ON JUDGEMENT

A problem with English is that in some important matters its vocabulary is inadequate.
God loves me and I love God are not the same use of ‘love’ as
I love ice-cream.
Today a very popular excuse for not doing the Christian thing from want of courage is to come up with the first part of a verse
from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 7
Do not judge and you will not be judged;

but leaving out the rest

because the judgements you give [not make] are the judgements you will get and the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given. (1-2)

The context of the bandied about truncated quotation makes it clear that one is not to ‘sit in judgement’ or condemn hypocritically, or self-righteously. BUT Scripture constantly urges the believer to exercise judgement, meaning discernment, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enables the believer to evaluate, and to discern between good people and bad people, good things and bad things.
A spiritual man, on the other hand, is able to judge the value of everything, and his own value is not to be judged by other men. (1 Corinthians, 2:15)

Discernment is what is required from a Christian, not criticism. And after discernment, for which praise God, comes action, which almost invariably requires another gift of the Holy Spirit, fortitude. After that come yet more gifts: piety and fear of the Lord, two which hardly anyone comprehends because hardly anyone reads the new Catholic Catechism – already some decades old – or can be bothered with such ‘extras’ as the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Why not just let everyone do what he or she likes and all have a merry feast?
Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls in front of pigs, or they may trample them and then turn on you and tear you to pieces. (Matt. 7:6)

Jesus was not afraid to say to some of those he cured, “Go, and sin no more.” Another much bandied about phrase is ‘unconditional love’. God is said to love unconditionally, and all will be forgiven, all will be made welcome. When put to the test of reasoned argument and the Gospel accounts of what Jesus said, this maxim needs to be very carefully defined. Else, we should expect to find Stalin, Hitler and their like playing harps in heaven. It makes nonsense of the deposit of faith that we have received – or should have received – from the earliest years of our lives.

Enter by the narrow gate, since the road that leads to perdition is wide and spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matt. 7:13-14)
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. (25)

Not Peace but a Sword

from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 10
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. (34)
Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. (38)

Laissez faire Christianity is Christendom’s betrayal of Jesus Christ, on account of which the world is as it is 2000 years and more after the Nativity. Of what use to celebrate Christmas, and cover up the Crucified One with decorations? The pilgrim way is a hard road, full of obstacles, and full of tempting side paths which seem to promise an easier way around those obstacles. How full of convincing arguments is the Father of Lies. “Don’t be ‘judgmental’.” “Everyone does it.” “Be real, be practical.”

You will be hated by all men on account of my name; but the man who stands firm to the end will be saved. (22)

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell. (28)

ROOTS – 7

An excellent custom obtained at the Sachivalaya (Secretariat) in Ahmedabad, after the state of Gujarat was formed in May 1960. Every Friday evening, at a fixed hour, the officers gathered to take tea, with the Chief Secretary presiding. It was an informal meeting, at which someone might relate a funny or a strange experience he had had in the course of that week’s official work. From one of these Secretaries’ teas, her father brought home an account heard from a junior colleague who, as it happened, lived with his family in the flat (at the Government Quarters) above theirs, and who, with his wife and children, had become good family friends. This story is a retelling of his account.

TALE OF A TUMBLER

Babubhai was a clerk in the PWD.  During breaks he partook of tea and gossip; gossip from his cronies, tea out of a glass tumbler.  It was not an unusual specimen; one would not have thought it likely that this tumbler’s history would be enshrined in a government’s archives, but appearances they say. . .  Babubhai had inherited it from his predecessor.  He intended passing it on likewise.

However, there’s many a slip ‘twixt the tumbler and the lip.  It slipped out of Babubhai’s grasp and took its last tumble.  Babubhai thought over his predicament.  The tumbler had come to him along with a well-furnished desk, almirah, waste-paper basket and clay water pot, on his promotion to the rank of UDC (Upper Division Clerk).  Ergo, it was government property.

Babubhai put up an indent for a glass tumbler.  That deceptively simple request travelled through the department like the Flying Dutchman, to and fro.  It acquired adjuncts and soon reposed in a burgeoning file.  Keener intelligences than the average person’s, worked on it and came up with queries of surpassing shrewdness.

To begin with, who had sanctioned the original purchase, and when?  This proved, after much investigation, to be as hard to trace as direct descent from Adam.  A query about the tumbler’s original cost met with a similar response – in due course.  Then arose the question, had it outlived its useful life.  Which in turn brought up the problem of how one could establish the length of ‘useful life’ in the case of a glass tumbler.  This byway was extensively explored and abandoned reluctantly when progress became impossible.

Someone then inquired how the tumbler came to need replacing.  Much paper-work later, came the inevitable question: how had Babubhai contrived to drink during the year and odd months since the aforesaid tumbler was broken?  Babubhai, now justifiably incensed, replied that he used improvised paper cups.  Back came the query, what paper did he use?  It was a promising line of inquiry, shedding light on the subject of what constitutes ‘government paper’: used envelopes, from non-government sources were adjudged not ‘government paper’.

Meanwhile, one ministry fell and another took over, resulting in a change of Secretary for Public Works etc.  The file came his way when the point was reached of asking Babubhai to show cause why the cost of the tumbler should not be recovered from him.  The Secretary carried the file home on a long weekend.

Come Monday morning, he asked some questions: what was the current price of a glass tumbler; what was the estimated cost (to the taxpayer) of paper and man hours expended on this exercise; could he write finis to the saga if he paid for the tumbler himself?  After this, sanction came rapidly for the purchase of a five-anna glass tumbler whose actual cost by then, at a moderate estimate, amounted to Rs 500.

As was said at the outset, Babubhai was a clerk in the Public Waste Department.

ROOTS – 6

It needs no Magus to discern that a tangible possession is more readily acquired by inheritance than an intangible quality, she thought, and passed in review a parade of unworthy children. Yet a remarkably gifted child might be the offspring of unlikely parents. And, of course, there was the kinship of the spirit, much more reliable and enjoyable than the hazardous kinship of blood, which too often brought forth a venomous toad.

But what was one to make of the fine women and men one would wish to see replicated but never would, because they had no children, or were kept from marrying? There might be a larger pattern invisible to her mortal eye that explained such things, but to her it seemed only another of those melancholy mysteries of human life.

And so, from generalities her mind passed to the particular, from which passage emerged two bright memories of her early years.

Clara Peres, born circa 1912, was eleven years younger than her good friend, Eugenia Alvares of Margão, and twelve years older than her very good friend, Eugenia’s daughter Susana, married to Clara’s ideal human being, Senhõr Fred.

Clara was plain in appearance, but she had much intelligence, a craftsman’s skill, fortitude, willingness to work hard, seemingly unquenchable liveliness, boundless generosity, and a most loving heart. She effaced herself so completely that, of all the many times she came to stay, diligently stitching clothes and embroidering linen for the family, only one photograph accidentally captured her in a corner of the image, her face almost in profile.

Extreme right, seated, Clara Peres, Nadiad, September 1955

Clara could have married. There was once a man who desired that. Her father, who begrudged his three daughters the expenses of marriage, packed her off to her friend Susana in India, with dire warnings. Clara did not consider board and lodging that might be lost through disobedience, but she loved her mother, and never again thought of marriage, she who would have been such a fine wife and mother.

All three Peres daughters were dressmakers and seamstresses. Clara earned a living in Bombay, and from time to time, following the call of her yearning for family love, she came to visit the beloved family wherever FJH was posted in Bombay and Ahmedabad. She was welcomed as visitor or as guest, always cheerful, always kind, a shrewd observer of humanity; willing to lend a sympathetic ear but never betraying a confidence. “Aunty Clara” she remained to the children long after they knew she was no kin to them by blood. Yet she was more nearly, more dearly tied by bonds of love.

The loss of Clara Peres in April 1982 was a severe blow. Her bubbling sense of humour, her girlish laugh, the twinkle in her eye, her warm embrace, the glee with which she took gift upon gift out of her bag, were long remembered after the Shepherd had lifted his sheep in his arms and carried her to his home.

In 1954 her father was posted to Kaira, a district undesirable to his colleagues but welcome to him and to her mother. Almost his first act was to become acquainted with his staff as individuals. That was always so in any office all through his life, and served him well.

One bright-eyed young man caught the Collector’s attention. He had a long, narrow face and a look of alert intelligence.

Natvarlal Brahmbhatt, 1950s

It was a look that did not deceive. Alert, intelligent, and what is invaluable, trustworthy in every way required of a ‘personal assistant (PA) and camp clerk’ - which was the designation of Natvarlal Brahmbhatt.

As “Natubhai” he became known to the Collector’s family, remaining so for the next half century and beyond. After he married, even his shy wife, poor lady, came to be addressed as “Mrs Natubhai”, overwhelmed by the strength of her husband’s personality.

Natubhai came into Bombay Government Service from Cambay State Service and he was promised that his earlier service would count. The promise was broken. There came a GR to state that seniority in Bombay Government Service alone would determine pay scales. This was followed by talk of retrenchment, the latest recruits to be let go first. Natubhai presented a petition to the Collector who had preceded her father. The officer said he could do nothing. Madhavlal Shah, a local politician who would later grow in power, also declined to use his good offices.

A GR is not lightly rescinded, if indeed it ever is, nor easily side-stepped. It was knight-errantry to even try. But FJH was never afraid to try. His previous post had been that of Motor Transport Controller and Director, Government Transport Service, Bombay State, and his Minister was Babubhai Jasbhai Patel of Nadiad, one day to be Chief Minister of Gujarat. FJH had made a crowd of friends in Gujarat, which region he had to visit on duty. Many of them were Congressmen, local leaders, politicians of a quite different stamp from those that followed after. He was certainly on excellent terms with the Minister, as he was with a large number of colleagues in the civil services, ICS and IAS. The Collector of Kaira wrote to persons in Government, with a copy to his Minister, drawing attention to the injustice that Government was dealing out. How the affair was managed she did not find out, hearing this story only after her father’s death, but managed it was. Natubhai was confirmed in his employment, with his former service taken into account.

In April 1956 her father was transferred to Kolhapur to do some trouble-shooting. (This was during a period of turbulence across Bombay State, with two simultaneous agitations, one for Mahagujarat, the other for Samyukta Maharashtra.) Natubhai remained in Kaira. The new Collector of Kolhapur managed a very tricky situation with his usual mix of excellent intelligence work, winning ways with influential local leaders, and brilliant, inspired improvisation at a climactic moment – matter for another tale. Meanwhile turmoil in Ahmedabad had boiled over to bring forth a crisis. Time for the man known to be capable, fearless, tactful, clever (wily, said some), sympathetic to the injured, formidable to those who transgressed the rules which govern a civilised society.

In the third week of October 1956 FJH was informed by telephone of his immediate transfer to Ahmedabad, a State Government Beechcraft flying him next day to Bombay en route to his new post. (Her mother was left to pack up and prepare to move!)

It was evident at once that with a demoralised staff and loyalties under strain – for this was a sort of civil war – the Collector would need an exceptional PA. Natubhai’s transfer was contrived by the resourceful Divisional Commissioner, D. D. Sathe ICS, and he was given lodging in a room at the top of the inconspicuous stairway leading from the Collector’s offices below to the residence above. There he remained for six to eight months until living quarters had been built for him, and for Sathe’s PA, in the grounds of the Commissioner’s small palace.

So continued a long friendship between the Collector, his family, and Natubhai, which endures to this day. Clara Peres and Natvarlal Brahmbhatt - their like is not to be found any more.

GLOSSARY for FJH stories

Bahadur – a great man; a brave man.

chaprassi - office servant; messenger (from chapras - brass buckle worn on belt). See also peon/ pattewala

chit - letter; note

civil list - Warrant or Order of Precedence, also known as the Green, Red or Blue Book

Collector - chief administrator of district, originally collector of revenue (see 'D.O.'). His office had an English department whose head clerk was called an aval karkun; and a vernacular department, whose head clerk was a chitnis. A deputy chitnis served the Collector’s other official duty, that of District Magistrate, and he had to be well up in the Police Act, and all law & order matters. The head of several talukas in a district was a pranth officer unless belonging to the IAS, in which case he was an Assistant Collector.

compound - enclosed area surrounding bungalow and servants' quarters

dacoit - robber, thus 'dacoity' - robbery

dak - post, thus dak-wallah - postman and dak-bungalow - government staging house.

dal/ dhal - lentils

D.O. - District Officer, executive head of district known as Collector, Deputy Commissioner or District Magistrate

dhoti -loose loincloth worn by caste Hindus

dhurri - rough cotton rug

goonda - bad character

GR – Government Resolution

hamal- house servant

hazur/huzoor - sir, honorific (lit. 'the presence')

heaven-born - honorific often used to denote the ICS

hill station - stations above 5,000 feet to which state and central governments transferred in the hot weather

hoshiyar – wary; careful; and by extension shrewdly watchful.

hullaballoo - uproar (from holo-bolo - to make a noise)

khansama - cook

khas-khas tatti - screen made of grass matting and hung round doors in hot weather

kutchery either used for a court or for an administrative office, particularly that of a District Collector; includes treasury.

lathi – heavy bamboo or wooden riot-control sticks.

mali - gardener

Mamlatdar - the officer in executive charge of a taluka, land records keeper of 70 to 80 villages (in the 1950s). There is a sub-treasury in every taluka.

memsahib - lady, from 'madam-sahib'; sometimes shortened to mem

mofussil - up-country; the provinces

naik/ jemadar – the head pattewala, with grander uniform including a turban; Naik for an Assistant Collector, Jemadar for a Collector. His first duty in the morning was to walk ahead of the Collector as the latter made his way from the residential part of the Bungalow to the office: “Saheb, if I don’t go ahead of you, how will anyone know who you are?”).

nilgai - largest Indian antelope; an adult male is thought to look like an ox and so is often called a blue bull

pattewala/ peon - office servant; messenger, (from patta, the sash over the shoulder and across the chest – with a brass buckle worn on a leather belt).

pi dog - mongrel found all over India (abbrev. of pariah)

pukka – proper

PWD - Public Works Department

raj - kingdom, used in twentieth century chiefly to denote British rule in India from 1858 to 1947

sahib/ saheb - sir; European, also affixed to rank, thus 'Collector saheb'

salaam - salutation

sambhur - large Indian deer

satyagraha - civil disobedience on Gandhian principles of non-violence

shabash - well done

shamiana - marquee

shikar - sport (shooting and hunting)

solar topee - heavy pith helmet

Swaraj - Home Rule

tahsildar - local tax collector

taluka - (in South Asia) an administrative district for taxation purposes, typically comprising a number of villages. Each taluka has on an average two or three head clerks (aval karkuns), one each for the office, the treasury, and rounds of village inspection.

tamasha - spectacle

tank - artificial lake

teapoy - small tripod table

verandah - open gallery around bungalow
wallah – man; also as in box-wallah derogatory term for service in a (business) company as opposed to the civil or the armed services. Refers to boxes carried by door-to-door salesmen.

Some of the technical terms in the Administration are as near as I can manage from old hastily pencilled notes made as my father reminisced - when he did reminisce in those last years.....

ROOTS - 5
Natvarlal Brahmbhatt on the extreme left; with Bapalal Thakar on his left, and FJH on Bapalal’s left. Counting votes during the critical 1957 General Election, 28 January 1957. Meanwhile, at the Methodist Mission Hospital in Nadiad, NPH was struggling to be born alive.

The Collector of Ahmedabad received an urgent phone call. The expected birth was difficult and a caesarean was not possible. Which should the surgeon save, mother or child? He was sworn at as FJH was never heard to swear. The latter thought of his two small children and finally said, “Save the mother.” No one knew why he looked so grey and grim as counting continued.

As soon as proceedings were wound up, FJH got into his Dodge along with a pattewala in case of need (even in a crisis he never failed to make provision), and drove like a crazed man for Nadiad. The road with no traffic was through Matar, passing over the Shedhi River by a rackety old bridge. When he got there, sure enough, a portion of the bridge had fallen into the river and someone had laid a plank across the gap. To the pattewala’s horror, Saheb backed the car some distance, then drove at maximum speed so that the car almost flew across the river, the plank splitting with a loud crack and falling into the water below.

Until rendered helpless before dying, FJH never failed to pray the Rosary before he slept. And God never forsook him. He got to keep his wife and to hold his baby daughter in his arms.

When his wife was well enough to go out with him, he took her to Mansukhlal’s, the saree shop where the very rich made their purchases. With an overdraft he bought her three sarees of the latest mode – for a new bride, he said – a light pink French glass nylon encrusted with lace and gold thread; a powder-blue of the same material embroidered with mother-of-pearl and silver sequins; and a royal blue Banaras silk patli-pallav, its pleat section and pallav like panels of gold brocade with elephants and peacocks woven into it in red and green. That was FJH of the tender and faithful heart.

There was also the Collector Saheb.

Bapalal was a Mamlatdar in Ahmedabad District. He was good at his job; an upright man. Off duty he was a well-bred, cultured man whose hobby was photography. It was he who took many of the photographs of the Collector on duty. Bapalal gave copies to his boss, writing on the backs: “With best regards to Saheb Bahadur.”

Bahadur was a title that the Collector of Ahmedabad earned in dramatic fashion, at least three times, but that is matter for another tale.

Saheb Bahadur, and Saheb Hoshiyar, he was to many an awestruck citizen of Ahmedabad. How did he know what conspiracies were hatching?

A slim young man who watched keenly and observed shrewdly could have told them. But Natvarlal Brahmbhatt never did. He told no one.

Natubhai came from a bardic clan who were record-keepers, chroniclers to the rulers of their day. For this they required excellent memories. However, they sang their histories in verse. Not so Natubhai. He made notes of secret meetings, notes to be destroyed when it was time. He typed letters that were never to be archived.

Had he spoken, the legends would not have thrived. The truth was so simple: absolutely first class intelligence gathered from watchers of diverse occupations, including the police. The legends grew around a Saheb who, by night, cycled around Ahmedabad, listening in on conversations, spying who went whither. No, said some, he sat in a corner at Diamond Restaurant and eavesdropped. Since the famous eating-house was owned by a Muslim, the Saheb was kitted out by storytellers with a lungi and a skull-cap for disguise.

[Many years later, when FJH was Home Secretary, there was the case of the bunch of conspirators who were planning a disruptive action that would have meant a catastrophe for Ahmedabad than which only one other kind could be more devastating. One night, they all disappeared none knew where to.

All of them except one. He was known to be a babbler, and a dabbler, too. The only one who could plausibly be blamed for betraying the others. He had not. But it was expedient that he be suspected.

Next morning, in all innocence, he awoke to exactly that, when it was openly said to him that he had betrayed his comrades, all whisked away by policemen before they could make a phone call (no cell phones then!) in an operation most artfully planned and meticulously executed. The terrified man hastened to Police Headquarters. “Arrest me!” he screamed. “Why don’t you arrest me?”

“We have no orders about you,” was the reply from a poker-faced officer. “But you must arrest me now,” the man pleaded. “What for?” he was asked. “If you want to be arrested, go and ask the Home Secretary-sahib” And then he knew. That dangerous fellow, who had once been the Collector (Odysseus lay beyond the man’s ken) had best be avoided. He had reason.]

But during the Mahagujarat agitation there was the case of the undermined street protest.
In political agitations there are the manipulators and the manipulated; there is strategy and there are tactics; there is also timing, which application of mind can interpret and turn back on the aggressor.

There was a sit-down protest, fasting, and blocking busy roads. Old women, young men, all took part. The plan was to sit until the mills had their shift change. As workers came away or went to work, there would be some jostling as they pushed their way through. Weapons would appear out of clothing and be used against the policemen lining the roads, with cries of ”the police are attacking us!”

When policemen carrying lathis are assailed, they tend towards excess in their reaction. Therefore, the highest-ranking officers and the Collector himself moved ceaselessly to and fro keeping a look-out for signs of trouble.

Sun and hunger had begun to try the endurance of the crowd. As pre-concerted, at a moment which the Collector had rightly judged, the signal was passed around and officers sent for tea and samosas from nearby tea-stalls to refresh their men. Policemen are human. Some of them slurped tea loudly and remarked to each other on the tasty samosas.  Some even offered refreshment to the crowd.

It was all too much for one beldame. She got to her feet, groaning, and stumbled off to the nearest tea-stall, ignoring the entreaties and threats of the provocateurs. Before long, large holes had opened up in the packed mass of humanity. By shift change time no one was left.

Sometimes it isn’t necessary to disperse a crowd with violence when a little wit will serve.

The Collector of Ahmedabad on the look-out.

[There is an entry from The Hindu’s Archive at http://www.thehindu.com/archives/from-the-archives-dated-august-3-1966/article8934042.ece that explains my cryptic tale above of the plot that was thwarted. One further detail is imprudent to reveal here.

No longer available online, here is the content:

]Police swoop on leftist leaders in Ahmedabad

Mr. Indulal Yagnik, President of the Mahagujarat Janata Parishad, Mr. Dinkar Mehta, Left Communist Mayor of Ahmedabad and 33 other persons were arrested here [Ahmedabad] early this morning [August 2] under the Preventive Detention Act. Mrs. Nalini Mehta, wife of Mr. Dinkar Mehta, was among those arrested and removed to the Baroda Jail. Police said the detention orders were passed “on specific evidence of a definite conspiracy to cause criminal acts of violence against life and property on August 8 and 15 with a view to creating a breakdown of law and order in Ahmedabad and elsewhere, so that the police might be compelled to use force and ultimately resort to firing.” The conspiracy was part of an all-India programme of causing criminal acts of violence throughout the country, a police spokesman said. He added that a secret meeting had been held here recently for the purpose. The police had unearthed the conspiracy. Mr. Indulal Yagnik and leftist leaders had planned to take out a procession on August 8 in connection with erecting a martyrs’ column at the traffic island in front of the Congress House here. The Police spokesman said the Janata Parishad had also announced a programme of “satyagraha” at petrol pumps of foreign companies oil storage depots and shops dealing in edible oils and such other places on August 15 ostensibly to focus attention on the Swadeshi movement, but in reality to initiate a countrywide programme of agitation sponsored by the Communist Party.

Reflections on All Saints’ Day

What is good has been explained to you, O man,
this is what the Lord asks of you:
only this, to act justly,
to love tenderly
and to walk humbly with your God
~ Micah 6: 6-8

Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble,
everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour,
and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise ...
Then the God of peace will be with you.
~ Philippians 4: 8-9

Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord?
Who shall stand in his holy place?
The man with clean hands and pure heart,
who desires not worthless things.
~ Psalm 23

I love you, Lord, my strength,
my rock, my fortress, my saviour.
My God is the rock where I take refuge,
my shield my mighty help, my stronghold.
The Lord is worthy of praise:
When I call I am saved from my foes.
~ Psalm 17

ROOTS - 4

A pair of funny stories.

When FJH got married, he was Assistant Collector in Dhulia for the District of West Khandesh. A large part of the District was forested, with leopards and tigers surviving the onslaughts of the British Raj. Leopards fancied dogs, and when FJH went on camp, which was much of the time, since village inspection meant living in tents for lack of dak bungalows, he had his dog, Teddy, set on a table and fastened to the tent pole, with a sentry beside him. His wife, Susana, often saw eyes, green in the light of lanterns, staring at her out of the dark.

There were very few Roman Catholics scattered about the district. Not enough for a mission in any one place. Once a month, a priest came to the then tiny town of Manmad and opened up a small two-room building, not even big enough to be called a chapel. He arrived on Saturday evening, cleaned out the ‘chaplet’, slept the night in the minute adjacent room, and early next morning celebrated Mass. Then he packed up the vessels and linen and left for home. His journeys were by State Transport bus.

One early Sunday morning, as FJH and his wife were approaching the place, a bunch of excited people clustered around. From their chatter, and from what the priest afterwards related, this is what emerged. On Saturday afternoon, a tiger who had fed well and was desirous of a nap, found a platform below the tree into which he must have dragged the last of his kill, and stepped on to it. The platform moved forward, but slowly, and the tiger settled himself among a number of gunny bags and other impedimenta, falling fast asleep. The State Transport bus carried on, no one inside any the wiser. But when it stopped at Manmad, the tiger was observed to be snuggled in amid the baggage on the roof. No one dared raise a cry. Evidently the priest got off safely. He could not say what became of the tiger on the bus. Or of the passengers who wanted to retrieve their baggage. Neither could the people who had told their tale. This was a story that vanished into the sunset.....

When FJH went to Ahmedabad in 1956 he found in residence as Divisional Commissioner a jolly, able, intelligent ICS officer, who should not have been attached as fifth wheel to the administration because he was capable of far better things. In fact, he must have been sent there for treading on someone’s toes. After he was recalled to Bombay he proved himself the fine officer he really was.

Now, the Divisional Commissioner resided in a small palace built by Shah Jahan when he was only the Subedar (Governor) of Gujarat. It was on a bank of the Sabarmati. Much further along there was a Hanuman temple on account of which bands of black-faced monkeys went marauding up and down the river-bank, popping into every residence along the way (including the Collector’s Bungalow). This the Commissioner’s offspring resented. One of them used a slingshot and laid low a Goliath in the monkey band. Young David was not seen but the fallen monkey was. Horror!

When the Commissioner was told of it, he hurried out with a couple of his staff. A few people had collected and questions would be asked. To prevent what is called ‘an untoward incident’ the Commissioner immediately declared that the monkey so sadly dead should be cremated with all the honour due to him. He took money out of his wallet and sent the onlookers off to buy sandalwood – no less – and ghee for a proper cremation. When they were gone, he swore a reliable servant to silence and they hastily buried the corpse in the sand. Then he returned to his office.

The bearers of sandalwood and ghee returned to find no monkey. “Ah yes,” said the beaming Commissioner, “isn’t it wonderful! The monkey was not dead, only unconscious. After a while it got up, shook its head, and loped off.” What of the materials for cremation? Oh, those would do as well for a puja. “Why don’t you take them to the Hanuman Temple as a puja offering?”

He was a capable officer, indeed.

ROOTS - 3

The Union Government of India was urging people to “Grow More Food”. As an encouragement to them, a distinction of “Krishi Pandit” was instituted to honour farmers who achieved the highest yield per acre of Paddy, Wheat, and certain other food crops.

One day the Collector of Kaira received telegraphic instructions to send a non-official representative to attend an investiture ceremony of Krishi Pandits at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The date of the ceremony was four days ahead.

Rapidly, the Collector conferred with the Secretary and the Deputy Chairman of his district’s Rural Development Board. They agreed with him that it would be fitting to send a genuine farmer to represent the district. The Collector recalled talking to a sturdy agriculturist during a recent village inspection. He suggested that this farmer be sent to Delhi. Although, or perhaps because, the farmer was of a community generally disprized, the two politicos agreed.

Straightaway, the three drove to the village, persuaded the bewildered farmer to undertake the journey to distant Delhi – he who had never seen a habitation larger than the pilgrim centre of Dakor, some forty kilometres away – got an achkan stitched for him, and procured him footwear. In 48 hours he was put on the mail train to Delhi, accompanied by an Agricultural Officer instructed to escort him to Rashtrapati Bhavan, show him the sights of Delhi, and return him to his village. This speed-of-light activity was a fantastic adventure for all involved: the farmer, the villagers, the officials. 

When the farmer came back, he was a changed man, no longer diffident. After seeing what importance was accorded to farming by the great Panditji himself, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had shaken him by the hand and inquired about his farm and his family, this farmer was more attached than ever to his occupation. [He grew a fragrant rice of which he sent a sack to the Collector.]

The story of the farmer’s adventure came to be told all over the district. It caused other members of his community to feel uplifted. It encouraged all agriculturists. And it earned the district administration goodwill.

These photographs are from the time when her father was Collector of Ahmedabad. In addition to handling the daily threats posed by the Mahagujarat agitation – which makes matter for a fine long tale of daring, Odyssean cunning, integrity and fortitude – he had his village inspections. There was the importance of cleanliness to be stressed; there was a water supply system to be set up so that women need no longer tramp to the well and bicker when there; there were villagers to be honoured for some distinction or other; and then he drove away, but not before accepting a bunch of greenery from a village child!

       ROOTS - 2

He was a modest man. His own daughter did not know of all the things he did or endured until long after his death.

Some things she understood from stray letters preserved, thinking with sadness of what he must have suffered in silence, as she matched them to her own memories of what she remembered hearing and seeing.

Other things she read written by him in a series of anecdotes which he ascribed to an unnamed IAS officer, never indicating that the officer was himself. One story was clinching evidence. She had heard it from a very old friend of the family, a young clerk who had caught the eye of the Collector of Kaira, and was sent for by him, with the pulling of many strings, to work as his Personal Assistant in Ahmedabad during the terrible months of the Mahagujarat agitation and after, because he was as secret as the grave, and was to be entrusted with most grave secrets. The old friend reported a story which for him summarised his idolised boss.

Here it is, in her father’s own words.

“One evening, the Collector, having risen from his desk to quit office for home, saw that there was a villager at the door, pleading with his Personal Assistant for an interview with the Collector. Intrigued by the man’s earnestness, the Collector asked him what he wanted. It transpired that he was a petty shopkeeper who had offered the highest bid at an auction of tax defaulter’s property, held by the Mamlatdar, whose Deputy Collector had, for some reason, withheld approval of the sale of those goods. This had happened several years earlier, since when the unsuccessful bidder had made repeated trips to the taluka office in order to obtain refund of the earnest money (some three hundred rupees) that he had paid into the taluka treasury on his bid being declared the highest. Returning from another fruitless attempt, he had visited the Collectorate on the chance of seeking the Collector’s intervention.

His manner was desperate, and his tale rang true. The Collector felt that immediate action alone would satisfy him.

He bundled the petitioner and his Personal Assistant into his jeep, and drove to the taluka kutchery – fortunately only a few kilometres away. Reaching after sunset, he sent his Personal Assistant to fetch the Mamlatdar and the Treasury Head Clerk from their homes. On their arrival, he had the Kutchery opened and the relevant records produced for examination.

He found that the petitioner’s tale was borne out by the records, and that the taluka officials could show no reason for withholding refund of the earnest money. On the spot, the Collector wrote out a “speaking” order, directing the Mamlatdar to refund the amount to the petitioner, got the Mamlatdar to acknowledge and carry out the order, and dropped the bemused petitioner at the chowk [market square] where he could catch a bus to return to his village.

This incident got to be talked about, even in official circles, where it taught the lesson that lack of precedent need not prevent an official from disregarding regular procedure, where redressal of an honest citizen’s grievance is the consideration.”

Thus the anonymous Collector’s tale. What the Personal Assistant told her is that the Collector gave him some money to have tea with the petitioner, whose vision was so blurred with tears he hardly knew what he was doing, and to return to Kaira by bus after seeing the poor man on his way home.

This is what made the Collector beloved of his people.

        ROOTS - 1 

Her parents’ marriage was arranged. Her paternal grandmother approached the parents of her mother and inquired if it would be agreeable to them and to their daughter for her son to visit their home, and she stated the purpose. After their inquiries confirmed a previous good opinion of the young man’s family and of himself, the visit was welcomed.

According to Portuguese law her mother would have inherited an equal portion with her siblings of the paternal property – small as that was. But she was going to marry an Indian and become an Indian citizen. Although at the time relations between India and Portugal had not reached the pitch of hostility that was to come, with her new status she would not be permitted – from the Portuguese point of view - to own ‘Portuguese’ property, even theoretically. As for her husband, he had not asked for her hand because it would hold a money-bag. Nor, as an Indian civil servant whose patriotism would be under scrutiny because he was also a Goan Catholic, did he want his wife to have any claims on her inheritance. So she willingly signed a legal renunciation of her claim.

Thus it happened that these two persons of deep religious faith and a strong sense of honour, but absolutely no monetary resources, started married life together. The husband had a job which paid a pittance and had very strict rules of conduct (in those far-off days), but a job which only the most serious misconduct would have deprived him of. A job which commanded respect if performed well, and offered scope for doing a world of good to fellow citizens, if the authority which vested in him were rightly exercised.

All this he did, and was long remembered wherever he worked, but that is matter for another tale. Here is the tiny story which remained the foundation of hope for herself and her sister in hard times.

Once a month, on a Friday morning, the beggars of the tiny town of Kaira (now Kheda) gathered in the compound of the Collector-saheb’s bungalow. Awaiting them were the memsaheb and her daughter, with a bag of rice and another of dhal. The mother would measure out a cigarette tin full of raw rice, and after that a half tin of raw dhal. Each time she handed the measure to her daughter, who gravely poured out the contents into a corner of a saree or a piece of cloth held out to her. The recipient would knot up the rice and the dhal, speak a word of thanks and blessing, and move on. This continued until the bags were empty.

Did the mother think of this when she stood in tears one morning before her oratory, because there was no money to buy food and the month was not yet over? There had been extraordinary expenses. She had given birth to a son only a few weeks earlier. Whatever she thought, a knock interrupted her prayers. It was the ayah. “Bai,” she said, “Bab has sent up a friend of his [the Collector’s office was on the ground floor] to see Baba.”

An old friend of her husband’s, and herself after her marriage, was in the room with her baby son. They spoke until it was time for the Collector to come upstairs and meet his friend. Meanwhile the mother returned to her baby and the round-eyed ayah. “Bai, see what Bab’s friend put under the pillow,” she said. The mother’s hand came away with a hundred-rupee note. In 1955 that was a lot of money. More than sufficient to meet household expenses until her husband’s next salary was received.

She told her husband the story and they agreed that God could always be trusted to help them in their utmost need, but they must never forget those who had even less than they did. This resolve guided their long lives, during which they were often in straitened circumstances and only knew a few comforts – such as most others would regard as necessities – in their old age. Luxuries, never.

That is why she was struck by the stupidity of people who assumed that persons who gave such sums in charity must have a hundred times as much stored away; and the cupidity of those who acted in the expectation of there being such wealth ready to be seized. But virtue must always be hard to practise, as even the pagan Romans well knew, although their definition of it was not equal to the Christian’s. Or where would there be the virtu in it?

FABLES

Proem: A frog consented to carry a scorpion across a pond.

Said the frog to the scorpion:

“You promised not to sting!”

Said the scorpion, “It’s my nature.”

“Now we’re both drowning,

Why did you do it?” froggie cried.

“My nature,” scorpion burbled as it died.

Moral: Some bad characters never change. Don’t trust them ever.

Proem: You can teach a mule to obey,

but an obstinate fool heeds not a word you say.

Dance lady, dance the night away;

In your red shoes, dance night and day.

Dance until the briars tear you,

Dance until your feet won’t bear you,

Then feet and shoes must go;

To be sorry you must know.

Moral: Read Hans Christian Andersen

©2015 by Ruth Heredia

THIS IS MY OWN

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
'This is my own, my native land!'

          ~ Walter Scott

She turned over the frail, yellowed pages of letters sixty years old, and read there of unsuspected drama bound up with the visits of much loved grandparents, and years in which her family enjoyed the company of a beloved uncle.

But her story had old roots. There was her father’s father, fleeing imprisonment at the least, by the Portuguese who ruled Goa; escaping by canoe, and on foot through the forest, into the safety of British India.

During the Freedom Struggle, Sarojini Naidu, addressing a public meeting of Christians on the grounds of the Catholic Gymkhana, remarked that if Christians dressed like Indians rather than like the British, their patriotism would not be doubted as it generally was. It was a meeting well attended by Goan Catholics, and her aunts and cousins were soon regally draped in that much admired Indian garment, the sari.

When India won Independence, the country had assured France of special status for the French enclaves, protection of their individual culture, language and identity. Satisfied, France had ceded these territories. Portugal was offered the same assurances for its colonies, and responded in true Fascist style, with brutal suppression of Goan and Damanese aspirations to be one with free India: imprisonment, torture, killings, and every punishment to break mind and spirit.

Her father’s eldest brother was a vocal and influential leader of the Goan Liberation movement which followed. Learning that Brazil intended to dismiss him, their Consul in Bombay, for his stand against a coloniser from whom Brazil itself had won freedom with some bloodshed, her uncle had resigned pre-empting this move, and released to the press his letter of reasoned argument which ended with his resignation. India appreciated him, but Brazil made itself ridiculous with several attempts to punish him, while Portugal tried him in absentia, and sentenced him to life imprisonment for “treason against the mother country” on the grounds that he was born in Goa of Portuguese parents. Since everyone inside and outside Goa recognised the falseness of the first ground and the absurdity of the second, the Portuguese Government was exposed as a tyranny on its way to madness.

Portuguese secret police carried off her mother’s first cousin, then a student in Portugal, and he was never seen thereafter. A doctor friend of her mother’s family, dignified, highly respected, was reported to have expressed a seditious sentiment. He was beaten on his palms with a specially devised bamboo baton, as a warning, leaving him too broken to ever practice again.

Another, most dear friend of her grandparents in Goa, singing opera with them in Margão’s elite club; a Professor of Medicine, microbiologist and leprologist who earned world-wide recognition; yet also a literary man who wrote a book on Rabindranath Tagore, whom he visited in Shantiniketan; elected from Goa to the new Portuguese Parliament for the years 1945-1949, where his speeches drew the Sauron-eye and hostility of Salazar, was forced in 1951 to leave with his family for South America before he came to grief. A clinching reason? At the wedding of a white Portuguese with a Goan lady, the literary, Tagore-loving doctor had raised a toast to the confluence of an Occidental culture hundreds of years old with an Oriental culture thousands of years old. It was an unbearable insult to the rulers. White inferior to brown?

But as it is always with human beings, there was plenty of treachery – to gratify envy, to satisfy vengefulness, to lay to rest Portugal’s paranoid suspicions, to gain advantages, or from sheer malevolence.

Thus it was that her mother’s father, a doctor of repute and Mayor of Margão, yearned for the liberation of Goa. But he spoke of it to few, softly, and only after the thick wooden floor-to-ceiling shutters had been set against every window and door that faced the streets. For the breadth alone of one of those streets separated his house from the prison, and cries from that evil place, piercing even the wooden shutters, kept her mother awake of nights.

Her mother had a brother, a brilliant student of medicine, that beloved uncle at the start of this story, Tio Doutor (Uncle Doctor). He was recklessly outspoken - remembering his murdered cousin and other atrocities - about how he would leave for India as soon as he had his diploma, and never return. His father pointed out the imprudence. “Wait until you have the diploma in your hands,” he said, and his exhortation was supported by her own father, an Indian civil servant.

Examiners held back the diploma for five months, releasing it only in April 1955. Her uncle applied to the Indian Consul for permits for himself and his parents to enter India. He was sent home with a message that the Consul wished to speak with the young man’s father. But, meanwhile, her grandfather had sent his resignation from the mayoralty to the Governor. Retaliation was immediate. His resignation was refused. While the authorities plotted tactics to have him found guilty of misconduct and dishonesty in the management of municipal affairs, a friend brought word to him of this threat.

Her father, learning of the situation from his brother-in-law, the newly qualified doctor, hastened to seek assistance from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). He wrote: “the Portuguese, apparently quite aware of the effect on public opinion in Goa and elsewhere of my father-in-law’s resignation and departure for India, are preparing to subject him to the full pressure of Fascist methods for dealing with opposition. For my father-in-law to enter our Consulate at this stage, when the non-acceptance of his resignation leaves him subject to regulations governing the conduct of officials, would be to invite arrest and further unpleasant consequences. I have advised my brother-in-law to meet our Consul, to explain the whole situation to him, and to seek his assistance in evacuating the entire family to India.” That “evacuating” was a word which stirred in her a fear decades old, first felt when she was in Goa in 1961, but to return to the story. . .

In correspondence marked ‘Secret’, a representative of the MEA offered to arrange for delivery of letters by safe means, and to get her uncle out of Goa; if possible, her grandparents as well.

By June, her grandfather had approached his infamous brother-in-law, a Deputy, appealing to their ties of kinship. He got a villainous reply: “neither he nor his family would ever be allowed to leave Goa.” Her father, using the secret mail service, advised the old gentleman to seek an interview with the Governor, to find out what was decided about his resignation, and to cite his wife’s illness which required surgery available only in India, together with his own knee problem requiring specialised treatment, as reasons for the application to leave Goa.

And then she smiled as she read on in her father’s letter to the man from the MEA: “In the event of his receiving a negative reply from the Governor, I feel that my brother-in-law should get out of Goa anyway. I hope you will be able to help in that case. As for my parents-in-law, I have a recourse in mind, regarding which I shall let you know later.”

That sentence led her thoughts to another plan, an ingenious plan, which only a man with a soldier’s experience, a capacity for imaginative action and meticulous organisation, a man of courage besides, could have devised. It was a story she must tell another day.

Her uncle, warned by an old friend who was in the local police, that the order had been given for his arrest, escaped according to the arrangements already in place and came safely away. Eventually, late in 1956, her grandparents also got permits to leave for India on medical grounds. Since neither they nor their son made any public statement against the Portuguese regarding the affair, and since the old people, at any rate, returned to Goa as they had promised to, they were permitted to visit their daughter once more, in December 1957.

In May 1961 her mother was allowed into Goa with her children because the old gentleman had inoperable cancer. At the Portuguese customs inspection shed she boiled over with indignation. Footwear the family was bringing had been wrapped in pieces of newspaper, Indian newspaper, naturally. The officials were removing these scraps which might foment sedition. Between scorn and some concern – for these creatures were so clearly ignorant brutes – she asked her mother if they would confiscate her books, a Selected Scott, a Selected Dickens, and Little Women. Indeed, they leafed suspiciously through the books, whereupon the mother pointed out colour plates and illustrations that could not possibly be found in seditious material, and hustled her out of the shed. After that, it was impressed on her that she was an enemy alien and must hold her tongue and school her face. The jail across the road onto which their bedroom windows looked was sufficient reminder.

In October her grandfather was dying. On this occasion the Governor was human enough to permit another visit by her mother and the children, this time with her Indian civil servant husband. (How the word ‘Indian’ still rings in her ears, spoken with such hostility and contempt by many Goans who rated liberty lower than the imported creature comforts their colonisation offered - rancid tinned butter, tinned cheese, tinned fruit and vegetables, tinned ham - delicacies indeed.)

Her loved grandfather died two months and two days before the liberation of Goa. As with the British in India, not all Portuguese were villains, not even under Salazar. Of this she had been persuaded even during that fraught month of May, when she met a teacher and his wife who were friends of her grandparents. In their pell-mell flight from Goa, the military, the police and officials took priority over civilians like the unassuming teacher. Now it was he who was in detention, and her grandmother sought her Indian son-in-law’s assistance. The poor frightened Portuguese teacher was released, and left for his country. “Come to Portugal,” he urged the widowed old lady. “You will be treated well there.” “Maybe,” she replied, “but even if my house were falling in ruin about my ears, it would still be my home.” And she never regretted her choice.

***

She remembered all these things with pride and sadness. It was well that they were gone, those admired people who loved their country, gone into that “great Ring of pure and endless light” where she would join them some day. Sighing, she folded away her memories.

The Indian civil servant

'Tio Doutor'