By: Ganesh Saili
‘That boy – the one in the blue jacket – he’s a real haramzada!’ yelled Dean Spread, the ‘Englishman-kabari’ who was just another waif of the Empire – used, discarded, abandoned and left behind. He was doing the rounds of collecting old newspapers and spent beer bottles in Bala Hisar.
‘He can’t be!’ calmly replied Sudhakar Misra, my friend. ‘That’s my son, Anu.’
As was Misraji’s wont, he poured the milk of human kindness to restore peace by telling the boys to back off. They did, and soon after, became friends. Dean came up from Dehradun’s Dalanwala, where his parents had had their home pre-partition. Of course, the property had changed many hands, it had been bought and sold several times. None of the owners had the heart to throw out the old, greying man. Abandoned, derelict, with the grounds a riot of overgrown weeds that none ventured near in the dark, until the day after he passed away and was buried in the family plot of the Chandranagar Cemetery.
Yet no heritage was denied to the one blessed with a double inheritance, which is perhaps best exemplified in author Ruskin Bond; perhaps it’s his body language if you call it that – one cannot get more Indian than him. Only occasionally, after ‘freedom at midnight’ once or twice on East Canal Road near his grandfather’s house was he catcalled a ‘lal bandar.’
‘Of course, I moved past it!‘ And he continued to write till he had become a household name.
Pic courtesy: Author’s Collection
I accompanied him to the MKP Girls College, Dehradun when the vice-chancellor of Garhwal University, Mrs Dobhal chided him for being unable to speak fluently in Hindi even after all these years.
‘Your husband taught me Hindi in BCS, Shimla!’ he retorted, leaving her gob-smacked.
True that! The legendary litterateur Mohan Rakesh had taught him Hindi in the early years in Shimla.
Then there was my old friend, Mr Lord, who turned his back on England after being treated badly. He used to say: ‘The other members of my family were white and adjusted to a new life. But you were in trouble if you happened to be a darkie or a khaki like me. I upped and left.’
In the evening of his life, he was cared for by the kind nuns of St Clare’s Convent near St Emilian’s Church.
Droves of Anglo-Indians left our shores to find a better life in Australia, like the Hyratts, who had a printing press at the mouth of Mullingar, just outside our gate, which later morphed into Bindal Printers (till it became defunct.)
‘Hmmph! Hanif Mohammed Hyaat was his real name,’ my childhood friend Tata (or Anmol Berry) whispered to me in Sydney where he has settled, adding: ‘They changed that to H. M. Hyratt!’
courtesy: Ruskin Bond’s family album
On Sundays, you would have found Papa Hyratt playing the accordion (that apart, the only other time I saw an accordion was in the film Sangam, with actor Raj Kapoor serenading Vyjyanthimala) at St. Paul’s Church, with his eldest son, Richard, playing the whistling saw. In the 1960s, the whole family upped and left for a better life Down Under, where their seeds continue to be scattered far and wide.
Such was the charged atmosphere of the days after our freedom struggle, that even the legendary naturalist and shikari after whom the national park is named, was not spared. Jim Corbett was refused membership in a well-known Nainital Club. Ironically, the English rulers took the opposite view – they did not find him British enough!
Probably they resented the man’s sympathy, compassion and praise for the grit and determination of the ordinary Indian. It has been said that in all but blood, the Corbetts were Indians, identifying themselves with the local population of Kumaon. They, in return, affectionately called him ‘Carpet Saab’.
A minuscule minority faulted Corbett’s attempts to go after the poachers and expand the park. The fact is his parents, both of them, were relics of the storm of 1857.
Sadly, Corbett left India for Kenya at the very end of his life, even though he was a second-generation India-born.
Colour had exacted its price again!
Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. Author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition worldwide.
