Tragic Magic

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Later when describing to Ron the fun at the pool and suggesting that perhaps we also could join the party, I was reminded that this was a bachelors' party to which none of the married couples was invited.

In the evening we crossed the river again to Albion to visit my cousin Mae and her husband, Jim Dakers, who was a salesman with Andrew Yule & Company. Both Mae and I, having no sisters, had always been close from the time when I arrived in Scotland from Russia as a young girl. It was a strange and happy coincidence that I should have landed in a compound directly opposite her own. We were overjoyed to meet each other after an absence of almost two years when she was on leave in Scotland and when, prior to her return to India, she had had to leave behind her little daughter, Patricia, to be educated in Scotland.

Mae was suffering from insomnia. Although she kept assuring me that she was well and happy I realized that deep down she was missing her daughter and suffering the same grief and anxiety that is the lot of all the mothers who have to part with their child when it reaches school age and has to leave India to receive an education in Britain. Mae was eager to hear the latest detailed news from Scotland. Monday was a working day. It wasn't usual for people to stay up late. At five o'clock in the morning, the bearer knocked on our bedroom door. Soon after, Ron left for the office. There he continued working with breaks for meals and a lie-back. At seven in the evening the working day was over. All the sahibs were to be seen, tired, hot and often drenched in sweat, wending their way back to their respective homes.

Dennis was a kerani. The kerani is the man in charge of the mill office and all the clerical staff. He was responsible for the safe, all the large sums of money delivered every week for the wages of the workers and the salaries of the European and Indian staff. The keranis of all the mills, up and down the river, were young men recruited from Dundee and its district. Most of them had a grammar school background and had served their apprenticeship in the offices of jute mills and brokers. They also had attended the Dundee Technical College and were, in short, qualified to embark for India. Usually after a certain time working as keranis in the mill offices they were promoted as salesmen in the various head offices, situated mostly in that promised land of Clive Street, Calcutta. The other men, the overseers, in different departments in the mill had held similar positions in the mill in Angus and also attended the Technical College. In addition there were engineers with sea-going experience, prior to taking up a post in India.

In Lawrence there were in all some twelve Europeans, including the manager and the salesman who travelled every day to the head office in Calcutta. Some five thou sand workers were employed inside and outside the mill. Each mill had a dispensary with a qualified Indian doctor in charge.

Indians usually referred to the European staff, not by their surnames, such as Smith sahib, but according to their position in the mill. To the married woman was added the title of memsahib. I, for instance, was referred to as the kerani memsahib. The manager was the burra sahib; his wife, the burra memsahib. The mechanic was the mistri sahib; his wife, the mistri memsahib; and so on. Talking among ourselves we naturally referred to each other by our own names, but when talking to the Indians, such as the bearers and other servants, we used their style of naming us. 'Take this note to the mistri memsahib, I would say to the bearer. He would know exactly whom I meant.

During my first week in India, Alice and Lily called. They were accompanied by a third lady - Jean Hebenton, a small woman whose sweet face reflected a warm and generous personality. In time, as I got to know her well, we became good friends. They gave me some good advice regarding all the matters with which I had to cope - such as the food the cook brought daily from Calcutta. 'You must handle well the meat and mutton before cooking, they told me. In this way you will have it all to your self. The Muhammadan servants consider us, European women, unclean. They will not cook it for themselves after you have handled it."

I did not follow that particular advice. There was a lot that was strange and puzzling, but gradually I began to understand the way of life in a compound. My difficulty with the language was, at first, a problem. From Dennis, who spoke fluently in Urdu, having passed the lower and higher exams, I picked up a few phrases, which I fondly imagined were understood by the servants. Occasionally a look of amazed horror would cross my husband's face on hearing my 'jungli' conversation with the servants, where for some reason the word 'chota' (little) figured prominently in spite of having no connection whatsoever with what I was trying to convey.

Hindustani, perhaps, is not such a difficult language. An effort on my part might have produced some fluency, but arising from indolence combined with the feeling that sooner or later it would not be required when we retired, I never learned anything more than what could be described as 'Kitchen Hindustani', similar to the way many of my lady friends spoke.

We had three servants. Two we employed ourselves; the third, a sweeper, was supplied by the company. The days when people employed numerous servants - even as late as during the time of the First World War - were over.

Our bearer Sofi Khan - the head servant - and I got along together quite well, once there was an acceptance on my part that Sofi Khan's priority at all times was his sahib. It had always been so and if now there was an interloper in the shape of a memsahib he saw no reason to change his ways. He was a good man, faithful and honest. We trusted him completely as we did the man who followed him some years later.

It was the custom of many memsahibs to carry the keys of their store cupboard and presses in their pockets or tied to handkerchiefs. I once tried to emulate them for a matter of a few weeks, but invariably the keys got lost. During a frantic search that followed, the bearer would quietly produce the keys saying, 'Memsahib, the keys were in the pocket of your other dress.' I never carried any keys again.

I have to admit that Sofi Khan was a bit indolent, as were most of the house servants, when compared with the workers inside the mills. His duties consisted of making the beds, setting and serving at the table, helping the cook dry the dishes, doing a little light dusting - never above his head or below his knees (that was the sweeper's task), taking meticulous care of all his sahib's clothing, keeping in perfect order inside the wardrobe shelves of socks, shirts, underwear and, most important of all, providing the tired sahib at the end of a day's work with a chota peg of whisky and soda.

I could never remember the name of my first cook in Lawrence. He was quite a good cook but it was always dif ficult to keep a cook for any lengthy period on account of there being no roads to the mill on our side of the river.