BOOK NOTES

BOOK NOTES

These are heady days for Anglo-Indian writers, or people writing about our community. A first novel, Vegemite Vindaloo, by Australia-based David McMahon, has ascended the best-seller lists. David was also one of the judges for the Anglo-Indian anthology, The Way We Were, recently published by Blair Williams for CTR Inc. Publishing. Both are reviewed here. An Indian writer, Rohit Handa, has centred his novel, A Twisted Cue, on a complex character: an Anglo-Indian soldier with the splendid name of Lieutenant-Colonel Quintin Reginald ‘Mulkally’ Oxley-Protheroe. And the Wallah takes another look at an old favourite, Under The Old School Topee, that is in its seventh and probably final printing.

Vegemite Vindaloo. Penguin Books India, 2006

Author: David McMahon

David McMahon was born in Calcutta, an “amazing city” he loves deeply. He went to high school at St. Joseph’s College, North Point, Darjeeling, and then on to university at St Xavier's College, Calcutta. He has lived in Australia for 19 years. He is a Melbourne-based journalist and internationally published photographer. His debut novel was published in April 2006 by Penguin Books India and has been on four bestseller lists.

Here’s how it places in a list from The Statesman, Calcutta, published in November:

FICTION
1. The Inheritance Of Loss: A Novel – Kiran Desai, Rs. 395.00
2. The Innocent Man – John Grisham, Rs. 268.00
3. Vegemite Vindaloo – David McMahon, Rs. 295.00
4. The Afghan – Frederick Forsyth, Rs. 268.00
5. Cat O'Nine Tales – Jeffrey Archer, Rs. 276.00

Great company – just behind Booker Prize winner Desai and perennial best-selling author Grisham, but ahead of two other big guns, Forsyth and Archer. The Wallah salutes David and is happy to print this review of his novel:

The Wizard of Oz

by Terry Fletcher

I parted company with a friend a couple of weeks ago. Actually, several friends. Harry and Kelvin whom I met only briefly, Frank and Wally, a knock-about double act that also didn’t tarry long, and there were Steve and Hilary and their sons, Clive and Azam, with whom I developed a long-lasting relationship. The sense of loss was almost tangible.

The reason we went our separate ways was that I finally, reluctantly, closed the back cover of the book Vegemite Vindaloo by David McMahon. But not before I returned to page one to speed-read the first chapter. I just had to make sure I had correctly assimilated precisely how and where and with whom I had taken this memorable journey.

The journey starts in Australia, quickly switches to India and Calcutta (Kolkata), and eventually returns to Australia. Wrapped up within this marathon trek are several other minor journeys that strive to bring the characters together, and succeed admirably. Nothing appears contrived; everything seems to progress naturally from one locale to the next.

To complement the main characters the author has surrounded them with a host of bit-players. Some are honourable and praiseworthy, almost heroic. Others are pretentious, patronizing, snobbish and condescending. And still others are unprincipled, dishonest, unscrupulous and deceitful. They are all believable, because we have all met similar characters at one time or another. You can be forgiven for thinking that you are accompanying real individuals as you progress through the book.

If you are an ex-Calcuttan you will revel in the description of the various locations. If, like me, you were only a transient visitor to that magnificent city, the description of New Market, for instance, will awaken long dormant memories. Only twice since leaving India have I come across flower sellers into whose shop I have walked, drawn by the aroma, only to crush discarded flower stalks on a wet floor. These days a zealous Health & Safety inspector would never allow it, more’s the pity. There are other passages that describe the chaos of the traffic caused by flooding rains that only a Calcutta-wallah can empathize with, but which are described with such clarity that the reader almost wants to step off the bus and paddle across to the urchins playing in the water at the side of the road.

You don’t have to have been an immigrant to enjoy this book, but it helps. The hilarious coming-to-terms with a new domicile and a new culture can only really be appreciated by someone who has made the perilous transition. The author vehemently denies that any part of this book is autobiographical, but you really need to have lived the life, both in India and in the new country of your choice, to be able to describe the events with such clarity. Equally, one can only sketch the more disagreeable characters with such accuracy if one has met someone like them in real life, and found them to be callous, conceited and contemptuous. It doesn’t matter what names the author gives these characters, you are certain to substitute the names of people you’ve known and disliked.

The roller-coaster ride reaches a self-induced crescendo when the reader realizes that there are only five or six pages left before the story will end. One wonders whether the author is competent enough to tie up the loose ends, or whether one is going to be disappointed as the story fizzles out. Rest assured, this man will hold your interest to the last word on the last page. And that is when, as I have mentioned before, you realize that you need to go back to the beginning so that you can enter your own comfort zone, reassuring yourself that you really did not misread the start of the story.

There is an old vaudeville saying that goes, “. . .leave ’em wanting more”, and I am waiting for more. Enough groundwork has already been laid to augur well for a sequel featuring the characters Frank and Wally, and that wonderfully sketched – but fictitious – outpost of Jindaroo Creek. Even the main characters from Vegemite Vindaloo could be woven into another enthralling and amusing tale.

So how about it, Mr. McMahon?

** Eugene Terence Fletcher (Terry) is an ex-RAF man who, after 36 years of continuous service to Queen & Country (UK), has retired gratefully to the much kinder climate of Portugal. Born in Bangalore, schooling was disjointed because he accompanied his railway parents to wherever they were posted, mostly in Madhya Pradesh. He completed his final four years at Baldwin Boys High School, Bangalore, excelling at sporting activities but underachieving in the classroom. In later life, he’s excelled in an unexpected way: he discovered an aptitude for computers. He is the owner of Anglo-Indian Portal - http://www.maltap.com/anglo/index.php - a site devoted to “All Things Anglo-Indian”. Terry says his “only unresolved ambition is to be able to convince all webmasters of Anglo-Indian sites that they should include reciprocal links rather than view each other as direct competition”. The Wallah applauds this sentiment and welcomes Terry as an inspiring Anglo-Indian.

Terry has also indicated where to buy the book:

Shop around . . . the prices vary considerably. I have done the hard work for you and put the ‘least expensive’ option as the first entry. If you do better, let me know.

Editor’s Note: Some Wallah readers may wonder about the title. Most if not all Anglo-Indians and many others would, of course, know what vindaloo is. Australians might be surprised to learn that outside their country their national spread – made from yeast products – is virtually unknown. It’s equivalent to Britain’s Marmite, which is also available in India and North America. Both products are an acquired taste but have their staunch fans, even addicts. David McMahon, interviewed by Anuradha Varma, had this to say about his choice of title: “I thought it was an apt way to link two very different, very rich cultures. Vegemite is a quintessential symbol of Australia, while everyone knows that vindaloo is an integral part of great Indian cuisine. Okay, here's a secret: Vegemite and vindaloo are two of my favourites as well.”

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The Way We Were: Anglo-Indian Chronicles. CTR Inc. Publishing, NJ, USA

Editors: Margaret Deefholts & Glenn Deefholts.

Cover design: Harry MacLure Design Studio, Chennai

Cover photo: Courtesy Dennis Whitworth

This is the fourth book in the series launched by Blair Williams under the CTR banner. The books raise money for the charity Blair started to help impoverished Anglo-Indians in India, and for which he is a tireless promoter and fund-raiser. http://www.blairrw.org/ctr/index.php

But the books also serve to give Anglo-Indians a chance to preserve their heritage and culture, through the voices of people who have experienced it firsthand. Two years ago CTR invited articles from around the world to portray Anglo-Indian culture in the pages of an anthology, The Way We Were. The guidelines said in part: “The publication, depicting our Anglo-Indian way of life, will cover a broad contemporary canvas. We would like to capture not only who we were but how we were in all walks of life – the way we lived, worked, rejoiced, loved, laughed and cried.”

The five judges – working ‘blind’, with no names attached – selected 42 of more than 80 submissions. Once again that gifted Anglo-Indian writer with what Blair calls a “prodigious work ethic”, Margaret Deefholts, was persuaded to edit the collection. Margaret had edited the 2004 anthology, Voices on the Verandah, with Sylvia Staub, another Anglo-Indian writer – there certainly are a lot of us. ON TWWW, Margaret worked with her son, Glenn Deefholts.

The new chronicles offer a kaleidoscope of Anglo-Indian life. But even for those of us old enough to have lived in Indian cities or railway colonies or upcountry, there is much more than just nostalgia for the beloved and the left-behind. There is plenty to learn: unexpected insights, different slants on what we remember, and even a chance to see ourselves through the eyes of non-Anglo-Indians who lived among us and knew our ways.

We certainly knew how to enjoy life. Writers like Calcutta-born Dolores Chew brings alive the bustle of the New Market as she accompanies her father in the annual ritual to buy just the right ingredients for her mother’s Christmas cake. You’ll swear by the end that you can smell the fragrance of it baking. Joyce Mitchell will cause you to squeal in sympathy for the excited kids for whom Father Christmas arranged an elephant ride. Noel McKertich will make not-so-young ‘lads’ yearn to play one more game of Tops. Pamela Rebeiro reminds us of the horrific days of Partition riots in Calcutta, of the family’s momentous decision years later to leave India – and what life was like for Anglo-Indians in England in the ’fifties. Susan Deefholts – yes, no fewer than three Deefholts figure in this anthology – writes a poetic ode to ‘transplant’ ancestors who gave her the travelling bug but who, along with Lord Ganesha, also helped her to find a place called home. Rochelle Almeida will bring you to tears with her poignant story about an Anglo-Indian piano teacher, the unforgettable Miss Dunn. And you’ll get many a laugh from these pages, too, especially from Kevin Peterson’s madcap tale of a family’s frenetic preparations for a Tangy (Tangasseri) party. Don’t miss his witty reference to a certain singer-trumpeter.

This is just skimming the surface of a rich collection of memoirs, matchless in its ability to capture the spirit and soul of a people and their times. I apologize to all those contributors not mentioned by name who shared their wit, humour, and magical imagery to preserve an entire way of life.

Let me end with a quote from one writer: “I belong to a place called Anglo-India. You will not find it on any map of the world.”

But you can find it in the pages of The Way We Were.

* * *

A Twisted Cue. Ravi Dayal, Delhi, 2003.

Author: Rohit Handa

Rohit Handa is one of the few Indians who has actually created an Anglo-Indian hero in fiction. Perhaps I should say one of the few writers who has done so – we’re more used to being slighted and slandered than praised. Bully for Handa and his memorable character, Lieutenant-Colonel Quintin Reginald ‘Mulkally’ Oxley-Protheroe. There’s an intriguing explanation for the nickname Mulkally, but I’ll leave that for the reader to discover.

Handa also gives himself a huge challenge with this complex novel, which examines with daring and wit the notion “an ancient people who had no recent achievement to exult about, turn to hero worship those ground into the dust by a conqueror and whose bloodshed cannot be avenged.” A conqueror like Muhammad Ghori in 1192. Or later ones like the British.

These lofty ambitions sometimes get in the way of the nifty story-telling of which Handa is capable when he concentrates on the narrative. For instance, as Pakistani and Indian troops prepare for war in 1965, a lesser character called Ronnie Dewan bemuses the reader with a meditation on conquerors, while imagining he has his guns trained on “gory Ghori”, on Alexander exacting tribute from King Porus of India, of Mahmud of Ghazni “slitting the throat of the ancient Aryan race”, then on the Mughal Jehangir and his “collapsible harem”, and now on the “handsome Pakistani major”, Dewan’s opposite number across the troubled border. Just when you come up for air, Handa has Lord Vishnu appearing to Ronnie in visions. And yet Dewan is crucial to Handa’s main theme, exploring the psyche of a people overrun by conquerors down through the centuries and still somewhat hesitant to enjoy and protect their freedom.

The author, a former war correspondent for a leading Indian newspaper, is very much more in command of his action scenes – really quite splendid – and has a wonderfully satirical romp mocking the pretentious military officers in the mess in the days before war breaks out. One particularly obsequious colonel – a gem of a creation – concocts the fictitious ‘Harminder Plan’ to win favour with his Army Commander and befuddle a gaggle of visiting MPs.

Mulkally is too much of a straight-arrow soldier to give the MPs anything but a dose of reality about the border and war. He scares the heck out of them. A la Sir Francis Drake finishing his game of bowls before attacking the Spanish Armada, Mulkally coolly calculates the progress of the conflict and takes time out for some fishing – an act that enhances his reputation as a soldier’s soldier.

Whereas Mulkally knows how to handle himself in the craft of war, he’s less adept at the art of love. Oh, he’s successful with women, all right, but he can’t seem to hang on to anyone valuable. Handa is at his narrative best in the scenes involving Mulkally and his doomed romance with the lovely Narayani. She dares to go on a hunting and fishing trip with Mulkally while still not divorced from her estranged air force husband. For the idyllic time they are together, the lovers shunt aside the reckoning that must surely come. Handa counter-balances the romance – which takes place in beautiful Himalayan settings where the author shows his own deep love of hunting and fishing – with dark allusions to the complexities of Indian society in general and military mores in particular. Eventually, Narayani takes her bitter medicine with courage and dignity, and the romantically wounded Mulkally faces bleak choices that inevitably change the life he has enjoyed in India.

Readers who stick with A Twisted Cue through Handa’s more fanciful chapters are rewarded by a good yarn that exhibits plenty of masterful story-telling. Whenever Mulkally appears, he drives the story along to its touching finale. Moreover, the author’s sense of humour and his parade of finely observed characters make this an entertaining read.

** Rohit Handa was born in Lahore in1937. He graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and went on to study at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S.A. He was Assistant Editor for the Indian Express and a correspondent in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War. Apart from heading two companies, he has written two other books, including a novel, Comrade Sahib. He continues to write for newspapers and journals, and is working on a third novel.

A Twisted Cue can be purchased through www.amazon.com and other online stores.

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Under The Old School Topee. Published by the author

Author: Hazel Innes Craig

This book was first published in 1990 by BACSA, the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, and reprinted in 1991. Hazel Innes Craig released a revised edition in 1996 and that edition is now in its fifth printing, which she says is the final one.

The Best Education In the Hills

by Deborah Van Veldhuizen

The Church’s desire to evangelize throughout India resulted in a most excellent system of education, the beneficiaries of which were many Anglo-Indians still alive today. The first “real” education in India was provided by French and Portuguese Roman Catholic priests as early as the 1600s. Their pupils were mainly the Anglo-Indian children who resulted from the marriages of English soldiers to Portuguese or Luso-Indian women. Protestant soldiers’ children were informally taught by tutors in the main; however, in 1670, the East India Company sent a Scottish preacher named Pringle to Fort St. George in Madras. This began a long tradition of Church of England schools, Craig writes. “St. Mary’s Church Charity School has the distinction of being recognized as the first European school in India. But not to be outdone, the Roman Catholic Capuchin Fathers started another English medium school in the Black Town of Madras where European and Anglo-Indian boys were taught with boys of Indian communities.”

Following this, Christian missionaries from countries other than Britain also set up schools. It is interesting to note that the East India Company tried to maintain religious neutrality, but by 1813 it finally allowed a Bishop to be appointed to the Indian Church.

Although Craig also discusses the Plains schools, her focus is on the schools in the Hills. In Calcutta, charitable orphanages had been set up by both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, and also by the military. Private schools such as La Martiniere College, Lucknow, also did quite well. Under the Old School Topee, named for the cumbersome hat that was deemed necessary protection from the sun at the Hills schools, provides exhaustive details of all aspects of school life, from discipline to ‘grub’. The first hill-stations established in Northern India were Simla in 1819 and Mussoorie in 1826. The British recognized the benefits of climate and health and holidayed there long before any schools were established. The Mussoorie school, often known as Maddocks (named after its first schoolmaster) was the first Hills school, established in 1835.

George Edward Cotton, Metropolitan Bishop of Calcutta (1858), finally managed to convince the Government of India to take part in educating its children. Renowned as one of the greatest educators of his time, he also established St. Paul’s School for Boys in Darjeeling.

The teaching at both the Plains and Hills schools was of the highest standard, based as it was on the British system. Many of the teachers and headmasters initially came out from England, but later on many were homegrown Anglo-Indians or Indians, or came from other European countries. Several Teacher Training Colleges were established, including St. Bede’s College for Women, Convent of Jesus and Mary at Simla. The strength of the educational system in India partly resulted from the organization, a hierarchical system that included prefects, as well as the excellent qualifications of the teachers.

Quite amazingly, religious tolerance was practised at the schools by the teachers, including priests and nuns, towards the Indian, Anglo-Indian, British, and European children of various faiths . Although religious services generally had to be attended by all the students, religion was not forced upon anyone and, in fact, actions were often taken to ensure that students’ individual faiths were maintained.

Particularly interesting are Craig’s chapters that outline going up to the Hills schools at the beginning of the school year, usually in March, and the Going Home Day nine months later, in late November or early December: “Dow Hillians remember some of their friends hurling their topees into the muddy waters of the Hugli River as the train clattered over Hardinge Bridge, a practice echoed by British troops and other old India hands as they steamed out of harbour on their journeys home to Blighty.” (Craig 234)

Craig’s book will prove particularly interesting to those who attended any of the schools mentioned in her books, as well as anyone who is a product of India’s school system in general. However, the general reader may find it a bit too pedantic and scholarly. Her Appendices include a well-written piece, “Who are the Anglo-Indians?”, as well as a profile of Dr. Graham, the founder of the Kalimpong Homes for needy Anglo-Indian children.

On a personal note, at the same time that my father, Lionel Lumb, was taught by Jesuit priests at St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta (1949-1954), my mother, Shirley Fanthome, was a boarder at Vincent Hill School (1947-1954) in Mussoorie, which was run by American Seventh Day Adventists. Both of my parents have fond memories of their excellent teachers, classmates, and schooldays in general.

** Deborah (Lumb) Van Veldhuizen is a 42-year-old Anglo-Indian who lives in Ottawa, Canada. She teaches English at Algonquin College and writes when she can.

Under The Old School Topee can be purchased directly from Hazel Innes Craig by writing to her at:

53 Hill Rise

Rickmansworth

Hertfordshire WD3 7NY

U.K.

The price is £12 pounds sterling, plus £5 pounds for postage and packaging. Sterling cheques or drafts only, please.