In the few hours I spent in the city, I could not find out the origin of its odd-sounding name. It has become quite a favourite with makers of crossword puzzles; a city full of prohibitions (Bangalore), a city of a noisy tale (Bangalore), a place in south India which tells a Bengali story (Banga lore), and so on. The only explanation given by a local was that the name is derived from Banglooria, meaning parched gram and was so adopted when Kempe Gowda occupied it and found nothing to eat except this cereal. Hobson Jobson, otherwise very knowledgeable on such matters, has nothing to say on the subject. And Balfour’s Cyclopaedia of India (1983) has a brief entry to the effect: ‘The climate is almost European, but at the most exposed parts is unfavourable to young children . . . Bangalore Pettah or civil town was taken by storm by the British on 21 March 1791. See silk, tea.’ One could add a lot of items to the list of things to be seen in Bangalore: aircraft, telephones, watches, electronic equipment, mangosteen, avocado pears, petite lasses with slender waists, knee-length hair and eyes as dark as the pools of Heshbon.
Calcutta
There was a time when I thought that there were no people on the earth more civilized than the Bengalis and no women easier on the eye than theirs. I even thought that if we had to choose a capital for ‘Culturistari, it would have to be Calcutta. Those were the days of Gurudev Tagore, Rathi Babu, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, New Theatre with Uday Shankar coming up on the horizon. As the years passed, my enthusiasm for everything Bengali began to wane. This was entirely due to repeated exposures to Calcutta. I saw it decline from a grand metropolis to an unkempt, unwashed city with more people than was good for its health. Soon it became, as Kipling had described it, a ‘packed and pestilential town’ with death hanging over it like dirty smog. I began to dislike it and avoided going there. In the last two years my dislike for Calcutta has turned to dread; I am frightened of the city and its denizens. Every time I walk down the corridor of Grand Hotel and come face to face with the solid wall of humanity flowing down Chowringhee, I stop in my tracks and want to run back to my room. I have to muster up all my courage to plunge into the smelly human stream, suffer jostling and buffeting, then stumble over uneven, broken pavements, avoid slimy ooze that is always there, dodge oncoming, overloaded buses and cabs which bear on me from all sides. I have developed all the phobias associated with filth and squalor, most of all claustrophobia - fear of crowds. No crowd in the world is more hostile than that of Calcutta. If a car brushes a pedestrian, a mob will collect, rock it till it turns over and set it on fire. I still believe that Bengalis have more going for them than any other Indian and their women have the longest, loveliest hair and the largest, loveliest eyes. But I cannot understand why they have Calcutta. And if they can’t do without it, why don’t they do something about it like, for instance, blow it up?
I now go to Calcutta only when I have to. I had to once, to cover the 77th plenary session of the AICC for The Telegraph. I also have as insatiable an appetite for gossip as our politicians have of catering to it. The foregathering of the Congress clan promised quite a feast of scandal. I also hoped to pick up a whisper or two about the next general elections and see for myself how Rajiv Gandhi was shaping as a politician. The five days I spent there proved to be quite rewarding: they confirmed my loathing for the city, provided me with lots of juicy tales of Congressmen’s peccadilloes, a wide range of views on the impending elections, and many opportunities of seeing Rajiv Gandhi in action.
The bandobast which seemed at first sight to be very pukka really turned out to be very kuchcha. The sessions were held in the Netaji Stadium designed to hold table tennis matches. No one had bothered to check its acoustics. The echo made the speeches inaudible; you could hear them better outside than inside the stadium. As a result, no one paid any attention to what was being said and indulged in the national pastime of small chat. Apart from the general hubbub of thousands of people talking, there was not a moment when at least a couple of hundred people were not coming or going from somewhere to nowhere. Quite understandably, Mrs Gandhi was in a bad temper throughout the five days and kept reprimanding people for lack of discipline (the worst culprits were press photographers) and repeatedly admonishing the audience: ‘Why don’t you listen?’ Equally understandably, the audience paid no attention to her command. They could not hear clearly, they had heard the same kind of thing said a few weeks ago in Bombay and in every other speech Mrs Gandhi had delivered since then. So what was she so peeved about! However, two things she said stayed in my mind. We should not plant eucalyptus trees which, though quick growing, do harm to the soil. And advising Congress leaders to set an example of simple, unostentatious living. Most of the netas were lodged in two of Calcutta’s most expensive hotels, Grand and Park.
Discipline? There was none. Shoving, pushing, gatecrashing and smashing window-panes. Scuffles between Seva Dal volunteers and visitors were a daily affair. The only person who seemed to keep his cool and occasionally get the crowd under control was Rajiv Gandhi. I was pleasantly surprised to see his stage presence and impressed by the way he spoke. Although he once boobed over his facts and figures, what he had to say, he said with dignity and clarity. He was mercifully free of the wind baggery that afflicted his partymen.
The last afternoon was nightmarish. From noon onwards, an unending procession of slogan-shouting Congressmen wended their way towards the Maidan to hear Mrs Gandhi. Till 4 p.m. there was no let up and I had only an hour left to get to the airport. If it had not been for the ingenuity of our driver I would not have made it on time. I was told that not since the visit of Khrushchev had a larger assemblage been seen in Calcutta. Then it was a Left-oriented crowd come to greet a communist leader. This time it was of a people expressing their resentment against communist rule.
It was a jolly crowd on the aircraft taking us back home to Delhi. And never before had I seen so many important personages on one plane. There were at least twelve ministers of the central government, some chief ministers and over two dozen MPs. ‘If this plane goes down, I won’t even get an obituary notice,’ I announced cheerfully. ‘That is why I decided to fly it myself,’ replied Captain Chaddha, the seniormost of the Indian Airlines pilots. ‘Don’t worry,’ assured Shankaranand, ‘I am accident-proof. Nothing happens to anyone when I am present.’ So we relaxed. I told H.K.L. Bhagat, Makwana, and Salve the latest Punjabi jokes and indulged in some sher-o-shairi with lady MPs and the air hostesses. I must have roused some envy amongst the mighty. Chaudhary Bansi Lal presented me with a glossy picture of a bridal couple, a grey-bearded, turbaned bridegroom with a very young and comely bride. ‘This is you,’ he said pointing to the aged groom. ‘And this is . . .’ I can’t tell you who the Chaudhary sahib had mated me with, except that I was more than willing.
A cheerful end to a momentous session!
I always return to Delhi as a man returns to his mistress when he has had his fill of whoring in other cities. What a welcome my beloved city gives me! It is a hot, sticky night. As soon as I am in my apartment, I peel off my clothes, go into the bathroom and turn on the tap. A muddy ooze oozes down into the bucket followed by a trickle of muddy water. Then a fart. No water. I give up.
I go to my study, pick up the phone and dial the caretaker. Two girls are on the line yapping away about their Daddyji and Uncleji. I put down the receiver to try again. They are still on the line now discussing their Mummyji and Aimtyji. I make an obscene reference to their parents. ‘Some dirty fellow on the line,’ says one, ‘Buzz you later.’
I dial my number. Engaged. I dial again. Engaged. I dial ‘complaints’. She tells me to dial ‘assistance’. I dial ‘assistance’. She tells me ‘number out of order, dial complaints’. I dial ‘complaints’. The telephone is dead.
I go to my bedroom to let the air-conditioner cool my naked flesh and raw temper. It welcomes me with a distinct lowering of tone. Its drone lulls me to slumber. It resents my indifference and goes off in a sulk. The bedroom becomes like the Black Hole of Calcutta.
Power cut. No light. No fan. I spend most of the night sitting in a chair in the lawn, slapping mosquitoes and counting the stars. A pale old moon wanders into the sky. The morning star glitters. I go indoors and throw open the windows. A cool breeze, fragrant with madhumalati, drives away the dank fuzz of yesterday’s dead air. Through the dark foliage of the mulberry tree appears the grey dawn. A magpie robin begins to warble; its dulcet notes awaken the koel which screams to announce the birth of another day.
Flying-foxes wing their soundless way to their perches on massive arjun trees. The old lady who lives above comes slish-sloshing along the road, looks round to see if anyone is looking, quickly plucks a few hibiscus flowers from my hedge, tucks them in her dupatta and slish-sloshes towards the temple. Her old man follows. He also stops by my hedge, looks around to see if anyone is listening, presses his paunch and breaks wind. He walks on with a lighter step and a ‘who-did-that’ look of innocence on his wrinkled face. A light goes up in the opposite block. A woman draws her curtains, ties her untidy hair into a bun and stretches her longing arms towards me. Crows begin cawing to each other. Sparrows start quarrelling in the hedges. From the neighbouring mosque, the muezzin’s voice rises to the heaven, proclaiming the glory of Allah. Temple bells peal to awaken the gods from their slumber. A milkman cycles round the block clanging his milk cans. Another man also on a cycle follows him calling in a heavy voice: Paperwala - Ishtaitman, Taim of India, Aikspraise, Hindustan Trime, Paperwala! I hear the shush of papers being pushed under my door.
Nature
There is much in India that remains unwritten because its leading scribes wear blinkers which restrict their vision to political tittle-tattle. There is the world of nature, an inexhaustible reservoir of things beautiful.. . Much remains unexplored and unexploited.
The Month of May
May is the month of the laburnum. Although gulmohars continue to blaze their fierce scarlets, oranges and yellows, you can see they are losing some of their fire and passing nature’s baton, as it were, to the laburnums.
The laburnum (Cassia fistula) or amaltas has become a great favourite of Delhiwalas as the gulmohar for the simple reason that both are quick growing and colourful. Of the two, the laburnum makes a more spectacular entry. It first sheds its leaves; by the second fortnight of April only the long, brown-black tubular (hence ‘fistula’) fruit can be seen hanging from its bare branches. Then suddenly blossoms appear in clusters like bunches of golden grapes. The beauty of the Indian laburnum defies description. No poet or writer has ventured to put it to paper. Only painters have been able to do it justice. Alas! its glory has a very short lease - less than a fortnight - after which its leaves take over. The seed of the laburnum when crushed makes a powerful purgative and its bark, which is aromatic like cinnamon, is also used for tanning.
An equally beautiful flowering tree which is in bloom this time of the year and outlives the laburnum by several weeks is the pink cassia (Cassia javanica). It is a thorny tree with slender branches adorned with pink and white blossoms like bracelets on the arms of a beautiful woman.
May is also the month of searing heat with the glass seldom falling below 40 degrees Celsius, often touching 42 and even 45 in the shade. As one wag remarked. ‘India has only two seasons: hot and hotter.’ With the heat comes the loo, the hot wind from the deserts of Rajasthan. Our loo, like the equally warm khamsin (sirocco) and the chilly mistral takes its toll of life. On the hottest days its torrid embrace beguiles the unwary and lulls them to eternal sleep.
Kipling has many memorable descriptions of the heat dust and sandstorms that visit northern India during May and June. In his story False Dawn, he writes: ‘I had felt that the air was growing hotter and hotter, but nobody seemed to notice it until the moon went out and a burning hot wind began lashing the orange trees with a sound like the noise of the sea. Before we knew where we were the duststorm was on us and everything was a roaring, whirling darkness.’ Kipling depicts in another poem the lassitude and weariness that come with the endless days of heat and dust:
No hope, no change! The clouds have shut us in.
And through the cloud the sullen Sun strikes down
Full on the bosom of the tortured town,
Till night falls heavy as remembered sin
That will not suffer sleep or thought of ease,
And hour on hour, the dry-eyed Moon in spite,
Glares through the haze and mocks with watery light
The torment of the uncomplaining trees. Far off, the thunder
bellows her despair
To echoing earth, thrice parched. The lightnings fly
In vain. No help the heaped-up clouds afford,
But wearier weight of burdened, burning air,
What truce with Dawn? Look, from the aching sky
Day stalks a tyrant with a flaming sword!
The days, hard enough to bear, get longer and longer. On the first of the month the sun rises at 5.40 a.m. and sets at 6.56 p.m. giving us more than thirteen and a quarter hours of hell. By the end of the month the sun rises sixteen minutes earlier (5.24 a.m.) and sets seventeen minutes later (7.13 p.m.) adding more than half an hour of unwelcome daylight. However, dry heat is easier to bear than the moist, sticky, warm stillness that pervades our coastal towns and cities. Even though perspiration is profuse, it is healthier than the body ooze that surfaces on the skin in humid climates. There is of course the nuisance of prickly heat (pitt) which erupts round the neck, but I hold to the theory my grandmother used to expound - that prickly heat is a sign of good health. For those who find it too oppressive, there are air coolers which convert hot winds into fragrant breezes by blowing them through dampened screens of khas fibre. These smell of the earth after the first drops of rain.
May is also the month of duststorms, cloudbursts and hailstorms. They come with little warning. There is of course a preliminary lull, but after days of windless calm you hardly notice it. Only pariah kites wheeling in the grey sky portend that something is on the way. Then suddenly it sweeps across with gale fury, blowing dust into your eyes and nostrils. It is usually followed by a cloudburst. The gale and rain take their toll of trees. I have seen ancient banyans which had stood for years like gigantic sentinels on either side of Parliament Street, torn up from their roots and ignominiously flung across the tarmac road. One May afternoon a weather-beaten neem on Kasturba Gandhi Marg, under whose shade half a dozen cars sheltered from the blazing sun, came crashing down and broke a Fiat car into two. A fifty-year-old mulberry (the only leafy tree outside my apartment, to whose shade I staked my claim every summer by parking my car under it in the early hours of the morning) was mauled by one of these storms. One afternoon as I left for the swimming pool, a fierce wind came up. I had barely gone a hundred yards when three branches of the mulberry were torn from the trunk and fell down on the exact spot where my car had rested. If my frail new Maruti had been there it would have been mashed to a pulp. If I had been in it, I would not be writing this. That afternoon I drove through lashing rain along Motilal Nehru Marg, up Shankar Road to the Ridge past Buddha Jayanti Park. The entire route was littered with branches of jamuns, neems and mahuas. Since fragile eucalyptus trees have no branches worth speaking of, many had been brought down to earth in one piece. It was hazardous driving along these avenues and for safety I drove in the middle of the road.
Despite the intense heat during May and June, you can also have, besides duststorms and cloudbursts, an occasional hailstorm which brings the temperature down for a few hours. Usually the hailstones are very small, almost like gravel but sometimes they are of the size of pigeons’ eggs. Hailstones of the size of cricket balls have been known to kill cattle and humans. A hailstorm in Moradabad in 1888 is said to have killed over 246 people in a few minutes.
Deciduous trees like neems, banyans, peepuls and mahuas continue to shed their leaves and don new vestments. Semuls have by now yielded all they have to give to humans. In May you will see families of poor gathering se
mul cotton in sacks to sell to the makers of pillows and quilts.
Petals shed by flowering trees lie about their boles. Laburnums spread golden carpets about their feet; maulsaris weave them in beige, papris (Pongamia glabra) in pink and white looking very much like a spread of tiny hailstones.
What is true of the flora is true of the fauna. In the feathered world, May is the month of birdsong, courtship and fulfilment. Kites and vultures which began courting in the winter sit hunchbacked watching over their nests high up in the branches of the ailanthus or semul trees. The screams of koels become louder and more strident. Crows grow more suspicious of koels’ intentions and can be seen chasing them away as soon as they come anywhere near their nests.
If you listen attentively to the koels’ calls, you will notice a clear pattern. It is amongst the earlier callers. As soon as the eastern sky turns grey, male koels lay claim to their airspace by a series of staccato ‘urook, urook, urook!’ repeated over half a dozen times. In human language this could be interpreted as a warning to other males: keep off and that means you! The rest of the day the call is a monotonous ‘Koo-oo, koo-oo!’ While courting, it is the female pursued by her suitor who emits sharp cries of ‘Kik, kik’ as she courses through the foliage. One rarely sees koels in the act of mating. Once the female is ready to lay her eggs, her paramour takes the lead in luring crows away from their nests. The female koel then quickly deposits her egg among the clutch of crows’ eggs and signals to her partner that her mission has been successful by triumphant cries, ‘kuil, kuil, kuil!’
Sex,Scotch and Scholarship Page 13
