers to find a route to the East where they might eventually locate Prester John and his Christian kingdom. Portuguese explorers started to sail along the African coast, looking for the mythical land with a large sea in the middle of it as per the legend. Once they crossed it, they would reach PJ’s abode. They were also driven by a religious zeal after Constantinople fell to the Islamic Turks, believing that an apocalypse was near and needed the full support of the powerful PJ. Keep in context that the PJ should have been many hundred years old by now, but then again he looked 32 forever because he had a fountain of youth in his backyard, so no problema….

The age of exploration had started, new sailing techniques had been mastered, and ships started to sail east and west, looking for PJ, and to finance it all, trade played a key role. And thus we get to Vasco Da Gama and his search for Christians and Prester John in Calicut, but as we know, there was no PJ in our part of the world. Even though Vasco reported that there were many Christians in Calicut, he was proved wrong, but the explorer had discovered new routes to the fabled spice capitals of Malabar and for a while trade rose to the fore.

The Portuguese did find a Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, and a priest by name John, but the land was neither wealthy nor capable of supporting the weary crusaders, in fact they needed Christian help to with stand their warring Muslim neighbors. As is nicely stated by Baldridge, the Portuguese Father Francisco Alvares, who fell in love with the country and its people, became a friend of its king, hid the Abyssinian's heresies from his superiors, and set in motion events that saved Ethiopia from imminent destruction. PJ on the other hand, quietly slipped from the front pages, but the hope that this fabled crusader would one day be located spurred more Spanish and Portuguese expeditions to various new lands such as Africa, Asia and the Americas, for another two hundred years.

The reason for the elaborate hoax, the 1165 letter, was perhaps to stop the petty fighting going on between the clergy and the monarchs with an underlying message that they should unite to fight the crusades. But what it did was trigger many centuries of exploration and reshaping of the world. It affected the destinies of millions in a way nobody could have imagined, let alone the ever young Prester John.

Igor Rachewiltz sums it up beautifully - Had the Prester John visualized by our ancestors really existed, he could have hardly done a better job than he did, by simply not being there!

Would it be fair to assume that an Indian triggered centuries of exploration with his tall tales? Why not???

Strange are the ways of our world, isn’t it?

References

Anecdota Oxoniensia: Semitic series, Part 7

St Thomas and San Thome – Rev H Hosten SJ (Asiatic society papers)

The Historical Prester John -Charles E. Nowell

Prester John – the legend and its sources – Keagan Brewer

The rites of eastern Christendom – Archdale A King

The Malabar church and Rome – George Schurhammer

The Hebrew letters of Prester John – Edward Ullendorff, CF Beckingham

Prester John's Letter: A Mediaeval Utopia - Karl F. Helleiner

Prisoners of Prester John – Cates Baldridge

Prester John and Europes discovery of East Asia – Igor De Rachewiltz

The lives of the popes in the middle ages – Vol VIII – Horace K mann

History of Paradise – Jean Delumeau

The hierarchy of the syro-malabar church – Placid j Podipara

Prester John: A Fourteenth-Century Manuscript at Cambridge- Malcolm Letts

Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 4 (1200-1350) - edited by David Thomas, Alexander Mallett

Notes

1. Karl F. Helleiner concludes in his paper – Assuming that it was political motives which caused the unknown author of the Epistola to fabricate this strange piece of correspondence-a desire to give some tangible encouragement to the hard-pressed Christians in the Holy Land, as well as the wish to take the high and mighty ruler of the Byzantine Empire down a peg or two by extolling the superior power and virtue of another Christian prince-did he really have to strain the credulity of his readers by adding all those fantastic details about India? All I can suggest is that the writer must have lost sight of whatever may have been his immediate objectives. He was carried away by his imagination, and composed a work whose character corresponds very closely to modern science fiction.

2. Most enticing among all the stories of Prester John is his magic mirror. The mirror allowed Prester John to see everything in his kingdom and instructed him in all the duties he was meant to perform. Is such a system not what every ruler of the West and East want even today? And the fountain of youth aspect continues to be researched by so many !

3. Rev Hosten professes an explanation that Mar John reached Constantinople to meet the Greek Emperor John II and that Mar John may have reached Rome only in 1124, not 1122.

4. Calicut Heritage forum had written in detail about the visit of Gama and the mentions of Christians. Please check this link out fordetails

Part 1 – ‘From the original soundtrack’, the production process

As you grow older and the world changes, you slip into periods of nostalgia now and then, looking back at the road you have traveled. It is in those moments that you often remember music you loved, food you enjoyed and great reads, just to name a few. For me, music has always been an integral part and Hindi film music has been at the fore, starting from my high school days.

I still remember the old record player we had at Calicut where we could play ancient 78 rpm Hindi records and a few of MS Subalakshmi’s early hits like suprabatham, and that it was nothing fancy. The next was the Grundig (or was it Telefunken) spool players in some affluent houses. It looked so sophisticated, when the guy put on the spool tape, reeled it around and went on to play a number of songs, I also saw other spool tape players and recorders at the Calicut AIR where I used to be sent for some children’s program recordings. As I grew up, we started to use the first versions of Phillips cassette tape players which my shippie uncle once brought. Tapes were not readily available, and what he brought, the earliest BASF cassettes used to get affected by the humidity and get stuck at times. Then the laborious process of extricating it from the rollers started, rolling it back with a hexagonal pencil (also not easy to obtain in India those days, but I had a Steadtler, as an engineering student) and finally the great tube of ‘quick fix’ adhesive came to the rescue when it did snap, which was often with the repeated playing of a handful of cassettes. I remember also that the quickfix smelt good. As years went by the Walkman arrived, then the CD player made its grand entrance, and finally all that moving stuff got replaced by the 0’s and 1’s of the mp3 file. But I still think none of that would beat the richer sound coming from a good record player or turntable coupled with a good amplifier and a pair of great speakers. I had written about HMV and the record player some years ago, so those interested can take a detour there, to get into the mood.

I loved Hindi film music, rudely titled Bollywood music these days, but since it is a usage which has gained much traction, I will use it as well. I am sure Mumbaikars will for once not object and try to change the Bombay in the synecdoche to Mumbai (in reverence to ‘that man’ Thackeray), for then, Bollywood would have to change to Mollywood and that as we know is Kerala’s film industry!! In this and two following articles, I will cover the birth and growth of the song and its making, its recording and finally a legendary music man, whom I revere a lot….

Life has come a long away, just the other day I saw AR Rahman and Sivamani playing music in thin air, just gesturing with his hands, using Intel Curie based contraptions. It was an early version, and only good to show the route the technology is taking towards making what they call ‘gesture music’.

Going back to the music of yore, I was always intrigued by the comment on tapes and records ‘from the original soundtrack’ and so after I had obtained my research material, a voluminous amount of it, I started to study…

Now I am going to take you to a time when it all started, some 86 years ago in Bombay, a city which was just getting to be real busy. Not many cars, but lots of people, mostly dhoti clad, a few Europeans and Parsis well suited, cattle on the street, even in Churchgate, steam engines rolling out of the stations, to an era when sepia toned photos were popular. It was soon to become the home to Bollywood, taking over from Calcutta, to become the place where dreams were made, where heroes and icons were created, where the industry of making films thrived, with another industry hiding behind, the music industry another core of the Hindi film.

In the 30’s film making comprised of a large studio set where things were pretty static. The large mic was hidden behind something, such as a bush in the middle rear just like in a drama stage and the actors tried not to move too much. The first film to feature a song was Alam Ara in 1931. Their eyes and emoting did the trick of conveying a story. Well, the actor also had to sing while the orchestra which took an early cue performed the music out of view of the camera, still depending on the very same mic and connected to the single camera. As the talking actor burst into song, the orchestra picked up and everything was good. The resulting sounds were primitive, but this was what is called the synchronized sound process. The system itself never changed for many decades thereafter, the technique being recording the sound on optic film system on a monaural track. People did want to buy records, though not a lot of it and so a second print was made at the HMV studio in Fort, the following day while the session remained fresh in the minds of the singing actors. Many of the early films were adaptations of stage dramas and the songs followed from stage to cinema.

The biggest problems in this very natural looking process were the camera noise and the ambient manmade such as a train passing by or natural sounds. Unfortunately the scene could not be shot over and over again, because the cost of raw film was very high, as much as a tenth of the film making cost. For a while special blankets and mufflers were used to reduce the camera sound, but a solution had to be found. The process was so traumatic for the filmmakers and soon enough, the art of playback singing started, with the film Dhoop Chhahon in the mid 1930’s. Put simply, it meant that music was recorded separately, sometimes also the speakers voice over for the enacted lines by the actor or by a better sounding dubbing artist.

The intent was to create the audio track on film separately (see this video to understand the

technique) and mix it with proper synchronization to the film visuals. The singer was still the actor and more instruments, musicians etc. could be used and the song recorded in a room at night or early morning without too many extraneous sounds. The song was later played over speakers on the sets and the actor mimed to his or her own song. At those times, they put the actor and musicians in a room and had a mic in there, which was connected to a recording van outside, one which had its own generator due to the problems associated with utility power frequency and frequent power failures. If you recall we mentioned that the actor sang, so that meant that the actor had to be a well-trained and proficient singer which was a difficult proposition. In any case, a second version continued to be rerecorded at the music studio for HMV, albeit a bit shorter. The original soundtrack version was therefore different from the audio record. This was also the time when the art of dubbing came into vogue where the voices of actors were dubbed. Typically this was done when the lead actor was one who could not speak the language of the film or it could have been the case when the film itself was made in another language and dubbed into Hindi. Anyway the sound was again recorded on optic film and the two negatives, that is the one with visuals and the one with sound were mixed in a double recorder into one.

The song by now started getting a standard format with an antra, mukhdas, instrumental interludes and perhaps even an alaap. Soon enough listeners started getting picky, especially as was mentioned in the case of singer actor Ashok Kumar, and the actor’s singing was replaced with the voice of a professional singer. The resulting song, something that remained in the Indian mind for decades, and crossing over into all sections of society, be it a beggar or a hard core Carnatic singer of the south, became the ever famous Bollywood melody.

The level of sophistication increased and the music production team started to become bigger. More people had to get involved and the producer, the director, the music director and the lyricist had to meet and thrash out the details of the so called situation or scene. The MD created a tune which was synced with the lyrics, sometimes, words changed here and there to sit in the tune. The mood, the gender of the song, the singer, the actor, the landscape or landscapes, and the number of songs had to be discussed in advance and the song recording was done well in advance of the film shooting. Why was that required? So that the song was available for playback which the actor mimed as he or she acted out the song, running around trees or cavorting in the rain. As the songs were made ahead of the movie itself, they were sometimes released ahead of the movie with a music release function, and became somewhat of an advance advertisement of the movie itself.

It was in those days that many a great song was recorded. Even with a dull sound, you enjoy it even today and testament to that is the song ‘piya milan ko jana’ by early pioneer singer music director Pankaj Mullick. Or try out ‘Babul Mora’ (see my earlier article on this) by Saigal, not to forget ‘Awaz de kahan he’ (which I wrote about earlier) where Noorjahan and Surendra who sang the song were the actors or ‘So ja raajkumari’ by Saigal. Mullick was one of the first music directors who used western instruments for the Hindi song, though his work was mostly at the Calcutta studios. One of the first Bombay MD’s was a woman named Saraswati Devi working for Bombay Talkies!

I must also tell you that there was music even in the days of silent movies. In those times, while the film ran, music was played in the film theatre live by orchestras, Pankaj Mullick gained public popularity conducting such orchestras and his AIR programs. Raichand Boral and Timir Baran were other popular composer - conductors as New theatres became famous in Calcutta. And it was Mullick who brought in the first of the great singers to the scene, Kundan Lal Saigal from Punjab. Thus Saigal who started with New theatres in Calcutta, and recording in 1933, left his mark to set such a high standard with his mellifluous songs (he even sang two Tamil songs in 1936 for Devadaasa), such as Baabul Mora, Do naina matware, Diya jalaao, Ek bangla bane, So ja rajakumari and so many more. In fact it was the popularity of his songs which created the concept of a film music industry.

As the early 40’s firmly established Saigal as a great singer actor, the music recording scene did not develop very much, but by 1945, the singing scene was seeing changes with the entry of Mukesh and Rafi while the still young actor/singer Saigal was on a downward spiral under the spell of alcohol. As India became independent, Noorjehan left for Pakistan and by then, even greater music creators such as C Ramachandra and SD Burman arrived from Calcutta. Many more singers came to the fore, the Mangeshkars came while Geeta Dutt entrenched herself as a great. The singer was recognized, so also the music director who all became starts independent of the actor, became an independent star, so also the music director, while the poet lyricist got only a mention. The 200 or so people of the orchestra who were playing in the various recordings were largely just staff on daily wages, and were never listed or mentioned, sadly. But there was also an intermediate stage when the movie had the actor’s voices for the song whereas the HMV records carried a professional singer’s voice but as playback and miming became more professional, the actor as singer became a rarity, one which we hardly see, even today.

The average Indian viewer still has to get his money’s worth, he needs the six good songs, the song and dance routines showing off the rain drenched scantily clad, well-endowed heroine or the in the dumps actor singing a sad song and so the singers and the song flourished and continue to do just that.

Let us now get back to sound recording, for we saw that the process of recording separated from filming by the mid 1930’s. The 35 mm film made with the sound had to be synchronizable to the 35 mm film using the right sprocket holes and run through a mechanical mixer or a double projector to make a married release print with sound and film on the same film. The music director of course had to make difficult choices of matching the singer to the song as well as the actor. You could not use the thinner voice of Rafi on a burly deep voiced actor, but at the same it was not possible to get Mukesh to sing a chirpy song for the burly actor. Some singers were adept at miming their voice close to the actor and the mangeshlkar’s were pretty good at that. That was how Mukesh became Raj Kapoor’s and Manoj Kumar’s voice, while Rafi became Shammi Kapoor’s voice.

Bombay in those early 40’s took over the music scene, and was replete also with a lot of foreigners

lending their hand at technology. It was also the commercial capital and the core of capital and had plenty of businessmen and money (recall also that the British shifted out of Calcutta to Delhi in 1931 and thus Calcutta lost some of its importance) to invest. This is termed as the second generation of Bombay film music. While the period until the 50’s had classic music leanings, the music after the 50’s had soared westward. The 60’s had swinging rhythm and by the 70’s it simply belonged to RD Burman and Kishore Kumar,

And thus music got made away from the shooting locales, and recording studio developed. We will soon see that it remained in about five Bombay locations and over years concentrated to just one, in Andheri all due to the busy schedules and the need to have all the professional musicians and technicians available in locations geographically close to each other.

Interestingly the technology that produced some of the greatest Hindi songs was not very sophisticated, due to the decisions the Indian government took. Technicians innovated out of need and did not have computers or advanced instruments and devices which are common place today. But then again, I will only say that the number of good songs coming out these days, even with all that at hand is only a handful. The artiste perhaps does not really strive to stand out, depending instead to take refuge in technology, to punching in difficult bits rather than spend hours perfecting it. You can see it easily when the same artiste tries to sing it on stage and failing. It was a period when the recording was still in mono, not stereo. Though multiple mics were used and multi-channel mixers were available, the mixed track was in monaural sound. Musicians and conductors had to play it by the ear and could never listen to the recording (to decide if a retake) as the recording was on film and the film had to be sent out for developing and return before it could be played back. All this required deep concentration, focus by the full team and detail to attention during and before recording. And as I said before film was very expensive, so was never available for multiple song recordings though MD’s made a couple of insurance copies. Optical film also had the problem of not being able to cover a big dynamic range (could cover only 6000Hz – So I wonder how Saigal really sounded!!) which magnetic tape technology boasted of. Then again editing was difficult with snipping and splicing of film which did not give a wonderful result.

And that was how magnetic tape technology arrived, but here again we saw an issue, for the inch wide tapes were difficult to synchronize to the 35 mm film. But the Indian government which had limited foreign exchange would not easily permit the import, and the permit raj was in place. It was to remain so until Rajiv Gandhi took the reins. Until then electric guitars were hand made in India, mixers and amplifiers were built by radio enthusiasts (we all have done these in school and college!). By the 50’s synchronizable 35mm audio tape with sprocket holes was developed and this became the norm for audio recordings. By 1958, HMV had acquired a transfer machine which could transfer music directly to a record instead of rerecording the song and it was thus the usage ‘from the original soundtrack’ originated. In any case the issues with synchronizing multi-channel magnetic tape to film and back to a record plagued the music industry for a long time, until the 80’s. This was the time when all the music was composed in just four studios namely Film center, Bombay sound, Famous and Mehaboob studios.

They were the first and big recording studios, the ones which made the greatest hits of the 60’s through 80’s. Each had specialists and unique features depending on the technology and skills they possessed, and the end result sometimes showed the studio’s signature.

But the recording was all the same, the musicians and the singer gathered in a room with the many mics and they recorded a few takes live, on multi track magnetic tape. The Nagra machine made much of this possible and replaced sound vans. Slowly it changed as music writing became standardized and track recordings were made separately for voice, rhythm and music. From just one track, sound recording went all the way to as much as 16 tracks by the 70’s. Eventually they were all reduced to one track for the film, though and this created a really bad master as musicians dubbed and overdubbed multiple adders and changes to the master. For example they made a two track audio, then added more sound tracks to it, again reducing to one, again adding more and so on. If you amplify those recordings with today’s digital technology, it would show much of the problems, but so long as it was analog, it was so to say, alright. Some music directors such as RD Burman embraced technology and employed specialists for recording while others left it to the studios.

After the 80’s, as education overseas and import of technology was liberalized, the technology galloped and the whole scene changed, with the recording scene itself changing from a complete sitting of musicians and singer to the ever busy singer recording his or her track in isolation. Punching also became the norm where a bit was taken out and replaced with a better take of just that portion instead of a complete rerecord. By the 1990’s a new Bollywood was born, and lump sum package practices ensured. The music director had a budget but also had access to a lot of technology. The industry became a sound factory and everything started to get synthesized, with lesser and lesser maestros or musicians. The scene was to change, but as I said, we wills tick to the golden era…

There is one other bit of background which is very specific to the period. Did you know that the government (one infamous minister named BV Keskar M for I and B who according to Indira Gandhi retained his post only due to an acute shortage of ministerial talent) decided to curtail and later ban Hindi music (cheap and vulgar – he said, he also banned cricket commentaries and the Harmonium!) at one time, on the AIR due to its supposed negative influence on the population? That was the reason radio Ceylon and Amin Sayani’s Binacca Geet mala rose to fame. I still remember that my most treasured property during early college was the small transistor radio which was duly licensed (we had to pay license fees for owning the radio) and tuned to Radio Ceylon during Wednesdays at 8PM for the BGM which Aminsaab would start with his customary Bhayiyom aur behnom…nothing would take me away from the device close to my ear. Apparently Indian listeners after listening to the English pop Binacca hit parade asked for a Hindi one and thus was born the BGM. Advertising revenue poured in from India and Amin became a star hosting over 54000 radio shows! He explains that the ratings were made after inputs from music shops and a select panel of the film industry in order to arrive at the final listing. AIR had no choice but to counter it and thus came about the Vividbharathi in the late 50’s and their fascinating programs like the Bhule bisre geet and aap ki farmaish programs, thereby going on to popularize one place which we all heard often – Jhumritalaiya!! Curiously the biggest number of requests for any film song addressed to Vividbharati came from Jhumri Telaiya. Many thought it was a hoax, they doubted if such a place existed! But yes, there is such a place, and it is in Jharkhand. The cheap post card and the numerous requests for songs from the listeners there which actually popularized it. The listeners of that lone outpost marveled when their name was announced to the whole world, by none other than the AIR announcer or Amin Sayani. They too became a memory after the 80’s when TV took over from the shortwave radio.

Today's recording studio

The 50’s through 80’s introduced us to so many great music directors like Salilda, Hemant Kumar, Naushad, Madan Mohan, Shankar Jaikishan, Lakshmikant Pyarelal, Kalyanji Anandji, Roshan, SD Burman, RD Burman, OP Nayyar, Khayyam and so on. The list will easily take up a whole page. It also heralded the arrival of the genius maestro Kishore Kumar. The careers of many peaked and waned, sparked and fizzled, depending not only on their music but also their relationships with studios and stars. That was the music which remained in the minds of the people of that South Asian generation, they are the tunes which went beyond the Indian borders, far and wide. That is why you hear a person in Siberia humming Awara Hoon just like the Arab in Yemen, the Burman in Rangoon, a Chinese youngster in Peking and the Turk in Istanbul.

Interestingly even though the first movie Alam Ara was shot with Sync sound, and used a Mitchell camera, the system as we saw soon changed to recording sound separately and remixing with the visual. Actors had to enact the scene again in their mind, within a dubbing studio while talking and in many a case, the real mood was lost. Sometimes, the dubbing artiste was a different person and this made the whole movie less realistic than what the director desired. It took many more decades and only recently has sync sound come back into Indian movies with many other contraptions such as waterproof mics, boom mikes and so on.

In following articles we will focus on music composing and recording, and finally get to the finest composer in my mind, and the most diverse and dynamic at that. In the course of this study I had access to many fine books as pictured. The list under references will provide those interested a detail of various printed resources for their own study. One of the finest books out there is Gregory Booth’s ‘behind the curtain’ and my humble thanks to him for taking me through those hallowed corridors with his fine writing.

References

Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema - Anna Morcom

Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios - Gregory D. Booth

Hindi Film Song Music beyond Boundaries – Ashok Da Ranade

Sun Mere bandhu re – Sathya Saran

Housefull – Ziya Us Salam (ed)

Global Hollywood – Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti

Bollywood melodies – Ganesh Anatharaman

Bollywood sounds – Jayson Beaster Jones

RD Burman – Anirudha Bhattacharjee & Balaji Vittal

The Architecture of sound and music: Soundmarks of Bollywood, a Popular Form and its Emergent Texts - Madhuja Mukherjee

The machines and mechanics of sound - http://www.medialabju.org/swf/sound.swf

The role of a song in a Hindi film Rajiv Vijayakar

The cinematic soundscape: conceptualizing the use of sound in Indian films - Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

Hindi Filmi Git: On the history of commercial Indian popular music Arnold, Alison E., Ph.D.

The Many Passages of Sound: Indian Talkies in the 1930s Joppan George

Not Really Bollywood – Sanjana P Nayee

Images

From Wikimedia

Madan mohans orchestra from the linked site

Swati Tirunal and his Observatory

John Caldecott, hailing from far away Scotland met Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma, sometime in 1836, through a mutual connection, the Travancore resident Gen Stuart Fraser. That meeting would serve to herald the science of the stars and space not only to the Gentry of Travancore comprising a mishmash of Europeans, the public, the Brahmins and the ruling family, but also many aspiring students. Travancore was chosen by astronomers with a specific purpose, for it was close to the equator. It was also to serve some purpose in the magnetic crusades of the time and in the creation of almanacs for the populace.

Centuries later, Travancore would serve to become India’s launching pad for all space efforts due to the location near the equator. The rocket launching station Thumba, the liquid fuel plant, thorium plants, they all would get located there….The unlikely friendship between the musically minded king and the amateur astronomer would lay ground for many of these feats, culminating in the recent Mangalyan (MOM Mars orbiter mission) spaceship orbiting Mars. For the space inclined persons, objects at the equator move at 1670 km per hour, while those at the pole are only moving at 1180 km per hour, so launching a rocket from the equator provides a higher tangential velocity at the launch site and lesser thrust to boost the rocket's speed, consequentially lesser amount of fuel. So it's better to launch rockets from the equator than from the North Pole.

The Chova dosham (adverse impact of Mars) ill luck which plagued the young king during the latter part of his short life must have made the king think of Mars up in the sky. Perhaps he wanted to study its course, perhaps not, but he plunged into the activity purposefully. Maths and astronomy interested him, perhaps astrology as well. Capt Welsh would recount thus - Swati Tirunal (when they met in 1825, he was 13) took up a book of mathematics and selecting the forty seventh proposition of Euclid sketched the figure on a country slate but what astonished me most was his telling us in English that Geometry was derived from the Sanskrit, which as Jaw metor (Jyamiti) to measure the earth and that many of our mathematical terms were also derived from the same source such as hexagon, heptagon, octagon, decagon, duo-decagon. His remarks were generally apposite, but their language inelegant and ungrammatical. This is much to be lamented, because with so many studies on hand, he can never read enough of English to correct his idiom; and the master, a very clever Tanjore Brahmin (Subba Rao), could not speak it much better than himself. His Persian was pure and elegant, but of the other languages, I am too ignorant to offer an opinion.

John Caldecott actually lived in Aleppey at that time. It was not a commercial hub then, but Travancore’s Veluthampi Dalawa had been instrumental in making its presence felt (refer The Veluthampi Revolt 1807-1809). Later it would become the base for American James Darragh in 1855. John Caldecott was a commercial agent for the Travancore government at that point of time and he had moved down from the North West of India after a career lasting 7 years at Apollo Cottons Bombay. Why he travelled to India aged 19, in 1820 from Scotland, is not clear, perhaps it was the lure of adventure. While at Bombay he had picked up an interest in astronomy and telescopes from his employer and family friend William West. Why he moved out of Bombay and headed for Travancore in 1828 is also not clear, but he did so, stopping at Aluwa. Soon enough he formed a partnership with his friend Humphrey Owen. The company Owen, Caldecott & Co trading in coffee did not survive too long. John’s next job was, as I mentioned previously, as an agent for the Travancore kingdom.

John wanted to set up a laboratory to continue his astronomy work, at Aleppey and expressed his idea to Stuart Fraser(but I am not sure about this as Fraser came only in 1837) according to prevailing legends, who mentioned it to the king. The king during a trip to Aleppey met Caldecott and saw some of the instruments which piqued his interest. Caldecott suggested his idea of building a small observatory in Aleppey, but the Raja put forth a counter proposal, if the young astronomer wanted to set up an observatory, why not do it in superior fashion at Ananthapuram/Trivandrum and he would gladly finance it. Caldecott would start it with his own set of instruments. As the observatory was being constructed, Caldecott and Taylor, the scientist from Madras took a tour making equatorial magnetic measurements, the first for the Magentic crusades.

Caldecott states- When it devolved on me to design a plan by which the liberal intentions of His Highness might be carried into the most complete effect, it became with me a matter of serious consideration, how the utmost benefit to science might be derived from the opportunity afforded by the proposed institution, without making any very great demand on the funds of the state; and I very soon came to the conclusion that no outlay, beyond what was absolutely necessary to effectiveness, should be made on the building, but that no expense should be spared in procuring instruments of such a size and quality as would ensure to an Observatory, where they were judiciously and actively made use of, a rank second to none in the world. Being supported in this view of the case by Colonel Fraser, the British Resident at Travancore (a gentleman most pre-eminently qualified to judge on such a matter), the plan now to be explained was sanctioned by His Highness, and the building has 6ince been completely and most satisfactorily erected, by Lieut. Horsley, of the Madras Engineers.

Accordingly per Sir Markham’s accounts, the building was planned and erected by Captain Horsley of the Madras Engineers in 1837, on a laterite hill two miles from the sea, and 195 feet above it, whence there is a magnificent view. On one side is the sea bordered by groves of cocoa-nut trees, on the other the rich undulating country, bounded by the many peaked ghats. Lieutenant Horsely of the Madras Engineers was visiting Engineer and Superintendent of Irrigation in Travancore State.

The tablet in front of the old observatory stated - The Thiruvananthapuram Observatory, founded by His Highness Sree Padmanabha Dasa vunchee Baula Rama Vurma Koola Shakhur Kireeta Putee Swatee Rama Rajah Bahadoor Munnei Sooltan Shemshair Jung. A.D. 1837.

Caldecott was also entrusted with the procurement of a printing press and locating it at the observatory presumably to print the first set of Almanacs. Later a regular press was ordered and installed with the residents’ agreement. Mr Sperschneider was put in charge of the printing department and the first calendar was issued in 1839.

According to Prof Ansari’s report on Caldecott’s work - He collected a good deal of stellar data with the assistance of an Indian, trained by T.G. Taylor. These data were transferred to the Royal Society. We may mention here his observations of the solar eclipse of Dec. 21, 1843, carried out at the source of Mahe River, including observations of Bailey’s beads. He also observed and computed the elements of the comets of 1843 and 1845. The former was the ‘daytime’ comet observed in March 1843. The latter was ‘Colla’s comet’ observed in June 1845. Caldecott’s observations of this comet were used by J.R. Hind to calculate its orbit.

By 1838 Caldecott set out to Britain to procure new equipment (permanent instrumental outfit) at an astronomical budget of some 8,000 pounds. He was an audacious man, for his steamer was to touch at Jeddah and the Brit planned to go in disguise and check out Mecca, but had to drop his idea when his guide chickened out. Next he stopped at Egypt, measured the height of the pyramids, passed through the Eastern ports, Athens and reached London in 1839.

In 1837, per the Swatitirunal site, the Travancore Government estimated that Rs 27,000 be allocated to buy lenses etc for the Observatory. Caldecott’s assistant Ananthacharya from Chennai was appointed for a salary of Rs 150 and three clerks at Rs 3 ½, two “classukar”at Rs 6/- each, two writers at Rs. 20/- and Rs. 15/- , one “raayasakkaran” at Rs. 12/- (monthly expense of 224 ½) were permitted. In 1840, and it is observed that Caldecott was paid a salary of Rs. 600/- and 25 people worked under him and the expense for their pay was Rs. 77126/- per year.

Caldecott came back with all the new instruments in 1841, which comprised astronomical clocks, and instruments purchased from Simms and Jones, a transit instrument by Dollond, two mural circles, an equatorial, altitude and azimuth, and magnetic and meteorological instruments. Resident Stuart Fraser had by now passed on and had been replaced by Gen Cullen. Gen.William Cullen, a former Military Officer of the English East India Company was appointed as the Resident of South Travancore on 8th September 1840. I will write more about his troubled relationship with Swati Tirunal later, but the next 6 years was a tale of a struggle for power and supremacy between Cullen and the Raja (1829-1847). The resident virtually ran a parallel state and a period where the CMS missionaries rose up in virtual revolt asking the powers for action against a number of demands.

Meanwhile the King was finding it more and more difficult to bear with the pressures and interference of the British in his rule over Travancore while the palace politics and intrigues were going from bad to worse. The pressure cooker situation Swati Tirunal was caught in, which perhaps led to his early demise was apparent and you can get a whiff of it from Rev GT Spencer’s notes from Dec 1840. You will note from the para below that he was pressured not only by Cullen, but also by the establishment around him.

This morning I paid a visit of ceremony to the Rajah, to whom I was presented by the British resident, my hospitable host Colonel Cullen. The sovereign of this beautiful country is about twenty-six years of age, of a very pleasing countenance, and his manners strikingly simple and gentlemanlike. He speaks English with perfect fluency, is an accomplished Persian and Arabic scholar, and is in other respects unusually well informed; having had the advantage of a much better education than commonly falls to the lot of oriental princes. Could he escape from the swaddling bands of the Brahmins, it is supposed that he would shew himself a really enlightened ruler. This however seems almost impossible, as these crafty priests have thrown their meshes so effectually around him that he can scarcely stir hand or foot without their permission. They possess unbounded influence over his mind, the influence which can only be attained by superstition; and the puppet of royalty is moved according to their will and pleasure by the brahminical string. It is very much to lamented; as unquestionably he might do, and probably has the inclination to do, much for his country, which now remains undone. Certainly their terrible religion is the bane and curse of India. The Brahminical superstition over the land like an impervious murky vapour, and seems to defy the sun of truth to scatter it. The Brahmins here are still all powerful, and are held by the other castes as something far better than men, and very little inferior to gods.

Anyway, the magnetic and meteorological observatory was eventually constructed that year and a new building for the 7 ft equatorial telescope was built in 1842. Taylor helped with the erection of the two mural circles. The days that followed were not satisfactory, they had a lot of interference from Gen Cullen and Rao and frequent complaints of excessive spending. Moreover, their recordings were not considered by the research circles in Britain and Caldecott became a despondent man, what with the death of his ageing father.

Caldecott forwarded complete copies of his observations to the Court of Directors and the Royal Society, and in 1846, leaving the Rev. Dr. Spershneider in charge of the observatory, he went to England to try and obtain the aid of some of the scientific Societies in publishing them, but without success. Around this time a rumor reached Caldecott that the raja was not in possession of all the funds he had planned to allocate for this project and he decided to cancel his return to Travancore. This according to Achutshankar’s research proved to be a doing of Krishna Rao and Gen Cullen. Anyway the king getting wind of the situation wrote to Caldecott clarifying that it was all untoward.

Swati Tirunal’s letter (letter dated 4th January 1843, available in the Royal Society (London) Archives) acquired by Dr AchutShankar S Nair states the following

Here I must not omit to say, in diametrical opposition to what the Resident has been pleased to intimate to you as my sentiments that neither such mean idea has ever entered into my head, nor have I, either directly or indirectly communicated anything upon this point to the above purport, but on the contrary, my sense of the high advantage derived from this establishment in a scientific point of view, as I am fully sensible that by reason of my patronizing it, my name, however, undeserving of any celebrity is favourably noticed even in distant regions, among the scientific personages of the present day.

By Dec 1846, Caldecott’s patron Swati Tirunal Rama Varma passed away tragically. Caldecott returned to Trivandrum in 1847, but was already quite unwell physically. In January 1849 he travelled to Bombay and into the hills, seeking relief. In October he suffered a seizure, recovered, but fell ill on 8 December and was found dead on the morning of 17 December 1849. For the next two years, readings were taken by J Sperschneider, the reverend in Trivandrum who later took over the Almanac printing. He became the first Superintendent of the Press.

A few words about the magnetic crusade - By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had been widely recognized that the Earth's magnetic field was continually changing over time in a complicated way that interfered with compass readings. It was a mystery which some scientists believed might be associated with weather patterns. This heralded the magnetic crusade, and to solve this mystery once and for all, a number of physicists recommended that a magnetic survey of the entire globe be carried out. Sabine was one of the instigators of this "Magnetic Crusade," urging the government to establish magnetic observatories throughout the empire. Caldecott and the Travancore observatory was one such contributor.

John Allen Braun formerly of Makerston Observatory near Edinborough succeeded Caldecott and arrived at Travancore in Jan 1852 after his friend Col Sykes recommended him, to the new king of Travancore. However to his misfortune, the observatory’s instruments were by then in a bad shape due to misuse and bad maintenance and so he had no choice but to concentrate his work on magnetic and meteorological measurements.

Mr. Broun went on to establish another Observatory, as is recorded - on the crown of a conical hill commanding an extensive and beautiful view of the surrounding country up to the sea on the west and on the east the Ghauts, in one of the highest peaks of which, known as the Agasthya Malai 6200 ft. above sea level, in Lat. 8° 37' North and Longitude 77° 20' east of Greenwich, stood another Observatory from which many observations by means of signaling, were simultaneously taken, and embodied in the Report of Mr. J. A. Broun and in the Indian Meteorological Memoirs Vol. X.

His period at Travancore was eventful, and in his efforts, was helped by two locals J KochuKunju and E Kochiravi pillai. They conducted a series of very valuable Magnetic observations for a number of years. These observations were acknowledged to be of great scientific value and were subsequently published in England, duly sponsored by the Travancore Government. According to Dr Gopachandran - From his observations he concluded that the Sun and the Moon exert certain influence on the direction of the magnetic needle, and there is a lunar diurnal variation for this influence. Near the equator the influence was in December opposite to what it was in June. He also showed that the lunar action was reversed at sunrise, and much greater during daytime than at night, whether the moon was above or below the horizon. Mr.Broun also deduced that day to day changes in the horizontal force of the earth's magnetism was simultaneous all over the world and some of these changes he attributed to the moon while the others had periodical changes once in 26 days, due the influence of sun. He also inferred that the greater magnetic disturbances were due to actions proceeding from certain meridians of the Sun.

Broun was also beset with illnesses, nervous attacks and other ailments, further he became deaf after a trip to one of the nearby hills and this was to trouble him for the rest of his life and prevent any further glory after his return to England in 1855. He devoted the rest of his life for publishing the Trivandrum Observations on Magnetism and Meteorology. Afterwards according to the suggestion of Sir William Denison, the Governor of Madras, the Travancore magnetic Observatory was closed. After the retirement of J. A. Broun, the Observatory was placed under the guidance of Dr. Mitchel F. R. S. E., Principal of His Highness the Maharaja's College and afterwards Director of Public Instruction, Travancore. He introduced a scheme of rainfall measurement for the whole state. In 1910 Mr.Stephenson, Professor of Physics succeeded Dr.Mitchell as Director of the Observatory. He continued the work started by Dr.Mitchell till 1920.

The work done in the Observatory those days consisted of: taking Meteorological and Magnetic observations and publishing the results weekly in the Travancore Government Gazette; dispatching daily Weather Telegrams to Madras, Bombay and Simla Meteorologists; compiling Meteorological statistics of Travancore and sending to the Meteorologist, Madras for incorporation in his daily, monthly and annual Reports; firing, morning, noon, and night time guns at the Nayar Brigade ground, half a mile distant, by means of an electric attachment placed in front of the Mean Solar Time Clock in the Observatory, corrected and reduced by Transit observations and making Astronomical observations from time to time.

In 1931 the Observatory building built by Mr. Broun and Dr. Mitchell had to be dismantled as that spot had to be given over to Engineering Department for the construction of a high level reservoir for distributing water in various parts of the town. The five inch Equatorial was shifted to the top of the reservoir to secure a better view of the sky all round. As years went by the royal observatory which had been taken over by the state government, went into disuse. Some years ago a section of the roof collapsed and the building was slated for demolishing, however it has since then been saved and I heard that some new instruments were being ordered.

It is still difficult to fathom the actions of the young king who had so much on his mind and hands. Art, music, science, governance…so much took up his time. The sensitive king however was not built for the rigors of politics and before long left this abode. The royal observatory and his Carnatic compositions remain for us to marvel at his intellect and breadth of his mental reach.

As Anand Narayanan stated in his article, with the days of scientific vigor gone, the astronomical observatory oriented itself to science popularization. Catering to the public’s fascination for the night sky, the telescopes were routinely opened for visitors, a practice that continues. The place occasionally draws a large crowd, especially when the skies stage rare events.

References

Popular Astronomy: 1916 Volume 24 The maharaja’s observatory at Trivandrum Article submitted by Rama Varma raja

Dr Richard Walding’s article

History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization: edited by Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya

Astronomy in India, 1784–1876 By Joydeep Sen

A Memoir on the Indian Surveys By Sir Clements Robert Markham

Kerala Calling June 2013 – Swathi Thirunal, Cynosure of Carnatic Music Dr Achuthsankar S Nair

Astronomical Archives in India S.M. Razaullah Ansari

The Journal - The Madras journal of literature and science,

A bit about the magnetic equator or the dip equator – The magnetic equator if you did not know passes through Travancore, in the 50’s was close to Quilon (now Kollam), but one which had been meandering a bit South or North over the years.

Quoting Jay Raja and Manoranjan Rao The term `geomagnetism' refers to the fact that earth behaves like a magnet. That is why a compass needle (itself a tiny magnet) always points towards `north'. In the northern hemisphere, the north-seeking end of a compass needle when freely suspended in the middle, would, in general, dip down. The angle by which the needle dips depends upon the latitude of the place. Similarly, in the southern hemisphere, the south-seeking end dips down. In between is a region where the needle does not dip at all. It remains strictly horizontal signifying that the dip is zero. The line joining all such points on earth where the dip is zero is called the magnetic equator. The magnetic equator differs significantly from the geographic equator. Directly above the magnetic equator, at altitudes of around 110 km in the atmosphere, a system of electric currents exists. Known as the equatorial electrojet, this has always fascinated scientists. The closer you are to the magnetic equator, the better placed you are to study the electrojet. In the early 1960s, there were very few places in the world close to the magnetic equator with adequate infrastructure to support research in this field.

Pics courtesy - The Hindu, wikimedia

The man who discovered the medieval Madhava school of Kerala Mathematics

Whish was certainly some character. At an age when many others toyed around with other exciting facets of human life, Whish studied Indian languages, excelled in Sanskrit and Malayalam, wrote and published the very first book ever written on Malayalam grammar, studied various Hindu scriptures, the Malabar Zodiac, their alphabetical notations of numerals and finally perused the complicated works of mathematics scholars. Remember now that we are talking about a person who predated Gundert and Logan, who incidentally spent entire days as an Assistant criminal judge in Calicut, just a few decades after the English (We are now talking about the 1820-1834 time frame) had finally got a foothold in India. He cultivated friendships with the learned people in Calicut and Malabar and understood not only their psyche, but also got close enough to understand the religious scriptures and astronomy and astrological methods. By the age of 38, the man was lost to this world, dying prematurely. Surely his friends would have remarked then that he had somehow upset the gods. I would however say that he was not yet ready for this world. His studies were alas, lost again to the world, suppressed so to say by lesser human beings envious of the painstaking and revolutionary work, for over 100 years, till finally CT Rajagpal and Mukunda Marar took it up in 1940. Now there are so many books and papers on the subject broadly termed as the Madhava School, the Kerala school of Mathematics or the Nila School.

Whish was the person who actually brought it all to light and tried hard to tell people how important that discovery was. As that information collected dust in the Asiatic society’s binders, people studied Newton’s theories of fluxions and Leibniz’s discoveries, heralding the subject which we know as calculus, today. It took another 150 years after Newton’s methods were burned into the brains of Math students that the discoveries and Calculus studies of mathematicians like Madhava and his students who predated Newton, came to light. Even today, as the work of Kerala School is finally gaining acceptance, the man who discovered it, Charles Whish is only mentioned in passing. Barring a scholarly paper by Sarma, Bhat, Pai and Ramasubramaniam, there are only passing mentions about this East India Company official who led such a varied and interesting, but short life in Malabar. I don’t think he missed a single day, or hour of his life, so busy was his life, so valuable his contributions to the world.

A remarkable young man, Charles was born to Martin and Harriet in 1794. It must have been tough, for the young lad was sandwiched right in the center between 7 elder to him and 7 younger. Martin worked for the excise department, but seems to have come to India sometime for it is said that Charles was born in India. Nevertheless Charles went to England for his studies, graduating from the newly established East India College close to London as a writer (administrator). He would have studied law, economics of course, and math from Dealtrey (the author of the book on fluxions) and Bewick Bridge. Literature and oriental languages would have been dealt with briefly. Whish passed the College examinations 'with credit' in 1810, aged 15 and in the following term won prizes for Persian and Hindustani. He was soon shipped off to India and straightaway went to the College of Fort St George in Madras (aka madras school) established for the purpose of training and graduating new EIC officers in Indian languages and publishing text books for that purpose. Whish was involved with these activities for the next few years and we find that he published the first Malayalam Grammar text book.

The school intended to pass out a batch of junior native civil officers from the college and work closely with the so called Dravidian ideas of FW Ellis, its founder. “Before the college was established, a junior civil servant on his arrival at Madras, was at once nominated to a situation, (generally in the interior) whence he was periodically summoned to the Presidency, for examination in the native languages, by a committee annually appointed. It was one of those committees which suggested the establishment of the college, in order to supply the want of tolerable native teachers, and of nearly all elementary books for the study of the native languages, then loudly and justly complained of; and to form a more permanent body, for the systematical examination of young men entering on the public service. With the exception of this last duty, the chief objects of the college, as explained in the paper suggesting its first establishment, were to print anew the few elementary books which then existed; to encourage by pecuniary rewards the composition of such others as were required; and to educate a class of natives for the situation of teacher to the junior civil servants.”

New works, illustrative of the Carnataca have been produced by one of its oldest members, Mr. M‘Kerrell, who has been followed by Mr. Reeves. Others on Teloogoo have been published, both by the present and a former college secretary, whilst two others of its students, Mr. Whish and Mr. Viveash, are engaged in similar works on the Malayalam (circa 1826) and Mahratta languages; and an extensive class of well-informed native teachers, of nearly every one of the numerous languages in use in the Peninsula, has at length been formed, aided by a subordinate class of candidates for that office.

Whish passed out with a first class in Malayalam in 1814, 5^thranked in Tamil, was highly placed in law and placed on par with another student Dent in all these subjects. In the passing out speech they are singled out “The Gentlemen whose names stand in the first Class of the third classification, namely Messrs. Viveash, Chamier, Whish, and Dent, have made a progress in the study of the two languages which entitles them in our opinion to receive the highest salary, namely 100 Pagodas pr. month and we accordingly recommend that it be granted to them. Mr. Whish and Mr. Dent, have fully qualified themselves for promotion, and should their services be required we have no doubt that they will prove highly useful in whatever department it may be pleasure of the Right Honorable the Governor in Council to employ them.”

CM. Whish's Malayalam Grammar and Dictionary was the first publication in that language with which the fort St College was associated as far back as 1815.By 1815, he is posted as the register of the Zillah of South Malabar and by 1823 to Malabar, presumably to Calicut. He rose to the position of Sub Collector and joint magistrate of Malabar in 1826 and in 1827 took the position of assistant judge and joint criminal judge of Malabar continuing on until 1830 when he was posted to Cudappah in the same post. For some reason he was not employed in 1831, was reinstated in 1832 and died prematurely in 1832, at Cudappah.

Let us now take a look at his contributions, both as a civil servant and those a result of his study of the methods of the Malabar zodiac. We saw that as a register, and later a criminal judge he was pally with both Murdoch Brown and Thomas Baber. Baber as a person who had a high regard of the native populace, was very much Whish’s sounding board on many aspects, as we will see soon. Perhaps it was his friendship with the Raja of Kadathanad, one Sankara Varma, an intelligent man and acute mathematician, as Whish himself testifies, which put him on the track to understanding the special methods used by Hindu mathematicians. Varma had by then authored the Sadratnamala, a book on Hindu astronomy ‘comprehended by two hundred and eleven verses of different measures, abounding with fluxional forms and series’. The details Whish gathered from the various texts he perused convinced him that the mathematics school which once existed in Kerala was far advanced than previously thought and that they predated relatively more modern solutions proposed by Newton and Leibniz. This prompted him to write a paper on the subject ‘on the Hindu quadrature of the circle and the infinite series…..”. It is now felt that he wrote this originally in the 1820-25 time frame, when he was a register and dealing with South Malabar. It took quite a few years before it was first read, then published by the society. During this period we now understand how Whish had to fight with the EIC who were at cross purposes when it came to depicting the intellectual capacity of the native population.

To understand his turmoil, we have to get to know two more people who were on the same track, again people who were neither historians nor mathematicians. They were Lt Col John Warren, a Frenchman indigo planter. During the 1805-1811 period he was in Madras, in temporary charge of the new observatory there and then he took to documenting the methods used by the South Indian in reckoning time. He returned to France in 1815, but continued with his research and published a voluminous record now named Kalasankalita. Obviously his path crossed that of Whish while he was at the St George College and their correspondence continued after Whish had been posted to Malabar. He was, as you can imagine, Warren’s source for the research in Malabar. George Hyne was an assistant surgeon and medical officer of the EIC and very much involved in the literary society, a naturalist and botanist dabbling in the field of flora and fauna.

We note from the contents of the Kalasankalita and the studies conducted by Sarma and team that Warren had started his own research after meeting a Hindu astronomer/astrologer. As the Asiatic society report states - In 1814 Captain John Warren, one of Colonel Lambton’s chief assistants in the Trigonometrical survey, at the suggestion of Mr. F. W. Ellis, prepared a paper on Hindu astronomical computations, and another on the Muhammadan Kalendar. It treats almost exclusively of the methods employed by the Brahmins in Southern India, explaining in detail the arithmetical processes for determining chronological and astronomical elements. The author deprecates any charge of trying to support the views of Bentley, or of the partisans of Bailly: his object “is merely to explain the various modes according to which the Natives of India divide time, and to render their Kalendars intelligible.” Very strange of course is the fact that Warren makes no acknowledgement to the inputs from Whish, but praises those from Hyne. We can perhaps infer from this that Whish had already fallen out of favor, due to his pro native views and also the fact that Warren and Hynes were considerably senior in age and position in the EIC bureaucracy.

Warren quotes Hyne mentioning that Whish had sent him details of his mathematical findings and that Whish felt that the knowledge was totally indigenous. He goes on to add however Whish’s change of mind - I requested him to make further inquiries, and his reply was, that he had reasons to believe them entirely modern and derived from Europeans, observing that not one of those who used the Rules could demonstrate them. Indeed the pretensions of the Hindus to such a knowledge of Geometry, is too ridiculous to deserve refutation. We can also infer that Hyne was the person behind this strong belief for Warren explains later referring to - Mr. Hyne’s opinion the Hindus never invented the Series referring to the Quadrature of the Circle which were found in their possession in various parts of India; and that Mr. Whish, from whom he had obtained some of those which were communicated to the Madras Literary Society, after having first expressed a belief that they were indigenous, had subsequently reasons for thinking them entirely modern, and derived from the Europeans ; observing that not one of the Jyautish Sastras who used these Rules, were capable of demonstrating them.

But Whish was not too happy about the direction he was forced to follow and finally published the paper in his own name, in 1832, well after the above faux pas. In it he made his conclusion clear “Having thus submitted to the inspection of the curious eight different infinite series, extracted from Brahmanical works for the quadrature of the circle, it will be proper to explain by what steps the Hindu mathematician has been led to these forms, which have only been made known to Europeans,

through the method of fluxions, the invention of the illustrious Newton. Let us first, however, know the age of these works; and as far as can be determined, the authors. First, then, it is a fact which I have ascertained beyond a doubt, that the invention of infinite series of these forms has originated in Malabar,, and is not, even to this day, known to the eastward of the range of Ghats which divides that country, called in the earliest times Ceralam, from the countries of Madurai, Coimbatore, Mysore, and those in succession, to that northward of these provinces.” He also provides details of each of the books, their authors and his opinion on their dating.

Whish also offers to provide the proofs and demonstrations, but very soon he was transferred to Cudappah and met an untimely death. Was it a punishment transfer out of Malabar due to his ‘going native’? You can also see that he loses his job after moving to Cudappah for a year before reinstatement in Cudappah. The paper was eventually published after his death, in 1834. Though it was by now in print, it was largely ignored by the academics.

We also note that the British continued to cast doubts on Whish’s deductions even after the paper was published. CP Brown’s book listed under references has a chapter ‘On Fraudulent documents’ where he refers to obtaining the opinion of one Ayyah Sastri, Hynes’s learned Brahmin assistant and atheist who demonstrates how easy it is to create false attributions. Sastri stating that it is easy to fool an Englishman, accuses Whish of quoting a reference named Tantra Sangraha which does not exist as it does not figure in Whish’s collections! It is a pity that such rubbish was published by Brown, as the work does exist in the collection and the book is now a well-known reference. But it is also a fact that there was an element of misquoting in Whish’s paper - KV Sarma explains that the equations referred to were not part of Tantrasangraha, but in the commentary by Sankara - The Sadratnamala.

Whish’s input to his Kalasankalita was perhaps the detail on the Malayali Kollam era and this was separately published by CM Whish as a paper titled – On the origin and antiquity of the Hindu Zodiac. Another paper titled ‘on the alphabetical notation of the Hindus was published by Whish, but the TLSM feels it is a paper apparently written by George Hyne and was wrongly attributed to Whish which is likely at first look. What is primary to all these studies is the Whish’s understanding of the Katapayadi system of using letters to depict numerals as letters, words or usage of slokas for long numbers. Unfortunately most works that detail the Kerala method attribute the first paper on the subject to CF Fleet and forget that Whish had actually explained it much earlier, in 1832.

Whish of course had many other interests as is evident from the papers he left behind. He studied the early history of Kerala, wrote about the Cheraman Perumal epoch, the Kollam calendar, the Jewish and Catholic copper plates, was adept at the ancient Malayalam vattezhuttu transcription

He frequently collaborated with Thomas Baber at Tellicherry on translations and dating of archaic Malayalam inscriptions and was the second person who provided a translation of the Jewish copper plates (the first was FW Ellis and third was Gundert) of Cochin, using his knowledge of vattezhutu as well as old Malayalam and Tamil. The Jewish plates were transliterated in 1821, when it is recorded - Mr. Baber called the attention of Mr. C. M. Whish, an excellent Tamul scholar, versed in the ancient as well as the modern character, to the subject of this inscription. Whish states that the basis of the translation is based on his skill at deciphering the script on the stone engraving at the Tiruvannur kshetram near Calicut and the Nedumprayar kshetram at Kavalappara – Palghat. By then he had inspected and worked with over 100 such temple inscriptions.

He explains - These inscriptions are perfectly unintelligible to the inhabitants of Malabar of the present day, not so much from difficulty arising from the character in which they are written, for it is a mere form of the present Kole-Elutta adapted to incision upon stone (with some peculiar characteristic variations); but particularly, from the peculiarity of the language in which they are written; it being an ancient dialect) the intricacy of which none other than the old Tamul dictionary, which is now publishing by the Board of Superintendence for the College of Fort St. George, can solve, aided by a competent knowledge of the Shen-Tamul. He observes that no mere scholar of modem Tamul or Malabar languages, ignorant of High Tamul, can expect to understand so ancient a record; such will perhaps agree in the reading, but be perfectly ignorant of the meaning of the terms, most of which will be as unknown to them as Greek.

His understanding of the Katapayadi system, was presented in the paper on the alphabetic notations and of course, in the paper on the Hindu quadrature, he introduces Aryabhatiya, Sankara Varma (Sadratnamala), Somayaji (Charana Padhati), Talakulattara nambudiri (Tantra Sangraha), Cellalura nambudri (Yukti Bhasha) and so on. The paper on alphabetic notations

Nick Balmer, referring to the notes of Thomas Hervey Baber mentions that Baber was an ally in the works completed by Whish and that they frequently met at Baber's house at Tellicherry during the Monsoon every November which was more like an annual holiday. While Whish served at Calicut as a civil administrator, Thomas Baber was the magistrate, collector and judge. Both were fluent in Malayalam, and both spent prolonged periods studying Indian texts surviving in the Temples in Tellicherry, and Calicut. We can find an interesting occasion when Thomas Baber (thanks and due acknowledgement to Mr Balmer for this tidbit) passed severe criticism on the way Whish judged an 80 year old blind man (on a crime of bribery) and sentenced him to such a large fine (well beyond the rule) that he would have spent his old age in jail for this minor crime. I would guess that by that time Whish was being blackballed by the EIC bureaucracy, and was starting to toe the line.

Anyway soon, he was transferred to Cudappah, lost his job, got reinstated and died soon after, slipping into obscurity till Marar and Rajagopal came up on the Quadrature paper a hundred or so years later.

After Whish’s untimely death and burial at Cudappah, his collection was gifted to the Royal Asiatic society Library in London, by his brother, where you can still view the considerable collection of some 300 granthams (for details see attached image).

A remarkable man, indeed….

References

Carnatic chronology, the Hindu and Mahomedan methods of reckoning time explained - By Charles Philip Brown

On the alphabetic notations of the Hindus – CM Whish

On the Hindu Quadrature of the Circle, and the infinite Series of the proportion of the circumference to the diameter exhibited in the four S'ástras, the Tantra Sangraham, Yucti Bháshá, Carana Padhati, and Sadratnamála – CM Whish

The discovery of the Madhava series by Whish: An episode on Historiography of Science – UKV Sarma, Vanishri Bhat, Venketeswara Pai, K Ramasubramanian

An overview of Indian mathematics - J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

Note: This is a short article on CM Whish and his work, leading upto to the announcement of the discovery of the Kerala School of Mathematics. The details of the 14^th-16^th century school and its works, plus the great teachers are covered in a number of interesting books, such as those by GG Joseph, Kim Plofker etc. There are also interesting hypotheses (Joseph, Arun Bala) on how this information perhaps traveled westward and got used by European scholars and mathematicians. If there is sufficient interest, I can provide an overview one of these days.

Madhava’s picture - A digital image of Madhava drawn up by the Madhava Ganitha Kendram, a voluntary association working to revive his works, with inputs provided by descendants of the mathematician-astronomer, Courtesy Telegraph Feb 25, 2014

Shanti LBJ - the little big Jumbo

When a few American politicians and bureaucrats, especially the kind who like practical jokes, bored with the goings on in Capitol Hill, get together, what would you think could happen? This is such a story, an incredible one and as I often think about it and smile, I wonder if the offices of Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders could ever be home to such mirth. The 60’s was according to Senator Jim Wright, a time when politics was fun. As he put it, in the heady days of the New Frontier and the Great Society, before the Vietnam War split the country into angry camps, political practitioners enjoyed their trade.

The date was the 27^th of Dec 1963, and Texas state senator and democrat Don Kennard of Fort Worth was on his way to a pre New Year party in Athens, TX. Kennard later famed for his herculean filibuster efforts, was one of the most vibrant senators of his time, a bear of a man who enjoyed a good story and always one who possessed a hearty laugh (Paul Burka – Texas times). To set a timeline, JFK had been assassinated a month ago and LBJ had taken over.

As Kennard was leaving his home, his phone rang and the man who announced himself at the other end of the line, a gruff sounding official from the US customs service was curt “Sir, I just got a message from our San Francisco office. They are holding an elephant for you out there, addressed to you, COD. I need to find out how you want to handle it.”

Spluttering and dumbfounded in parts, Kennard, a booming Texas man could only exclaim “An Elephant? For me?”

“Yessir,” the customs man continued, “sent on a collect basis, shipped from someplace by air…yeah, from Cambodia, by airfreight. The freight charges due from you are $1,400.00.”

Kennard was alarmed, for he was never one who had money left over in his accounts. “Fourteen hundred you said?”

“Yeah, not to mention the $38 per day custodial charge during the two weeks we have to keep it in quarantine”, continued the customs man.

“Who in the dickens sent the elephant to me? Was it a man named Newbold?” Asked Kennard.

“Message don’t say” muttered the customs man.

The stunned Kennard weaseled out, stating that he would get back in a day or two, after his return from East Texas. In any case the elephant was in quarantine.

For those who are politically savvy, this might be a bit of a surprise for Kennard was never one to be caught short of words. You see, Kennard is often remembered for his 29-hour, 22-minute filibuster to gain a four-year status for the University of Texas at Arlington. Compare that with the oft mentioned 8 hour speech of Krishna Menon and you will note the magnitude of the speaking effort.

Now as many of you will surmise, the story has something to do with a Newbold. Who on earth could

it be, you’d think and assume correctly that for him to be capable of this, Newbold must be an interesting person. Well, you see, Bill Newbold, a reporter and a onetime TV news anchor for WBAP-TV, was at that time working for the US information agency in Cambodia. He was a good friend of Marshall Lynam, the man who documented this story. Senator Jim Wright was the Democratic U.S. Congressman from Texas who served 34 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the Speaker of the House from 1987 to 1989 was on the other hand, planning mischief. Wright had just witnessed death, riding in the motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Lynman worked for Wright and was his chief of staff. All large hearted Texans, Fort Worth natives, and believe me, there are more to come.

We flashback to a party held some months ago. Bill, a stocky blond Texan, as you can imagine, usually held his audience spellbound with his tales from the East and now he was in a party extolling the flora and fauna of that faraway country with Kennard and Lynam amongst others, listening.

“The little ocelots are beautiful, Newbold (quoting Wright) exclaimed. When I get back to Cambodia, I'm going to get a pair sent to the Fort Worth Zoo.

Ocelots! Kennard exploded in mock contempt. That's the trouble with Fort Worth! We think too small. Don't send mangy ocelots. Send elephants! Send something big enough to challenge our imagination!

I must remark here that Ocelots are not native to Cambodia, nor are Siberian tigers, as Lynam mentions in his version of the story. He goes on to say that Newbold had delivered a couple of Siberian tiger cubs to the Fort Worth zoo after that discussion. I believe that Newbold must have meant Asian Tigers.

Kennard had a reason to mention the elephant, for the Zoo’s principal attraction and the favorite among children, a Burmese elephant named Penny had died a couple of years ago. She had been named Penny after a Star-telegram newspaper campaign where people donated a penny apiece. After 20 years of boredom at the zoo, entertaining long streams of visitors, she became somewhat violent and the zookeepers decided that she had to be put down. The stir crazy elephant was shot down with 5 shots from a high powered rifle, just like her predecessor Ruby was. The children of the area clamored for another and so an elephant was high on the local wish list. Cambodia was famed for its elephants, so why not get Newbold to cough up one? That was the idea that flashed through the crafty politician Kennard’s mind.

Wright, Curtis and Lynam made a note of this, but kept silent. Kennard kept pestering Newbold - at least a little elephant. Now a person who is picky is bound to ask, who is Curtis? Well Lawrence Curtis was the only non-politician in the bunch. He was the Fort Worth zoo director, having moved there from Dallas and a good friend of the politicians.

Lynam

Some days later, when Lynam met Wright, the latter came up with the idea of playing a practical joke on Kennard. He suggested that they trick Kennard with a cash on delivery elephant from Cambodia. The two friends had a hilarious time imagining Kennard’s expression when faced with the situation. But Lynam soon found out that his boss was quite serious. Wright added that it had to be done right, and that the delivery message will have to come from a credible source such as a friendly US Customs agent.

And that was how the unnamed customs agent called Kennard. The agent reported later to Wright that Kennard did appear to be shocked and at a loss of effectual speech. The rouge group snickered and giggled, and settled down to more pressing matters such as governing the US public, the gag having been played to perfection.

But they were not to know then that this little telephone prank would start an unstoppable circus of

events. The tricksters assumed that Kennard would call Newbold in Cambodia to check and tell him that he, Kennard had not meant to order a shipment of an elephant and pay it with $1,400 of his own money, only to get shocked to hear the retort from Newbold that he had done no such thing. Kennard, they were convinced, would be ridiculed by all and sundry for being the butt of such a silly joke.

Well, as you can imagine, matters did not quite turn out as expected. Kennard came back home,

collected his senses and called the customs man again, only to be assured that the pachyderm was anxiously waiting in the bay area pending instructions from its new master. In Fort Worth, Kennard spread the word around, as newspapers said, moaning in discomfort, but instead of being ridiculed, he found himself elevated to a hero status. His daughter was overjoyed to imagine that she would have a play pal of her size, and was wondering how it would be if she took the little elephant to her school. Curtis the Zoo director was overjoyed, he assumed that the Zoo would get to keep the little fella, and assured Kennard that he would take care of all the itty bitty details and even presented Kennard a book on caring for elephants, hoping that it would convince Kennard about the elephantine proportions - feeding an elephant would turn out to, thereby convincing him to move the animal to the zoo, which as you know needed one.

Anyway Kennard reveled in the role of a foster father for the elephant ‘child - to – come’. He imagined the massive opportunities the animal presented, the possibility of lots of TV time, public events and continued newspaper coverage. You see, for a professor, the need is to get published, for a politician the desire is to be in public view for the maximum time. He first decided to go to his friendly newspaper ‘the star-telegram’ with the news. The city desk man wanted to know who had sent the elephant. Kennard mentioned that it was perhaps Bill Newbold. The reporter called Cambodia, where things were however in turmoil.

Bill Newbold had been kicked out by the King Norodom Sihanouk who believed that the Americans were trying to overthrow his rule. Newbold was transferred by the state department to Hong Kong. The city reporter did not know all this and as he could not get Bill, got a hold of his father Charles who worked for the same newspaper, some floors below. Charles explained that his son was in limbo, moving to Hong Kong but his mother agreed that it was perfectly possible that her son sent across an elephant. After all, he had sent the tiger cubs some time ago!

Chester Bowles

Newspapers splashed the story on page one, announcing how the moaning senator found himself to be the owner of a 635 pound elephant shipped COD. Two days later, the newspaper continued headline coverage, stating that they had tried to trace the elephant in the US customs, only to find that it was not traceable. Meanwhile Kennard was getting exhausted with the thought that he had to pay all this money for an elephant. He was wondering how somebody could send an elephant COD! Curtis though looking forward to the gift, stressed that the zoo had no budgets to acquire elephants. Kennard also picked up the nickname Sabu, the elephant boy.

Senator Wright who had been keeping tabs on the story, was getting worried that Kennard might resort to a public fund collection (which Kennard actually did) drive with little school boys and girls donating their lunch money and all that, because he knew there was no elephant. It would become a dynamite of a political disaster and the fuse had already been lit. Curtis meanwhile reported to the press (falsely) that Jim wright had assured him about the elephant clearing customs and that the furry animal was enroute Fort Worth. The populace was expectant. The politicians who planned the prank on the other hand, were seen sporting hunched shoulders and gloomy countenances. But another shocker was to come, the reporter contacted the longshoremen’s union in San Francisco who emphatically stated that they had not unloaded any elephant at the wharfs. Confusion was rampant.

Jim Wright

A grim meeting took place between Lynam and Wright. Wright explained that he had not talked to Curtis and told Lynam that he now had an urgent errand to find an elephant, pronto. The aide had heard many requests, but never one to acquire an elephant, and Lynam in the end agreed to try.

Meanwhile the associated press got wind of the story of the senator who was gifted an elephant COD and the news spread countrywide. Phone calls poured in, including from republicans who as you know have the elephant as their party symbol. Kennard insisted that his was a democratic elephant, there was no chance he would give it to the republicans. Besieged with calls about the elephant, he started to redirect callers to check with Lawrence Curtis about the latest situation. Curtis by now suspected that something was amiss and shared his suspicion with Kennard.

The despondent Kennard had no choice but to agree. To tide over the situation, they took to utilizing delay tactics. Enlisting friends in the Zoo fraternity, reports of the imaginary elephant’s movement across the US on road from the west coast started to hit the airwaves. Yeah, it was here, the truck just left, yeah it passed by two days ago and so on.

In Washington, Lynam was frantically trying to find an elephant, and worrying about the ‘expenses to come’ in getting one, if they did find one. Finally in desperation, he called the Zoo superintendent, who suggested that Lynam contact the state department. Apparently he had heard some rumors that there was a Raja in India who was trying to gift a baby elephant to the Americans.

L Curtis

With that the story moved to the South of India, a location just a couple of miles away from my ancestral home in Pallavur, to Kollengode. The nearby Anamalai (elephant hill) forests were home to many elephants and as you can imagine, where there are elephants and ivory, there is always some amount of poaching, sad to say. A mother elephant had been trapped in an elephant trap and died. The little 10 week old baby elephant it left behind was adopted by the Kollengode Raja. The girls of the Venganad palace had named her Shanti (peace) and the elephant had a gala time playing with them, as the children took to feeding it milk with a baby bottle.

The elder raja living in Madras had other ideas, he wanted to gift this little animal to the children of the United States. He contacted Chester Bowles, the Ambassador who was not too keen. Bowles incidentally had been appointed Ambassador to India a second time in 1963 and he was a passionate advocate for stronger relations between the United States and India. So he could not offend this mild mannered Maharaja and offered to spread the word back in the states and see if somebody was interested. The state department staff who were in a pickle, so to say, wanted to offload this unnecessary baggage at the earliest.

Meanwhile Newbold had reached Hong Kong found that his new-found notoriety as a procurer of animals was the talk of the embassy. He was asked what he had actually done with the elephant, which had been shipped but had not reached its consignee. Newbold was flabbergasted. He wisely decided to stay under the radar.

Now, were the politicians Wright and Lynam interested in Bowles’s offer? Yes, of course they were interested. Godsend, was what they thought. They quickly got in touch with Bowles who happened to be a friend of Wright’s and he promised to speed up the arrangements as long as Wright worked out the approvals in the US. The bureaucratic wheels were spun faster and an approval was speedily obtained.

The story of course had a nice culmination, Wright called a news conference and explained the caper

(he even had a donkey named ‘meanwhile’ – the Democratic symbol or a symbol of a jackass - giftwrapped and delivered to Kennard) and the fact that though it had started as an innocent prank, it had worked out right and that an elephant named Shanti was on its way, really, this time, to Fort Worth, thanks to the Raja of Kollengode. The people took it with a lot of humor and goodwill, and the papers were enthralled with the breadth of the caper.

Newspapers worked overtime, the Baytown sun reported - LBJ are the Initials of New Elephant Owned by Senator. After providing a brief on the prank, the paper continued - But "instant elephant," Wright found, is one thing the American economy has yet to produce. So Wright sent Kennard the animal closest to his Democratic heart—a donkey. As Wright went on an elephant hunt, he arranged to ship the donkey to Kennard for presentation to the Fort Worth Zoo. The donkey was dubbed "Meanwhile," and Wright said the promised elephant would sport the LBJ initials with his name of "Little Big Jumbo."

Lawrence Curtis flew to India and motored down to Kollengode, to take delivery of the elephant which was sent by truck to Madras, then by a commercial airline to America. Wright and Kennard agreed to foot Curtis’s travel bill, but I do not yet know if it exceeded the $1,400 he would have otherwise spent for the COD. I did notice that there was some delay in making Shanti’s airfreight payment to American Airlines, and that some legal action was in the offing, but I believe it was eventually settled.

The Indian newspapers reported the event - Director Lawrence Curtis of the Fort Worth (Tex.) zoo, accepted the gift of an 11-month-old elephant given as a token of appreciation for what America had done for India. American families in Madras attended the ceremony at the residence of U. S. Consul General Albert Franklin. Curtis will leave Madras Wednesday night by air with the elephant, named Shanti. Curtis was also presented with a pair of tusks from Shanti’s mother and a framed picture of Shanti with Venugopal Varma, Raja of Kollengode, the town whose children decided upon making a gift of Shanti. In return a crystal elephant was presented to Venugopal Varma by Curtis.

A special Maha Ganapati homam was conducted at the palace, before Shanti was handed over to the Americans.

The American DOS newsletter put a different spin - The 11 month-old female elephant, “Shanti,” was a gift to American children from the children of the Rajah of Collengode "as an expression of thanks for all that America has been doing to help our country in our hour of need." Albert B Franklin US Consul general in Madras found a home For Shanti in the United States with the aid of Congressman James C Wright of Texas. She was shipped to the Fort Worth zoo early in April.

Shanti arrived in Fort Worth, already a celebrity, on April 4^th 1964. She was accompanied by the raja’s son, 24 year old Venugopal raja who took leave from his Kothari estates job for a month, to accompany the pachyderm. Both the Raja and Shanti were accorded honorary (unfortunately Shanti is named Shani in the document) Texas citizenships. The Texans were particularly careful to ensure that the young man was treated well and not offended in any way, they even checked in advance about his diet and if alcohol could be offered.

Shanti was welcomed and declared ‘a little minister without portfolio’ by R Friedman, the mayor of F Worth. Wright had this to say “The rajah's son, who had; always wanted to visit America, accompanied the young animal as "mahout," or caretaker. With much fanfare, a presentation was made at the zoo. The "mahout" stayed on for six weeks as Kennard's house guest.

Of course Bill Newbold continued to garner credit for sending the elephant, while Lawrence Curtis got his wish, a new elephant in his menagerie and took over as its foster father. Curtis himself faced multiple issues later in his working life and moved on to the Riyadh Zoo. All the other key characters of the story lived happily ever after, mostly doing well in politics (regrettably almost all of them are no more today). Lynam went on to write a lovely story ‘The great Washington elephant hunt’, on which this article is almost entirely based upon. I owe my thanks and gratitude to him for documenting it so hilariously, for posterity. The storyline is augmented with facts obtained from Kennard’s personal file on the Shanti episode, which I am in possession of.

Sadly though, while Shanti (aka cutie pie) is still remembered by the people of Fort Worth (new elephants are still being named after her) she died after a good eight years in Texas, of kidney disease, in 1972.

Somebody may have noticed a comment that Kennard got a nickname ‘Sabu’. Why would they call him that? Who is Sabu? That will be a story for another day.

References

Stories I never told the speaker – Marshall S Lynam

Box 21, Folder 19 ‘Elephant Shanti’ from, Don Kennard papers

US State Department Newsletter #36 April 1964

Historic alleys - The Venganad Nambitis of Kollengode

Reports on - The Baytown Sun from Baytown, Texas, Jan 2^nd1964, Park city daily news Dec 31^st 1963, The Tuscaloosa News - Dec 30, 1963, Gettysburg times, Toledo blade, Reading eagle, Times daily…..

Note:

It is presumed that, the amply mustachioed son of Venugopala Raja, named Vasudeva Varma Raja was the one who made the visit to Texas with Shanti. There is some confusion and the names are often interchanged in the files and the newspaper reports. Perhaps one of the girls who played with the elephant is Jaya Jaitly (daughter of KK Chettur, Indian Ambassador to Japan, who figured in one of my previous Jumbo stories) the well-known Indian politician.

Pics courtesy - Kennard colelction, websources, DOD newsletter

A case that shook Madras in 1953, all for a pen……

The Telugu Komati Chetties had been trading in Madras for a long time and were pretty good at it, holding privileged positions with the British in the pre independence days, well located in the (China town) Parry’s corner and Broadway environs of old Madras. The kothwal market or the Kothachawady was something which owes its origin to them, so also many of the old businesses and shops, which old timers frequented. But this is about an unsavory character of their lot, one Alavandar who traded in pens, plastic goods and sarees and his timely demise, if I may term it so. This Alavander, a namesake of the great Vaishnavite philosopher, was no good man, but a philanderer, often preying on young women. As it transpired, in the autumn months of 1951, he chanced upon a young girl of 22, named Devaki Menon, who visited the shop he worked in (it still exists) called Gem and Co to buy a fountain pen. Such pens were much treasured in those days and had great value. In this peculiar case, that pen sale was to start an amorous affair of sorts and eventually result in the murder of this Alavandar.

The story came out in bits and pieces, during the early months of 1953 when the case came up for trail in the hallowed Madras High court. Newspapers feasted on the lurid, morbid and sleazy details. It was certainly tricky, for the jurors, the judge, the police, the lawyers and the others who assisted with the investigation. You must now remember that the scientific facilities we have today were not available to the rudimentary medical team in Madras during that period. X-rays, fingerprints, autopsies and so on were not so advanced and conclusions not too easy to reach. Much of the information on the happenings came out from the confessions (sometimes coerced) provided by the accused and the co accused and the juries made their decisions based on those, after the presiding judge had made his summary and opinion of the case.

The accused was Prabhakara P Menon, husband of the co accused Devaki Menon and they lived in Royapuram. Prior to their marriage in June 1952, Devaki was a social worker imparting Hindi tuitions and lived with her parents in Adam Sahib St. Prabhakara Menon was an insurance clerk at the Premier insurance Co and had since then taken up a position as the editor for the newspaper Freedom. After marriage they settled down in a house rented from one Yusuf Mohammed, at 62 Cemetery Rd Royapuram. The hornets’ nest was stirred (or so it seems) when Menon wanted an advertisement in his paper and his wife offered to help by getting an advertisement from Gem and Co. Menon accompanied Devaki and met Alavandar who seemed overtly friendly with his wife thereby raising suspicions in Menon’s mind about his wife’s fidelity. In fact if he had asked around, Menon could have been more definite in his conclusions, for Alavandar did have many such conquests to boot.

Alavandar, then 42 years old, was not debonair, but dressed nattily, used to work in the Military department at Avadi and had taken up to the businesses mentioned above, after premature retirement. I would assume that he saw greater opportunities in business and soon found out that he could easily bed many a woman he desired by offering pens, sarees and plastic vessels and accepting their bodies in lieu or as part payment for the pens or vessels sold.

On 29^th August 1952, Inspector Ramantha Iyer was faced by a worried looking woman claiming to be the wife of the said Alavandar, complaining that her husband had not come home. The press took up the issue announcing the case of a missing businessman, the following day. Iyer checked up with Kannan Chetty the owner of Gem and Co and talked to Venkatarangan an aspiring politician, who had been around as well as other employees who all mentioned that Alavandar was last seen talking to Devaki Menon on the 28^thAugust, the previous day, before noon.

Meanwhile, on the same day, the 29^th, at about noon time, a ticket examiner boarded the 3^rd class compartment of the Indo-Ceylon boat mail at Manamadurai, a station some 60 miles from Madurai, only to be accosted by irate passengers who complained of a stink from a section of the compartment. Hastening to the location, he found a green steel trunk under the seat as the source of the offending smell, with nasty blood pools around it. The station police and station master were summoned and the box opened. The contents were nothing short of macabre, it comprised a human body sans its head, severed arms and legs, all swiftly rotting in the hot and humid weather. The police were perplexed, whose corpse could this be? It decidedly originated from Egmore station in Madras, with the train.

A quick postmortem revealed injuries to the left side of the chest, a circumcised penis, a black waist thread, and green socks on the feet. The police surgeon concluded after an X-ray that it belonged to a Muslim male aged 24. As we can see, it was a deduction far from reality. The body was moved to the local burial ground and a watch kept, just in case, for this bit of horrid news also hit the papers.

Ramanatha Iyer reading the news the next day somehow felt that the body in the trunk was related to the missing Alavandar. He had in the meantime tracked down the residence of Devaki Menon in Royapuram only to be told that the house had been vacated and the occupants had left town. He entered to see an empty house, but with a number of blood stains on the walls and the kitchen. Iyer was quick to round up and question a number of people in the neighborhood and slowly the scene was recreated. A rickshaw puller Arumugam informed that the occupant of the home, PP Menon had hired his rickshaw, was seen carrying a pumpkin like object, which he had tossed into the Bowekuppam at the Royapuram beach.

Iyer deducted that this tossed object must be the missing head of the headless corpse, but then again, the head was still missing. Proverbially, Jayarama Iyer a constable, walking along the beach chanced upon this very head, as a wave brought it in at 4PM on Aug 31^st. Ramanatha Iyer quickly had the torso brought in to Madras and the combination was handed over for further analysis to a medical team headed by Dr KC Jacob and Dr CP Gopalakrishnan. They were able to establish that the head belonged to the body after seeing that the cervical vertebrae matched at the cut and the finger prints from the severed hands matched those of Alavandar (which were available since he was in military service). Also the height of the body after combining the torso with the head came up to 5’5” whereas the service record mentioned Alvander’s height at 5’4.5”. Alavandar’s wife was called for identification and she identified him based on his two holed right earlobe, his black overriding upper canine tooth, his waist thread, circumcised penis and the green socks. It also transpired during the case that Alavandar had gotten circumcised and consumed opium, both attributed to greater sexual prowess by the press. The stomach analysis revealed opium which Alavandar was known to take.

With this the case took a new turn, to the investigation of the homicide of Alavander and the tracking down of the missing assailants, presumed to be the Prabhakaran and Devaki. The police soon traced the servant boy who worked for the Menon’s, a Coimbatore lad of 13 named KT Narayanan, who had run away from home some months ago and come to Madras. After questioning him (and perhaps Devaki’s father Raman Menon), they learnt that the couple had left for Bombay via Mysore. Ramanatha Iyer drove to Bangalore and flew to Bombay and located Prabhakara Menon at one Subedar Major Nair’s house, with Bombay police’s help. Devaki Menon had in the meanwhile suffered an abortion and was hospitalized. Menon was arrested on 13^th Sept and Devaki later after she was discharged from the hospital, on the 22^nd. Both were brought back to Madras.

I cannot but feel astonished at the efficiency with which all this took place, can you imagine, in 1952, when police departments had small budgets, less staff and depended on the ingenuity of its officers. Just imagine - they could resort to air travel, they worked well with Bombay police and even moved suspects by air!!

The police continued with its investigation, and identified some 50 persons who could provide circumstantial evidence about the movements of Alavander and the Menon’s. The police uncovered a watch and a pen from Menon which they believed were Alavandar’s. They also found a knife in the belongings of Devaki and traced out her blood stained sari and the Malabar knife used to sever the head of the deceased. Menon later showed the police a location near the beach he had hidden clothes and underwear belonging to Alavander. But the police had no eyewitness or clinching evidence linking the Menon’s directly to the crime except for a bloodstained palm print purporting to be Menon’s at 62 Cemetery rd. The police tried hard to get Devaki to become an approver in return for a full pardon if she could affirm that Prabhakaran had committed a premeditated murder, but she would not budge and continued to support her husband who she said acted to save her honor. All the court had was their statements, some obtained under police pressure, but which were used in the court during a trial by jury and headed by a senior judge.

What is even more interesting is the group of people who came together in this pursuit for justice. The presiding judge was A S Panchapakesa Ayyar, from Palghat, a stentorian individual, while the public prosecutor was Govind Swaminathan (brother of Lakshmi Sehgal) from Palghat (later Calicut). The lawyers for the defense were BT Soundararajan and S Krishamurthy. The case was soon readied and the much talked about trial was held at the great hall in the Madras high court, just a few months later, in March 1953. A number of people were questioned, a number of items were introduced as evidence and a number of findings were revealed to the public, and events were replayed in the interest of judicial correctness and for the jury to take a note of. The arguments hovered around whether the case was justifiable or culpable homicide, or a case or premeditated murder. It was very important to have this right for each of them carried a very different sentence, in severity.

Ayilam Subramania Panchapakesan Iyer had come a long way from that small village in Palghat and had risen up the ranks to be the first ICS officer from Madras. After education at Oxford, he became an eminent and outspoken judge. He was author of so many interesting books such as The Layman's Bhagavad Gita, Three men of destiny, and his novel Baladitya is possibly the first historical romance based on Indian History. He was never popular with the British, whom he derided often, and they denied him promotions, keeping him as a district judge for long years. Finally, after Independence he got his much deserved elevation as the first permanent Indian Chief Justice of the Madras High Court.

Govind Swaminathan on the other hand, was born into an influential family, son of Dr S Swaminathan, a leading barrister of Madras who specialized in Criminal Law. Govind’s mother Ammu was a leading social activist later becoming a member of the Constituent Assembly of India and an MP. Govind had two sisters one of whom was the eminent dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai and the other the well-known INA Capt Lakshmi Sehgal.

Not much is known about the defense counsel, perhaps they were court appointed.

So let us now go to the High court at the Parry’s corner, a few hundred feet away from the pen shop where Alavandar had worked, and see what happened, as we reconstruct the events of 28^th August 1952. The judge ASP Ayyar is smartly clad in a black suit and covered with his judicial crimson robes, the sheriff sits on his right wearing a white-laced black gown holding a spear in his hand and to his left sits the Commissioner of Police. The Sergeant would bellow, just as the court was to begin, mightily, “Oye! Oye! Oye!” With that the court belonged to Ayyar, and perfect stillness would descend in the court. The hallowed halls built of teak from Indonesia and furniture of rosewood from Waynad were filled with people looking on….

The hearing revealed the following

The 22 year old Devaki daughter of Raman Menon lived with her parents at Adam Saheb st, and first met Alavandar in August 1951 when she went to Gem & Co to buy a pen. They met frequently and it appears that she was seduced by Alavander a month later at a Broadway hotel, perhaps The Crown. In May 1952, she met Prabhakara Menon, then working as a clerk at the Premier insurance company. He had a reasonably good job and a company car, but soon changed jobs and became an editor at a newspaper named Freedom. They got married in June 1952, a month later.

A few days later, needing an advertisement, Menon meets Alavandar who compliments him on his marriage, but raises the suspicions of Menon who sees too much familiarity in Alavandar’s references to his wife Devaki. Soon they move into new lodgings at 62 Cemetery road and employ Narayanan mainly for cooking and carrying water upstairs. It is perceived that Alavandar has been pursuing Devaki even though she was married. He apparently demands compensation for the advertisement and takes Devaki to the Mercantile hotel for sex, but she manages to escape, and Alavander is incensed. On that particular day, Menon’s suspicions increase as Devaki reaches home late and he accosts his wife and asks her if she is carrying on an affair. She initially denies it, but admits to the previous affair with Alavandar during a movie they go to see at the Minerva Talkies, on 27^th August. The furious Menon storms out of the theater and later at night asks his wife to bring Alavandar home so that he could finish him off (according to the statement of Narayanan who overheard the outburst in Malayalam – seems the boy woke up and went to pee).

A day later the Menon’s world is turned upside down by the events which occur in rapid succession, and in a surprisingly orderly and planned fashion, all brought to light by a quirk of fate, when the wave carried Alavandar’s lifeless head back to shore, depositing it at the feet of Constable Jayraman Iyer.

According to the public prosecutor - Menon plans the act of finishing off Alavandar. He asks Devaki to bring him home on 28^thAugust. He absconds office that day and orders a large knife from Khader Moideen (or another man) which is picked up around 9AM. He asks Narayanan to go elsewhere that day and then leaves home at 10AM, well dressed, he is said to have walked up to the nearby shop and purchased two bottles of Vimto sodas (why Vimto – because it was crimson red?).

At 400 PM, he hires a rickshaw and proceeds to throw toss a pumpkin shaped object into the beach dump. He also finds time to hide some clothes under a rock near the beach (though not noticed doing so by the rickshaw driver Arumugam).

At about 530 PM, Menon is seen again pedaling home on a cycle carrying a large green trunk. Narayanan who has returned by then notices that Devaki is washing some clothes downstairs, she declines offers for help. He is later summoned to help wash the floor upstairs and smells cut flesh. Later Menon proceeds to Egmore station in a rickshaw of one Kathavarayan, with the green trunk. At the station he declines porter help in carrying the box initially, but later does, with whom he deposits the object under a seat of the Ceylon boat mail ETD 800PM, stating that this was for a friend leaving by the train. The porter sees blood and Menon explains that he has cut his hand which indeed is the case, for his thumb and palm are injured. The porter is paid Rs 5/- and asked to keep mum. Menon comes back, shaves off his moustache and returns the Malabar knife to Moideen (actually there is an anomaly here for Menon in his confession explained that he got it from somebody else).

Next day as the trunk is opened up in Manamadurai and as Ramanathan Iyer is dealing with Alavandar’s wife’s complaint, the Menon’s busy themselves in vacating their 62 Cemetery Rd house, transferring the goods to Raman Menon’s (Devaki’s father) house. Later that evening they take the train to Mysore (where Menon tries to settle his company dues from his boss) and then Bombay, leaving the boy Narayanan behind.

The police follow the culprits to Bombay where Menon has started to work for BICC and is living with a relative Subedar Major Nair. Devaki seems to be pregnant and had taken ill. Menon surrenders to the Bombay police when accosted and inspectors Clark and Jaffer book a case of homicide on him. He is then handed over to Ramanathan Iyer who takes him back to Madras and gets him to go over the events, while at the same time unearthing the blood stained clothes of Alavandar.

Later the police rummage through Devaki’s possessions, find the watch and pen belonging to Alavander as well as a knife. She is also brought back to Madras by air after recovery, but is tight lipped.

Some more details come to light, that Devaki had visited Gem and Co at 11AM, had a chat with Alavandar and left around noon. Alavandar followed her in a motor rickshaw according to politician Venkatarangan, informing his staff that he will be back in an hour. It is said that Devaki reached home, and her husband opened the door. Fifteen minutes later Alavadar tapped on the door, which was opened by Devaki. Alavandar went in, the door was closed.

What happened inside 62 Cemetery road at 1230 PM on 28^thAug 1952 after which Menon left for Egmore with the green trunk leaking blood? A witness Anthony testified that he presumed Menon was home since he purchased the Vimto drinks from one Chotta Saheb’s shop and that he had seen Alavandar entering Devaki’s home after alighting from an auto rickshaw after noon.

According to the first theory based on the prosecutions deductions, Devaki invited Alavandar home where Menon was lying in wait in the bedroom. Alavandar arrived and proceeded to disrobe Devaki in the hall when Menon came roaring in. A fight ensued and in the process Alavandar got stabbed (Devaki did not witness the fight and was ordered out of the room by the enraged husband) in his lung and liver. During the fight, Alavandar bit Menon’s hand. The Menon’s then decided to dispose of the body and vamoose. So they hacked the body, dismembered the head and arms, as well as a leg. Menon went out, disposed off the head at the beach, then purchased the trunk and left it in the Ceylon bound train. They then washed the floor and kitchen with Lux soap!! The event was premeditated and well planned and death occurred from a frontal stab and not ‘by chance’ during a tussle.

According to Devaki’s and Menon’s statement, Alavandar followed Devaki home and tried to molest her and it was during that event that Menon arrived and knocked on the door. Alavandar opened the door and Menon and Alavandar had a fight which resulted in the events as above. The event was an occurrence by chance precipitated by Alavandar’s molestation attempt. The stabbing was by Alavandar’s own hand as they went down to the floor during the fight.

At 4PM Menon left in Arumugam’s rickshaw to dispose Alavandar’s head in the corporation dump near the Royapuram beach. The trunk was later deposited in the Indo Ceylon mail by Menon. Menon next went to Mysore, to settle their salary dues, then both fled to Bombay and stayed with Sub Maj Nair, a relative of Menon, after which Prabhakaran met up with KS Alva (for a job perhaps) and found employment with BICC British insulated cables.

The defense tried to attack Alavandar’s character, Antony’s testimony and Narayanan’s statements, but do not seem to have dented them or created any doubts in the mind of the jury. The judge, a stern moralist felt that Alavandar got what he deserved and made it clear in his summary. The jury settled on culpable homicide, not going for premeditated, and Ayyar sentenced Menon and Devaki to seven and three years of imprisonment respectively under IPC sections 201 and 304. The public it is said, felt that ASP Ayyar had sided with the couple because they were from Malabar, but failed to notice that the public prosecutor was also from Malabar.

It is believed that the couple went back to Kerala after release and set up a small business. Nothing more is known about them and the memories of the case faded. Randor guy (Madabhushi Rangadorai) wrote about the case, talked often about it and made a television serial based on this story. The medical analysis and its use in conviction ushered a new era of police forensics, while the jury system continued for another 6 years until it was disbanded after the notorious Ahuja – Nanavati case, which I had written about earlier.

In summary, it was diabolic and well timed in execution, for a plan made just the day before. Menon had approximately three hours between 1230 and 330PM to kill and dismember Alavandar, who had unwittingly walked into the trap (or as the court decided, into a crime of passion). The killing was done with a smaller knife puncturing the lung and liver though I believe Alavandar was not yet dead but was stabbed, in mortal danger and bleeding profusely. He was dead only after his head was loped off. To slice off one’s head with a cleaver is not easy, that too for a novice like Menon, but the cut was neat which is surprising (or else the forensic doctor would not have been able to match the cervical vertebrae). Then again it is very difficult to cut through sinew, bone and muscle if you were not a butcher. To remove two hands and a leg off a writhing body lying on a slippery blood pooled floor of the kitchen, while bending down, is very difficult, without expert help. It was not done on a raised dining table or there would have been knife and blood marks on it. Did somebody help?

The confessions make it clear that Devaki was not at the scene of the dismembering. It is 4 PM now. After this Menon had to go and get rid of the head and clothes (Royapuram and back 1 hr), get a trunk on his cycle (15-30 min), go to the Egmore station, some 6 miles away by rickshaw (45 min) and be there to load the truck into the for the Indo Ceylon mail by 630 PM. The trunk would have leaked blood from that point until departure at 8PM and nobody noticed or complained? Another question, why did Menon choose that train and that too Egmore when it was so far away, why not Central station which is nearer (perhaps to throw the police off the scent?) to Royapuram? Nevertheless, it was all carried out in clockwork precision by a cool headed thinker, if you ask me, which therefore leaves even more mystery behind.

I don’t know what make of pen entrapped Devaki, was it a hero or a pilot or a waterman? I don’t know if there were more nefarious activities goings on for it has been muttered that Alavandar was seen more often at 62 Cemetery lane, before the murder, even after Devaki got married. Questions have also been asked as to why all the people of the locality took little note of the happenings or failed to talk the police about it, but well, that’s how it was.

Royapuram continues to be a crowded place, though I am not sure 62 Cemetery road exists. The high court is still there but the glorious carved ceiling has been covered up with a false ceiling to support air conditioning. People still do things they should not, keeping the court and the people who work there, busy. Cases come and go, people are sentenced and acquitted, and Judges as well as advocates continue their arguments and sentencing. Common people no longer occupy the Jurors seats, for the system has been disbanded.

Ironically this would have been an ideal case for the Los Angeles chief medical examiner and coroner Lakshmanan Satyavagishwaran, who worked with complex cases like that of OJ Simpson’s. Lakshmanan, if you did not know, is judge ASP Ayyar’s grandson.

References

Famous murder trials – S Rajagopalan

Defense contentions in Alavandar Case – Indian express March 12^th 1953

Randor guy (Alavandar Murder case) and TV Raj articles (Murder most foul) on the Alavandar Case

S Muthiah – Madras musings - Bodies in the trunk

Photos Courtesy Hindu, Indian express, Randor Guy, ASP Ayyar, Wikimedia

By Yoga Balaji - From a Digital Camera (Nikon), CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11200059

A gentleman banker, teacher, lawyer and novelist

It was in 1887 that this young man wrote a romantic short story in Malayalam and asked his friends to read it. In the Malabar of yore, only a select few were fortunate to have been educated formally and this young man was one of them. As the story goes, they encouraged him to publish it. In those days, Malayalam readings were mostly limited to poems and prose dealing with mythological topics. So any kind of fiction or for that matter, historic romantic fiction, was a novelty. The Novel in those early days was therefore, an even bigger novelty. Our man, the short story writer decided to try his hand at it, working off his short story. The rest is history. His name, was Appu Nedungadi.

Appu Nedungadi had by this time become a lawyer and was starting to hold his own in the British judicial system of the Queen’s presidency of Madras. But his journey through a varied life was not an easy one and took much hard work, dedication and when viewed today is highly illuminating. Such stalwarts like Appu Nedungadi were the ones who established foundations for lesser mortals like us to step on. So let us follow his passage and marvel at the story of this gentleman from Malabar who achieved much and earned a lot of respect from his peers and superiors. Calicut heritage forumhad previously introduced him with a brief article and I thought it fit to provide an expanded version for those interested in the people who were instrumental in shaping Calicut’s future.

I still recall walking alone, down the road from Ambalakkat towards Tali, turning right and going past the Chalappuram post office, past the gates of the Achutan Girls school and drifting to the Ganapati School, during my younger days in Calicut. It was a time when there were horse driven jutkas, cycle rickshaws and hand pulled rickshaws on the road. On those serene mornings, an odd Ex-servicemen bus roared by, scattering the people on the road hither and thither, and people were sometimes witness to a man (people held their noses as the wheelbarrow like cart with the galvanized iron pots passed by) held in much disgust, the ‘thotti’ who would trundle by, head hung low, pushing his night soil cart. Horns were hardly heard, the rickshaw drivers yelled ‘kooyi’ or rang a bell to get a right of way.

I had frequently heard Nedungadi family name, for he was a relative through my paternal Zamorin links but I never knew anything about Appu Nedungadi. I had visited the Nedungadi brother’s textile shop at Sultanpet Palghat, but bothered not about the connections to Appu Nedungadi. I never stepped into any Nedungadi bank though I saw the branches here and there. I have passed Cherplassery often and visited relatives there and in Ottapalam, but knew no Nedungadi, all I knew was that it was an illustrious family. Now it is time to delve into the story of the doyen among them who was no ruler of Nedunganad, but who turned out to be much more.

The Nedungadi maternal Tharavadu is located at a place called Kothakurissi about 4 miles north of Ottapalam. The Talakoti madam Puthiyaparamb house, once established by an Eralpad (2^nd in line and heir apparent to the position of Zamorin) witnessed the birth of Appu Nedungadi in 1862. Appu Nedungadi’s Grandmother Kunjikutty was the wife of the Eralpad. His mother with the same name, Kunjukutty Kovilamma was married to the Zamorin Kovilakom, a Moonalpaad (3^rd in line) and to her was born five children, three sons and two daughters. He lost his parents early, and a brother succumbed to smallpox. As was the norm, their maternal uncle brought them up in strict Nair traditions as one can imagine, in this village near Palghat. But like in most families, there was a black sheep, for Appu Nedungadi’s brother Kunjunni, who studied to become a doctor in Madras, broke many of those traditions when he married an Englishwoman. Not much more is known about him though.

Appu Nedungadi was initially home educated, moved to Calicut and joined the Zamorin’s Kerala Vidyasala (now Zamorins college) Calicut for further studies, where he completed his intermediate before going on to the Christian college in Madras for his graduation in 1883. As was the tradition, he was married very young, at 17, but it is presumed that the young man still did not settle into any kind of domestic bliss, and struggled with studies, living alone and working many of those early years.

His initial forays were as a teacher, teaching at Cannanore and also at the BEM high school in Calicut, but he had much bigger ideas, moving on as tutor in the Madras Christian College, a more prestigious institution. While at Madras, he also studied and graduated in law in 1888, and dabbled with writing to write the aforesaid short story.

As Appu Nedungadi himself narrates, he decided to expand his short story and publish it as a novel after his friends who read it compelled him to. But his primary reason in doing it was to introduce the women of his land to the medium of romantic historic fiction in Malayalam, as compared to what they were used to, which was narrations and booklets covering stories from Nalacharitam, Ramayanam, Narayaneeyam and Mahabharatam. He complains that all they did was memorize them by heart, only to narrate it again and again to others, remarking that it was time that they, who were not proficient in English, got a feel of what a novel was all about. To him it was an experiment, and the novel he wrote, one about a faraway fictitious place with strange place names (Kalinga, Kunthalam), alien customs and people with even stranger names, like the heroine Kundhalatha (Kalinga’s princess), and men named Pratapachandran, Aghoranathan, Taranathan and so on. The book was titled Kundhalatha and it took its rightful place as the first Malayalam Novel (see notes) to be published, in Oct 1887 from Madras. In charming fashion beset with humility, he continues on, hoping that the bored housewife will be relived of her tedium in the kitchen and its environs, after perusing his book, even if it possessed little by way of excellence. Perhaps it could also be assumed that there was some contribution from somebody who is hardly mentioned, his wife Meenakshi Amma and mother to their 14 children, over the years in whatever he did.

It was not distinguished in quality according to some critics, though becoming a university text book (until then using texts such as Gundert’s Keralolpathi). During his tenure, he was also the chairman of the Malayalam examination board of the Madras University. But all this showed a varied mind at work, and the young man’s commitment to think beyond his own lot. This was to manifest in all his work later, demonstrating his keen commitment to the social upbringing of lesser privileged kinsfolk in Malabar.

Was the book not so good? Many compared it with Indulekha, a novel from Chandu Menon which followed later, itself a novel compared with Henrietta Temple by Benjamin Disraeli. Those people opined that Indulekha was a real novel, constantly denigrating the pioneering efforts of Appu Nedungadi. Some said it was modelled after Pamela of Walter Scott.

U Balakrishnanan Nair writing in the Calcutta review had this to say - Like the original romance writers, our ancient authors found no charm in simple prose; they showed an inordinate and exclusive preference for metre and rhyme. Nor was this their only fault. They chose for their themes wild and improbable events and paid no heed to time, place, or circumstance. And it was likewise the fashion amongst them to give colour to their writings by high-sounding Sanskrit words, foreign to the ordinary reader. Thus it is that the Malayalam language is sadly deficient in prose literature, and works of fiction, as we understand them now, have been hitherto unknown. Hence it was that when educated Malayalees like the author of Kamakshicharitam (Chitambara Vadyar), a version of Shakespeare's ‘As you like it’, and the clever writer of Kundalatha, essayed a new channel, their labours met with no small measure of interest and approval.

Dr Sankaran Ravindran is more detailed in his analysis and I will provide the reader only some bits Appu Nedungadi’s knowledge of Shakespeare and CV Raman Pillai’s reading of Walter Scott novels are speculated as the genesis of their narrative fiction. Such speculations have led to subordinating these writers, unnecessarily to English writers. Although there is no denial of the fact that English fiction and drama kindle din these two writers the desire to shape linguistic forms in their mother tongue, the kind of imagination and artistic skills that have shaped these early fictional narrative in Malayalam need no subordination. All writers of all ages and all nationalities are ultimately indebted to the resource of literary system.

(reference 4 may be perused for details).

Ellen Ambrosone, a recent researcher had this to say - Literary critics have saturated scholarly discourse on Malayalam literature with a dutiful tone that offers Kundalata the chronological “pride of place” as the first Malayalam novel, only to subvert this position with extended discussions of its insufficiencies in comparison to Indulekha. Those interested in the literary merits of Kundalatha may peruse her paper for more detail.

It was a phase in his life, I guess, for he wrote no novels after that. He did write poems and articles sporadically, but a year later, he returned to Calicut, as a lawyer to start an eminent career, culminating in the lucrative position as the government pleader (public prosecutor) in 1906 under Judge Jaxon at the district court. During this period he was one of the luminous personalities of Calicut, among others like Kalyana Krishna Iyer, KP Raman Menon and TC Narayana Kurup, but his mind was forever skirting with new opportunities.

What made him open the first milk center and cattle farm near Annie Hall road is not clear, but that he did, bringing animals from Pollachi. He then started a readymade garments store Nedungadi brothers at Cochin and also set about arranging demonstrations of the first gramophone in Calicut, playing a song for an anna. It is also said that he was one of the first native motor car owners in Calicut. It was around this time (1899) that he started the Nedungadi bank operating from home, a bank which was later incorporated in 1913.

He associated himself with the West Coast spectator, The West Coast reformer and the Kerala Chandrika and wrote articles for them often. Mahakavi Ulloor S.Parameswara Iyer is of the opinion that Kerala Pathrika had an advantageous situation as if it got the blessings of the ‘trinity’ (the lords Brahma, Vishnu and Siva) by the blending in it the short and pleasant style of Kunhirama Menon, the serious type of sentences of Appu Nedungadi and the humour brimming articles of Kesari.Appu Nedungadi by assisting finance, contributing articles and participating in the shaping of policy was like the ‘Godfather’ of Kerala Pathrika right from the beginning. Many of the articles in Kerala Pathrika that enlightened the public in respect of political, social and cultural matters were contributed by him.

KP Kesava Menon, a friend and contemporary, but opposite in ideology when it came to the British rule in India, had this to reminiscence about Appu Nedungadi the person ‘Appu Nedungdi, a legal luminary spoke beautifully in English and Malayalam, His respect towards the bench, courtesy towards the advocate of the opposite party, the manner in which he cross examined the persons of the other side without making any threat etc., was quite admirable. The judge had shown high respect to him, his long practice’.

Many people rest on their laurels, once they have reached the summit, but Appu Nedungadi decided otherwise, for his next venture was to open a girl’s school, in Chalappuram. Prior to that he had worked with promoting SPEW - a society for promotion of education for women. It was a period when the two convent schools the St Joseph’s girl’s school and the German girl’s school in Calicut admitted mainly Christian girls. As Nedungadi wanted traditional education imparted also to girls from Hindu families, he started one in 1890 them in the same line with German teachers imparting classes in the school. This would continue until the First World War started after which those teachers were sent back home. The school itself faced many difficulties, for it was constructed in Chalappuram where a pond once existed. Superstitious beliefs helped start a rumor that girls studying in the school would develop rheumatism, but the school commenced, aided by other personalities such as Rarichan Moopan. Appu Nedungadi also had the girls in his own family and the kovilakom admitted to the school to set an example. It was the first school in Calicut sans caste barriers and initially prospered.

During this period, Appu Nedungadi was also the Calicut municipal councilor. The school was eventually handed over to the municipality after Appu Nedungadi left the municipality position, following which his friend Achuthan took charge and the school was named after him. Appu Nedungadi also presided over the Malabar provincial conference.

Articles and anecdotes about Appu Nedungadi indicate that he was pro colonial, that he had great regard for the British system of justice and was soon bestowed with the Rao Bahadur title by the British rulers. He was not one who was happy with the home rule and self-government agitations and thought little of anti-British mentality. Strict British style upbringing and education was the norm with his children, and it is not surprising that his nephew Kelu Nedungadi became the principal of Victoria College Palghat and Brennen’s in Tellicherry. His youngest daughter Subhadra Amma, wife of GK Chettur, was the principal of the Arts College in Mangalore and skilled in the game of tennis. Some of his other children excelled in careers they chose, such as banking, music and writing.

One sphere where Appu Nedungadi’s name is still remembered is in the banking industry. He was involved with the setting up of the first bank in Malabar, amid a number of unorganized and unregulated chit funds and hundi based money lenders. In those days, there used to be just one branch of the Imperial bank in Calicut. For a trading city, once a great entrepot of spices, it was nothing short of a disgrace.

Nedungadi started the first offices of the Nedungadi bank in 1899 after investing his savings of Rs 19,000 on the floor above his house, in Chalappuam. Growth was slow and difficult, but by 1913 it was formally registered, reopened in the Palayam area and they had a second branch at Cherplassery. The Bank being the first commercial bank to be set up in South India, at that point, was one among the five banking establishments in the whole of India (The other four banks being Allahabad Bank (1965), Oudh Commercial Bank (1881), Ayodhya bank (1884), and Punjab National Bank (1894))

Some of the earliest shareholders included Kunjukuttan Thanmpuran, PS Warrier (Arya Vaidya Sala), K Raman Nair, AVG Menon etc. The cheque books and safes came from Germany and armed guards were appointed for security. Appu Nedungadi was the managing director and he concentrated on the bank’s affairs after he left his position as public prosecutor during the depression years. In 1933, he had to resign and this was a devastating blow to an ailing 71 year old Appu Nedungadi, suffering from diabetes. On 6^th Nov 1933, he passed away, leaving the reins of his business to others in his family.

In 1935, as the RBI act came into force, the bank was included in the second schedule. Some years later the Cochin national bank and the Coimbatore national bank merged into the Nedungadi bank. The bank grew, and with branches at all major metropolitan cities like New Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, Mumbai, Ahmedabad etc., Nedungadi’s enterprise had broadened its operations far and wide. By 2001, it had grown to cover 175 branches and was poised to leap or fall. The latter was the unfortunate outcome, but that is a story of financial mismanagement by its so called professional non Nedungadi managers briefly explained in a note at the end.

References

Kundhalatha – Appu Nedungadi – 2^nd edition

Malayalam literary survey, 2000- Appu Nedungadi – the novelist and banker – KKN Kurup, Sankaran Raveendran

The first great Malayalam Novel – U Balakrishnanan Nair Calcutta Review Vol 109, 1899

The Early Novels in the South Indian Languages – Sankaran Raveendran

Kozhikode Vamozhi Charitram – P Ganghadharan

Encyclopedia of the Madras presidency and the adjacent states 1920-21

Indian express - 125 Years and Still Going Strong, Anila Backer Published: 04th May 2015 06:01

Print and public sphere in Malabar: a study of early newspapers (1847-1930) – Stella Joseph

Reconsidering Genre: Questioning the First Malayalam Novel (abstract) - Ambrosone, Ellen

Notes

1. Kundhalatha was the first novel conceived and published in Malayalam. Other works such as the translations of Catherine Mullen’s Bengali novel ‘Fulmoni O Korunar Biboron’ (1858, 1884), Ghatakavadham by Richard Collins (1877) a translation of the English ‘Slayer slain’ etc. appeared in the Malayalam published works domain. Chandu Menon set the standard, with his blockbuster ‘Indulekha’ two years later in 1889.

2. A less stringent criticism of a prevalent form of female education is found in Kundalata in which it is remarked that such education may give "great familiarity with the Kavyams, Natakams and Alankurams", but is incapable of producing what is accepted as more important, "a blemishless and well-informed mind", However, it was sometimes explicitly stated that a Sanskrit-based education which gave importance to Kavyams, Natakams etc (poetries and Plays) etc, would only promote sensuality, and that by avoiding these and teaching the Dharmsastra (moral canon) instead, women could be made virtuous. Gendering individuals: a study of Gender and individualization in Reform Language in Modern Keralam – 1880’s – 1950’s - Devika, J

3. Nedungadis and the Zamorin - Many of the Nedungadis are connected by marriage to the Zamorin kovilakoms of Calicut, starting from the Eralpad’s period in Cherplassery. The name Nedungadi is believed to be derived from the word "Nedunganadu" and the word ""aadi", meaning "to rule"."Nedunganadu" used to be a small region that now includes Shornur, Ottappalam, Kothakursi, Pattambi, Kootanad, Naduvattam, Karalmanna Cherpulasserry, Karimpuza, Nellaya, Vallapuzha, Manjeri, Kannur are the old seats of Eralpad Raja, the second Sthani of Zamorin. The original family name of the rulers of Nedunganad is unknown, but the members of the royal families are referred to as "the Nedungadis" in the later documents of the Samutiris of Kozhikode who conquered and ruled this territory. For more details read Rajendu’s book - Nedunganad Charitram

4. Those desirous of studying Appu Nedungadi’s legal mind at work may refer to ‘The Indian decision – Madras’ volumes available on google books

5. The NBL bank’s debacle in 2000 resulted from the misuse of an arbitrage scheme approved by its directors in 1999. The joint committee report explains that this scheme envisaged purchase and sale of shares taking advantage of the price differential between NSE and BSE and other Stock Exchanges. The Board of the Bank included the former President of the BSE, M.G. Damani, who was instrumental in devising the scheme, and C.V. Nair, a former Executive Director of RBI. An amount of 94 crores was in question, of which Rs 73 crores were collected and Rs 21 crores remained outstanding. Board members it appears, used companies owned by their family members to do these transactions. The chairman AR Murthy was subsequently sacked. Read this articlefor more details

6. A good amount of the information in this article comes from KKN Kurup’s essay about Appu Nedungadi from references 2 &4, I am indebted to him for this input, and is gratefully acknowledged.

pics – EOMP, America.pink,Kundalatha cover (Chinta publishers)

Part 2 – Making the song

For a person to listen to a song and finally say – ‘are wah! kya gaana tha… yaar, woh’, the song has to be nothing short of inspirational. From conception to production, from advertisement to music CD release is a long process, and somewhat haphazard when it relates to Bollywood. By the time the music director finally has his copy ready for mass CD or record punching in the pre-90’s era, he was huffing and puffing and would have lost a good deal of hair.

In the first article ‘From the original soundtrack’ we went through the historical development of the music scene. In this one we will study the steps taken to get a song ready. As we saw, a few film studios were established in Bombay during the 30’s and some names like New Theatres, Prabhat talkies and Bombay talkies were prominent. Many others followed, notably Imperial Film Company, Minerva Movietone, Ranjit Movietone, Sagar Movietone and Wadia Movietone. Of course Calcutta and Madras had their own studios, but smaller in number. Most of them had in their employ a number of musicians who not only composed BGM or background music, but also the main fare, film songs. People from that era would easily associate a tune of the movie with a film company, mainly because certain MD’s (music directors) worked only for certain companies and had a distinctive style (An example is Punkaj Mullick who worked for New Theaters). With the passage of time, MD’s became professionals and were associated with various film producers, companies, projects and directors.

Group Photograph of Talat Mahmood, Mohd Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Geeta Dutt, GM Durrani, Meena Kapoor, Kamal Barot, Mubarak Begum and others

In the early days where the tune was almost always set to a classical raga, the MD who was usually well versed with Hindustani or Carnatic music would build a tune based on the raga befitting the mood. In case the mood was more suited for a folk tune, a little adaptation of a popular folk song would be done. Once the tune was cast, the lyricist would, again, based on the situation explained by the director, put together or change the words and word sequences to fit the tune (AR Rahman once said it was difficult for him to set his tunes to Malayalam words!). It was important to get the overall combination right, for only then would it become a ‘hit’. Only experience would tell the motely group assembled if the resulting concoction would be a classic or a hit or a filler, there was no formula to make it a hit, it simply had to be instinctively good. Of course, there were inspired songs (song tunes lifted from popular hit compositions in other languages) created by virtuoso’s like Mozart or popular composers from other countries. Early on, Calcutta studios had more western content (Mullick being one among the first to introduce western styles in Hindi songs) than the ones from Bombay and also had a tendency to be biased with Ravindra sangeet. Saraswati Devi, the doyen among MD’s of Bombay stuck true to Hindustani though. Devotional themes used only basic Hindustani tunes and were developed as kirtans. The intention of these songs, as you can imagine, was to embellish the scene, but as years went by, the music in many a case carried the film.

The tunes and interludes were usually supported by various instruments and in the beginning these comprised just the tabla, the harmonium and the violin, with the focus mainly on the vocals. Soon the number, the variety and the combinations of instruments increased greatly, for the piano, Saxophone, flute, xylophones, clarinet, bongos, Congo’s, drum sets, synthesizers, sitar, jaltarang, bulbul tarang and so on could be seen. In most cases, the composition was done by the team comprising the MD, musicians and the lyricists sitting together. Complications, increase in quantity and quality were soon the reasons for the split of this ideal arrangement. MD’s started to demand the lyrics early and this became the norm, whereby the lyricist created his poetry with greater independence. As one can imagine, the number of films were not too many and the time available to create a song and to review and change it was substantial. Each film company did about four to five films, and that meant about 35-40 songs in total per annum. The MD was usually an employee of the studio and so the competition between MD’s was not so fierce.

As you may recall, earlier movies had the actor singing the song, so the MD had to set the tune befitting the vocal ability of the actor and his persona. MD’s rebelled or showed their frustration often for there were very few good actor singers and the final result was typically mediocre. Their style was typically Hindustani and the voices coarse, heavy and somewhat hoarse. To get an example, listen to Awaz de kahan hai by Noorjehan, you can see its difference from the silky texture as compared to Shreya Ghoshal’s Jism song jadu hai nasha hai. Days went by, movies became a popular medium and the Calcutta style of softer sensual singing or crooning caught on in Bombay. The trick with the new style, I understood, was to sing close to the microphone. Saigal was one who adapted very quickly to the new style.

It was towards the early 40’s, when playback singers arrived and with it the quality of the song shot up. Naturally the singer had to have a stand out voice, had to be flexible in adapting to various situations, moods, actor styles and voices and possessing a basic understanding of music. While the actor was a visible connection to the person in the audience, the playback singer had to connect to his audience purely with his voice, all the time staying invisible. As songs and the orchestral ensemble developed, the number of instrumentalists increased and the team size in each studio varied. In many a studio the western part was taken up by Goan Christians. New instruments like Guitars, French horn, trombone, cellos, mandolins and so on arrived on the scene. MD’s in most cases made up and chose members of their teams. The team created the team style.

As the song stood its stead, the lyrical content, the vocal quality and the instrumentation improved, so also the recording techniques. The song started to have its own place in the movie and became more than a scene embellishment. In fact even today people remember the scene of an old movie from playing a particular song back in their mind. The song is etched into your memory, not the scene or the acting, if you ask me.

Picking up from where we left off in the previous article, the number and quality of microphones increased, playback was the norm and music was recorded in the studios. Music was recorded on magnetic tape. Songs were recorded first, filming was done later. Import restrictions were the stumbling factor in development and nothing changed until the 80’s. Even though there were multiple mic techniques, recording was done on single track film. Studio vans were being conceived, and recordists took over the session. HMV soon acquired the optical transfer machine and rerecording was finally done away with. As technology developed, sound was recorded for films at Film center, Mehboob, Famous and Bombay sound studios. Finally magnetic tape recorders with the 35mm format arrived and by 1967, optic recording started to become obsolete. Multi track recording came next, and by the 70’s upto 4 tracks were being recorded. Music, rhythm, voice and a composite formed the four. Eventually they all got mixed down to a single track for the film master. As days went by, some sound engineers worked with upto 12 tracks dubbing down to increase music in each track. Finally the highly dependable portable Swiss Nagra recorder was used to transfer sound from the 35mm magnetic tape to film.

Some MD’s now had one more member in their entourage, the recording assistant. The cassette player had arrived and impromptu ideas and tunes were quickly recorded and archived for later use. The first movie with six track stereo was Sholay, with Deepan Chatterji as the recording engineer and the music by the maestro RD Burman. The complex recording process for the 70mm film was completed in London and later replicated for Shalimar, with Pancham da always deeply involved in this pioneering process, of getting the stereo sound right. Recording coordination was tough, the large orchestra synchronized instruments watching the others, for there were no monitor earphones. But the process was old fashioned, the singer sang with the orchestra while it was recorded multi track on a 35mm magnetic tape, and if a mistake occurred, they started all over again. Experience counted, or costs went up. New singers and musicians were therefore not easily inducted. They had to earn their place.

In the old Bollywood, when Shankar-Jaykishan, Kalyanji Anadji, The Burman’s, OP Nayyar and so on ruled, the musicians were all free lancers and four songs a day was the norm. Pyarelal was considered the most knowledgeable, OP Nayyar the most human and Kalyanji Anandji as a keyboard whiz when it came to composing tunes. In the new Bollywood of the late 80’s and early 90’s, where HMV was less important, RD Burman, Rajesh Roshan, Bhappi Lahri, Ravindra Jain and so on influenced the scene, to do things differently. Gulshan Kumar and the cassette revolution happened, western influence on Indian film music increased and music became affordable and more mainstream than before, a time where you depended on the AIR or Radio Ceylon to play a tune. Now you owned your music. The large studios and orchestras were becoming a waste and the cost of song production too large for a budget producer. And with this came up the lumpsum system where the producer offered a package deal for a certain number of songs. The MD thus increased his dependence on electronics and synthesized sound. The orchestra died, it became history. But it was an era of originality, it was an era of group effort, improvisations and sometimes, genius peeking through. They gave us the memories. So how exactly did one of those sessions work out in old Bollywood?

Time to record a song, and now we are in the old Bollywood era, a time when the maestro’s ruled. The producer and director explained the scene and the sequence, the locale, and he hero or heroine who would lip the song. Everything started in the music room, and typically the MD’s office as this was usually in his sitting room (Some MD’s like RDB rented a room in Linking road and put up an impressive sound system, popular SJ had a large building set aside for this). The MD brought on the appropriate tune from his bank vocally, with a harmonium or through his sitting assistant and discussed who would be best to render it vocally. The producer or director would step in and insist on a certain singer while the discussion sometimes veered away then to expenses based on that singer. This was a time when self-taught musicians and trained musicians existed side by side. The latter was needed to notate the tune for this was the only way a group could play synchronized music after it was arranged. But some of the traditional players still could not read the notations and picked the requirements instinctively, after it was explained to them and a couple of rehearsals were carried out. The swaras were written in an Indian language in the sa re ga ma fashion and in some cases the song was notated in western style. The musical interludes were based on the location or situation and had to blend with the main tune. In some complex cases where the scene changes and takes on multiple characters, the tunes and interludes have to be redone after a first version is completed.

The lyricist in those days interacted with the director, producer and MD often, making sure his poetic composition would fit the tune and also have the right set of words, based on the character and situation. Use of Urdu, local dialects, other languages, and so on was based on the situation and scene. In many a case, the musicality of the director was persuasion enough for the flow of creative juices from the MD and lyricist. Not all songs had an audio value and many were situational at best. The audio value song was the song the MD really counted on to become immortal, that was his signature song of the film.

The concept started at the sitting or baithak session where the MD came up with the tune befitting the

scene and developed it with a sitting musician, a petti or harmonium player or violinist. An assistant or arranger notated it (in later days recorded the tunes with a portable recorder). The sitting musician was a regular with a particular MD and accompanied him like family, unlike the orchestra staff who got involved case by case. He was usually welcome to bring in improvisation, and was well respected by the MD. Once the tunes were set and accepted by the producer, the next step for the rhythm arrangement with a specialist set of musicians. Then the various other parts were set, such as interludes, countermelodies and orchestration. Soon the composition itself was ready for a group rehearsal (In the New Bollywood, things took a slightly different route, where this entire section was completed using keyboards, with hook lines and repeating of set music rhythms. By the 90’s the usage of computers, MIDI sync and Protocols picked up and the traditional raga based song fell by the wayside).

Initially there were restrictions on the song duration, both due to AIR as well as due to the recording media and set to around 3 minutes. To fit this, you had a prelude refrain – Mukhda, followed by an Antra a verse, the Mukhda is repeated, then a second antra or verse and finally the refrain again. In longer versions you had a third and even a fourth verse. The interlude music is the bridge between the sections. The Mukhda sets the mood, and gets you into the song, so is very important, that is where the magic starts.

It was a time when there were no cellphones and SMS, so messengers or informers scooted or biked to various places in Bombay’s suburbs, delivering messages to musicians, singers, summoning them to sessions, changing times or cancelling sessions. They were music coordinators actually, getting together the group to perform the orchestral session or a song, based on the requirements, usually well advised by the MD and the arranger of the prerequisites. Once the group was readied, they rehearsed in parts or together and again and again depending on if the MD had arranged a studio or if he had his own (like SJ did). Some of the very busy Ustads did not come until the penultimate day. Most of the famous MD’s of that time did not directly partake on the film background music aspect and passed it on to their arrangers, only checking now and then.

The great MD Khayyam reminiscences - It used to be magical to record with a huge live orchestra. Aisa lagta tha ki sangeet banana ek ibadat hai (we used to feel that making music is a prayer). Singers, writers, recordists and musicians would all work together towards fulfilling the mission of making beautiful music. Every music company used to have around a 30 member orchestra. The rehearsals used to be two three hours long, and there would be around three rehearsals before a song was recorded. By then, all the musicians in the orchestra would know all the notations by heart. So, while recording, the music used to come straight from the heart. (Interview - Soumya Vajpayee Tiwari, Hindustan Times, Mumbai Apr 02, 2016)

During these recording sessions, the prominent person who later on simply faded away was the track singer. They were the ones who participated in the rehearsals to get the tune just right, until the final day. On that fated day, the star play back singer arrived, threw some tantrums, made some changes, sang the song with a flourish and walked away with all the adulation and praise. In fact these track singers were the first to sing any song, but you won't find their names on album covers or anywhere in the movie credits. Their only hope is that one day the MD will elevate their name and version or use their song if the singer did not turn up.

Well, as tradition dictated, the playback singer listened to the track singer’s version and got the feel of the song which had been recorded on a solo track. This was the track that got erased and replaced with the singer’s voice after he had executed it with his inimitable style. So you will understand that there were many track singers in the industry, with voices close to the required singer’s style. Track singers were required to know music, understand notations and the MD’s style and unsaid requirements. Because the good ones were always required, they were always left there and never allowed to advance, as some track singers opined. They were the ghost singers.

Once the song is complete, the choreographer takes over and creates the scene with the dance and steps to match, after training the hero, heroine and others in the scene. The actors lip sync to the song as it is filmed with a variety of locations and costumes effortlessly moving across continents, air or water, indoor and outdoor and all sorts of weather. Sometimes it is an item song, which has hardly anything to do with the story line and features an erotic dance, these days enacted by a leading heroine and not a vamp (Helen, Bindu et. al.) like in the old times. This is typically used to take of any drag a previous scene sequence may have created and energizes the audience.

Between the 30’s and today, the suburbs of Bombay housed so many film and music recording studios, but now is concentrated around Andheri. The musicians and the studios are all there, barring those of maestros Rahman and Ilayaraja which are in Chennai Madras and other parts of the Globe.

Time went by, beautiful songs and immortal melodies were created which we all savored, a great many music directors graced the scene sharing the limelight with countless actors and directors who have since then faded away, unrecognized. Hemant Kumar, SD Burman, Salil Chaudhary, Madan Mohan, Naushad, Shankar Jaikishen, RD Burman, LP, OP Nayyar….the list goes on and on…all names we know so well, those who produced countless gems we hum even today. The incredible lot of playback singers we grew up with in the 60-80’s are also gone, Kishore, Rafi, Mukesh, Gita, Lata, Asha and so many more. They were the vital stars, the people with golden voices, infusing soul, voice and life into the song. Changes were seen rarely, like when ghazals entered the film scene and when singers from the south made their mark in Bollywood. Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand’s productions continued to stick to quality, while Disco made its entry with Bhappida. After a diffident phase in the 80’s, the 90’s brought back many a great score, new MD’s like Rahman and many new singers. MD’s including RD Burman slowly strayed from pattern music to new styles, and brought back melody like in 1942 a love story.

As somebody mentioned, a good singer has the magic in his voice which stirs up dormant human emotions, put a smile to a grumpy face or bring a tear to a joyous man.

The singers too, made their mark and slowly the last of them are retiring from the silver screen today. The new wave have taken over, with new sounds, we can detect the Punjabi weighty voice coming back, what we had lost when Noorjahan left. The tunes are more energetic, and no longer lilting. There is an urgency in each song, with little time to waste in conveying a message. The lyrics are more nonsensical.

The many hundred musicians are hardly remembered. Some moved on to become music directors or made their own recordings, like guitarist Bhupinder, but by and far, the instrumentalists just retired with their instruments, the sounds having been recorded or consigned into banks and memories, only coming out rarely for live shows or paid events.

In the mid 80’s programmable synthesizers arrived on the scene and the process started to get broken up. The keyboard was used to program the song tune and this was used to get the final parts together, and on the recording front, new multi-track machines were being introduced and the uninterruptible power supply was used to get a constant power source and avoid track tuning errors due to the fluctuating power frequency in densely populated and industrial suburbs of Bombay. Can you imagine, some recordings had to be done after the factories and offices had shut down and the power magnitude and frequency had stabilized, sometimes early in the morning! And then came Dolby Digital and digital recording in the latter part of the 90’s. With the 24 track Dolby methods, hard disk recording on computers had also commenced.

With software programs a plenty, new sessions are done on the fly. Programming the track is done at home, then some recording of acoustic instruments is carried out at the studio back home where the files are mixed and bits punched in and out. The home studio easily blended with the music studio. Singers were asked to do bits and the MD team combined (punched) various versions later, as needed. Old timers complained, they had to sing the whole song in progression to get the feel right, to get into the mood, but soon, they too picked it up (more like - or adjusted, put up with it and got paid), or so they say. It was certainly cheaper than getting hundreds of musicians in one sweaty room and having a temperamental singer sing the song 15 times before the final take, but well, that’s all history.

Life has moved a long way from all that. Spiraling costs and studio economics changed the entire process in the 21^st century. Computers, software and banks of audio sounds meant that everything was available without having to ‘recreate it for the moment’ with an instrument. The lump sum system became the norm and the making of music was centralized in the MD’s computer or keyboard. Synthesizers were the first, MIDI common protocol technology came next, sequencers to play back the combined music soon following. With that the art of music direction mostly became programming. Using advanced software, maestros like Rahman or other new MD’s create and change tunes at will, working off vast libraries they have themselves created to ease their work.

Look at the case of the currently hot Salim Sulaiman duo (Sonam Joshi, Mashable, July 19 2016) - In the last few years, as the siblings have spent an increasing amount of time travelling and performing live concerts, they've increasingly used apps such as Music Memo and Garageband to record ideas and work remotely. For instance, Salim often works with a room mike fixed to his iPhone to record tunes, which are then exported to Logic Pro to be fleshed out. "We do 75 concerts and travel 100 days a year," Salim says. "A lot of our music is composed in hotel rooms. These remote gadgets really help us put down an idea when we're away from the studio." But they add - "Technology is there to help you. The most important thing is your own creativity and what you produce," Sulaiman says. "Everybody uses the same machinery, but two people sound so different because you have the option of unlimited sounds. Technology makes life simple, but it's your creativity that works"

Singers then lend their voice, not necessarily singing the whole song in a few takes, but doing bits as and when required, all to be joined up and edited later, punched in or out or overdubbed. Facetime and skype are used with the singer not even in the recording studio for the rehearsals. Rhythm bits are looped, time markers helping sound engineering and mastering done with expert software such as Pro tools. They still create lovely tunes, just a few if you ask me, and not necessarily ones which would be remembered like that masterpiece by Lata Mangeshkar or Rafi or Mukesh from the 70’s. But then, that is my take, not one my nephew or niece would agree to!!

In conclusion, I will add the words of Vishal writing at Apna sangeet - Philosophically speaking, the music composition gives body to a song, the music arrangement gives flair or dignity to a song, and last but not the least, the lyrics gives the character to a song. Take away any of the component mentioned above, and the song becomes incomplete....

References

Behind the curtain – Gregory Booth

Bollywood Melodies – Ganesh Anatharaman

A journey down memory lane – Raju Bharatan

Hindi Film Git – Alsion E Arnold

Hindi Film songs and cinema – Anna Morcom

More than Bollywood – Ed Gregory Booth and Bradley Shoppe

Some interesting recording clips

Shreya Ghoshal with M Jayachandran at a Malayalam recording

The sitting for 1942 a love story – RD Burman

Lata Mangeskar at a recording

Mohammed Rafi and others – recording scenes

Asha recording for RD Burman

Kishore Kumar at the studio

Read Part 1 ‘From the original soundtrack’, the production process

Pics

Rdburman at recording – courtesy womenonrecord.com

Rdb at recording - courtesy megabyte4everyone

Group Photograph of Talat Mahmood, Mohd Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Geeta Dutt, GM Durrani, Meena Kapoor, Kamal Barot, Mubarak Begum and others - courtesy bombaymann2.blogspot.com

Introducing India’s friend Robert I Crane

India is quite a nationalist country and most people are content with homespun and homegrown heroes. While it serves the greater populace, the many others who were hugely influential in its creation and existence as a modern democracy are hardly known to the teeming masses, not that it would get noticed, even if one were to write an article about it. I will nevertheless try to tell you all about one such person, an American, born in India and who went on to make an impact on the American government’s stance on India during a period when Britain and America were firmly tied up as allies in the WW II.

As Churchill leaned heavily on America’s president FDR, forcing him to withdraw tacit support for India’s independence, the Indian lobby being so created in Washington DC was working overtime to at least tilt the state department’s stance in favor of Indian independence. At one point of time, there was a lone American driven by his convictions, a young upstart named Robert I Crane, firmly supporting the Indian lobby. See I told you, you would never have heard that name or of that fascinating gentlemen, one of the best friends India ever had. This is his story.

But many people did notice that the turning point in Indo US relations was when the Phillips affair hit the wires in 1944. In those days, many with influence to boot, read the very popular column written by one Drew Pearson, entitled ‘Washington Merry-go-round’ in the Washington Post. He was without doubt ‘a larger than life’ media man. Pearson’s articles bordered on sensationalism, using journalism as a weapon against those he judged to be working against the public interest.

Pearson’s description of himself is interesting, his promo brochure states – Pearson is a tall, slender, professorial-looking individualist, whose prime amusement and occupation is observing the merry-go-round of national politics. He had travelled around the world, and along the way had even met Gandhiji in an Indian prison.

Not that there were no reports in the US on the problems in India, even before the Phiilips affair. A recap would therefore be a good idea. The first seeds of discontent started with the Gadhar movement in the second decade of the 20^th century, in the US West Coast where a number of Sikhs had settled, moving in mainly from Canada, after some oppression there. Lala Har Dayal led the effort with the publication Gadhar. Within a year he had fled America to Germany, after the British complained, leaving the organization in Rama Chandra’s hands. An uprising planned in Punjab was scuttled by the British and many leaders were being arrested in California. Taraknath Das was a later spearhead, and new efforts were mooted by Lajpat Rai, who started the home rule league. He addressed the US senate, without avail, and then came Syud Hossein, whom I had written in detail about, earlier (See these articles, one and two). WJ Bryan and JH Holmes toured India and wrote about the issues there, and Gandhiji’s salt marches in the 30’s were compared to the Boston tea party. Durant and Emerson wrote persuasive articles. Margret Wilson, President Woodrow Wilson’s daughter tried to persuade FDR to address a message to India, but that did not quite bear fruit. Subramanya Iyer’s letter to Wilson was widely circulated and home rule was proposed as a solution, considering India’s willingness to support the Allied war interests with fighting men. Things dragged on until 1942, which was when Louis Fischer visited India and wrote about India in many articles and books. Gunther, Pearl S Buck, Dorothy Norman and many others joined the fray in India’s support. Syud Hossein was usurped by the dynamic JJ Singh as the head of the India league. FDR himself had his sympathies with India, and raised the issue with Churchill in 1941 only to be rebuffed by the boorish Churchill, in the most vehement manner.

FDR was also obligated by the Atlantic charter of 1941, cosigned by the US which guaranteed self-rule. Churchill sidestepped the US contention by saying that the charter was applicable to only those under Nazi Germany’s occupation. FDR tried again to reason with Churchill in private, but did not succeed. He then wrote to Churchill in more detail about how Indians could form a multi representative government etc. In March 1942, Stafford Cripps was deputed to India to obtain her support for the war and to placate FDR, but Cripps did not have Churchill’s overt support in the mission. The Americans had in the meanwhile sent Col Louis Johnson for the same purpose and he saw through Churchill’s ploy with Cripps. Churchill won that round and grandly announced that he would not be the one to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. Johnson returned to America. Gandhiji wrote to FDR insisting that India desired freedom. As Nehru wrote about Sino-Indian friendship and future, and Britain was inclined towards letting Japan capture China (so that they could bargain for its annexation later during a peace treaty stage) Chiang Kai-shek met Gandhiji, and later wrote to FDR supporting India’s independence. By August 1942, the quit India movement was announced. Arrests and unrest followed.

FDR decided to send his personal emissary, William Phillips to India. Phillips, grandson of the great abolitionist Wendell Phillips, brought up amongst Boston gentry and trained at Harvard, had risen quickly in his diplomatic career to become undersecretary in the State Department. He had served at the OSS London office and as ambassador to Italy.

He had a torrid time in India, faced with a total lack of support from the British Viceroy Linlithgow. He was not allowed to meet Gandhiji who was imprisoned in the Agha Khan palace. He sent many gloomy letters and cables to FDR detailing the terrible situation in India. He also saw that that the Indians were quickly losing their belief in American support and the US championship of freedom. Finally he headed back home, disappointed. He wrote a memo detailing his travails in India, to President Roosevelt, who was beleaguered with comments from skeptics about the military prowess of the Poms, or lack of it thereof, what with their failures in Burma. From India, another American Samuel Stokes (the apple missionary whom I had introduced earlier) also wrote to FDR, about the sad state of affairs.

And thus, we get to the Pearson Phillips affair. As it occurred, the confidential memo prepared by Ambassador William Phillips fell into the hands of Drew Pearson. Ambassador Phillips’s memo was a document quite critical of British policy and methods adopted in India. Phillips believed that the British arrogance and rigid stance was not right, and talked about its effect on America’s war in the East. He concluded that it was high time Britain declared their intention to grant independence to India at least after the war ended.

This is what he said, among other things

Assuming that India is bound to be an important base for our future operations against Burma and Japan, it would seem to me of highest importance that we should have around us a sympathetic India rather than an indifferent and possibly a hostile India. It would appear that we will have the primal responsibility in the conduct of the war against Japan. There is no evidence that the British intend to do much more than give token assistance. If that is so, then the conditions surrounding our base in India become of vital importance.

At present the Indian people are at war only in a legal sense as, for various reasons, the British Government declared India in the conflict without the formality of consulting Indian leaders or even the Indian legislature. Indians feel that they have no voice in the Government and therefore no responsibility in the conduct of the war. They feel they have nothing to fight for as they are convinced that the professed war aims of the United Nations do not apply to them. The British Prime Minister, in fact, has stated that the provisions of the Atlantic Charter are not applicable to India, and it is not unnatural therefore that the Indian leaders are beginning to wonder whether the Charter is only for the benefit of the white races. The present Indian Army is purely mercenary and only that part of it which is drawn from the martial races has been tried in actual warfare and these martial soldiers represent only thirty-three percent of that Army. General Stilwell has expressed to me his concern over the situation and in particular in regard to the poor morale of the Indian officers.

The attitude of the general public toward the war is even worse. Lassitude and indifference and bitterness have increased as a result of the famine conditions, the growing high cost of living and the continued political deadlock. While India is broken politically into various parties and groups, all have one object in common, eventual freedom and independence from British domination. There would seem to be only one remedy to this highly unsatisfactory situation in which we are unfortunately but nevertheless seriously involved, and that is to change the attitude of the people of India towards the war, make them feel that we want them to assume responsibilities to the United Nations and are prepared to give them facilities for doing so, and that the voice of India will play an important part in the reconstruction of the world. The present political conditions do not permit of any improvement in this respect. Even though the British should fail again it is high time that they should make a new effort to improve conditions and to reestablish confidence among the Indian people that their future independence is to be granted. Words are of no avail. They only aggravate the present situation. It is time for the British to act. This they can do by a solemn declaration from the King Emperor that India will achieve her independence at a specified date after the war and as a guarantee of good faith in this respect a provisional representative coalition government will be established at the center and limited powers transferred to it.

I feel strongly, Mr. President, that in view of our military position in India we should have a voice in these matters. It is not right for the British to say "this is none of your business" when we alone presumably will have the major part to play in the future struggle with Japan. If we do nothing and merely accept the British point of view that conditions in India are none of our business then we must be prepared for various serious consequences in the internal situation in India which may develop as a result of despair and misery and anti-white sentiments of hundreds of millions of subject people.

Pearson’s disclosure of the ambassador’s comments in the Washington Post on July 22^nd 1944, but naturally, caused a sensation in Washington, and greatly assisted the efforts of the India Lobby.

It was a rough period during the Great War. Just the previous month, London had gotten battered by the German V1 rockets, and after courting disaster in Burma had narrowly and decisively pushed away the Japanese Indian threat at Kohima. India’s eastern bastion had withstood a breach. The British were now carpet bombing Normandy, in preparation for the D day, Rommel was wounded, and the war news seesawed back and forth, jangling tired nerves. An allied victory was still years away. Britain has no intention of losing India, the jewel in its crown, the economic lifeline for their miserable citizens under siege in Britain. The Indian lobby did not want to lose any chance of utilizing any advantage it saw and stepped on the gas.

Did the Phillips memo just fall in Pearson’s proximity, like the proverbial apple fell on Newton? Of course not. It found its way to Drew from the hands of our hero Robert Crane, a child of missionary parents who had spent his childhood years in Bengal and at that point of time in history, was but a junior desk officer on South Asia in the State Department Division of Cultural Relations. Time to get to know him better, I suppose.

Nothing explains his actions and his convictions better than the opening paragraph of an obituary by John Hill, in the JOAS. Hill writes - Born in India of American missionary parents at the start of Gandhi's national noncooperation campaign, Crane's adult life was dominated by two intertwined convictions: that the peoples and civilizations of Southern Asia were of immense importance in the world's past and present, and that American understanding of South Asia was vital to the United States future.

Crane joined the State Department at the end of 1943, just 23 years old and after he finished his Having been born in India-my father was in charge of several schools for Indians sponsored by the Methodist Episcopal Church-and, after we returned to the United States, having had the good fortune to meet a fine Indian nationalist living here, I had early developed a strong sense of the rightness and validity of the struggle for Indian independence led by the Indian National Congress. My graduate studies in Washington only served to reinforce those views…

graduate studies on the history of U.S. (he received a bachelor's degree from Duke University in 1941, a master's degree from American university in 1943) Indian relations and had inclined himself a great supporter of Indian independence. Crane explains –

As the sh%^t hit the fan, the state department was in turmoil. The president was embarrassed, the British Prime minister and his surly bureaucracy were mortified and a witch-hunt started in Washington. Ambassador Phillips was declared persona non grata in London and New Delhi, but Churchill termed him publically ‘a well-meaning ass’. The US state department recommended that FDR release no public statements. The US congress passed a resolution stating that India was important to the US in war and peace, Roosevelt refused to apologize or disassociate himself from Phillips.

British intelligence stated investigations, as the Atlantic ‘pond’ between imperial Britain and the new world - America stormed and fizzed. President Roosevelt speculated that Sumner Welles, the former Undersecretary of State, had leaked the report. Welles was both a personal friend of Pearson’s and a vocal supporter of Indian independence, but today we know that it was none other than the young Robert Crane. Robert Crane, the junior desk officer on South Asia in the State Department Division of Cultural Relations, was therefore one who risked prison to advance the cause of Indian independence, though his role in the affair remained undiscovered for more than four decades.

Quoting Rebecca Solnit from her fine thesis - Well aware of this widespread anti-colonial sentiment, Crane quietly passed a copy of the classified document to some Indian friends in Washington. By doing so, he violated a U.S. legal code addressing wartime disclosure of classified information that had been first established by the controversial 1917 Espionage Act. If convicted of this federal crime, Crane would have lost his government position, faced fines up to $10,000, and/or imprisonment for up to twenty years. Crane risked all of this to help promote Indian independence.

There was much more to the intrigue and the covert business behind this leak, lest all this sound so pat and simple. It was a well-planned act, involving some 12 members of the India Lobby, a few Americans and so many others.

Crane explained in his paper quoted under references - In the fall of 1941, I enrolled for an M.A. in history at The American University in Washington, D.C. My thesis was to be on U.S. opinion vis-a vis India, 1895-1935.' After the United States entered World War II, I joined the government service and by late 1943 was the desk officer on South Asia in the Division of Cultural Relations, U.S. Department of State. My duties as desk officer for South Asia also brought me into close contact with persons in the District of Columbia who were professionally concerned with India. Most of my associates were pro-Indian National Congress (INC), as was I, favoring progress toward independence for India soon after the end of the war.

That was not, however, the official policy of the U.S. government. Nor were there very many people in the U.S. government who supported early independence for India. Public opinion, as far as we could gauge it, was ambiguous. The political desk officer in the Department of State, with whom I had to deal, was quite pro-British and followed the "Churchill line" on India at all times. Meanwhile, the British Information Services were expending a great deal of time, effort, and money trying to influence our media and public opinion in the direction of the official propaganda of His Majesty's government regarding India. They even reissued and handed out copies of the notorious anti-Indian book by Katherine Mayo ‘Mother India’. It painted Indians in an awful light. There was also a lot of disinformation spread about concerning Mahatma Gandhi and the INC, especially after the 1942 Quit India movement.

During the period of 1943-1944, there were a few organizations in the United States that tried to publicize the Indian cause and provide accurate information about Indian nationalism and the Indian scene. I soon came into close contact-unofficially-with two or three such groups. In the District of Columbia there was the National Committee for India's Independence, headed by Dr. Anup Singh and Dr. Syud Hosein; they held public meetings on India and issued a newsletter. I became a close friend of these two men and attended all their public meetings as well as a few of their press conferences. I also got to know J. J. Singh, head of the India League of New York City.

As we follow the story in Crane’s own words, we get to see that he met and became acquainted with Obaid Ur Rahman and Maj Altaf Aqdir, both staunch nationalists. Through them, he met KC Mahendra and KAD Naoroji, and later Kate Mitchell. This committed group decided to influence American opinion about India.

The official position of the US government, as Crane understood from briefings by the political desk officer, was that the British Government of India was the legitimate government as well as US ally against the Nazis and the Japanese. Nothing was to be done to undermine the GOI or to give any aid or comfort to its enemies, including the Indian nationalists who were not cooperating in the war against Japan. But they believed that India would be much more actively enrolled in the war effort if the legitimate demands of the Indian nationalist movement for a political settlement were heeded.

Crane continues - This viewpoint received unexpected support when Drew Pearson published the Report by U.S. Envoy William Phillips, who had gone to India as President Roosevelt's personal representative. The Phillips Report had come routinely across my desk in the Division of Cultural Relations. Impressed and pleased by its contents, I subsequently showed it to two of my close Indian friends in Washington. Though I was not aware of it then, one of them copied the report verbatim and later gave it to Drew Pearson, who published it. The report had a substantial impact on public opinion.

After its publication we were able to use it in support of our long-standing argument in favor of the validity of the posture of the Indian nationalists. Public opinion in the United States remained torn between those who bought the British line and those who did not. Most of the public, as far as I could tell, remained indifferent to the Indian nationalist cause.

But there was a problem. A major problem was that India and its future was far less important to the United States than was China. American interest in and support for the KMT government were strong and continuing. The China lobby-if it may be called that-was far more powerful than the informal, poorly supported efforts of the miniscule India League or the National Committee for India's Independence. India had much less support or understanding among American citizens than did the Republic of China.

Nothing much happened, at least Crane also thought so, but the plight of the Indians were better known now to some powerful Americans. He concluded thus - The American public was either indifferent to India or uninformed. A small group favored Indian independence and the INC, and another small group shared the British view that Indians could not possibly govern themselves. Almost no one envisioned India as an important figure on the postwar world political or economic stage.

As the Indian cauldron simmered with the British ineptness and active stoking, as well as the war efforts, Crane was moved on to the Office of Strategic Services and served mainly in the China-Burma-India Theater of operations. But the CBI Theater was located in the North East corner of India, and their activities, especially the 4,000 or so Americans who spent their war days there, are also largely unknown to most Indians. He spent his time as demanded, scouring all kinds of Indian published works for communist propaganda. He found none, but was soon immersed in South Asian culture, something he enjoyed.

At the tail end of the Pearson Phillips affair, Roald Dahl stepped into the scene from the deep shadows. Now how and why on earth could Norwegian Roald Dahl, the famous writer who wrote Charlie and Matilda and many other children’s books get involved in this caper? Well you see; in those days he served the MI6 in its BSC cloak and dagger American outfit, frequenting cocktail parties and such, hobnobbing with the gentry and peddling pro-British stories, and was involved in the task of finding out the person behind the Pearson leak.

Pearson however got wind of the frantic British attempts and gleefully reported that as well – He stated “following the further leaks, the British went frantic. Six British secret service men and two burglar alarm experts arrived at the British India office here. They combed files, took finger prints from documents, examined locks, windows”…..but nobody could ferret out Crane’s involvement, Qadir kept mum. Initially they established the identity of the person who supplied the Phillips letter as Chaman Lal, but later zoomed into Maj Altaf Qadir, the 3^rdsecretary of the British Agent-general of India, both of whom got evicted from the USA, Qadir getting sent to the Burmese fighting front. As I could gather, the poor man Altaf Qadir died at the Burmese front, unrecognized for all he did.

The India lobby gamely continued on, but Nehru hated JJ Singh – he had once said “unfortunately, the Indians in American are a very unsatisfactory lot. They shout a lot and do no work. Often they do injury to our cause.” Soon after all this and sensing reluctant support from America, Vijayalakshmi Pandit was sent to America to champion Indian cause.

Crane came back to America, continued his studies at Yale, securing a PhD in 1951, perhaps the first American doctorate in South Asian history. He taught South Asian history at the University of Chicago from 1949-53, University of Michigan from 1956-61, and Duke University from 1961-1968. He was the first person appointed to the Ford-Maxwell Professorship of South Asian history at Syracuse University in 1968. He taught at the Syracuse University until 1990. Among his own varied literary achievements connected to South Asia, he also edited Nehru’s Discovery of India. He created many a graduate South Asian program, always including Hindi and Urdu language instruction. And sadly I did not mention this in my earlier article, he was the person behind the PL 480 Indian book collection spree, an act I thank every time I secure an obscure Indian author’s book, available here due to the ‘grain for books’ scheme.

He struggled with glaucoma in the last two decades of his life, but Lakshmi Crane, his wife was there to support him ardently and ably through those years. Sadly, he passed away in 1997. That my friends, is a little bit on a magnificent man, guided by his convictions, that was Robert Crane, India’s friend.

The next part with deal with the OSS in India and later I will get into the CBI theater related American activities in India. Those desirous of reading about the Pearson affair and those tumultuous days in more detail are recommended to peruse Solnit’s fine thesis and Gould’s book, listed under references.

References

The Forgotten Lobby: Advocates for India in the U.S. during World War II – Rebecca Solnit

Crane, Robert I. “U.S.-India Relations: The Early Phase, 1941-1945,

United States Department of State / Foreign relations of the United States diplomatic papers, 1943. The Near East and Africa (1943)

Aldrich, Richard. Intelligence and the War against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics of Secret Service

Gould, Harold A. Sikhs, Swamis, Students, and Spies: The India Lobby in the United States, 1900-1946.

Venkataramani, M.S. and B. K. Shrivastava, Roosevelt-Gandhi-Churchill: America and the Last Phase of India’s Freedom Struggle.

Quest for freedom, the United States and India’s independence – Kenton J Clymer

Pics

Robert Crane – Obituary - The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, No. 2 (May, 1998)

Drew Pearson – alchetron.com

Hafiz Abdul Karim at the Windsor castle

In Agra, there used to be a building called Karim Lodge near the Bijli ghar. It was built for its last occupant on land gifted by one of the most powerful persons living then, the Queen of England. The last occupant of it was, believe it or not, one who could have attained so much but asked for little, and he was Queen Victoria’s friend and confidante during her fading years. Their passionate story, the story of the sexagenarian rani and her Munshi, is unique and beset with intrigue and sorrow, a story the house of Windsor tried hard to first suppress and then erase. She the empress of India, protected him as long as she was alive, when powerful forces worked against his presence at the palace. As soon as she died, Abdul was unceremoniously sacked and sent home to India, and all written records destroyed. Was their relationship platonic or was it not? Let’s find out by going back a century and 30 years.

The story was well known to people working in the palace, mainly the queen’s physician James Reid and years after her death, the story slowly saw light, and a couple of books were written, the first by Sushila Anand and the second by Shrabani Basu. But who was Brown? The John Brown mentioned in the title was Victoria’s friend after Prince Albert’s death in 1861, many years before Abdul, he was her Scottish servant actually. Victoria was proclaimed queen in 1876 and Brown her friend and confidante, died in 1883. Four years after Brown’s death, the Queen who had a longstanding interest in her Indian territories and who always wanted to visit India, but could never do it due to the arduousness involved in the travel, decided to employ some Indian servants to get her wish granted in her Golden Jubilee year. Abdul Karim and Mohammed Buksh were selected by Governor (NWFP) John Tyler in India, coached on British manners and etiquette and shipped off to London, as her new servants. They arrived at the Windsor castle in June 1887 amidst the festivities and were meant to be her khitmagers or table servants, to start with.

Karim then aged 24, son of an Agra hakim (native doctor) was to make his presence in the royal household, and how. He became her friend, her Urdu instructor (hence the official Munshi title) and was finally gazetted as her Indian secretary and hafiz. He was certainly a good companion, he told her stories of the great Indian subcontinent, and they discussed political, philosophical as well as a range of other topics, all evident from Vitoria’s diaries and letters.

As they met first, the darker skinned Buksh and the lighter and taller Karim kissed her feet as was the customary greeting for the monarch (I guess they don’t do such silly things these days!). She took pride in her two new assistants and had special Indian style tweed uniforms made for them, making sure also that the kit was complete with gloves, shoes and warm underwear.

It is understood that Karim was unhappy doing menial tasks and after a while wanted to return home. The queen requested him to stay on so that she could learn some Hindustani, and promised to recommend him for a suitable post. However she did something better, she had him promoted to her assistant.

Abdul progressed rapidly, from standing tables, to blotting her letters, and made friends with the other servants in the palace, soon becoming comfortable and at home, something Victoria enjoyed writing about to others. Interestingly, the queen wrote regularly to various people, perhaps it was how things were done those days, even as people talked to each other. The queen wrote (about 2500 words on an average per day) to her friends and acquaintances, and also to Karim regularly, sometimes many letters a day to the same person, such was the system. The queen had only good things to say about him, and a large number of adjectives and superlatives are testament to that affection. Good natured, attentive, quiet, gentle, intelligent, has good sense, great accounting skills, even learning a smattering of French, and in a nutshell, he was to her - a through gentlemen.

Along the way, Abdul Karim taught the queen Hindustani/Urdu, introduced her to Indian curries, and obtained many privileges such as carrying a sword, wearing medals, playing billiards, a private carriage and a footman, his father was allowed to smoke a Hookah. The queen requisitioned her favorite artist to make a portrait of Karim and also sent out memos to her staff that Indians should not be called black and they should not hold any prejudice on account of their skin color.

The others in the palace deeply resented the growing relationship and made efforts to nip it quickly, like when a performance was arranged in 1889 and the queen added Karim to her family group. As the event started and they arrived, Karim saw that he was allocated a seat with the other servants and he stormed off in protest. The queen was unhappy and from then on made it a point to ensure he sat with the household. Another event where she supported Karim was when one of her brooches were missing and Karim’s Brother in law Hourmet Ali was suspected. The queen instead of castigating Karim, spoke in his support. She then went on to take him with her on a weekend jaunt to Glassalt Shiel, her private retreat, only to hear even more tongues wagging. Later on when Abdul developed a carbuncle in his neck, the queen was seen constantly visiting him and caring for him. Next we see that she organized for land to be perpetually granted to him in Delhi (that took many months and repeated efforts by the queen herself to cut through the procedural red tape) and Abdul going home in style on vacation.

Like it always happens, another Indian turned up at the London scene, one Rafiuddin Ahmed, who in turn published the queen’s Urdu writing from her diary. Ahmed was incidentally considered to be a spy of the Afghan emir and a small player in the ‘great game’, so the palace officials got alarmed when Ahmed using his friendship with Karim got copies of the queen’s diary and later used the same connections obtusely to curry other favors. Rafiuddin was to become a major reason for the problems faced afterwards by the Munshi.

In 1891, the Munshi’s wife (and mother in law) also arrived in London, and was an object of much curiosity for the queen, who found her shy and nice looking. The queen started visiting them at the Frogmore cottage often, delightedly remarking about hosting the first purdah clad ladies in Windsor castle, though a tad unhappy since they did not wear the sari, but salwar kameez’s.

Many more aspects of this strange friendship astounded royal watchers and the castle staff, the queen then decided to help the couple who were having difficulties having a baby, by asking her personal physician to check the wife himself. You can imagine how the prudish royal household, full of schemers and opportunists, took to these developments.

As the gossip mills churned, the queen was always quick to come behind the Munshi in support, while at the same time, the Munshi was taking full advantage the situation, like for example using the queen’s photographs with him, in an article about himself, in Italian newspapers. Letters and articles show the disdain the white servants had for the preferential treatment the Munshi, a person who in their opinion had much lower standing, was getting. Victorian England was nothing short of racist, but we knew that and the Munshi from his vantage point, was thumbing his nose at them, with royal support. In 1895, the queen awarded him the CIE – Companion of the order of the Indian empire, much to everybody’s indignation. Royals in India took note and complained that a lowly servant was given a CIE, while they were disregarded (he was later decorated with the Eastern star).

Karim, in the meanwhile as it was noted, cemented his stay at Frogmore cottage, filling it with souvenirs and presents from the queen. More Indian Muslim servants joined the queen’s entourage and the queen was at times seen to be conversing with them in Urdu over breakfast. All unsavory for the British nobility and not in line with their snobbery, as anybody would conclude. The queen talking in Urdu, to her servants!

In 1896, Karim took another trip to India and the British planned to have him surveilled, due to his proximity with people such as Rafiuddin, who they felt was joining up with others against the British empire. On Abdul’s return he found that the palace had started a revolt against the special privileges he was getting but that the queen was firmly on his side. The queen made it very clear that she would not tolerate race prejudice, and petty jealousness about a superior servant like the Munshi.

There are some who say he took advantage of her, ever demanding more and more, shouting at the old matriarch and so on, soon to become the most hated in the palace, but that portrait appears to be generally painted wrong, to me, though there could be some elements of truth in them. Sir James Reid probably had other reasons to be sore with the Munshi – It appears that he was asked on one occasion to supply to the Munshi's father a huge supply of drugs including six pounds of laudanum, two ounces of pure strychnine and enough poisons, he estimated, "to kill 15,000 grown men or an enormously larger number of children". This naturally raised heckles on his neck and he was wary of Abdul Karim ever after.

By 1897, the Munshi was also getting exasperated with the rough atmosphere in the palace and suggested that he will resign, as the queen upped the ante and wrote again in his support and expressing disgust, that her own British people, even her doctor Reid were spying on her and the Munshi’s movements.

The palace heated up, with Dr Reid talking about how low class the Munshi was, and that his father

was no surgeon general as Karim had claimed, but a lowly hakim or quack, the queen retorting that this was outrageous (and that she knew an archbishop who was the son of a butcher!) and rumors of him getting knighted started. The queen threatened to pull of her diamond jubilee celebrations, and Dr Reid countered with information that the Munshi had contracted VD. As the queen became livid at this, Dr Reid delivered an ultimatum, egged on by Edward VII that he will have to declare her insane. The queen had no choice but to concede defeat and withdraw from the plan to make the Munshi, Sir Abdul Karim. But all this palace intrigue was taking a heavy toll on the old and benevolent lady, rheumatism in her legs had rendered her lame, and her eyesight was already clouded by cataracts.

In Jan 1901, the 81 year old queen passed away peacefully. Abdul Karim was allowed to say his personal farewell and see the queen’s body and walk in the funeral procession. This could not be refused as it had been willed so by the queen. A lock of Scotsman John Brown's hair, along with a picture of him, was placed in her left hand and concealed from the view of the family by a carefully positioned bunch of flowers. Items of jewelry included the wedding ring of John Brown's mother, given to her by Brown in 1883. That, I assume, may have provided consolation to those who felt she had given her heart to the Munshi Abdul Karim, 42 years her junior. The Victorian era had ended.

That was the end, the new king, Victoria’s son, the pompous Edward VII made sure all the queen’s Indian servants were quickly rounded up, all their presents and letters and other effects confiscated, and unceremoniously bundled back to India.

Edward seized all or Karim’s letters and souvenirs and had them burnt before Karim departed (though Karim as it appears, saved a few). In 1905 George V the crown prince met Karim in Delhi and stated that the Munshi had grown fat, but remained humble. The Munshi passed away in 1909, aged 46, and of those he had spent 13 in the blighty, with his queen. The paranoid Edward then had the viceroy send agents to his Agra house and get anything which remained with the grieving widow, even after Karim’s death.

As the British gentry remarked, there was no more queerness in the castle, ever after.

The Panchkuin kabaristan, once a burial ground for the Moghuls, is now home to a red sandstone mausoleum. Karim, his father and his wife are interred there. The rest of the family moved to Pakistan after 1947. Stray dogs and buffaloes pass by, and as his epitaph states, Abdul Karim is now alone in this world…

Plot 314 in a part of Agra, near the railway line and bijli ghar, near Ghati Azim khan, measuring to 141 acres, all gifted to him by his dear queen, was eventually of no use to him or his family (i.e. his brother, his sisters and their progeny), for most of them had decided to move to another nation hived off by the British and Jinnah, Pakistan. The Indian ministry of rehabilitation secured Karim lodge and the area belonging to him, allocating it to Hindu refugees from Pakistan.

Out there in the Bilayat, the blighty, Karim’s cottage, built for him by the queen, in Aberdeen is available for rental stays at over £1000 per week. They state that free sat TV and wi-fi are available, and that seven guests could be entertained comfortably in modern style. Karim’s name and relationship with the monarch is clearly something I assume, which could be used for profit.

Edward VII, Prince of Wales, who ascended the throne always despised Karim, and it was his complaint that the Queen sometimes discussed Indian matters and as is commonly believed, showed official papers to the Munshi. He as it seems, never got her ear or saw any of those papers and but naturally, his mother never took her playboy and boorish son seriously. She had once written to her eldest daughter, "I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder. Edward succumbed to lung disease by 1910, most probably due to his chain smoking habit. Finally, the son whom Victoria thought was the cause of her husband’s death was gone. Even though Edward comes across as a proper villain, it is also a curious fact that when he toured India in 1875, he mentioned about British racism in letters home, where he complained of the treatment of the native Indians by the British officials: "Because a man has a black face and a different religion from our own, there is no reason why he should be treated as a brute." Why did he hate Karim so much? Was it because his mother saw Karim as a son she always wanted? Perhaps! Karim on the other hand expresses his concern only once in his diaries of an unpleasantness in the palace.

Whatever happened to the Munshi’s widow? The Munshi’s wife died while sailing on the ship bound to Karachi. She was not destined to leave her husband’s side, and was interred with him in Agra.

Rafiuddin, the cause of much concern, retuned to India in 1909, became a minister of the Bombay government in 1928, was knighted (just imagine, the person who was considered a thorn in the British flesh gets knighted whereas the Munshi gets the boot for having been the same person’s friend on a previous occasion) in 1932, lived in Poona to talk about his glorious days in the queen’s court and died in 1954. The person who got him all that access, Abdul Karim, is not known or remembered by India, after all, he was nothing but a servant.

Queen Victoria was not one for racism (She had adopted a little African girl Sarah Forbes Bonetta in 1850, providing her with an education and a generous dowry when she got married) as this episode teaches us, and she valued human relationships. Theirs as Karim’s family was to testify to Basu, was a mother son relationship, perhaps a mother trying to repair the relationship of her country and family with her big daughter, the country India through this newfound son, Abdul Karim (many of her letters to him were signed ‘your loving mother’). She wanted to do something good in return for the representative of that land which was being used to enrich the British people, perhaps….But that is just my impression.

While this belonged to a pre-independence era, another relationship was to determine the destinies of India and Pakistan, that of Churchill, Ruttie and Jinnah. More about all of that for another rainy day…..

There is so much more to this story for those interested and they are advised to read Basu’s book, which is nicely written. I am a big fan, and her first book “Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan”, was quite telling.

References

The Indian Sahib, Queen Victoria’s Dear Abdul – Sushila Anand

Victoria and Abdul – Shrabani Basu

The Royal Munshi – Victoria’s secret – Farida Asrar

The Painter, his teacher, a rival and a muse

Though I know little about painting, I can certainly say that I like studying the women lovingly brought to life on canvas by Ravi Varma and his younger brother. There are some who would wonder why I brought up his brother’s name in the same breath. Well, they did work in tandem with the younger Raja Varma finishing up with many of the portraits of the elder Ravi, during their heydays. He was no mean painter himself, and is a person whose persona I will bring to light on these pages someday. Ravi Varma himself has been written about in so many books, but there is unfortunately quite a bit of conflicting and incorrect information in some of his early biographies, which were perhaps a little too effusive. Nevertheless, he was a genius and also in many ways just an ordinary person, deeply religious, meticulous in his work, quick to take offense and in later days a mite tired after the onset of diabetic symptoms, for which sadly there were no insulin therapies in those days.

Ravi Varma

Today our whole perception of the physical look of a Hindu god is somewhat due to Ravi Varma and his lithographs. The fine muscular structure of Shiva, the majestic look of Lakshmi, the somber face of Saraswati, Bhima’s physique, Yudhishtira’s pensive looks, Damayanti’s forlorn face, Ravana’s fierce countenance …..you name it, they were created from the faces of ordinary mortals of India, in the studios of Ravi and Raja Varma.. The saree was popularized with his paintings, Ravi was the first to depict to the masses the drapery of many a fine Maharashtrian and Kancheepuram saree.

But how did he get there? How did he learn his basics? The story is quite interesting and I got some detail from Deepanjana’s biography on the artist. Additional detail came from the debut book on the Travancore Royals by the young Manu S Pillai and an exquisite article on Travancore art by Sharat Sundar Rajeev. Was Ravi self-taught? Did he learn painting on the sly? In a previous article, we talked about his later day muses at Bombay, but who was his first muse, who was his first mentor and sponsor? If he learned from a teacher, who was the teacher and what kind of paintings did he do? The answers are very illuminating and throw light into the workings and life at the royal houses of Travancore.

Like most palaces, the rich Travancore abodes had their share of poets, singers, courtesans, writers,

Raja Varma (Brother)

scribes and painters. What was once the so called Kerala mural style of paintings or frescos dealing with mythical characters and legends, which you can still see here and there, were being replaced by the company style or hybrid Indo European style, steeped in very visible subjects and realism, but with a tint of the Mughal. The style of painting which took root in Travancore during Ravi Varma’s younger years however was the so called Tanjore style, itself influenced by the Vijayanagara style, and even the Company style.

If you recall from our discussions around Swati Tirunal and music, there was a steady flow of artisans from the declining Maratha Nayak kingdom to Travancore in the latter decades of the 19^th century. The Travancore rajas, patrons of art and music were glad to receive some of those stalwarts moving out from Tanjore, westward. These artists (Rajus & Naidus) or ‘oviars’ were originally Telugu speaking people from the artistically vibrant "Rayalseema" region of Andhra, who moved to Tamil Nadu in the wake of the fall of the Vijayanagar Empire and the establishment of Nayak rule in Madurai and Thanjavur. Some of them famed in art, moved to Travancore, carrying with them mastery over a new medium, oil, in search of patronage, particularly to the courts of Swathi Thirunal (1829-47), and his successor, Ayilyam Thirunal (1847-80).

The encouragement to painting on modern lines in Travancore was given by Swati Tirunal who invited to his court Alagiri Naidu, a native of Madura, considered to be the best painter of the day (Pedda Dasari was another exponent who painted at the courts during this period). Alagiri Naidu, expert on ivory painting was the person who introduced canvas painting in Travancore and it was he who executed the painting of Dewan Subba Rao, and a few other exquisite paintings. Popular during the 1850’s Naidu was instrumental in teaching his methods to Raja Raja Varma, Ravi Varma’s uncle.

Ramaswamy Naicker or Naidu who followed him was an oil painter in the European style, specializing in portraits and served in Ayilyam Tirunal’s court. While some people pass off Naicker’s art as linear (I don’t), examples of which can still be seen in the Sri Chitra art gallery, he was popular and in 1874, at an exhibition in Calcutta, Ramaswamy of Travancore dominated. Naidu carried off the prize for 'the best work by a native artist'. Looking at his two marvelous paintings “three Nair girls of Travancore” and “mother and child” you can see the influence he had on Ravi Varma’s picturization, especially the curves and depiction of native jewelry.

It was an incident between this Naicker and Ravi Varma that was to become a catalyst to Ravi Varma’s meteoric rise and Naicker’s (Naidu) decline. According to popular tradition, “once in a weak moment he (Ravi Varma) approached Naidu for some guidance, but Naidu only curtly refused.” Later biographers of Varma often point to this incident as a decisive moment in the life of young Varma, for it was when he made up his mind to excel Naidu at any cost. But let us see what a couple of his biographers have to say.

The 13 year old Ravi Varma who had already been dabbling in water colors, was brought to Trivandrum by his uncle Raja Raja Varma in 1862 and was presented to the maharaja Ayilyam Tirunal, mainly to be interviewed as a potential suitor for one of the palace princesses (a point debated by some). Manu Pillai explains - In 1859, less than two years after the adoption the Maharajah decided to get the Rani married and three young suitors were presented to her. One of them was Kerala Varma of Changanassery, the grandnephew of the Maharajah’s father. The other was Kerala Varma from Kilimanoor while the third was a Ravi Varma, also from Kilimanoor. The choice had to be made most carefully. A royal consort would father future Maharajahs and hence intelligence, good looks etc were all essential qualities. Rani Lakshmi Bayi chose the Koil Thampuran from Changanassery. She had rejected Ravi Varma because he was dark skinned and her sister Rani Parvathi Bayi had selected the second person.

His uncle sought a second meeting with the king and it was here that Ravi presented the Raja with three of his handiworks, one of which resembled the new consort of the Raja. The meeting covered many other subjects and the Raja took a liking for the young fella from Kilimanoor and asked him to stay back to live in Trivandrum and learn from the palace stalwarts. Nobody, or for that matter Ravi himself would have imagined that this one meeting would be the forerunner to the buildup of his brilliance, fame and name, but also the fact that he would sire the girls who bore future lineages of the Travancore dynasty.

Kerala Varma Koyil Thampuran (Parappanad royal family) born to a Parappanad Rani the cousin of

Bhageerathy (Wife)

Ravi Varma mentioned above (he was married to Kerala Varma’s mothers youngest sister) was a friend and sponsor. He was the person who presented Ravi his first set of Winsor & Newton oil paints around 1866. Ravi stayed at the Moodathu madom near the Padmanabhaswami temple and observed the painters of the palace and the sculptors at the temple, those were the informal lessons which formed his base. Ravi also found access to the palace collections and libraries, he saw European paintings, especially French art, on the printed medium. Ravi also struck up an acquaintance with Madhava Rao, the dewan, which was to serve him in good stead for the future. Three years passed by and as the young boy started to feel at ease in the palace, the resident painters started to get more wary of the new entrant (with an access to the king), as his paintings started to show more promise. In 1866 he got married to a child princess Bhageerathi from nearby Mavelikkara, but he was not to stay at his brides home for long (for that was custom), and he returned to Trivandrum to get back to a problem which was vexing him, the matter of mixing pigments with oil to create good paintings. It was something he simply could not master, even after some guidance by his uncle. He requested Naicker’s help and the meeting between the two resulted in naught and left the two as bitter enemies.

Ravi complained to the king, and Naicker did likewise, to his friend - the raja’s brother Vishakam Tirunal, the Raja’s rival and heir, whom he had always courted. Ravi Varma as you can see had brought about a minor palace crisis which was eventually resolved when Naicker was asked to let Ravi watch him at work. Ravi leaned nothing new, and the aspect of making and mixing of paint was always done in secret, in a neighboring room, well away from Ravi’s prying eyes. At some point, Ravi became friends with Arumugham Pillai, Naicker’s assistant. Whether he was bribed or he acted on his accord is not clear, but Arumugham became a late night visitor to Ravi’s studio to impart special training to him. The story reminded me of Dronacharya and Ekalavya, but left a question. Who was really the teacher Arumugham or Ramaswami? Pillai himself went on to excel at his work and set up the art section at the Napier museum and I would consider Arumugham as Ravi Varma’s guru.

Two events in 1868 were to turn the tide even further. One was the arrival of European painter Theodore Jensen and the other the entrance of a muse (and perhaps romance) in Ravi’s life.

A painter of Dutch origin, who had just finished working a commission for the British royal family, named Theodore Jansen came to India to seek his fortune as a portrait painter. Before moving to Travancore, Jansen had already completed a number of portraits at Poona and Bombay, and many of his works had been exhibited in the special Picture Gallery at the Nagpur Exhibition on 1865-66. Now his task was to create paintings of the Ayilyam Tirunal and his family, especially his consort the beautiful Kalyanikutti amma. It was a turbulent period in the palace, with the Visakham Tirunal scheming in the background, the new royal consort now the Nagercoil Ammachi establishing her will in the household and Dewan Madhava Rao getting estranged from the king. Let’s get to know the beautiful lady.

After the death of Thiruvattar Ammachi his first wife, the Maharajah married in 1862 one Kalyanikutty Amma (born 1839) the daughter of Krishna Menon, a former Dewan of Cochin and Lakshmi Amma. She had been previously married to Punnakkal Easwara Pillai Vicharippukar, a kathakali exponent.

As Sharat Sundar Rajeev, Travacore history buff explains - ‘Kaithavilakam Bungalow’ a.k.a. ‘Bungalow Ammaveedu,’ located in Punnakkal Lane, is the home of one of the prominent families inside the Fort area. The history of Kaithavilakam Bungalow is entwined with the life of Easwara Pillai Vicharippukar, one of the greatest Kathakali exponents of Travancore. Easwara Pillai was a favorite of Uthram Tirunal Marthanda Varma, the King of Travancore. According to popular family tradition, Easwara Pillai had married four times and one of his wives lived in the Bungalow Ammaveedu.

Kalyanikutty

That was Kalyani Kutty. Kalyani arrived in Trivandrum during the 1850’s after eloping with the Pillai. When and how the king met this lady is not clear, but it is rumored that he met her either at Cochin or at Trivandrum and that he was so enamored with her and took to visiting her on the sly. Easwara Pillai as it seems, had no choice but to hand his wife over to the king.

In 1865 she was formally married to the king following three years of ‘kettilamma status or consortship’, and was adopted by the Maharajah into the Nagercoil Ammaveedu after which her full title became Nagercoil Ammachi Panapillai Amma Srimathi Lakshmi Pillai Kalyanikutty Pillai Ammachi.

Nagercoil Ammachi was also a scholar of Sanskrit and a poet in her own right, having authored Rasa Krida, Satya Panchakam, Pativrataya Panchakam, Ambarishacharitram and other works. She learnt English, hobnobbed with dignitaries, studied the Bible and so on, all very uncharacteristic for a Royal consort who should typically remain behind the scenes. Kalyanikutty Amma as we heard previously, was a woman of renowned beauty and a Carnatic composer of merit, as evidenced by her oeuvre ‘Saptaswara Sankirtanam’.

Jensen was now in Travancore to paint the king and this strong willed lady. Meanwhile Ravi approached Jensen to be formally inducted as his pupil and Jensen promptly refused, for this haughty painter had no intention in having any kind of competition. Ravi requested the king’s help again and the king ruled just like he did with Ramaswami naicker, that Jensen let Ravi watch him at work.

Jensen had a torrid time for over a month painting the king and the Nagercoil Ammachi, for they were not sitting together but the painting had to show them side by side. With separate sittings and a glowering king, he felt very uncomfortable. Ravi on the corner was also doing the same portrait, but in his own fashion. After they were done, Ravi impertinently presented his portrait to the king, and his likeness of Kalyanikutty amazed everybody, with people agreeing that it was a brilliant painting.

It cemented Ravi’s reputation in Travancore and drew him to his first muse, the royal consort Kalyanikutty. Again, we have to rely on rumors that she became a patron of sorts, supporting him after that event and there are many mentions of the consort’s regular visits to Ravi’s studio at irregular hours. In 1870 the painter left on a trip to Mookambika, and that was when he took his first commission at Calicut to paint Kizhakke Palat Krishna Menon’s family.

As the tale goes, he came back and was gifted a Vira Shringala bangle by the king. Soon he rose to fame as a portrait painter and with it came busy days, more rumors etc. At the palace, the things were turning sour, with Madhava Rao breaking off from the king, the king’s tussle with his brother and the strong willed Nagercoil Ammachi’s involvement in state matters. Kerala Varma Koyil Thampuran’s hand in all this was suspected and as a result of all this intrigue, was declared a traitor and banished.

Manu pillai explains the intrigue - The Maharajah Ayilyam Thirunal, who ascended the musnud in 1860, was on bad terms with the Elayarajah Visakham Thirunal, who it was rumored had tried to secure the removal of his brother with the connivance of Dewan Rajah Sir T. Madhava Rao. The Dewan had been “retired” with a handsome pension, but the relationship between the Maharajah and his brother remained tense. Kerala Varma, who was a protégé of the Elayarajah, became the Maharajah’s pawn to punish his brother.

Over and above all this it appears Ramaswamay Naicker was behind spreading some of the rumors that Ravi Varma was getting singular praise only because of Kalyanikutty. By 1872, Madhava Rao was retired or dismissed and Ravi Varma who was considered to be close to Kerala Varma was also asked to leave Travancore. Eventually Ravi was called back to Travancore, only to leave again in 1881 after machinations by Naicker and the ill will shown by the new king Visakam Tirunal.

M Kasper writes - Relations between the painter and his Travancore patrons, however, were not always smooth. Ayialyam Tirunaal, Maharaja until 1880, was genuinely supportive, but his brother and successor Visakam was not. He thought Ravi Varma too big for his britches. He was especially miffed once when Ravi Varma happened to get an Imperial citation made out to Raja Ravi Varma, an honorific which the Maharaja felt the artist wasn't entitled to. Ravi Varma was bothered in turn, and thereafter he took to using the title openly, just to get the old ruler's goat. It might be noted that the only gift for which Visakam is thanked today is introducing tapioca to Kerala.

Naicker’s and Ravi’s tussles continued with both competing at exhibitions, and it is debated often as to who won and whose name remained for posterity. Finally Ravi Varma stopped submitting his work for exhibitions, for his fame had spread and there was no need. It was time to spread his wings and move North, with his friend and confidante, his younger brother Raja Raja Varma. In some ways that rivalry was necessary for that provided Ravi the impetus to excel. The rest of the story covering the days before he returned for good, will be taken up another day.

Let me now present an ode to the painter from Subramanya Bharati - Bharatiyar (a rough translation of Subramanya Bharathi's vaazhthupaattu- 'Chandiranoliai Eesan padaithathu)

God created moonlight and the Jataka bird to drink it. He also created gods to consume the nectar, he created Iravata the elephant to match the splendor of Indra, he created beauty in flowers, in the blue sky and on the countenances of women, for the famed Ravi Varma to paint it on Canvas…The master's light... . Has lit the palaces of Kings and the huts of the poor", bringing "delight" to all….

Even though I am great fan of Raja Ravi Varma’s works, the two paintings of Nayar girls by Ramaswamy Naicker are my personal favorites, of late. They are just fascinating, if you spend a few minutes in front of those works and look closely, some might agree. See them here

Three nayar girls

Mother and Child

But were they better than Ravi Varma’s figures? Well, it depends….

References

Sharat Sunder Rajeev, "The Durbar Artists of Travancore," in Tinpahar, October 12, 2015,

The Painter Deepanjana Pal

The ivory throne Manu S Pillai

Madras Miscellany By Muthiah S (when art breaks records 9Dec 2002)

Sharat’s article in Hindu

Another translation of Bharatiyar's ode

A note for the uninitiated – The Rani of Travancore is not the wife of the King, but the sister or neice of the king. The king’s wife is called an Ammachi or consort. The king’s son does not become king, but his eldest nephew becomes one. All this because of the practice of matriliny in Kerala. Ammaveedus were the residences of the consorts of the Maharajahs of Travancore in Trivandrum. The main Ammaveedus are the Arumana, Vadasseri, Thiruvattar and Nagercoil Ammaveedus. The Ammachi as Samuel Mateer put it…is not a member of the royal household, has neither official nor social position at court, and cannot even be seen in public with the ruler whose associate she is.” For further details refer Manu’s article

Other articles related to Ravi Varma

Three muses

The raja in Ravi Varma

Prince Ramachandra Balaji in Russia

One of the first organized rumblings against the British EIC’s tyranny in India was the much written about Sepoy mutiny in 1857. The British had previously retaliated against early stirrings by hanging Mangal Pandey, but as the unrest spread to Agra, Allahabad, Ambala and Merrut, some British soldiers were lynched at Delhi while Bahadur Shah, proclaimed as India’s emperor, looked on. After the British arrested Bahadur Shah, things took a turn for the worse and the siege of Kanpur and the flight of the British resulted in the death of a few British with Nana Saheb being held responsible for the events that occurred.

For the uninitiated, Nana Govind Dhondu Pant, a.k.a Nana Sahib was the adopted son of the deposed Maratha Baji Rao II, exiled at Bithoor near Kanpur by the British. Recalling from my article on Manu, Nana Sahib's childhood associates included Tatya Tope, Azimullah Khan and Manu who later became famous as Rani Lakshmibai.

Nana Sahib was the legal heir to the throne and eligible for the annual pension from the East India Company. However, after the death of Baji Rao II, the EIC declined to pay the pension on the grounds that the Nana was adopted and that the Maratha kingdom no longer existed. The Nana, as you can imagine was quite offended by all this and sent an envoy (Azimullah Khan) to England in 1853 to fight his case with the British. However, Azimullah Khan failed returning home in 1855. Matters dragged on with Nana remaining cordial with the English. The British expected Nana Sahib to support them when the rebellion spread to Kanpur, however Nana joined up with the rebels and decided to fight them instead.

The English military reached Kanpur in July and defeated Nana’s forces who in turn retreated to Bithoor. General Havelock went after Nana, but Nana Sahib had already escaped, never to be caught by the British. By 1859, Sahib was reported to have fled to Nepal with his family. Sahib's ultimate fate was never known. The British wrote a number of books and articles about Nana and the mutineers, painting a picture of those who revolted as the vilest scum on earth, for they had the temerity to maim and kill a few British men and women. Many anti British nations like the French projected Nana as a hero for standing up to the British. Jules Verne based the famous character of Prince Dakkar or Captain Nemo on Nana Saheb. Nana’s stories of valor grew and grew in the Indian mind.

But then again, let me remind you, this is not an article about Nana or his heroics. It is about another person, a very strange character and not yet known to many an Indian reader. In the year 1878, a scruffy Indian arrived in St Petersburg armed with letters of introduction from Iskandar Khan, grandson of Dost Mohammed, the Emir of Afghanistan. He, this shabby looking but proud man, was according to his own words, the nephew of the famous Nana Saheb who fought the British.

That certainly interested many top level Russians of the region. Why so? A little knowledge of the political scene post 1850’s is required. As you will see, the ‘great game’ was already afoot. Like most people who become insecure after acquiring riches, a beautiful woman or a great jewel, the British were worried about the loss of India, their great possession and source of all kinds of raw material, riches and semi-finished goods with little effort and great profit. Many others were eyeing the jewel from both the west and the North. While the British worried about the French on the western borders, the Russians were breathing down heavily from beyond the Northern Mountains. The only buffer was the northwest frontier provinces. Earlier in the 19^th century, Napoleon (who had even planned to team up with the Russians to invade India) had been defeated and the French advances had been held up near Egypt and Syria.

To put it simply, Russia was fearful of British commercial and military inroads into Central Asia, and Britain was fearful of Russia adding "the jewel in the crown", India, to the vast empire that Russia was building in Asia. This resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and the constant threat of war between the two empires. If Russia were to gain control of the Emirate of Afghanistan, it might then be used as a staging post for a Russian invasion of India. Starting in 1830, the game moved like a well-crafted game of chess, with both parties trading pieces, only they were much bigger. In October 1838 Auckland issued the Simla Manifesto, a piece of propaganda designed to blacken the reputation of Dost Mohammad Khan (Emir of Afghanistan) and to ensure British influence was extended into Afghanistan for it to become a buffer state. In December 1838, the British marched into Afghanistan and arrested Dost Mohammad, and sent him into exile in India, replacing him with the unpopular Shah Shuja. By 1842, the Afghans were in a rebellious state and the British withdrew. By 1846 however the British had captured Sindh and defeated the Sikhs and later in 1857, the Persians. The Crimean War had ended in 1856 with Russia's defeat by an alliance of Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire. The new and wary Czar Alexander II of Russia waited some years so as not to antagonize the British, then Russia expanded into Central Asia in two campaigns.

In India the EIC, after the 1857 rebellion, finally relinquished possession of the states and regions it held passing them on formally to the British crown. Now that domestic strife was contained, it was time for the British to go back to the troubled Northern borders. The Second Anglo Afghan War was fought between the British Raj and the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1878 to 1880, when the latter was ruled by Sher Ali Khan, son of former Emir Dost Mohammad Khan. The war ended after the British emerged victorious. The Afghan tribes were permitted to maintain internal rule and local customs but they had to cede control of the area's foreign relations to the British, who, in turn, guaranteed the area's freedom from foreign military domination. This was aimed to thwart expansion by the Russian Empire into India.

It was during these events that the troubled Russians heralded the arrival of a smooth talking Ramachandr Baladzhi or Rama Chandra Balaji, so called nephew of Nana Saheb, the peshwa who made the British tremble in Kanpur. The events that transpired between this one man representative of the Indians against the British, or so it was as he put it, and the Russians in St Petersburg was for me, very interesting. I must admit that my sources were few and with little corroboration, I have to depend on just one fine article by TN Zagarodnikova and bits from the doctoral thesis of Alexander Graham Marshall.

Alexander the liberator had become a reformist Romanov Czar after the emancipation of serfs in

Alexander II

1861 and after selling Alaska to America in 1867 and was avoiding assassination attempts all the time. As they say, Balaji presented a strange picture in St Petersburg, which was the Russian Czarian capital then. A scruffy man with a scar on his cheek, looking sad and hungry, and wearing shabby clothes, but with a proud countenance, this young fella was just scraping along, with borrowed funds and earnings tutoring rich families, in English. He spoke many languages, including Russian and French and perhaps Farsi. Curiously he cultivated a number of acquaintances in high places, some very important men, who were all trying to find him work or to help him.

Balaji arrived in Russia around the end of the Russo Turkish war, where the Russians were victorious as the Ottoman Sultan sued for peace; and the Treaty of San Stefano was signed by Russia and Turkey. Balaji was at that time in Turkey and came across an acquaintance, a Japanese officer whom he knew from his days in Berlin. The Japanese officer introduced him to the Russians who invited him to Russia. So that presents the first piece of a growing puzzle. What exactly was Balaji doing in Berlin or Turkey?

Balaji of course was effusive in providing details of his background, which when analyzed seriously proved to be full of holes. But let’s see what he said. According to his testimony, he was born in 1850. As the British soldiers arrived in Bithoor, he fell out of the window and broke his cheekbone. A childless English officer took the boy first with him to Calcutta and thence to London, where he found the climate less than salubrious. So he grew up in Italy, but as an Englishman, visiting London often, until he was sent to Switzerland in 1859 for continued education. He went on to learn Sanskrit from somebody who had come to London with Duleep Singh (remember the Kohinoor story?) and later owing to the benevolence of the Rajah of Kolhapur who died in Florence, got enough funds to make a trip to India and back to Switzerland (he was forced to go back by the British). In 1870, he entered the Berlin University for higher studies (curious that he did not go back to Britain), struck up an acquaintance with Prof Weber an eminent Sanskritologist, and KA Kossovich, the pioneer Russian Sanskritologist. It was while vacationing in Britain that Balaji met Iskandar Khan, who invited him to Persia.

Iskandar Khan the grandson of Dost Mohammed had been trying to get back the Afghan throne for himself, but failing to get support from at first Russia and later the British, left in 1877 for Turkey and finally settled in Persia.

Balaji was not interested with that invitation then and went back to Berlin. Warned however by his friends that the British, wary of his friendship with Iskandar, were planning to send him off to the Jamaica, Balaji abandoned his studies and went to Tehran. From there he tried to go back to India, but after getting robbed by Afghan tribals, returned to Tehran. Interestingly his next venture was to launch an agitation favoring the Persian Japanese treaty to import green tea directly to Persia instead of Bombay, thereby damaging British commercial interests.

I checked this aspect of the story and it appears that a Japanese team did come to Tehran to discuss a trade treaty. Though the members of the mission held trading fairs in Bušehr and Tehran in order to exhibit Japanese products, they did not draw much interest from the Iranians. The treaty talk never took place, because Japan wished to be treated on a most-favored-nation basis by Iran and obtain the same extraterritorial rights that the European countries enjoyed, which Iran did not agree to.

The connection between Iran’s Nāṣer-al-Din Shah and iskander Khan is quite real, but the involvement of Balaji in these matters is somewhat circumspect what with his lack of experience in trade matters. It is also clear that balaji never mentioned any connections with Nana Saheb while in Tehran.

As the story runs through its course, Balaji next found himself in Istanbul where the San Stephano treaty was being negotiated. From there he found his way to St Petersburg, and it is felt by the Russians who studied him later that he had a singular plan. The English were not too pleased with the treaty signed between the British and the Turks and the Russians felt another war was in the offing. To avoid it, it was better to pose a threat to the British at the Indian frontiers and get them busy. Balaji (maybe induced to do so by Iskandar Khan) wanted to persuade the Russians to attack India coming down through Afghanistan, and liberate India from the British yoke. The real question is who would believe an unkempt Indian refuge with such a major idea. Well, that is the interesting part, for within months he had built up a social circle, though hardly making his own ends meet. His circle included VV Grigoriev, the famous orientalist, Baron Jomini and Von der Osten Saken top officials in the foreign affairs department, Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich, Semenov Tyan Shansky, MN Katkov the editor of ‘Moscow Vedomosty’, and other personnel in the Japanese and Persian embassies.

It was also an opportune moment for Balaji to scout out a potential route to India, for the Grand duke was heading an exploratory trip to Turkestan in Central Asia. The intention of the trip was to check the potential in restoration of the Amu Darya’s flow, obtain cooperation of the Khivans and Bukharans, the acquisition of riches, and the opening of a new water route from the Caspian through the Amu Darya to India. Balaji proved to be very useful and accompanied the Duke. Balaji and Afghan Mirdali Khan apparently testified to the existence of ancient river beds and tributaries. Balaji was soon heralded in social circles and was to be seen in many parties and it is mentioned that many a Russian lady found him quite romantic. Articles about Balaji and his exploits appeared in Moscow newspapers and journals.

In India, Madame Blavatsky was livid and saw through Balaji’s caper. She wrote to newspapers that this fellow Balaji was an imposter, for she herself had been involved in resurrecting the Nana legacy in India and knew that Nana Sahib had no such nephews. She wrote to the editor of Indu Prakash

“Ever since my arrival here, in February, with a hospitality and persistence worthy of a better cause, I have been hailed by every class of society as a secret emissary of the Russian government—a ‘spy,’ to call things by their proper names. And yet, so poorly informed am I by the authorities of my native country of the ways and doings of the Russian police, that, in my ardent curiosity, I have now to apply to you for help. Will you kindly put your head together with mine to try and ‘guess’ who may possibly be a certain mysterious individual who has recently appeared in Russia? He calls himself a ‘prince of India,’ and provoking the greatest curiosity in the general public is, at the same time, received as an honoured guest by the St. Petersburg ‘court’ —though, as I am informed, secretly. This is what one of the numerous papers I received says of him, mentioning his arrival. I translate verbatim: . . . ‘A few days ago, arrived at Moscow, on his way from Petersburg to Samara, the Hindustani Prince Ramchander Balajee of Bhottor. Colonel and Aide de Camp on the general staff the Count N. Y. Rostovtzeff has been placed at the orders of the prince, and now forms a part of his numerous suite.’ Who is this prince? He evidently belongs to the native place, if he is not actually of kin to the famous Nana Sahib, of course. Though news for your readers, this piece of information will be stale for the omniscient police of India, who, for instance, have discovered in a twinkling of the eye that I was a dangerous Russian spy. They must certainly know all about this mirific prince. How provoking, then, that they will not tell!”

Interestingly, the Russians also had similar doubts. Col LN Sobolev had investigated Balaji and submitted a report with the result that suspicions of Balaji being a British spy were rife. His connection with the circumspect Iskander khan was another reason. Zinoviev the Russian ambassador in Tehran reported that Balaji never mentioned any connections with Nana Saheb while in Tehran and was actually selling medicines (herbal?). It is also mentioned that Balaji was finally recalled from the Grand Duke's party due to suspicions in higher quarters about his character and his 'bad influence' on the Grand Duke. But Balaji continued his meager existence till 1880, providing tuitions for children of the richer families or taking handouts and loans from his many friends.

Proponents for his cause such as Col Korolkov maintained that he was definitely not a British spy and that his plans to access India through the dangerous Samarkand route would not have been approved by the English. While there, Balaji had met the Sikhs living there headed by Guru Charan Singh (who promised support with some 300,000 people for a future attack against the British). He also published an article in 1880 – My visit to Abdurahman Khan in Tashkent, in a newspaper where he outlined the difficulties faced by Indians living in Central Asia without their families and the handful who had their wives and daughters, but were fearful for their safety in these khanates.

Gen Skobolev

The Russians must have decided that their suspicions were unfounded for we find next that Balaji obtained a Czar’s decree accrediting him to the Asiatic department and he is seconded to Gen Skobelev with an ample allowance of 400 rubles.

The nature of his duties were never clarified, and the questions were if he was to be a liaison for the various Indian envoys (of Indian princes and rajas such as the maharajah of Kashmir) who came to Russia for support, if it were to coordinate with new forays involving Iskandar khan in Afghanistan or if he was to coordinate the selection and facilitation of Indian born agents into the Russian forces. He was certainly knowledgeable and provided original opinion. He understood the various polemics played out in the region and the complicated geopolitics at play. His knowledge of the geography and history of the Central Asian khanates was more than adequate. But he also came up with wild ideas such as Indians being potentially encouraged to move to fertile Afghanistan from the crowded plains, plotting a revolt against the British through the Maharajas of Kashmir, Patiala and Gwalior and so on. His duty was to start work in Turkestan in right earnest and hoping for active Russian support, he soldiered on.

It was summer 1880 that Ramachandra suddenly requested permission to go to Tehran to attend to some urgent personal matters. Marshall believed another motive - Unhappy at the lack of positive commitments from his interviews with Russian War and Foreign Ministry officials however, Baladzhi left for Persia. The Russians provided him the necessary papers and money. Surely I believe they suspected something was afoot and wanted to check his movements,

Mme Blavatsky continued to air her suspicions wondering why Balaji was considered important

"From Simla I wrote an article for the Novoe Vremya, ‘The Truth about the Nephew of Nana Sahib’. I have gathered the most elaborate information about this scamp. Golos constantly prints letters written by this liar, as if to incite England to make war on Russia. And Novoe Vremya disdained to print my note. For what reason? Besides being true, it is written as a free contribution. One would think they might have believed in the good intention of a countrywoman of theirs, of a Russian who is at the very source of the information about this self-proclaimed and false ally of Russia -- this Prince Ramchandra. His biography -- perfectly false -- has appeared in the June number of the Russian Herald, 1889. And his letters from Bagdad and Cabul, printed in Golos, amuse and needlessly irritate everyone here who knows the truth of the matter….

She continued her tirade in another letter- Nikolay Mihaylovich Prjevalsky (or Przhevalsky) (1839-88) was a famous military man, traveller, explorer and geographer. From 1864 to 1866 he taught geography at the military school at Warsaw, having graduated from the Academy of the General Staff. In 1867 he was sent to Irkutsk where he explored the highlands on the banks of the Usuri until 1869. In 1870, accompanied by only three men, he crossed the Gobi Desert, reached Peking, explored the upper the difficulties of the Bagh-o-Bahar and Baital Pachisi in the land of Wasudew Bulwant Phadke, or translating the exercise from Hindi into Russian in the “legitimate heir-loom” of the “Prince Ramchandra,” the hapless hero of the Russian Golos—in the North-Western Provinces! Will you kindly inform us whether Mr. Walter T. Lyall’s advice is to be immediately carried out, or must we wait till the Kali Yuga is over?

Balaji proved to be very erratic after that, for he first wrote from Baghdad that he no longer wanted to be part of the Turkestan project, but a month later wrote from Shiraz that he was trying to find business for the Japanese in Persia. Next he wrote to Gen Skobelev that he was willing to rejoin service. Skobolev was livid and recorded that he wanted no part of Balaji, who he believed to be mentally ill.

But strangely Balaji was very much part of the Skobolev camp during the Geok tepe conflict with the Czar’s express support, who insisted that Balaji be included, but be supervised strictly. Things did not go well and Skobelev complained about Balaji again to his HQ as being an evil person. Balaji, not waiting to see what the reply was, escaped, headed for India. But he was captured in Ashkhabad enroute to Herat and was sent back to St Petersburg with a police escort.

It is not clear if he was kept under house arrest or imprisoned, but a few months later in March 1881 was released and moved out to Moscow where of course he had neither the contacts nor means for his daily sustenance. He went back to St Petersburg and wrote to the Czar asking for an allowance of 1000 rubles to travel out and abroad. The Czar himself replied with his handwritten order on the side of the petition, that Balaji was not to be provided any further allowance and that he be escorted and released at the border.

We have to conclude that he left Russia after this three year troubled stay. But what happened to him? Nobody knows for his trail just went cold and he vanished……

Questions remain, who was Balaji and what were his motives? Why was he so important and how did he cultivate such a group of influential friends? Was he really a British spy whom the Russians toyed with during the great game? Was he just another Indian nationalist?

Some clues exist for the reasons why Balaji fell out of favor with the Russians, that Balaji was quite rude and short tempered, kept only to high society and upper class Russians, and that he simply could not get along with Gen Skobelev. It is possible that he had a falling out with the brutal General and that was the reason why he eventually tried to escape. Let’s see what happened in Geok Tepe where Balaji was an eyewitness riding shotgun (not exactly - he was consigned to the transport column) with Gen Skobelev.

In January, 1881, General Mikhail Skobelev, the hero of Plevna, with 7000 men, stormed the Tekke fortress at Geok Tepe, where were assembled 35,000 men, women, and children, with 10,000 horsemen. Nearly 20,000 persons were slain in the fort and during the pursuit, while the Russians lost barely 1000 men. This butchery broke, or rather annihilated, the Turkoman power, and, strange as it may seem, the survivors of the massacre have become loyal subjects of the tsar. The victory of Geok Tepe brought Russia to the borders of Khurasan.

Skobolev remarked once that he would not like to be a commander in an Indian invasion plan with a large army of 150,000 troops but at the same time mentioned, ‘It will be in the end our duty to organize masses of Asian cavalry and hurl them into India as a vanguard, under the banner of blood and rapine, thereby reviving the times of Tamerlane’.

Perhaps Balaji wanted no part of such a campaign. In 1881, the Czar Alexander II was eventually assassinated after many aborted attempts. Did Balaji go back to working with Khan in Tehran (We know that Khan was active in Mashad during 1887) or did he retire to England or India? We do not know. There is a glimmer of a possibility. In 1894, a two volume work was published in London anonymously with the title “Russia’s march towards India’ by an Indian officer. Was Balaji the author? Just a wild guess. In any case, it is clear that he had nothing to do with Nana Saheb, but was indeed a capable character at various forms of bluster and intrigue.

General Mikhail Skobelev died in the Hotel Dussaud in Moscow on July 7, 1882 under very strange circumstances. It was generally felt that his death was linked to a heart disease. Rumor had it however that he was actually poisoned by foreign agents and, lastly, his death was also linked to a female presence. More than a century after, the mystery still lingers (Sputniknews)

The great game continued and the Russians continued to irk the British, prophesying Iskandar khan who remarked to some of his London interlocutors years earlier- Our rocky country serves as a protecting bastion to English dominion in India. We are well placed by Nature in our stronghold, and we are warlike in a high degree. But we are much divided among ourselves as tribes, and by blood feuds. If once the Russians should succeed in lodging themselves there, it will be utterly impossible to dislodge them again."

On September 10, 1885 the Delimitation Protocol between Great Britain and Russia was signed in London. The protocol defined the boundary from the Oxus to the Harirud and was later followed by many additional protocols providing detail. In 1895, it was agreed that the Amu Darya River would form the border between Afghanistan and the Russian empire. The Russians gained all of the lands North of the Amu Darya which included the land claimed by the Khanate of Khiva, including the approaches to Herat, and all of the land claimed by the Khanate of Khoqand, including the Pamir plateau. To ensure a complete separation, this new Afghan state was given an odd eastern appendage known as the Wakhan Corridor. As William C Rowe concluded, "In setting these boundaries, the final act of the tense game played out by the British and Russian governments came to a close”

References

Nana Sahib’s Nephew in Russia – TN Zagorodnikova (Indian history a Russian viewpoint, ICHR MS8 – Ed. Eugenia Vanina)

The Origins of Conflict in Afghanistan - Jeffery J. Roberts

The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860-1917 - Alex Marshall

Dar Al-Harb: the Russian general staff and the Asiatic frontier, 1860-1917 - Marshall, Alexander Graham (2001)

The History of Nations, Volume 5 edited by Henry Cabot Lodge

Indians Abroad - Sarva Daman Singh

Notes

It is mentioned that a number of sources relating to Balaji still exist in the former USSR Moscow and Tashkent archives. Many of the documents are in French, the formal language of Czarist Russia, others in German. In case anybody has additional information on this story, please comment in detail.

Turkestan, literally means "Land of the Turks" in Persian. It refers to an area in Central Asia between Siberia to the north and Tibet, India and Afghanistan to the south, the Caspian Sea to the west and Mongolia and the Gobi Destert to the east.

Thanks again to TN Zagorodnikova for the article on this interesting character, for much of the data in this comes from her article.

Additional information 10/31/16 – MI Salonikes article, British newspapers

After I posted the article, I found an online version of MI Salonikes’s – Indiiskii patriot v rossii and with a passable google translation, dredged out additional aspects of the Balaji story. In effect it does not change the story line, but provides more information, some changes to the time line and adds meat to the character. The additional points are

Balaji stayed at the Porsche pension while studying at Lausanne Switzerland paying 100CHF per month. He learnt and spoke French, German, Italian and English. At Switzerland he gave English and music lessons
During his yearly and obligatory summer visits to Britain, he learnt that his parents were alive and living in Nepal. He learnt that he had a brother named Sridhar(?)
In 1868, he met the Kolhapur prince at Florence and this man gifted him £2000 on his death bed. Using this money he went to Nepal where he met his parents and brother. The British learnt of his visit and sent him back to Britain in 1869 fearing that he might be persuaded to go against them.
He joined the Berlin University with British permission, and was a volunteer in the army hospital when the Franco Prussian war broke.
During the next attempt to go to India he got robbed and came back. Then he went to Turkey hoping to get their help in his plans to topple the British in India. Later he met the Russian staff officers and landed up in St Petersburg.
While in Russia he lived in the house of the Persian Consul Jabbar Ali. Help came from Yamamoto and Nissi of the Japanese embassy. Prof Kossovich from Berlin had given him letters of introduction.
Following the Amu Darya expedition, Balaji requested support from the Russians to infiltrate Russia and start a rebellion, but no help was forthcoming.
Following this he went to Tehran in 1880 and started the discussions with the Japanese on the tea imports. This is documented in a London Times report.
On his own, he went and joined up with Gen Skobelev as it was a war affecting negatively the interests of the British. He was distraught after seeing the violence and suffering and had a fall out with Gen Skobelev after mentioning this.
War minister Dimitri Milutin sent him off to Moscow and facing a terrible isolation there, Balaji wrote to the Czar, who in exasperation, expelled him.

His departure to Tehran in 1880 suddenly is explained in anxious British press reports as an intrigue to support the accession of Abdur Rahman, the new Emir of Afghanistan. The British press describe this as Prince Rama Chunder’s second missive to Afghanistan. They also confirm that Balaji was responsible for the arrival of Japanese trading ships at the Iranian port. We note that these are picked up as Balaji’s own reporting on the Golos newspaper.

The pall mall budget reporting of Balaji’s visit to Kabul scoffs at Balaji and his ‘idle tales’ – Ram Chunder would to-day have no more influence (sic. in Cabul) than a New Zealand chief

In the end we can see that it was his objections to Gen Skobolev’s actions at Geok Tepe got him into serious trouble. But was he a double agent, a Russian agent or a one man army, an Indian Patriot?

And the yellow tail from down under

Ironically, the story of the Italians arriving in Bangalore starts with the explosive success of a Bangalore invention called the Bangalore Torpedo, only that it was during the WW II attacks in Libya, the jewel of Mussolini’s crown. The unexpected Allied successes at the African western deserts of Libya and Egypt resulted in the capture of many thousands of Italian POW’s. Many were sent to work in Britain and South Africa. Officers who did not have to work according to the Geneva Convention (remember the dialog between Saito and Nicholson in ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’?) were the first to be sent to Indian Camp at Yol. The many tens of thousands of soldiers who followed were interned at various camps at Bangalore, Bhopal, Ramgarh and Dehra Dun. Some 22,000 of the so called group 1 landed up in Bangalore (Jalahalli, Jakkur and Hebbal). I will attempt to do a short study on this group and go on to trace the story of one prisoner who decided to do something else with his remaining life.

At the beginning of World War II the Italians military was ensconced in Libya. Mussolini had ordered his commander, Graziani, to attack the British in Egypt. His large army of 250,000 (though badly trained and ill equipped) faced a crack British force of barely 30,000 on torridly hot and dusty desert terrains. The British were led by two brilliant officers, Lt. Gen. Sir Richard O'Connor, who commanded the Western Desert Force, and Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell, supreme commander of Egypt. Operation Compass was O’Conner’s brainchild.

On 9 December 1940 the Western Desert Force attacked the Italian positions at Sidi Barrani overrunning them, and 38,000 Italian soldiers were taken prisoners. Later as the operation in the Arabian western deserts got underway, the ANZAC Australian troops rising early on 3 January 1941, ate a meal, drank a tot of rum and singing ‘South of the border down Mexico way’, (don’t ask me why) commenced the attack on the Italian XXIII Corps at Bardia for the next three days. Sappers blew gaps in the barbed wire with Bangalore torpedoes (12-foot pipes packed with ammonal which were slid under the barbed wire at 60 yards intervals) blowing the fences off.

The explosive charge called the Bangalore torpedo was developed in Bangalore by one Captain McClintock in 1912, which involved packing explosives in a tube (perhaps mimicking the old Mughal method of packing gunpowder in bamboo tubes) and used to blow up barbed wire fences by inserting it into the wire coils at the bottom. Such was the explosive effect in quickly breaching a fence that traditional time intensive wire cutting methods (the BT is still used by armies around the world and under the name Bangalore Torpedo) could be loudly done away with, when in a hurry.

The troops overran the Italian defenses, and eventually the Italian garrisons in the North surrendered after which about 25,000 prisoners were taken. The British allied troops lost only a few in these successful attacks. In the following months a half million Italians had surrendered. Many of these prisoners were destined to Bangalore, a place they would never ever have heard of.

Having achieved success in North Africa, the thoughts of the strategist and generals veered to the vexing problem of dealing with the prisoners. After much discussions and arguments, Wavell send a big lot of them to India. As we saw earlier, the officers went to live in relative comfort at Yol near Dharmasala, and the foot soldiers were sent off to Bangalore. Jalahalli which later became the location of the air force training school was the biggest of the POW camps housing the Italians. In all, over half a million Italian soldiers were taken prisoner during the Second World War and were sent to camps in Great Britain, the United States, North and South Africa, India and Australia. India accommodated in total more than 67,656 Italians, including over 11,000 officers.

In February 1941, about 2,200 Italian prisoners (mainly the ones captured at Sidi Barrani, Bardia and Tobruk campaigns) of war arrived in Bangalore after a weary ride on a special train and were marched to transit camps at Byramangala and Krishnarajapura. They were then moved to tent camps at Jalahalli the largest of them, Jakkur and also at Hebbal. By Nov 1941, around 22,000 prisoners (18,500 soldiers and 3,500 officers) lived in Bangalore, nearly half of the total 45,676 sent to India. Camps 1-6 in Bangalore were occupied by soldiers while 7 & 8 were occupied by officers. In total Jalahalli, Jakkur and Hebbal were home to a total of 8 camps.

For the next two years they were held in captivity and in 1943, following Italy’s surrender were

Original tent camp 1941

allowed a higher degree of freedom until 1945/46, as hostilities of the WW II ceased, were repatriated back home in troop ships. The International Red Cross photo library provides some detail of the life at the Jalahalli camps and the overall picture is not too bad. Initially they lived in open tents and thatched hutments and the prisoners had their kitchen, garden, pigs and sheep to tend. They had a laundry arrangement and a church, bathing areas, and recreation such as soccer and boxing.

They even constructed a large framework where a white sheet was strung across to show European movies (Bangaloregirl mentions that Ramalingam Mudaliar and his son had a contract to screen films brought in from Europe). They had a hospital building, were dressed in khakhi shorts and shirts, ‘sola-topi’ hats, though donning trousers for formal occasions such as Sunday mass, in their makeshift church. They made curios and musical instruments to while away time, and some took to gardening and growing chickens and pigs One collected and built up a bottled library of various types of snakes and there is even a story of an Italian who picked up a coiled cobra thinking it was a tennikoit (remember that game anybody?) ring and got bitten.

Frame used to sling a white sheet to project movies

Unlike Italian prisoners sent to London or South Africa, the POW’s did not have too much work except for building reinforced barracks for themselves (by 1942 the tents were replaced by thatched huts) and mostly led a boring and forgettable existence for two years. They had representations and evangelical radio messages beamed from the Vatican. Some did make attempts to escape as is narrated in a novel ‘Latin lovers’ by Ottone Menato, a soldier who spent his time in Bangalore.

The camps had barbed wire fence and armed sentries, Indian soldiers from the looks of it. I could also identify local Indian labor from some of the pictures, for delivering water, other menial jobs and were also perhaps used as help. Neatly laid out graves with crosses were the temporary abodes of those who departed for ever from Bangalore. I am not sure if these gravesites are still there in Jalahalli.

Playing Soccer

The inter-camp football matches were well attended with a lot of spectators on the sidelines and the teams can be seen properly dressed for the game, with canvas shoes and uniforms. The boxing teams show very healthy, muscular men with cross countenances and even wearing regular boxing gloves and shoes! So the British did take reasonable care of them.

Many others not too fond of rough and tussle in the field preferred to play chess (with regular wooden chess pieces) in their tents. We see that in the initial stages, they had bedding laid out on the ground, but in later photos, they seem to have used rope lined charpoys or Indian village cots. The brass band seemed to be a popular pastime with some youngsters learning to blow bugles. They had a canteen from which tinned goods could be purchased, but I am not sure if alcohol was ever served, though hooch service existed, as will be seen later. Special credit notes and temporary currency took care of their subsistence within the camps.The notes were printed alike with the name of the camp over printed or over stamped. Bangalore issued denominations of 1, 2, 4, and 8 annas and 1,2, and 5 rupees.

In the kitchen, they made their own spaghetti and even obtained fish for their dishes! For contrast, it is interesting to read a comment from a letter of an Italian internee at Lameroo “These people demand so much of us Italians, and they would like to treat us as Indians – work without eating”.

Some amount of subversion of the non-fascist members of this motley group was planned by the British SOE and the so called Mazzini team of five Italians were to be inserted in these camps. It did not quite work out as planned and the idea was scuttled early enough, but the head of the team, an American Italian doctor (educated in Paris) named Lucio Tarchiani was later commissioned by the Intelligence Corps in March 1942, to serve as an interpreter and liaison officer at the POW camps at Bangalore and Dehra Dun.

Somewhere along the way a few of these POW’s strayed further south, albeit temporarily and ended up making a lovely Italian garden within the precincts of the botanical gardens at Ootacamund (Oooty) which can be seen to this day.

As we saw, the original camps were tent camps and it is mentioned that the Bangalore NST group supplied and/or erected the tents for these makeshift camps for the Italians towards the end of 1940. They were as you can imagine hastily constructed and the lack of good sanitation resulted in epidemics of bowel diseases such as enteric fever, dysentery and cholera. They were quickly contained.

Muthiah’s lovely book on the Spencer’s of Madras mentions that they provided catering to this camp at some point of time (perhaps for the officers?). Later when I saw the list of rations supplied to them, I could figure out that it did require an organization such as the Spencer’s to supply large amounts of imported goods. The Italians were placed on peace scale British standard rations and were given a cash allowance of 3 ½ annas per head each day! The working men got 4 ¾ annas per day. From the military records we can observe that a large number of prisoners were recalcitrant and did not cooperate resulting in them being maintained on a reduced ration (even then they had meat daily, fish, eggs, fresh butter, fruits and fresh vegetables, corn, onions, semolina, jam, milk and what not).

Rations were reduced somewhat during the 1945 famine but desirable items were available in the canteen for purchase. Some of these supplies were made by Nilgiri’s. Chenniappan of Nilgiri’s states -"During World War 2, we had a good supply of butter to the military camps in Jalahalli, there were Italian prisoners there who laid roads and played football with the local team! There were also part-time wounded soldiers who needed good quality butter and we were the only people who supplied that quality."

In 1942 the Quit India movement was launched and started to gather momentum, and by 1944 the Bangalore palace construction was finally completed. Ravi idly (so they say) was invented by MTR to tide over rice shortages. Right hand drive lorries arrived at Bangalore all the way from America, to serve the Americans housed (serving the war cause) in Bangalore city and gashol (petrol and ethyl alcohol mixture) was used for vehicles. The first time football was played in Bangalore, according to lore and legend was at the garrison ground opposite MG Road where Italian prisoners clad in boots played against the barefoot locals. This was followed by games at the YMCA ground, the corporation ground in Austin Town and other grounds.

Between 1943 and 1944, after Italy surrendered to the Allies, the prisoners were allowed to roam around and some of them did turn out to be a nuisance for old-timers of Bangalore. Women were somewhat scared, with rumors floating around of women being kidnapped and taken to the camps, and they were kind of unruly in the movie theaters, but others did well, partaking in merriment, dancing at Funnels in Brigade road, competing in boxing matches or even helping form Soccer teams. They could be seen ambling past Brigade road, being allowed to shop only at specific shops.

The Italians loved romancing the many European women, dancing and football as is oft stated by the jealous old timers of Bangalore, especially those who chat about those days. Margaret Ledger, a Nurse mentions this in her memoirs “They were Italians who were captured in North Africa, who were employed in general duties. They were very polite, but enjoyed hiding away from work. One day three of them had disappeared, and I went to search for them, because we were short of staff. They were sitting outside the Quartermaster’s Stores. I told them to come back to the ward. In a chorus of three voices, they replied “Madam, we do not make war, we make love!”

Boxing was of particular interest to these Italian soldiers and Bangalore rose to fame with keenly contested matches at the Opera house (Residency Rd), Hollywood city, Garrison sports ground and the Globe theater to name a few. As narrated in Samyukta Harshita- The matches were generally held in the evenings and continued till the night. Prices of tickets started at Rs. 6 for a ring side seat. Soldiers fought soldiers and soldiers fought civilians too. The American ‘Gunboat Joe’ was a famous boxer of that era.

The POW camps at Bangalore and Dehra Dun were closed on 15^thSeptember 1944. By this time the camp was a well laid out affair and fully self-contained and the Jalahalli camp gave way to what was in those days known as Hospital town, the largest hospital complex in the world and meant to tend to the huge numbers of British and Indians injured from the Burmese battles.

As such, the original tent town had been transformed by the Italians in the two years they stayed there - The original camps consisted of rather hastily erected huts, with walls of native basha (Basha: the ubiquitous Indian building material of pliable dried palm fronds – thatched roof made of coconut palm leaves) work.

Their foundations, roofs, and timber were retained, but the walls were stripped and brick walls erected. Timber supports were embedded in concrete to prevent destruction by white ants. The huts thus completed were light and airy, attractively painted, and had wide verandas on either side. Each accommodated some 40 patients and contained duty rooms, sanitary annexes, and ward kitchens as well. Covered ways connected the surgical wards and operating-theatres, and there were flower gardens between the wards, which made the outlook for the patients more attractive.

Rene Thompson a nurse records - The Maharajah of Mysore had been building as a leper colony, before the army took over Jalahalli. We started to get returned prisoners from Japan, who were being assessed for the journey home. One man had inserted a piece of airplane in his leg himself, so he could walk. So it was, in the beginning of 1944, in order to accommodate casualties expected from South-East Asia, this camp was chosen as the site for a complex capable of taking about 10,000 patients at a time, both British and Indian (you will recall that in those days they got different treatment, just like different rations). Rather than build a large unit anew it was decided to convert these Italian POW camps to hospital buildings. The site was ideal from the medical point of view, while buildings and essential services (electric power, water, and sewage disposal) were already in existence. When built, eight hospitals and ancillary units occupied the area with each camp having a hospital of 1000 or 1200 beds. These units took in weary and wounded soldiers, almost dead from the death march across Burma and into India.

Some Italians hung around, Fred’s letters mention an Italian music troupe which played a band at the hospital and did well for a time. Many others took up odd jobs such as washing dishes and so on. The hospital town continued for some time and one Englishman who worked there poignantly records the words of his orderly at the end. "War finis," he asserted with an all-embracing wave of his hand, "English sahibs go: you sahib, you sahib, all go. Tig hai. Leave army."

The hospital complex became home to an Indian air force base and training school after independence in 1947. BEL, HMT and other organizations moved in to the area and the Italians who once lived there were soon forgotten. Perhaps some of them reminisced about that not so tropical sojourn during the war years, of the Indians and the funny places named as such by the English like Brigade, Residency, St Marks and so on, of the Funnels dancing floor and bouts with the great gunboat jack. Some Italians mention it as a horrible period of their life, but naturally, for they were prisoners of war. Some changed for the better, some lived the rest of their lives quietly and bit the dust. One did better than all of them.

So we now zoom rapidly into the story of that internee from one of these Bangalore camps. This bloke was named Fillippo Casella and he spent six years or thereabouts in Bangalore. His days in Bangalore are not well documented or retold, I can only hope that his now famous family may step forward and provide details, but from what I read, the brief snapshot below is his astounding story of perseverance, hard work and foresight.

When Filippo was born in 1920 to Guiseppe and Rosa, Italy was certainly not doing well and as the world war enveloped all of Europe, Filippo volunteered for military service in 1939. He was selected to serve in the Bersaglieri, the elite of the Italian Army, as a radio operator. The Bersaglieri were of above-average size and stamina, endured intense physical training and had to qualify as marksmen.

Whilst fighting in Libya, he was captured and after journeying across North Africa eventually became resident of a prisoner of one of the war camps in Bangalore, India in 1941. It is said that Filippo put his alcohol-making talents to use, making a still and producing spirit using local fruit, such as papaya and raisins, for his fellow prisoners at Bangalore. He also used the opportunity wisely to study and learn English, French, math and history.

In Nov 1946, returning home after six long years, Filippo found a Sicily changed by time and war. Filippo the blue eyed, eventually married blonde haired Maria Patane of Sciara and took to tending vines in order to contribute to the family income but then again, life was even harder in war torn Sicily. The White Australia program allowing white Europeans to migrate to Australia was a golden opportunity which beckoned Filippo.

He immigrated to Australia in 1957 and worked hard for the next five or six years, with his wife and two children joining him later. After years of share-farming, cane-cutting and tobacco growing, the Casella family made a permanent home in Yenda in 1966, starting their own little vineyard (they purchased this property # 1471 for $19,000) called Casella wines. They supplied wine to bottlers in Queensland for the next 20 years. In 1990 Filippo suffered a heart attack and underwent a triple bypass. At this juncture, the family were faced with a crucial decision, whether to dispose of the business or not. As it happens in many an entrepreneurial family, the responsibility was passed on to John Casella, Filippo’s son.

John, Filippo’s son who had studied wine making at Wiggi Wagga and was trained with Australian wine makers such as Riverina wines, joined the family business in 1994. The legendary Yellow tail (The Yellow Tail logo incidentally depicts the yellow-footed rock wallaby, a relative of kangaroo) wine from the Casella vineyards at Yenda was formally created in 2001, for the US market, and 225,000 cases were sent out the first year. By 2006 sales rose to 8 million cases and the rest is history. The yellow tail is the signature brand and I myself can testify to the fine properties of their Shiraz and Sangria wines and I have a few in the wine cabinet at all times.

Today the Casella legacy has grown from the original fifty acre property to over thirty five wine-growing regions across Australia, including some of the best vineyards down under. It is a multibillion dollar business today.

Casella’s Yellow Tail is, I believe, savored in Bangalore these days and with that I must conclude that Fillippo’s circle of life is complete. His fellow Italians who drank his hooch at Bangalore would have been be the first to cheer. Perhaps Filippo himself, looking from up above would be smiling at the people of that land which gave him some relief during a war, a war in which he could indeed have lost his life.

References

The British Empire and its Italian Prisoners of War, 1940–1947 - Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich

Enforced Diaspora: The Fate of Italian Prisoners of War during the Second World War - Bob Moore

From Tobruk to Clare: the experiences of the Italian prisoner of war Luigi Bortolotti 1941-1946 - Desmond O’Connor

English for Nurses - Nitin Bhatnagar
Official history of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War 1939-45. Medical Services B L Raina ( Volumes - Preventive medicine and Administration)

A Toast to Bargain Wines: How Innovators, Iconoclasts, and Winemaking Revolutionaries Are Changing the Way the World Drinks - George M. Taber

Currencies at the camps 1, 2

Italian families who want to track down internees can refer to this link – 1, 2

Hindu articles 1, 2

PENSIONER’S PARADISE OR POW CAMP ?

Notes

The pictures posted are the property of ICRC, the international committee of Red Cross. Please do not copy and reuse without permission or share

See a video of the Italian POW’s arriving at Bombay

Anna Liberata De Souza the Calicut Ayah and Mary Frere the memsahib

Sometimes you come across the most amazing persons in dark and musty historic alleys. They are coated in layers of dust and grime added on by the many years which have passed by and the many people who have handled them. Getting the original persona out of this jacket is therefore enormous fun, if you are so inclined. And Anna D’Souza made me do just that, just like she got academicians Leela Prasad at Duke and Kirin Narayan at Wisconsin interested. I am as you will also understand, borrowing from the intense efforts of Leela and Kirin in uncovering the story of a remarkable Ayah – Anna D’Souza, though my work unlike theirs will stick to Anna and not to her tales. Her tales are something you should read yourself, and a helpful link is provided at the tail end of this biopic.

Indian folk tales meandered along into world literature, and that started eons ago. You will find linkages between Greek tales and our epics, you will find connections and similarities between Western fairy tales and the Panchatantra or the Jataka and so on. But the person who provided fodder to a very popular set of tales, the first of their kind entitled ‘Deccan tales’ was actually one born to ancestors who lived in Calicut. It was also perhaps the only book of its time which gave the native narrator not only full credit but also space for introducing herself and telling her own tale. And interestingly, through these tales, Anna was the first person to introduce Kannaki’s tale from Chilappathikaram, in her own way, to the western world..

As we know now, Mary was educated at Wimbledon, she arrived at Bombay, where her father was governor, and in the following year (1864), in her mother's absence in England she was the young 18 year old hostess at the government house. With not much else to do, she accompanied her father on his Mahratha tours, traveling for 3 months during 1865-66. Quite lonely during the tour and having only one other female companion the ayah in the whole entourage, Mary started a conversation with her Calicut Ayah. It was thus that she gathered these tales from Anna Liberata. Let us see what Mary herself had to say on this collaboration which continued on for some 18 months.

Mary explains - The circumstances were as follows. In the cold weather of 1865-6, my father, whom I

accompanied, made a three months' tour through the Southern Mahratta Country, in the Bombay Presidency, of which he was then Governor. Our party (of around 600 souls) was composed of my father and his Staff, to whom were usually added two or three friends, and the Officers Civil and Military, who were commanding in the Districts through which he was passing. Our mode of progress consisted in riding or driving about twenty-five miles a day, from one of our Camps to the next….My mother being at the time absent in England, I chanced to be the only Lady of the party. Anna Liberata de Souza, my native ayah, went with me.

They traveled through Poona, Satara, Kolhapur, Bijapur, Sholapur, back to Poona and Bombay. It was certainly an eye-opener to Mary, new to the Indian countryside filled with rich, poor and varying races.

Mary continues - As there was no other lady in the Camp, and I sometimes had no lady visitors for some days together, I was necessarily much alone. One day, being tired of reading, writing, and sketching, I asked Anna, my constant attendant, whose caste (the Lingaet) belonged to part of the country that we were traversing, if she could not tell me a story? This she declared to be impossible. I said, 'You have children and grandchildren, surely you tell them stories to amuse them sometimes?' She then said she would try and remember one, such as she told her grandchildren, and which had been told her by her own grandmother when she was a child; and she told me the story of 'Punchkin;' which was subsequently followed by the others that are here recorded. Whilst narrating them she usually sat cross-legged on the floor, looking into space, and repeating what she said as by an effort of memory. If any one came into the room whilst she was speaking, or she were otherwise interrupted during the narration, it was apparently impossible for her to gather up the thread of the narration where it had been dropped, and she had to begin afresh at the beginning of her story as at the commencement of some long-forgotten melody. She had not, I believe, heard any of the stories after she was eleven years old, when her grandmother had died. As she told me a story I made notes of what she said, and then wrote it down and read it to her, to be certain that I had correctly given every detail. In this manner all the stories that she could recollect were one by one recorded.

Now how did Anna the narrator learn these stories? These stories were picked up by Anna’s grandmother while living at Calicut in the late 17^th century, a period when the Mysore sultans ravaged the city and laid it to waste. We also know that they spoke in Malayalam at home (the Calicut language, with perhaps a bit of Konkani added). Anna also introduces one to what is known as the ‘Calicut song’, perhaps a ship song based somewhat on the Portuguese song ‘A Nau Catrineta’ written around Cabral’s exploits. I had written about the Calicut song some months ago.

So I think it is time to get to know Anna D’Souza and her life. At one point of time, her family belonged to the Saivite Lingayat (perhaps vania potters (kumbar)) community residing in Calicut. Whether they drifted from Coorg or the Nelliyalam regions where they had prospered in the past, is not clear, but we do know that Tipu in particular was heavy handed with their community, once choosing to single out a Lingayat woman who according to local practice wore no upper garments. As the story goes he saw her selling curds (yogurt) on a street and had his soldiers seize her and cut off her breasts to make it a point that women had to cover themselves, as was prescribed in his religion.

The British were awarded the territory of Malabar in 1792 after Tipu lost the third Anglo Mysore war after which the new rulers settled down to administer Malabar, from Tellicherry. This was perhaps the period when Anna’s grandfather joined the British army and rose up to the position of Havildar. Sometime later he moved to Goa, converted himself and his family to Christianity and settled down there. It is certainly curious that he took a Portuguese family name, when he could have become a British Protestant Christian instead. I wondered if Anna’s grandmother, Anna Liberata was perhaps a Goan girl herself and if a conversion was needed to marry her, but that would not have been the case since their children grew up in Calicut and spoke Malayalam, not Konkani.

His father who had continued on in Calicut, was miffed and threw them out of the house, so they settled in Goa, but continued to speak Malayalam at home while learning new tongues such as English, Marathi and Konkani. We can surmise that all this occurred in the early 1812-1815 period as the British moved into Goa, and this is corroborated by Anna. Anna’s grandmother, a stately, tall, strong, fine and handsome woman, the original teller of all these tales, was named Anna Liberata after her conversion and they adopted the family name D’souza. The grandfather and Anna’s father continued to soldier on for the British with the latter becoming a tent lascar (tent-pitcher). We note from Anna’s tale that her father and grandfather fought Tipu and considering the mention of Wellesley can also assume that they fought against the Pazhassi Raja, and were with the army during the same time as TH Baber in Tellichery.

Around 1817, we see that Anna’s father was in charge of the Khadki stores near Pune when the third Anglo Maratha war was raging at Khadki. Anna the narrator was born approximately around 1819-1823 in Calicut. After things had settled down, Anna and her eight siblings (seven brothers and a sister) moved to Pune and grew up in the cantonment, in care of their grandmother. Her mother did menial work and even ground rice for shopkeepers now and then, when she could for the extra income. When she did not, she took care of the children and to get them off the streets, told them many folk tales, sometimes over and over again, burning them into Anna’s memory. Meanwhile Anna brushed up her knowledge of English and became an Ayah, working as a trusted servant for many British officers. When she was 11, her grandmother died and a year later she was married off, aged 12. Eight years and two children later, Anna was widowed, and lost her son, whom she had taken pains to send to school. Her daughter Rosie however grew up to get married and bear more children. The stories that Anna heard from her grandmother were retold to her own grandchildren. This was her story until she met Mary Frere and the ‘Deccan Days’ project started.

Anna Liberata De'Souza

How old was Anna then? That is a tricky question since Mary says that Anna was an old woman, now would that mean late 40’s? The portrait itself shows a lower middle aged woman, perhaps closing in around the mid 40’s, so Anna’s date of birth hazarded by Leela Prasad, at 1819, seems plausible.

Mary adds that Anna Liberata de Souza's detailed her own story in the sum of many conversations she had with her, during the eighteen months that she was with them. She adds that the legends themselves were altered as little as possible. To get a feel of Anna’s narration, read this

My grandfather's family were of the Lingaet caste, and lived in Calicut; but they went and settled near Goa at the time the English were there. It was there my grandfather became a Christian. He and his wife, and all the family, became Christians at once, and when his father heard it he was very angry, and turned them all out of the house. There were very few Christians in those days. Now you see Christians everywhere, but then we were very proud to see one anywhere. My grandfather was Havildar in the English army; and when the English fought against Tippo Sahib my grandmother followed him all through the war. She was a very tall, fine, handsome woman, and very strong; wherever the regiment marched she went, on, on, on, on, on ('great deal hard work that old woman done'). Plenty stories my granny used to tell about Tippo and how Tippo was killed, and about Wellesley Sahib, and Monro Sahib, and Malcolm Sahib, and Elphinstone Sahib. Plenty things had that old woman heard and seen.

Ah, he was a good man, Elphinstone Sahib! My granny used often to tell us how he would go down and say to the soldiers, 'Baba, Baba, fight well. Win the battles, and each man shall have his cap full of money; and after the war is over I'll send every one of you to his own home.' (And he did do it.) Then we children 'plenty proud' when we heard what Elphinstone Sahib had said. In those days the soldiers were not low-caste people like they are now. Many very high caste men, and come from very far, from Goa, and Calicut, and Malabar, to join the English.

My father was a tent lascar, and when the war was over my grandfather had won five medals for all the good he had done, and my father had three; and my father was given charge of the Kirkee stores. My grandmother and mother, and all the family, were in those woods behind Poona at time of the battle at Kirkee. I’ve often heard my father say how full the river was after the battle--baggage and bundles floating down, and men trying to swim across--and horses and all such a bustle. Many people got good things on that day. My father got a large chattee, and two good ponies that were in the river, and he took them home to camp; but when he got there the guard took them away. So all his trouble did him no good.

We were poor people, but living was cheap, and we had 'plenty comfort.'

Mary concludes - These few legends, told by one old woman to her grandchildren, can only be considered as representatives of a class. "That world," to use her own words, " is gone ;" and those who can tell us about it in this critical and unimaginative age,, are fast disappearing too, before the onward march of civilization; yet there must be in the country many a rich gold mine unexplored. Will no one go to the diggings?Mary acknowledges that she records it for her ‘Little sister’- Catherine Francis Frere, for whom the tales were written down and then ‘to all those in India who love England and to all those in England who love India’.

After adding an introduction and a recommendation with notes by her father as well as illustrations

Government House - Poona

by her sister Catherine, Mary Frere published twenty-four of these tales in March 1868, under the title of 'Old Deccan Days.' The work was very successful, and was reprinted four times (fifth impression 1898). She had sent out advance copies to many other luminaries such as Kingsley, Tennyson, Longfellow and Grant, and not to forget, the Queen monarch. Max Muller commented that Miss Frere's tales had been preserved by oral tradition so accurately that some of them were nearly word for word translations of the Sanskrit in which they were originally told. More editions followed providing Mary decent profits from the effort.

Another reviewer stated (The Eclectic Magazine, Volume 9) - Many an English child has passed its early years in parts of India without hearing from native servants any one of the pictures as legends here gathered from the lips of Anna Liberata de Souza. If this woman still lives, it may convey to her a true pleasure, in the evening of a life which has had sore troubles, to know that she has made thousands of English children happy, and that here, if not in her own land, her name will be remembered with feelings of lively gratitude.

Anna’s words are prophetic - I don’t know what good all this reading and writing does. My grandfather couldn’t write, and my father couldn’t write, they did very well; but all that’s changed now. I know your language—what use? To blow the fire? I only a miserable woman, fit to go to cook-room and cook the dinner?

Other memsahebs had offered to take her to Britain, but she had no interest. She said - One lady with whom I stayed wished to take me to England with her when she went home (at that time the children neither little or big), and she offered to give me Rs. 5000 and warm clothes if I would go with her; but I wouldn't go. I a silly girl then, and afraid of going from the children and on the sea; I think--' May be I shall make plenty money, but what good if all the little fishes eat my bones? I shall not rest with my old Father and Mother if I go '--so I told her I could not do it. I would come to England with you, for I know you would be good to me and bury me when I die, but I cannot go so far from Rosie.

Khirkee battle

My one eye put out, my other eye left. I could not lose it too. If it were not for Rosie and her children I should like to travel about and see the world. There are four places I have always wished to see--Calcutta, Madras, England, and Jerusalem (my poor mother always wished to see Jerusalem too--that her great hope), but I shall not see them now. Many ladies wanted to take me to England with them, and if I had gone I should have saved plenty money, but now it is too late to think of that. Besides, it would not be much use. What's the good of my saving money? Can I take it away with me when I die? My father and grandfather did not do so, and they had enough to live on till they died. I have enough for what I want, and I've plenty poor relations. They all come to me asking for money, and I give it them. I thank our Savior there are enough good Christians here to give me a slice of bread and cup of water when I can't work for it. I do not fear to come to want.

Anna Liberata de Souza died at Government House, Gunish Khind (Ganeshkhind), near Poona, after a short illness, on 14th August 1887, 19 years after her tales were published. Her poignant remark about the decline in story telling with the advent of literacy, is something many of us will agree with. Mary mentioned this in her notes and that there was a performance aspect in the art of Anna’s storytelling – ‘half the charm, however, consisted in the narrator’s eager, flexible, voice and graphic gestures.’ Ironically, Anna as you can see never travelled to places she wanted to, but her stories spread far and wide, leaving behind a lasting legacy.

A few words on Bartle Frere would not be out of place. Frere was educated in the EIC College and

appointed a writer in the Bombay civil service in 1834. He became the collector of Poona in 1835 and then the PA to the governor of Bombay in 1842. Then he was the resident at Satara, after which he became the commissioner of Sindh in 1850. By 1862, he moved back to Bombay as its Governor. He was back in Britain in 1867. In 1877 he became the High commissioner of South Africa. His later years did not prove to be good in anyway with his behavior during the Zulu wars and in 1880 he was recalled and censured. On his death Mary Frere wrote a glowing obituary, which makes interesting reading. They used to have a Frere road in Karachi. Leela Prasad adds - Frere supported the inclusion of natives into governance, encouraged the vernacular, and developed a native infrastructure, all without compromising his commitment to British imperialism. He assumed the governorship of Bombay in 1862, and once again distinguished himself through his public works that modernized the city of Bombay. He encouraged the cotton trade to compensate for the scarcity of cotton for the mills of Manchester during the American Civil War years. Bartle Frere retired as governor of Bombay, and returned to England in March 1867. The manuscript of Old Deccan Days traveled back with him and his daughter.

Accompanying her father to South Africa when he was appointed high commissioner (March 1877), Mary Frere continued to mix with the local populace, like she did at India. She was after her eventual return to London, also invited by Queen Victoria for an audience. Later on, Mary travelled extensively and spent time in Egypt, and finally spending time at Jerusalem between 1906 to August 1908. She paased away three years later in 1911.

As we saw, Mary Frere profited handsomely from her efforts, aided by the influence her father had, she kept in touch with Anna, but whether she shared the monetary profits with Anna or her progeny is doubtful. I tried to find out what happened to Rosie, but as they say the trail had gone cold years ago. Perhaps there is somebody in Khadki or Poona who vaguely remembers their great grandmother, who knows?

References

Old Deccan Days or Hindoo Fairy Legends by Mary Frere, Edited and with an introduction by Kirin Narayan

The authorial other in folktale collections in colonial India Tracing Narration and its Dis/Continuities - Leela Prasad

Deccan days – Online reading

Anna’s narrative from Deccan days

Notes

Khadki (referred to previously as Kirkee during the British Raj) was the site of the Battle of Khadki, fought between the British East India Company and the Marathas in 1817 in which Baji Rao II, the Peshwa ruler was defeated. Soon after the war, the British set up a cantonment here. It then became the base of the Royal Regiment of Artillery's 79 (Khadki) Commando Battery. Gunish Khind is Ganeshkhind, not far from Khadki.

CIA’s Operation HAT in the Himalayas

I love cloak and dagger stories, and since the days of Ian Fleming’s 007’s books, I have devoured many a tale on espionage with the same eagerness I started with. I first came across this story while reading the Mallory camera incident some years ago. Naturally this was a great story to peruse and one that I simply had to retell. These days we have less of human involvement in espionage but the stories are no less mysterious and keep the nerves tingling.

This story involves the Americans, Chinese and Indians. Pakistan too figures on the periphery. The backdrop is the cold war era of the late 50’s-early 60’s tinted with the fear of a communist surge from behind the iron curtain. The need of the hour was actionable intelligence from behind the curtains, especially those related to USSR and China’d development of nuclear bombs and missiles. With that intention, the first high altitude (>70,000’) U2 spy plane forays to photograph activity and sites, was started. The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", was an American single-jet engine, ultra-high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, usually operated by the CIA.

While these ‘peeping’ flights were flying out of Incrilik in Turkey and Peshawar, a listening station was in place at Badaber in Peshawar, also known locally as ‘little USA’. For purposes of deniability, Eisenhower decided to use the services of British pilots initially, the Brits being forced to agree after the Egyptian invasion fiasco (Suez Canal crisis). After initial flights, CIA pilots, most famously Gary Powers, were flying them to cover soviet defense installations. On 1^st May, however, during his next flight code named ‘Grand sham’ in order to photograph ICBM and plutonium production sites (information which was needed before the important Paris summit planned a few days later), luck simply ran out for Gary Powers, for the Soviets were waiting.

It was not ordinarily possible to intercept these super high altitude flights (pilots themselves flew with special preparations such as inhaling 100% oxygen for an hour to remove nitrogen from their systems, before the takeoff) with fighters but it was brought down by an S-75 Dvina SAM. Powers did not kill himself or destroy onboard cameras as he was supposed to, but ejected, was captured alive and the secret was out of the bag.

Not knowing about the capture, the Americans bluffed stating that the U2 was a NASA weather mission, but Khrushchev using the golden opportunity, produced details of the capture and trapped Eisenhower on the lie, forcing the latter to even contemplate a resignation. The Paris summit did not go well and the CIA’s Dulles was left incensed as his covert actions had been uncovered. The Pakistani’s fearing exposure, backtracked and stated that they had no idea of such clandestine operations being done in their backyard, when threatened by Khrushchev of retaliation.

Nevertheless the Badaber facility which had some ears over the bordering Lop Nor nuclear facility of China, coupled with the U2 flights, continued to provide limited information about Chinese nuclear activity which was ramping up, to the CIA. The 1963 limited nuclear test ban treaty was not signed by China and after an ideological fall out with the Soviets in 1959 the Chinese were forging ahead on their own. During the summer of 1964, the discovery of a test site on the Xinjian desert through intelligence from a blurry satellite photograph led to speculation that China would soon stage a nuclear test. In 1964, Khrushchev was ousted and the Chinese completed their Nuke test (596 or Chic-1).What troubled the West was how the Chinese got the U235, not realizing then that the Chinese had obtained it from the Lanzhou Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which the CIA knew about from U2 surveillance but whose efficiency they had underestimated.

The years 1960-65 were the years when the high mountains and areas bordering China, Pakistan and India saw much action. Pakistan’s Ayub Khan continued to argue with the Americans who he felt were cozying to the Indians and it was also not a happy time for India which had a miserable setback during the border skirmishes with China in 1962. Krishna Menon had lost his post and Nehru was in deep depression, but the Kennedy administration had tilted in offering support to India as well as subsequent information on Chinese troop movements using U2 flights from Taiwan and Thai bases.

Another problem was that the Chinese had managed to bring down a couple of U2’s with SAM’s and other U2’s had been lost in training (4 Taiwanese flown U2’s had been downed by the Chinese and Chinese Radio had offered $280,000 in gold to any defecting U-2 pilot with a U-2). One pilot was captured and U2 flights over China were suspended in 1962. It was time to find a new base closer to China, and of course it was ideally in India. Galbraith the American Ambassador discussed plans with Nehru and eventually Nehru consented, allowing U2’s taking off from Thailand to be refueled over Indian airspace. U2 pictures showing Chinese positions had been provided by the Americans to Nehru after the 1962 ceasefire and Nehru had understood their value, but his sense of non-alignment was still difficult to break.

The Thai U-2 flights did not quite pan out, and the Taiwan U-2’s were getting hit, so Galbraith requested a base in India, formally in the spring of 1963. President John F Kennedy reiterated it in his meeting with President Radhakrishnan.

Finally India yielded, handing over an abandoned World War II base in Charbatia at Orissa, which was in a bad shape, to the Americans. The first U2 flight from Charbatia took off in May 1964, but it was not meant to be, for while landing, the flight had difficulties (perhaps there were no Ford mustang car to guide it in! – see notes) and got stuck in mud. Getting it unstuck quickly without the press and the leftists knowing, was a harrowing experience for the Americans and after a few sorties decided to go back to Thailand. Anyway Nehru died three days later, and further operations were postponed.

The CIA record states “The pilots and aircraft left Charbatia, but others remained in place to save staging costs. In December 1964, when Sino-Indian tensions increased along the border, Detachment G returned to Charbatia and conducted three highly successful missions, satisfying all requirements for the Sino-Indian border region. By this time, however, Takhli had become the main base for Detachment G's Asian operations, and Charbatia served merely as a forward staging base. Charbatia was closed out in July 1967.

Then came 1965 and the 17 day Indian border war with Pakistan, following the botched ‘Operation Gibraltar’ by Pak forces. China hinted at nuclear retaliation to support Pakistan, but harsh warnings from the Americans and Russians resulted in their earning a rebuke even from Pakistan. As years passed by and Pakistan warmed up to the Chinese, India cemented military ties with Russia and intelligence ties with the CIA.

Seeing that a lot of equipment and aid provided to Pakistan was used for the war effort against India, the Americans placed sanctions on (both countries, but the effect was more on) Pakistan. The furious Pakistanis retaliated by refusing the extension of the expiring 10 year lease and this resulted in the shutting down of the Badaber base and the immensely successful Earthling radar system. The CIA then established the Checkrote system in Taiwan.

The closure of Badaber was a problem for the CIA which now lost its ears towards East

Asia. Meanwhile the Chinese were getting busy, they were developing intermediate and long range missiles and were getting ready to test those at Xinjiang. At the same time, U2’s were being lost. This was when the CIA decided to launch an eavesdropping operation with Indian support to monitor its missile launches (and tap their telemetry transmissions while in flight) from a land based station, high up in the mountains overlooking China. And so, Operation Hat was charted out. The mission plan was for mountaineers to scale the tall Kanchenjunga Mountain and install a signal receiver and re-transmitter, powered by a nuclear electrical generator, at the summit. While there were some ferret satellites up in space already, their passes over China were too few to pick up a launch. What happened next is detailed in the books referenced as well as the numerous news and magazine reports, but I will cover it rapidly, for completeness.

The CIA and the USAF decided to place a telemetry sensor atop the Himalayan Mountains to pry into the Xinjiang region. In India, the CIA had finally established a receptive audience with the Nehru administration and its Intelligence organization headed by BN Mullick, as Menon was gone. Various plans in supporting covert activities in Tibet were being put into place and the ARC with ex RAF pilot Biju Patnaik’s support was doing well. RN Kao was the new director for ARC Aviation research center. Ramji - RN Kao who had been head of Nehru’s personal security team was now responsible for collecting technical intelligence through the ARC.

Kao was contacted by the CIA and he passed on the probe to Mullick. Even though he was not the IB director, (Nehru had passed away by then) he still had control over China affairs. The CIA had in the meantime chosen Indian controlled Kanchenjunga (28,146’) as a likely candidate to place the transmitter. The team to do it would be a joint Indo US one and a search for India’s best climbers culminated with MS Kohli (he worked for the Indian Navy, and had been deputed to the ITBP due to his mountaineering skills) who had just scaled Mt Everest. Before he could even celebrate and recuperate, he was contacted by Kao and asked to get ready to go to USA for training so as to be part of the team intended for the operation. Just 26 days after Kohli’s climb, he and his team were on the way to Washington. Soon they were practicing on America’s tallest mountain, the Mt Mc Kinley (now known as Denali) in Alaska with a mockup of the 125 pound transmitter. Kohli concluded right away that this was not a feasible idea, it was simply not possible to climb Kanchenjunga with that amount of gear. Kohli kept quiet and the Indians returned home after the training.

After he was back, Kohli explained to Kao why the climb was virtually impossible. In addition to the physical part, the people of Sikkim would not allow their holy mountain to be defiled. The IB - CIA brass met and a final compromise choice was the Nandadevi (25,645’). Note now that the climb was being discussed and finalized as the Indo Pak war was raging. Was it going to work? Would the mountain gods cooperate? The device the CIA wanted high up on the mountain was a permanent electronic intelligence (ELINT) device powered by a nuclear SNAP 19C power pack fuel cell (a plutonium powered battery).

To cut a long and thrilling story short, the first attempt to place this device on the Nanda Devi in Oct 65, by the Indo US team failed, as the team had to retreat in the face of very bad blizzard conditions and an avalanche. Nevertheless they left the device in a small unmarked mountain cave titled camp four, after having hauled the device painstakingly just short of the peak.

Nanda Devi

In the meantime scientists met in America and after another round of calculations, decided that they could actually place the transmitter on a lower altitude, and so, the mountaineers were free to find another appropriate location to eavesdrop. But they had to retrieve the device already up in Nanda Devi and so another Kohli expedition returned the following year in May 1966 to recover the device, only to find most of it missing, save bits and pieces of the original equipment. Even though people did not realize it then, the loss was critical, especially the plutonium fuel cell which presented grave problems. Would the hot radioactive device melt its way through the glacier and end up in the rivers flowing down? Mallick and Kao were in a panic, and their necks were on the line.

Lal Bahadur Shastri had passed away earlier that year, and another emergency climb was carried out for a more detailed search, which yielded no results. A furious Mullick could not accept defeat and he browbeat Kohli’s team members to check again, this time telling them about the radioactive risks.

This climb, a farce resulted in the death of a replacement doctor. With no conclusive results, this team abjectly climbed down. Kohli who was incensed, fired off a detailed report to Mullick. Meanwhile the Americans were also flustered with the going on and dispatched a couple of modified Husky helicopters to aid the search and to pick up soil samples for radio activity testing. But the fuel cell canister remained elusive.

In Oct 66, the Chinese tested their second nuclear device in Xinjiang. This was even more alarming for it was the warhead of a missile, the DongFeng 2. And then they tested their third device, on a platform. The urgency to gather detailed information on all these was never greater.

Another mission was launched in May 1967 with Kohli in the lead to place a similar device on the

Nanda Kot

Nanda Kot, while at the same time a few in the CIA opined that the plutonium cell was perhaps spirited away by Kohli’s ‘all Indian team’ of May 1966, for India’s nuclear programs. The Nanda Kot mission went well, for a change, and the transmitter was commissioned and ‘Guru Rimpoche’ went live.

In August yet another team headed by Kohli was sent up to check for the missing equipment at Nanda Devi, but bad weather put a premature stop to the effort, while at the same time, they received the bad news that the Nanda Kot transmitter had stopped working. So Kohli and his team made yet another bone chilling and back breaking climb only to see that snow had accumulated on the antenna. Their orders were to clear it, and as soon as it was done, the antenna was back transmitting data.

Part of the team continued looking for signs of radioactivity from the battery in the base camps of the Nanda Devi, with no conclusive success. The CIA and the IB were now in wait for important information on the next Chinese plans, which were testing an ICBM with a 6,000 mile range. Xinjiang was buzzing with activity and a test was imminent.

In the meantime, snow accumulated on the Nanda Kot transmitter and it went silent again. The irritated CIA bosses wanted a more permanent solution, and perhaps many more transmitters peering down from other vantage points in the Himalayas. Kohli and team climbed again, and got the device and its battery cell, back for the Americans. The CIA decided that they would do away with nuclear powered cells and came up with a new solution, a gas powered generator. It was also decided once and for all that the Nanda Devi device was ‘lost’.

M S Kohli

In December the team headed by Bhangu, who had accompanied Kohli on earlier trips, was directed to place the gas powered transmitter on the frigid slopes of Leh to test the system. It worked. In March 67, a new team went up Leh to place a solar powered transmitter in place of the gas powered one. That too worked without a glitch. To pick up signals on a missile launch along an Easterly corridor a second transmitter needed to be in place, and for this they chose a place called Pakila, East of Bomdila in Arunachal.

The Chinese fired the Dong Feng rocket in 1970 and extended DF 5 in 1971. The Leh transmitters picked up some data, but they were not particularly useful. In 1973, the Chinese fired an improved DF5 and this time around, the sensors picked all the data the intelligence agencies required. All the effort from the past three years had finally come of some use.

But it was too little, perhaps, too late, for Rhyolite satellites had taken over from the skies and would from then on, rule the roost.

Starting with Corona spy satellite (Discoverer program) mounted with cameras (Alistair MacLean’s thriller ‘Ice station Zebra’, is about recovering one of these satellites!), the race to collect intelligence from the skies galloped along at a furious pace. The missile trackers were the Rhyolites and these TRW satellites of the 70’s were an effective means providing a wealth of information, replacing fixed sensor mountain installations.

Today the space is littered with thousands of even more advanced spy satellites belonging to many nations interested in such matters. They work in tandem with all kinds of other electronic systems, so much so that people wonder if 007’s and honey traps exist anymore. Old timers in the community I guess, maintain that there is still nothing better than actionable human intelligence.

The much decorated and accomplished Manmohan Singh Kohli left the forces to work with AirIndia, first in Bombay, then in Sydney. In 1978, the news of the missions leaked out as an Outside magazine article and by 1974, India had already detonated its nuclear device. In Jan 1977, Indira Gandhi lost the elections and with Morarji in power, the press were back in full swing, accusing of CIA meddling in Indian affairs. A top level committee was set up including MGK Menon and Raja Ramanna. Kohli was summoned to Delhi by the Prime Minister to provide a debriefing and a written report. The committee concluded that that the risk of contamination was very low and the story died a quiet death, ending with the Nandadevi biosphere being closed to all visitors.

A report from 2001 mentioned the successful trip of a 40 member Gharwal rifles team to Nandadevi and their recovery of eighty gunny bags of environmentally hazardous garbage. A congratulatory message from the Indian president followed, with his appreciation of the team’s attempts at preservation of the environment. Hmm? Food for thought, I suppose..

References

Spies in the Himalayas – MS Kohli and Kenneth Conboy

An eye at the top of the world - Pete Takeda

The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology - Jeffrey T Richelson

Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland - S. Frederick Starr

India: Foreign Policy & Government Guide, Volume 1 - International Business Publications

China’s Greatest Statesman: Zhou Enlai’s Revolution and the One He Left Behind in his Birthplace of Huai’an - Roy K. McCall

India's world: essays on foreign policy and security issues – Mohan Guruswamy

Photos - Google maps, Wikipedia

Notes

The U2 was notoriously difficult to fly at lower altitudes and difficult to land. Because of the U-2's tendency to drift while landing, the US Air Force used high-speed chase cars like Ford Mustangs and Pontiac GTOs speeding down the tarmac and looking at the planes tilt and under-carriage, to guide the U-2 pilot down.
Data collection is the primary purpose of the U.S. Rhyolite series of satellites (also termed Aquacade) orbiting at 22,000 miles above. The telemetry stream from a launch is intended to show the missile's designers exactly how the new machine is performing and, if it fails, what components caused the failure. This information once decoded, also reveals the detailed mechanics of the missile such as fuel consumption, acceleration, guidance, and the like.
There is more to what meets the eye and one part which is not covered in books or other published accounts came up in comments (In his book Kohli mentions hearing about Pakistani paratroopers in Roorkee before they set out, but not this! There is also a mention of sighting of an armed spy with Mongolian features at the ND sanctuary, but that was not taken seriously) by Kohli in a recent interview to the Hindu– He said “Pakistanis parachuted down on Nanda Devi to check on us and some of them were caught too…. India and Pakistan were war-drawn then…India was planning to occupy Lahore on September 7 that year. The whole thing was foiled after the Pakistani Army got a whiff of it.” Well, well!

The 86 year old Captain Kohli, perhaps India’s greatest mountaineer, stated: “I am an ordinary person. My life story simply proves that every human being can scale the highest peaks of achievement in his or her chosen field. No one is born great. Only challenges make one so. I am a product of supreme challenges”. He is known fondly as the grand old man of the mountains. These days, he writes books and runs his unique hotel named The Legend Inn at Delhi. Ironically, it was Pakistani president Ayub Khan’s family which saved Kohli’s family during the harrowing days of the partition.

WISHING ALL READERS A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR

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