by M. M. Kaye
I have been in other temples since then, many of them far larger and older and more impressive. But none of them ever gave me such a feeling of awe and wonder, and holiness, as this small and relatively unimportant one in a village near the old and evil battlefield of Panipat.
That particular Christmas camp was, like most others, a week-long affair, planned to end the day after Boxing Day. But as Tacklow could not be away for more than three days, he and Mother had offered us the choice of spending the entire week there (in which case Tacklow would come out on Christmas Eve and return with us on Boxing Day) or of spending Christmas at Curzon House — in which case he would come to Panipat with us, and bring us back with him on Christmas Eve. Since we had not realized at that time that the Slaters and their children would be asked to join the camp and that Bargie and Tony would be there, Bets and I had elected for the second option. Our reasons being that Panipat lacked the allure of Okhla and the river and sounded pretty dull; whereas back in Curzon House there would be a Christmas tree to decorate and, more important, a proper fireplace. (We were always slightly uneasy about hanging up our stockings in a tent, for even if Father Christmas was able to trace us to our camp — as Mother assured us he would — how would he be able to deliver the goods on schedule if there were no chimney to come down?) Besides, Tacklow would be home every evening, so taking all this into consideration we had plumped for returning to Delhi.
But when the time came to leave, I for one wished very much that we had chosen differently, for I had enjoyed myself so much at Panipat, and having Bargie here had been an unexpected and delightful bonus. I hated leaving her and the camp, and the landowner and his family — and Panipat. But it was too late to change our plans, because knowing that we would be leaving, others had been asked out to take our place and our tents for the extra days. I still remember vividly the deep depression and regret I felt as I waved goodbye to them all, and which stayed with me all the way back to Delhi. A regret that was made deeper by the knowledge that I had made a wrong and irreversible decision, and had no one to blame but myself! I would come to that same bleak conclusion all too often in the future — as I suppose everyone is bound to do — and I can only conclude that the reason I remember it so clearly is because this was the first time it happened to me.
Fortunately, my gloom did not outlast the arrival of the Christmas tree at our rooms in Curzon House that same afternoon. It was a splendid one that only just allowed space for a Christmas star to be fastened to the top after it was firmly planted in a huge copper coal-scuttle. That done we all went gaily off to the Lal Kila to buy tangerines, which were always available at that season from a stall in the Red Fort’s own bazaar — two rows of small shops that face each other from either side of the long, covered arcade that leads out of the vast, double-storeyed entrance hall that is the ante-room of the main gate (the Lahore Gate) of Jehangir’s fortress-palace. These tangerines were a part of Christmas and to this day the sight, and more particularly the sharp, spicy scent of them, always reminds me of Christmas in India and conjures up a picture of the shadowy, sun-splashed Lal Kila arcade.
The Christmas tree by family tradition (Bryson, I suspect — not Kaye!) was decorated late on Christmas Eve; long after the children had hung up their stockings, said their prayers and were safely asleep. We would go off to bed leaving it an ordinary fir tree stuck in its tub, and wake up next morning to find it glittering with silver bells, glass balls and spun-glass baubles, strings of tinsel, Christmas crackers, cottonwool snow and innumerable brightly coloured little candles. It was a sight that never lost its magic for us. The most exciting moment of the day, though, was when we woke up in the very early morning and, crawling to the end of our beds, groped in the dawn darkness for the stockings we had hung up on the previous night (there was always the fear that this time we might have been forgotten!) and felt them bulging with little parcels and topped by two or three crackers.
Those stockings were a delight, for every single item was wrapped separately in different coloured tissue paper, so that one had the added thrill of opening them one by one. Small, Indian-made toys and trinkets, bought off stalls in the bazaars or at melas* by Mother during the past year and hoarded for this occasion; none of them costing more than an anna or two and each one an enchanting artefact. Crackers stuck out of the top of each stocking and there was always an orange in the toe and an apple in the heel, with nuts and sweets in between, and a packet of those little grey sticks that crackle and fizzle and spit out showers of silver stars when you light the top with a match. And somewhere in my stocking would be, year after year, an adorable biscuit-china cherub or angel with real hair, each one different from the last. These little figurines, in contrast with the rest of the toys, cost a whole rupee, for they were made in Bavaria and sold in Rago Mull’s shop in the Chandi Chowk, Delhi’s famous Silver Street. By the time I left India to go to school I had managed to collect seven of them; but alas, they all perished, with so much else, in that disastrous fire at the Elephant and Castle.
The larger presents were always given to us when we burst in on our parents to hand them their parcels and share their chota-hazri. And after breakfast there were the dálís — flat, tinsel-bedecked baskets of gilded Indian sweets, fruit and nuts and flowers, presented to us by proprietors of shops where we had an account, head clerks in Tacklow’s office, and our servants, to mark the occasion. Sometimes the dálís contained money tucked away among the flowers or hidden under the fruit, and sometimes there were jewels for Mother or expensive toys or trinkets for Bets and myself. These could never be kept, however alluring, since they constituted a bribe and the taking of bribes was most strictly forbidden. The only gifts one was allowed to accept were perishable ones — fruit and flowers and things to eat.
I have heard of British officials who regarded these expensive gifts as insults and returned them with loud rude words. And, worse, of others who accepted them and said nothing. But Tacklow would always return them with the polite pretence, if it was money, that it must have dropped out of the donor’s pocket by mistake, or in the case of jewellery or any valuable present, with warm thanks for having been given the chance of handling and admiring such a charming object … The point was taken and there were no hard feelings. But oh, I would dearly have liked to have kept some of those expensive toys! Among them, once, there was a French doll with a Paris wardrobe and eyes that opened and shut, which I longed to possess and handled with enormous admiration before regretfully giving it back! Gifts from close Indian friends were of course a different matter. For one thing the givers had no axe to grind, and for another, one reciprocated with gifts of equal value on their special festivals; as well as on birthdays and weddings.
After the presentation of the dálís and all the thank-yous, we would put on our Sunday-best hats, which were white solar topis of the mushroom variety with removable, and washable, covers of white broderie anglaise, and leave Curzon House on foot to walk to church, past the Kudsia Bagh, the Tennis Club and the Nicholson Gardens, and on, under the battered arch of the Kashmir Gate, past the Police-khana and the old Quarter Guard, to St James’s; the Anglican Church built in the early 1820s by Sikunder-Sahib — Colonel James Skinner of Skinner’s Horse. It is said that he built it because of a vow he made while lying wounded on a battlefield, that if he should survive he would build a church; and also that he hedged his bets by building a mosque and a temple as well, just to be on the safe side. But his body lies buried in the Skinner vault in St James’s.
I was much too young to know anything about architecture, Palladian or otherwise, yet even my untutored eye found a deep satisfaction in the proportions of St James’s; in its lines and planes and arches, and the way in which the sound of the service echoed under its central dome. That day the echo threw back the joyful thunder of the organ and the voices of a packed congregation singing ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ at the top of their lungs. And suddenly it was Christmas! Really Christmas. Not just a day for stockings
and presents and parties, plum-pudding and snap-dragon, or even the Christmas tree, but an enormous, world-wide birthday party to celebrate the arrival of a baby who had been born in a cattle-shed nearly two thousand years ago: that ‘Saviour who is Christ the Lord’. All the rest of it was no more than pleasant trimmings tacked on to the birthday celebration because this was a time of good-will and rejoicing, and everyone felt generous and jolly and full of optimism. I had of course heard the Christmas story; and read it too in a book called The Life of Jesus of Nazareth, beautifully illustrated by a William Hole, R.A. I had both listened to and sung carols and knew a good many of them by heart — a favourite being ‘Good King Wenceslas’! But until this particular Christmas the true meaning of the ‘Mass of Christ’ had been swamped by all those exciting trimmings — the presents and the parties, the tinsel and the tangerines. It took ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Glory to the Newborn King!’, sung in Sikunder-Sahib’s church in Delhi, to bring home to me for the first time what it was really all about. There are so many first times when one is young; and all of them milestones.
There are other carols, learned much later, that I like better. Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the Bleak Mid-winter’ for one. But ever since then no Christmas Day has been truly Christmas to me until I have heard or sung ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. I have heard it sung in churches all over the world. In Peking in north China. In churches in India from Kohat in the north to Calcutta in the south. In Kashmir and in Kenya, in Egypt and the Andaman Islands, in Switzerland, Spain and Austria, and in divided Berlin as well as in Scotland and England, Ulster and Ireland. Yet every time I hear it I am back again in that little Palladian church in Old Delhi, with the sunlight streaming down from the windows below the dome and a long-vanished congregation singing the carol that first revealed Christmas to me.
That afternoon we went to a party in the Moncrieff-Smiths’ rooms in Curzon House, where their daughter Phyllis made a dramatic appearance from behind the curtains that (as in our rooms) divided the front rooms from the bedrooms, dressed as a snow-fairy and sitting on a sledge loaded with parcels which she distributed to her guests. We were much impressed by this original departure from a scenario that usually entailed an embarrassed father pretending to be Santa Claus in a deplorably home-made cotton-wool beard and someone’s red dressing-gown, plus a repertoire of nervous ‘Ho-ho-hos’ that would not have deceived the dumbest two-year-old. But then the Moncrieff-Smiths were famous for their children’s parties — as witness their spectacularly successful Pink Party in Simla. We used to play with Phyllis, who was a bit older than I was and inclined, we thought, to be a bit snooty. She never became a real friend, though for a few weeks during which our favourite game, for reasons unknown, was playing at preaching sermons, she showed a remarkable aptitude in the role of Vicar for ticking off the congregation (myself, Bets, Sibyl, Joanie, Iris, Tony and anyone else who happened to be around — I don’t remember Bargie ever playing). She was excellent in the pulpit, but not so hot as a member of the congregation.
The next two Christmases were both spent at Okhla, the first in the Canal Bungalow and the second in camp alongside Number 3 Groin, below the weir. I had really enjoyed Panipat, but to both Bets and myself no playground — not even our beloved Kudsia Bagh — could stand comparison with an Indian river.
Oh, those rivers …! Why is it that they still keep such a strong hold on my imagination that whenever I hear a really haunting piece of music, like Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony for instance, or any piece that has real melody, I see to its refrain the quiet, slow-moving, mile-wide rivers of my childhood, flowing through those enormous, sun-baked spaces; and remember the basking rows of turtles lining the sandbanks, the flocks of white egrets pricking through the shallows, wild duck flighting at evening and the parrots coming down to drink in the dawn … the smell of it. And the silence: we lost that long ago, but in my day there were endless places where one could hear the wind breathing through the grasses or whispering through pine needles; the whirr of a dragonfly’s wings or the fall of a leaf. And even, on certain white nights, the faint ‘pop’ that the bud of a moonflower makes as it unfurls.
There were always birds along the rivers. Egrets, gulls, sandpipers, wild duck, herons and storks, sedate flocks of pelicans, stately sarus cranes, and endless other land and water birds. There were always, too, those ranks of sunbathing river turtles which Bets and I used to stalk in imitation of our elders and betters stalking muggers — inching forward on our stomachs over the hot white sand and freezing into immobility whenever one of their sentinels turned an alert, snake-like head in our direction. At the last moment, when we had got as near as possible, we would leap to our feet and rush forward in the hope of grabbing a tardy one who had been a bit slow in taking off. We never got one of course, for at the first flicker of movement the somnolent ranks of sunbathers would flip back into the water, and for a good hundred yards up and down stream the sandbanks would be as empty as the back of your hand.
Brooding over our lack of success I came up with the brilliant idea of using Tacklow’s butterfly-net. Racing forward after the usual prolonged stalk, one aimed at the water and not the turtles, and generally managed to scoop in an escapee as it swam away. The resulting captives were carried triumphantly back to the camp and incarcerated in our tin bathtub, where we could watch them swimming round and round and scrabbling futilely at the sides. However, Nemesis overtook me, because the butterfly-net did not stand up well to the job of catching turtles and Tacklow became uncharacteristically testy when he saw the damage they had done to his property (which, to make matters worse, we had borrowed without his permission). I got a sharp ticking-off and was in disgrace for at least an hour: after which he relented and suggested that Kashmera’s muchli-net would be more suitable. It wasn’t, because it was too heavy for us. But Kashmera accompanied us on several of our turtle-stalks and caught one or two for us.
The captives were always returned to the river in the evening, each one being carried down separately and released on the spot where it had been caught. But watching Kashmera catch them wasn’t half as much fun as catching them ourselves had been, and we soon gave up that particular sport and went back to fishing for chilwa and releasing them into pools that we made by digging branch channels off the side-streams and then constructing dams. Tacklow made up a song about the turtles which went to the tune of one of his music-hall songs: ‘Once there was a little poodle with a coat as white as snow’. It was never written down and I don’t remember it being sung very often. But it remains firmly in my memory, and here it is —
Mollie saw a little turtle in a pool beside the weir,
So she went and tried to catch it, but it would not let her near;
Swam away, she could not follow just for fear of getting wet,
So she called and old Kashmera caught it in his fishing-net.
Mollie took that little turtle home and put it in a tub,
Sluiced it down with nice clean water, gave its little back a scrub.
Round and round that turtle scrambled, vainly to escape he tried
But at last he gave it up, because he could not climb the side.
Later when the sun was setting Mollie took it in her hand,
Bore it down beside the river, laid it softly on the sand.
Then that turtle winked his eye at Daddy’s little daughter
And flipped his funny little tail, and popped into the water!
This masterpiece by our personal Poet Laureate was, of course, sung in ‘Kaye-language’; which was something else that Tacklow had invented for our amusement. Various letters and/or combination of letters were pronounced as z (e.g., ‘Then thaz turzel winked its eye at Dazzy’s lizzle dauzer, and flipped its funny lizzle tail, and popped into the warzer’!). The rules as to which letters were replaced by z were very strict: but there were exceptions too, of the ‘i before e except after c’ variety. We all got very good at it and when spoken quickly in ordinary conversation it was quit
e difficult for non-Kayes to know what we were saying. A nice example of it was when we were driving through a particular bleak and barren stretch of country in which nothing moved but a number of grazing goats, and Tacklow remarked idly: ‘A dezolaze country, entirely inhabizez by goze!’
The outfits that we wore in camp were known as our ‘scampy brown dresses’, and no party frock I ever possessed, however pretty, could touch them for popularity. They represented freedom and fun, and consisted of short, button-through frocks of stout khaki-coloured cotton with white collars and brown leather belts, worn over matching bloomers which, being provided with elastic at top and bottom, made admirable pockets besides enabling us to stuff our skirts into them when paddling. We could have done without the white collars, which showed up too well against the general browny, greeny, sand-coloured surroundings, but when stalking we merely tucked them inside the necks of our dresses. Regulation khaki-coloured topis were worn as a matter of course when the sun was high, since they were supposed to protect us from sunstroke; and always while in camp or at Okhla we were allowed to run bare-foot. It was not long before the soles of our feet became as tough as those of any of the Canal coolies or their children, and we could scamper along the gravel-strewn paths of the Canal Bungalow or the Headworks, or across the open country where the sun-baked ground and the hot dust were littered with flakes of mica, small stones and fallen kikar thorns — those wicked double spikes that can penetrate all but the toughest leather. I still carry the mark of those happy, shoeless days in the form of a small but solid patch of horn (I really can’t call it skin!) on the pad of each of my big toes: the last traces of the toughened soles on which I could easily have walked over live coals or broken glass without taking any harm, as Kashmera and his friends did. To know that we could do that too was a source of great pride to us: though we could never summon up the courage to deal with an aggressive scorpion, poised to strike, simply by treading on it as they did.
