Passage Across the Mersey

by Robert Bhatia

  In 1995, amid concerns about the impact of water utility privatization in the UK, Helen wrote to her sister Avril about the water shortage in India:

  I became very used to having little water in India. The tap was turned on for an hour every morning, and you had to draw enough from a trickling tap to last the day. This went on, even when our little settlement had its own well. I used to have about six pails of water for the three of us [including the servant] for absolutely everything [including bathing]. We had a lavatory that flushed and keeping it from getting blocked was a real headache. We used every ounce of water several times, and the residue went down the loo, needless to say.

  I felt I was lucky to have a loo that flushed, but after eighteen months, I began to think that the old-fashioned arrival of the untouchable [former term for someone outside the caste system, many of whom performed tasks considered unclean] who removed and cleaned the chamber pots had a lot of merit. He stank and his cart stank, as did the little privy room – but at least it worked. He had a special back door straight into the lavatory room, because, as an untouchable, he would pollute the house if he walked through it – and of course, there was also the understandable danger that he carried germs which, through the centuries, he was immune to, and we were not. He would come in and clean the floor and the loo and I would pay him. And after he had gone, I would clean it all over again.

  I washed my clothes in the traditional way, using a bucket of hot water in which to wet the garments. Then I would put them on the floor and rub salt into them. Then I would stand up and swing them round and round to beat them on the stone floor to get the dirt out. They were rinsed in cold water, hand wrung and put out on the verandah to dry. In summer, a double, heavy cotton sheet would dry in about five or 10 minutes. Later on, a washerman came out and took the clothes away to wash them in the River. They came back reasonably clean and ironed.

  The washerman would also, on request, come to the house and press one’s better saris right there. Since the minimum length of a sari is five yards, this is no mean amount of work taken off one’s hands.

  On a practical level, Helen learned to cook, keep house and manage life in India. She did her best to become a good Indian faculty wife. There were no doubt annoying frustrations – such as the standard of cleanliness in toilets, or the inefficiency of Indian bureaucracy – but for Helen these were just challenges to be overcome or accepted. However, there were some exceptional circumstances to contend with when Helen first arrived:

  In 1949, Ahmedabad had had an epidemic [of cholera], which had begun on the college campus. This year, the city was ready to combat it. Avadh and I stood in the longest queue I have ever seen, while two health workers filled syringes with the necessary shots and shoved the needles into the populace’s proffered arms. They used the same needles again and again, washing them, rather ineffectually, in disinfectant between shots. One shudders to think what the result might be in this day of the much greater threat of AIDS from the needle itself. However, the cholera did not spread too much, so the Health authorities’ efforts obviously worked.

  Helen escaped the cholera but she soon became very ill with other diseases: ‘My greatest single problem was ill health, because I had no natural defence against local germs. We did have a new well – polluted water is a great health problem in India. I contracted amoebic dysentery, pneumonia, influenza, etc, and became very anaemic.’ She battled dysentery for several months, during which her weight dropped below seven stone and she struggled to regain her energy.

  While she was trying to build up her strength, Helen was often on her own.

  My husband was the first theoretical physicist to be appointed to the new University of Gujarat, and he was, in consequence, a very busy man. I must say that I often had a quiet cry, as I tried, alone, to deal with circumstances which I had never met before, like two huge goats which walked in through the front door – and refused to go out! A shepherd kindly got them out for me, eventually.

  The practicalities of her new life in India could easily have overwhelmed Helen but she was used to having little, overcoming hardship and being resourceful. She persevered and the reward was the people she encountered, the friendships she forged and the ever-deepening bond with her husband.

  For the first year in India she did not meet Avadh’s mother because of the Hindu period of mourning. Perhaps she still felt nervous at the thought of a visit from her new mother-in-law but at least by the time it took place she’d had some time to learn Indian customs.

  My mother-in-law, kind and willing, could not come to me, because my father-in-law died within a few weeks of our marriage. She was, by strong custom, confined to the family home or garden for one year of mourning. By the time she was free to visit, I had learned, at least, to cook, speak some mixed Gujarati and Hindi and put on a sari the right way round! We got on very well indeed, thank heavens.

  Her attitude about religion amused me greatly. She said one day, ‘Religion is for men – women don’t have time.’ I asked her about her beliefs and she said, ‘I believe what is, Is.’ Which if you meditate upon it, is quite profound – for a little village lady who could not read or write.

  Helen knew that Kashi had remained at the Bhatia family home in Bulandshahr, and was raising Vijay between there and his maternal grandparents’ home in Kashmir. Avadh sent money every month for her and Vijay and relations between them became amicable. Not long after Avadh died and immediately after my son, Stephen, was born in 1985, Kashi wrote a most gracious letter to Helen. She said: ‘Avadh was a great learned person and you are a great writer, both were a perfect match, and were made for each other. My dear Avadh be always famous and be in the heart of everyone till sun and moon shines.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  A great, devout and wonderfully tolerant band of wonderful women – I was proud to know them.

  None of the letters my mother wrote from India has survived, but in later life she gave several speeches about the time she spent there. Somewhat surprisingly, one of the most extensive was a speech in 1978 to high-school students in the small city of Grande Prairie, Alberta, 460 kilometers north-west of Edmonton. This and a couple of other talks she gave offer very colourful descriptions of Indian society in the period so I have quoted from them at length in this chapter.

  Indians are a very, very tolerant people, and they had great experience of English people, because the English ruled them for 200 years. They were invariably very kind to me, rich and poor alike. And they forgave me the inevitable social blunders that I made.

  But I learned, and my moral values are based on Indian attitudes. Everybody loves money, but the Indians do not put it first in importance. First come religious beliefs and, second, devotion to family, then hospitality.

  Life was always interesting in India, because one interacted closely with people, with neighbours, those that serve you and those that you had to respect and serve. To my door came beggars, the umbrella man, the sweeper who cleaned the lavatory and took away the garbage; the milkman with his cow, the vegetable vendor, the cloth merchant, strolling players; [distant] relations arrived to camp out on the veranda; people from all over India who had come to work at the University – the latter caused me quite a lot of problems, because each one seemed to speak a different language!

  The local people, Gujaratis, are famous for their beauty and, in those days wore most attractive costumes. The women wore red skirts and blouses with a veil. The men wore raspberry red turbans, tight, short, frilled jackets and dhotis – a dhoti is a long loincloth. When they were going to town, both sexes wore heavy leather shoes with pointed, turned up toes, trimmed with brass; otherwise, they went barefoot. The middle classes wore plain white and were Jains by religion.

  As I learned Hindi and Gujarati, and came to understand the manners and customs, I was very happy there.

  Helen’s position as an outsider, combined with her fascination for the people around her, enabled her to interact with ordinary locals in a
unique way.

  Because I had no caste, I was very willing to give water to any passersby, most of whom were very low caste or actually untouchables. I did not feel that they would pollute me or my water jugs, which is what my higher-caste neighbours would feel if they gave water to the travellers.

  The result was that I had more loving friends in that isolated spot than I have ever had since. It was wonderful. Lots of jokes at the expense of the highcaste members of the university staff! And lots of little gifts of fresh vegetables from the travellers’ farms. I learned to really love camels, which are so badly treated but seemed quite gentle once they got to know me.

  In a speech to an Edmonton audience about women in India, Helen paid tribute to the village women she met, who made a very strong impression on her.

  When the rains were good, the farmers managed to raise good crops of millet, wheat and vegetables to feed themselves and the huge mill town of Ahmedabad. They were often helped in the fields by their women folk.

  I think that the women of that district were the most beautiful I have ever seen. They looked as if they had stepped out of some ancient Persian painting. I used to look forward to their passing my home on their way to market with milk, vegetables, and kitchen tools. They would sometimes stop and talk to me.

  They wear a very full, dark red skirt – the more material in it, the better off the family – and with it a backless, multi-coloured blouse with sleeves, which is tied by a thread around neck and waist. On their heads they wore a veil of thin red cloth and their holiday veils were usually exquisitely embroidered with mirror embroidery, which I have not seen anywhere else. Tiny pieces of mirror are held by embroidery in a large pattern and they look very attractive indeed dancing in the sunlight.

  To enable them to carry their brass jars of milk etc. safely, they plaited a little crown out of rope, which they put on their heads. Into this the rounded bottom of the largest jar was fitted, on top of that a smaller one and again on top of that a smaller one still – and on the very top were put her shoes, to preserve them until she got to town. The shoes were heavy leather embossed with brass rings and turned up at the toes.

  To lift this heavy load on to her head without spilling any of the milk or grain was an art, and I always found it incredible that such delicate, princess-like women could do it. They had, however, small rippling muscles, perfectly coordinated and even when with a small child still seemed to be able to do it effortlessly.

  They always sang as they walked along, perhaps six of them together and they laughed and joked without an atom of shyness, though they were very modest.

  The time of harvest was a wonderful time of little parties and of weddings. I was amused one night to see the men and women harvesting together, cutting the millet with sickles under the light of arc lamps. While we were there, there had been no proper harvests for three years and every single ear of grain was precious. And still the women sang as they worked. Even the oldest crone who came to beg a few annas [1/16 of a rupee] from me each week seemed to be able to make some wisecrack or quote some piece of country wisdom to show that things might be worse.

  The village women were curious why the women in the university accommodation had so few babies while they themselves constantly had new arrivals. Since the methods used by the university women were far too expensive for villagers, Helen explained in her rudimentary Gujarati the art of timing and the importance of traditional ways of limiting a family – such as going to stay with their mothers during the part of the month when they were likely to become pregnant.

  It seems obvious to me that my mother’s language skills developed to be much more proficient than she admits, because to understand humour and folk sayings in another language takes considerable fluency. I think her natural friendliness was also an asset: she was determined to make friends in this new and, in many ways strange, land.

  I talked with village women, holy men, priests, shepherds, camel drivers, shopkeepers, beggars. I was called the Memsahib with the book, because I had always to carry a dictionary. I had no one to teach me Gujarati: my husband’s language was Hindi. India is a very talkative country. My mind expanded.

  Just as thousands of other visitors and invaders have been, I was absorbed into the Indian mosaic. When I walk down an English street, and see the tired, sad faces approaching me, I think of the Red Gate in Ahmedabad or the Colaba in Bombay and people surging by me, laughing, talking, arguing, quarrelling – alive.

  As well as village people and travellers, Helen made friends with Avadh’s university colleagues. In the late 1990s, she wrote about some of her memories for the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the establishment of the Physics Research Laboratory where Avadh worked.

  Professor Bhatia was encouraged to come to Ahmedabad by his friend, Dr Vikram Sarabhai, himself a Cosmic Ray specialist. Dr Sarabhai was the son of a great Ahmedabad family with huge business interests, so his life was, of a necessity, split between science and commerce. He and his family were extremely kind to us while we were in Ahmedabad.

  Before Helen came, Avadh had felt snubbed when he was not invited by Dr Sarabhai to attend a function with a visiting professor, but after Helen arrived, they were invited by the Sarabhais a number of times. Coincidentally, in the 1990s, while on a tour of India, Helen found herself in the Sarabhai family mansion, which had by then been converted into a textile museum. It brought back fond memories of playing pat-a-cake with Professor Sarabhai’s little boy.

  When we arrived, the Laboratory was in the charge of Dr Ramanathan, a wonderfully gentle soul. He and his wife showered kindnesses upon us which were particularly appreciated by the Professor’s English, casteless wife [Helen], who did understand the problems she presented to such households [as a foreigner, lacking a proper caste, and therefore a proper place in the social order]. Later on, we were joined by Dr Venketesen [Venket] and his new wife, Bharati, both of whom worked in Cosmic Rays. They had to stay in a barracks of a students’ residence, because, as with us, permanent accommodation had not yet been built.

  There was similar confusion and disorganization surrounding the facilities at the laboratory, which was on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, with no local bazaar to serve it, but Helen soon discovered who to ask if there was a problem.

  One of the most useful people in the laboratory was not a scientist. He was an elderly Brahmin who lived in the woodshed. His name was Jokha Pandey. He was the Commissionaire in charge of the watchmen, and he was the person who was consulted by the entire staff on how to get ration books, seats in trains, get paraffin for pressure stoves, move furniture, etc. He knew everything about the city and everybody in it. When he was off duty, he would recite the scriptures to anyone who invited him. He was so capable that I doubt whether the staff could have survived without him. We certainly could not have done. Dr Bhatia was from United Provinces, and he did not know much about local Gujarati affairs, and, for myself, as a foreigner floundering in a totally alien environment, he was wise grandfather, friend and mentor, who saved me from many a social faux pas.

  In 1950 Helen attended the ceremony at which the foundation stone of the permanent laboratory was laid by Sardar Patel, a very prominent leader in the Anti-British movement, who after independence became Deputy Prime Minister. He died of heart failure in December 1950. She wrote:

  I think it was Sardar Patel who came to lay it. Later, I heard him give a public address. I could not, at that time, understand all he said because he spoke in Gujarati, but I remember being enormously impressed at how this tiny crumpled autumn leaf of a man could hold an audience so brilliantly. Within a year, I was, with a million others, in Bombay to weep at his funeral. Truly, Gujarat has produced some amazing men and women.

  My father was already fairly well known for his work in theoretical nuclear physics and in solid state physics when he arrived at the laboratory at the age of twenty-eight. He loved his subject, although he was unhappy about the military applications of nuclear physics. For this reason, h
e steered his research towards other fields such as the properties of matter, in particular liquid metals, in which he became very well known. It was a struggle for him to set up a research and teaching department, with adequate facilities for students. When he left Ahmedabad in 1952, he was still fighting for the funds to subscribe to appropriate journals of physics to help the staff keep up with modern developments.

  *

  In coming to India, my mother committed herself emotionally and intellectually to Avadh but also to India and whatever it brought. Her experience there became fundamental to her being.

  On an intimate level she found deep, true and lasting love with an Indian man. While Avadh worried, in some of his letters, about the challenges of a relationship spanning a cultural divide, Helen’s approach was to fling herself wholeheartedly into Indian life and to become as Indian as she possibly could.

  Her adoption of Hinduism was genuine. While Helen was not outwardly religious or spiritual, she did seek solace, acceptance and understanding in Hindu philosophy for the rest of her life. At the same time, she did not lose her appreciation for the beauty and goodness of the Church of England.

  When I was growing up, she often described to me the near-desert scenes outside the Ahmedabad flat and the many different types of people she met. Her experience as a social worker, as well as her personal experience of poverty, gave her an empathy with the rural and urban poor in India. She had been brought up in villages and small towns, so could appreciate and begin to understand the rural lifestyles around her. In particular, her admiration for the village women was always evident.

  At the same time, her early exposure to the upper-middle-class circle of her parents’ friends, together with her experience in business, would have amply prepared her for socializing with Dr Sarabhai and his wealthy family.

  Despite the language barrier, she had a strong and deep respect for everyone she met in India, especially the ordinary people she encountered in her day-to-day life.