by M Krishnan
It is true that some Feringhees did assume, within their limited territories, airs more properly left to God, but many of them loved that bit of the country where they lived, and spent much of their spare time (and, one fears, much of their official time as well) exploring it. But for the Feringhee, there would have been no rich lore of natural history in India. And there would have been no Ooty.
Nor is this all. They have left behind a wonderfully varied and valuable heritage of their own culture that deeply influences our lives today. You may disagree, but I think the scientific outlook that is developing in India today is mainly due to the pioneer work (often in the face of real difficulties) of many Feringhees in many parts of India—much more than to the abridgement of horizons in the sphere of modern communication. I am quite willing to confess that my life has been profoundly influenced by Feringhee values—you may, probably, deny this influence in your own, though I am writing this in the language of the Feringhee and you are reading it!
What we will do with this rich heritage from a historically recent past, how much of it we shall assimilate into our culture and what we shall reject, are all questions of raging controversy today. I do not know the answers to those questions—I doubt if anyone really does. But I do think we would be very foolish to pass by things of solid value to which we can so easily help ourselves today.
1959
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* Not reproduced here.
63
A Letter to the Editor
When I was young, I had one sure test for incipient senility. When people started writing in to the correspondence columns of newspapers, they had left mental youth, and even middle age, well behind.
The way I argued it, such letters showed lack of faith in one’s prowess. A strong man fights his fights decently and in private. With maturity he may bring a certain cunning into the fight to supplement valour, but when he starts making public appeals it is plain squealing, a confession that he can no longer look after himself and has degenerated into a querulous complainant. Furthermore, the fact that he has time for such correspondence (let us take it one letter in ten gets published) shows that he has reached the age of superannuation.
Later, I could see that this argument was somewhat immature, for those who write to the editor are not complaining of injustice to themselves as a rule, but fighting an issue on principle. ‘Pro Bono Publico’, ‘Vox Populi’, ‘Fairplay’ and ‘A Retired Headmaster’ have nothing to gain by public ventilation of grievances—even ‘One Affected’ and ‘Bare Justice’ make no attempt at unmanly disguise of their personal implication, and they are fighting for the clan really, not cadging sympathy for themselves.
It is only recently that I realized that these selfless people are, in fact, the pillars of our democracy. They risk brawls in public in the interests of equity, and I think their letters, far from disclosing senility, prove their virile community spirit and mature daring. It is only recently that I have taken to writing such letters.
And, believe me, it is a losing battle. You see the flagrant injustice in something public, say, in a university examination paper, and sit down purposefully to work out pros and cons. This analysis is quite necessary in the interests of logic and length. Otherwise your letter will be rejected because it seems biased and is much too long, or, worse still, be relegated to the Points from Letters column. Of course it is hardly possible to compress arguments on an issue like this into the compass of a brief letter, but it is a question of compression or nothing.
So your arguments are reduced to main points, ignoring all subtleties, and you write them down concisely. Your preliminary draft covers two closely typed foolscap pages, in spite of its stark fundamentality. By cutting out adjectives, clubbing sentences together and omitting a phrase here and a whole clause there, you reach one page. Then you see that you must give up some of your arguments, for the utmost the editor will suffer is half a page. However, this does not dishearten you—surely the reader can be trusted to read between the lines and think up subsidiary points for himself; no need to state everything so fully.
It is when you have succeeded in trimming your letter of all frills and in reaching the stipulated length that you begin to see that it is all cons and no pros, and will surely give the editor the impression of bias and inability to see the point of view of the question-setter. Only by further sacrifice of cherished arguments, and devoting one whole sentence to your apprehension of pros, can you give yourself any chance of publication. At this stage you give up the idea of a letter to the editor. Two hours later your final draft is on its way to him.
In the morning you are surprised to find your effort at the foot of the correspondence column, below the letters of three tedious correspondents who have much to say on nothing. The sentence you fancied especially in your letter has been omitted wholesale by an editor who has, evidently, no feeling for the niceties of prose. But you console yourself with the thought that probably some raw, subadult subeditor was responsible for this.
Only next morning do you come to know what you have let yourself in for. An egocentric nincompoop has written at length, casting aspersions on your motive in writing to the paper, and justifying the question-setter in tortured sentences distinguished only by pompous vacuity. For some reason that is quite beyond you (pull in editorial circles?) this tepid fool has been given pride of place, and his letter, in larger print than the rest, heads the column. It is clear that you must reply at once, mincing no words, and exposing this cantankerous nonentity unmistakably.
The trouble is that while you are willing to annihilate him, you do not know how. He has sidestepped your arguments and brought in wholly irrelevant considerations that the editor has passed somehow. Moreover you cannot say what you think of him frankly, for the editor will not permit suspicions about a correspondent’s lineage or even plain statements about his depravity of mind and morals. However, by the use of sarcasm (a weapon you had always despised) and mock agreement with the adversary’s views you succeed in concocting a suitable reply, which you despatch post-haste to the editor. Only while reading the carbon copy, later, do you notice that you have made two rather silly spelling mistakes.
Next morning you find your letter again at the foot of the column and in small print. The editor has cut out the sarcastic bits and toned down the mockery in your agreement till it seems sincere and almost apologetic. Nor is this all. Your old friend, Tuljayram, has rushed in loyally to your rescue with a letter published just above yours. At college debates people worked hard to lure Tuljayram into the opposition, for his flair for losing arguments was unbounded. You note that he has lost none of his old skill.
In a joint reply to both Tuljayram and you, published in the next issue, the contemptible adversary has used means to which you had not imagined anyone would descend. The first line of the correspondence column begins with the words that Tuljayram and you have ‘rushed in where angels fear to tread’ and the rest of the letter is similarly inspired by insulting innuendo. There is no point in continuing the correspondence when the editor is prepared to publish such stuff from the opposition. Moreover, at the end of his letter there is a brief editorial note that says, ‘Correspondence on this subject is closed.’
Yes, it is a mug’s game all right, writing letters to the editor. Sometimes I wonder why I play it.
1955
64
A Suggestion to Government
Apeon employed in the Bihar Legislative Assembly who owns forty-five bighas of land and an elephant which he rode to his office one day claims that his job is a labour of love for him. (Report).
The Under Secretary owns a car
(An asthmatic old crock with its own will),
A flat, a dog, six textile shares (at par)—
But of elephants; nil.
The Secretary has a bigger car,
A wife, four daughters and a coffee mill,
A solar cooker and a Chowkidar—
But, of elephants: nil.
&
nbsp; The Minister for Transport rides a bus,
When of his limousine he’s had his fill—
In pomp and state how far removed from us!
But—no elephant, still.
Neither bus rides, nor photographs displaying
One digging earth and sweating like a lascar,
Nor badge-decked limousines, can be as paying
As just one healthy tusker!
What can convince the public of one’s zeal,
One’s zest for work for its own sake, and firm
Resolve to serve the Governmental weal,
So like the pachyderm?
What can affirm more massively the word
Of those who say they do not work for bread,
Than, just outside their offices, a herd
Tethered with tape of red?
Away with limousine and jeep and chariot,
Prescribed attire and regulations tight!
Present each worker in the Secretariat
A jumbo, coloured white!
1954
65
Tests in Far Places
Recently I read a newspaper report that said Jack Hobbs thought Saturday afternoon games on the village green more exhilarating and worthwhile than county cricket. It was good to know that another well-known cricketer held the same opinion as I, though of the game elsewhere. I have always thought few things more dreary and uneventful than the spectacle of Representative Indian Cricket at the crease—laborious, elderly, apprehensive, covetous, without that momentous incidence of fate and fortune that makes real cricket, dull even in death. But of course we have true, red-blooded cricket here, not at the Brabourne Stadium but in far places: only, you never hear of it, and very few (except some of those playing) watch it even. You watch and hear and read Representative Cricket all the time. It is the old, old story of vested interests suppressing authentic talent.
It is to tell you about real, rural cricket that I write this fulllength account of our match with the Dam Site XI. Compare it to a Test (there is one in progress as I write), and you will have some idea of the relative merits of the two. Even in the preparatory stage we had to face problems unknown to Representative Cricket. There were the problems of Transport and Pads, and then the riddle of the schoolmasters. Anyone can captain an Indian Test XI and almost everyone has done it, but the captaincy of a team like ours calls for considerable finesse, tact and realism, besides a profound knowledge of the game. The thing I had to decide (yes, I skipper our team) was how to get the school bus (the only vehicle available—the Dam Site was twenty miles away) without being overburdened with schoolmasters. The conditions of loan, as stipulated by the spokesman of the school (strangely enough this was not the Games Master, but the History Assistant), were that we should supply petrol and include six schoolmasters in the team. Finally, I compromised at two masters and two boys from the school, explaining that we could not possibly accommodate more than four, and it was such a nice gesture, didn’t he think, to give the boys a chance—it is my experience that schoolboys, placed strategically in the outfield, can do much to repair the lapses of their mentors. The question of pads was less easily solved. The letter from the DS XI said they had five new balls and that we needn’t bring one, that they could spare us a bat or two if needed, but would we please bring pads in plenty as they had only an illassorted pair? Well, we had three pads, all right-legged. One should be realistic in deciding such problems. We took all three.
We reached the Dam Site tired, dispirited and irritable. The trip over twenty miles of bumpy ghat-road had been an ordeal, aggravated by the insistence of the History Assistant in telling us all about the historical associations of the passing scenery—something about the packed, long seats of the bus seemed to remind him of his native classroom. He was still in the Vijayanagar Period when we got to the Site. I had planned to debus some distance from the ground, at a hotel, and treat the team to hot coffee and a brisk walk to help it arrive at the Present—but the Construction Engineer was waiting for us on the road, and took immediate command. He had made this cricket field and wanted us to know just how he had done it. I must say we were disappointed when we did get to the field—we had imagined all this lavish use of bulldozers, tractors, theodolites and steamrollers would have produced something better than the uneven, baked brown waste before us.
We inspected the pitch at once. This is of vital importance; it establishes one’s status as a cricketer, and the Lawyer and the Doctor (our opening batsmen) and I always insisted on acquainting ourselves with every dent and bump on the pitch before play. An olive-brown mat covered the pitch and hid it completely—we were sure there were hollows beneath its taut, flat stretch, in places known to the home side. We could hardly ask them to remove the much-nailed-down matting and let us have a look at the parched earth underneath, but this was unnecessary. I know a way of putting the other side in first and we could do this, if we wished to, and locate the hollows by close observation, while they batted. As we returned to the galvanized-iron shed that served as pavilion, the Doctor nudged me and pointed furtively to the steps beyond. A great hulking figure was sprawled on them, smoking a lonely cigarette, and at its feet lay five new balls, in a semicircle. I had never seen such overdeveloped shoulders and arms on anyone. ‘Fast bowler,’ whispered the Doctor in my ear, and as I watched, the figure bent down, picked a bent nail from the ground, the kind of nail used for pegging down the mat, and straightened it casually between its fingers. That settled it: there could be no question of our facing this man on a pitch with secret hollows.
At the pavilion we were introduced to the DS XI. There was the expert in underwater engineering, the Engineer in charge of Bridges, Loco-Engineer, Roadways, Electricity, ten engineers of various sorts. Then there was their captain who was no engineer but the local grocer. He reminded me irresistibly, then and many times during the match, of several well-known Indian Test players, simultaneously. He spoke in soft tones and held his arms behind him. He didn’t like cricket. He was good at tennis, but here there were no tennis courts. He liked tennis balls: they were not so hard. As he spun the coin for the toss, I made a loud, inarticulate sound in my throat; then I clapped him on the shoulder, and announced we would put them in. There were no protests.
The score at lunch is what counts in an One-day Test, and at lunch the position was terrible. They had made 53 for 3, and Roadways and the Fast Bowler were together, going strong. Electricity, who opened their innings with the Fast Bowler, had gone early, short-circuited by treading on his wicket, and Bridges had fallen to a catch by one of the schoolboys. Construction had been run out, and when Roadways came in the chalk-marked scoreboard had read ‘15’. And now it was 53! The engineer had contributed little to this handsome total, but Vulcan was scoring steadily. He was patient with an inexorable patience, and played each ball with the middle of his little bat, ever so gently. Never once did he hit at the ball, but the mere repercussion from such massive impact sent the ball flying for twos and fours, and there seemed to be no way of getting him out. After lunch I held a confab with the Lawyer (who kept wicket for us) but he was unusually without suggestions. We had discovered no hollow places under the mat so far, and none of our bowlers seemed keen on bowling any more.
Finally I tossed the ball to the schoolboy who had held the catch, half in desperation and half in reaction to the urgent hints of the History Assistant that he (the historian) might be given a try. This move produced startling results. From the first ball it was obvious that the scholar would be hard to play. He sent down the same innocuous stuff that our stock bowlers did, but his run to the wicket and delivery were disconcerting in the extreme. He took a corkscrew run to the bowling crease and arrived there with a jump, both feet in the air and interwined, both arms also in the air and interwined. Taken aback by this grotesque display, the batsmen were completely deceived by the impossibly projected ball. He beat both batsmen repeatedly but with no luck, for he bowled on the leg-side edge of the mat and was consis
tent in his direction. Finally, in response to the Lawyer’s frantic waves to the right, he sent down a ball of the offside edge of the mat, and surprised by this Roadways jabbed at the ball and pulled it into his wicket. Encouraged by this our new-found star bagged two more quick wickets, both engineers dragging the ball into their wickets from the offside edge of the mat. The scoreboard now read 70 for 6, which was not so bad, considering all things (Wides—13). But at this stage Vulcan discovered the answer to our tactics.
He had been brooding heavily for some time, and he walked down the wicket and informed the engineer at the other end, who was nicely set for pulling the ball into his stumps, that all they had to do was to leave the ball alone and not play at it. I was astonished at this display of ponderous thought, and I did not like it. For naturally this did for our young hope: it was as much as he could do, with that tortured action of his, to keep the ball on the matting, and he seemed to be suffering from one of those strong aversions to the stump area which afflicts all bowlers at times. The score crept up steadily at the other end (and by wides) and at 80, they were still 6 wickets down. Things were looking gloomy again, and I was toying with the idea of calling on the other schoolboy, when one of these things happened that make cricket the glorious game it is. Vulcan had allowed another ball from our scholar to go past, and the Lawyer, gathering it, appealed suddenly and loudly. The umpire at the bowler’s end wanted to know what he was appealing for, but knowing that the burden of proof lies on him who sets up a chain, our wicketkeeper would not commit himself. ‘How’s that?’ he repeated. ‘Not out,’ said the umpire firmly, and almost on the point of returning the ball to the bowler, the Lawyer turned round and filed a Second Appeal, to the umpire at square leg. ‘How’s that?’ he asked again. Up went the umpire’s finger, and the Lawyer turned in triumph to Vulcan: ‘You’re out,’ he announced. This brought a chorus of protests from the batsmen and Umpire 1, but the Lawyer just refused to take cognizance. He pointed out that the jurisdiction of both umpires was concurrent, co-equal and independent and that a decision by either was binding and valid. At this point Vulcan stumped off to the pavilion, unable to stem the flow of legal argument, and thereafter we had no trouble. They were all out for 96, with three hours left for play.
