One Hell Of a Life: An Anglo-Indian Wallah's Memoir from the Last Decades of the Raj , livre ebook

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197 pages

English

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This is the heart-warming story of a backward boy coming from a dysfunctional family and a broken home. Unable to talk at age four, he was sent to a boarding school to learn to speak. Branded a moron and dragged through ten schools in seven years, he suddenly "finds his feet" and becomes dux of one of India's most prestigious colleges. Later he becomes an officer in one of the Indian Army's most famous regiments and Adjutant of its premier battalion.

Laugh at his misfortunes and exult in his successes. At age four he barely escapes a kidnap attempt, he travels to boarding school on the world's most famous railway, Darjeeling's toy train, which was once chased by a wild elephant. Accompany the author as he goes to catch a monkey and shoot a panther, and as his Brigade confronts the Russians over possession of the Iranian oilfields; and he reads fairy tales to a blood-thirsty Pathan warrior who asks if the stories are true!

Feel the desperation of millions as murder and mayhem stalk the Indian sub-continent. See the refugee trains, ushered in by the granting of independence to India in 1947 when inter-communal violence spawned ten million refugees overnight and one million hapless men, women and children were slaughtered.

Sujets

Vie de famille

Relations familiales

Histoire

South Asia

History

Asia

India

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	12 août 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781456621285
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Katherine England, well-known Adelaide book reviewer, had this to say after reading the original (unabridged) manuscript:
"The book is informative, interesting and often very funny ... it holds the attention of the reader ... It explores an area and subject which has not, I think, been much written about in Australia. The style is very accessible - a generally straightforward narrative couched in plain, literate and slightly formal prose, and the voice is engaging and attractive.
"Although the tone is less ingenuous and the writing more educated, the book reminded this reader of Albert Facey’s A Fortunate Life and it is partly in comparison with that extraordinarily popular autobiography that the following recommendations are made ...
"The book is particularly effective and memorable when the author ... describes his life and surroundings (making and flying kites; Indian sweets; school routines; the proximity of the Himalayas; Indian trains and train journeys etc), the history of India (particularly Partition) and when he tells the story of some bizarre (often official) enterprise: the panther hunt for example, which is both suspenseful and funny, and the anti-aircraft exercise which made me laugh aloud ... The book ends neatly and on a positive note at a natural finishing point, leaving the reader quite sorry that s/he is not to accompany the author further into his new life."
Those were the good parts. There were also four pages of comments which were less than flattering, but which contained constructive criticisms and extremely valuable recommendations which the author has heeded in producing this edition.
The heart-warming story of a backward boy, unable to talk at the age of four and sent to boarding school in order to learn to speak.
Branded a moron and dragged through ten schools in seven years, he suddenly “finds his feet” and becomes dux of one of India’s most prestigious colleges.
Later he becomes an officer in one of the Indian Army’s most famous regiments and Adjutant of its premier battalion.
He comes from a dysfunctional family and a broken home. He is an Anglo-Indian, a much despised member of the human race in the days of the Raj, rubbing shoulders with British and Indian officers.
Laugh at his misfortunes and exult in his successes; hold your breath as the four-year old barely escapes a kidnap attempt; enjoy travelling on the world’s most famous mountain railway, Darjeeling’s toy train, which was once chased by a wild elephant.
Read of cobras, jaadu (Indian witchcraft) and schoolboys using toilet paper as currency to support their gambling habit.
Accompany the author as he goes to catch a monkey and shoot a panther; as his brigade confronts the Russians over possession of the Iranian oilfields and as he reads fairy tales to a blood-thirsty Pathan warrior who asks if the stories are true!
Feel the desperation of millions as murder and mayhem stalk the Indian sub-continent. See the refugee trains, ushered in by the granting of independence to India, when intercommunal violence spawned ten million refugees overnight and one million hapless men, women and children were slaughtered.
For the old India wallahs, this is a trip down memory lane to savour the aura of Calcutta, of Chowringhee and Firpo’s; of Darjeeling and Mussoorie, of Dehra Dun and Poona; of the railway institutes and the Auxiliary Force, and much much more.

The author now lives in retirement in Adelaide

ONE HELL OF A LIFE
An Anglo-Indian Wallah’s Memoir from the Last Decades of the Raj

by
Captain Stan Blackford
Ex Adjutant, 6th Royal Battalion (Scinde)
13th Frontier Force Rifles
Indian Army

Copyright 2014 Stan Blackford,
All rights reserved.

Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2128-5

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Dedicated to
Saint Anthony of Padua
Why would a person, who was born a dyed-in-the-wool Protestant, dedicate his first book to St Anthony of Padua?

Read on and find out.

Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw
I gratefully acknowledge the generous assistance received from the South Australian Government through Arts SA for the production of this book
PART 1 – Childhood

Chapter 1 – Popo Baba
‘HAIL, STANLEY. THOU ART GOING TO BE GREAT!’ That’s what God said to me.
I was in bed, fast asleep. It was 1927, Calcutta. In my dreams dark monsoon clouds billowed over the Hooghly River. Suddenly, God’s head and shoulders poked through the murky sky. He was wearing a peaked cap, like the one my grandfather wore as a railway guard, and His voice thundered out the words that awakened me.
I was going to be great! The mantle of greatness was already descending on my willing shoulders as I rushed to my mother’s bed, shook her and shouted, ‘Mummy, mummy, wake up. I’m going to be great. God told me that I’m going to be great.’
‘You’ll never be great,’ said my mother. She hugged me and kissed me and said, ‘You are mummy’s little buddhu. 1 You can never be great.’
‘But God told me,’ I cried.
My mother drew me into her bed, cuddled me and said, ‘You’ll never be great. You’re mummy’s little ugly duckling and you have elephant’s ears. You can never be great because you are a buddhu.’
I had always known that I was a buddhu. Other children used to make fun of me because I was ‘not very bright’.
Born in Calcutta, India, on the 26th of May, 1920, I was baptised into the Church of England at St Paul’s Church, Scott’s Lane, but my earliest memories are of when I was four and Frank, my brother, was two. We were living at Asansol, a large railway colony about 200 kilometres to the West of Calcutta. My father was a burra sahib (a VIP) in the Civil Service. We lived in a palatial government bungalow about five kilometres out of town, tended by a dozen servants. My father’s 1922 Chevrolet roadster was one of the few cars in the district. We were a privileged family.
By this time it was apparent that I was a ‘backward’ child. In later life I heard my mother telling friends that I never cried nor showed anger or frustration, that I was a ‘good’ child, placid and easy to look after; that I was always content to play quietly with toy cars. Her only complaint was that I never smiled or laughed and that I never responded to her hugs and kisses. She said that I was as ‘emotionless as a vegetable’, and my recollection of that period is as a mechanical blur with no highs and no lows. All this was twenty years before autism was recognised as a medical condition. (I can’t say that I was autistic, but later in life I was told that the symptoms I displayed were typical of at least mild autism).
Tall for my age and good looking, I never demanded attention and stayed quiet and passive for hours, unlike my brother who was a mischievous imp, always in trouble. My parents were disappointed that I was not always doing cute little things like Frank; the sort of pranks that proud parents boast about to their friends.
During the first four years of my life I uttered barely a sound, except when I saw a car. Then I would cry ‘Popo popo’ in imitation of a car horn. It was the pre-electric-horn era, when cars were fitted with bulb horns to warn pedestrians and other traffic of the approach of one’s car.
A typical horn was a long metal tube, sometimes ornamentally fashioned like a sea serpent with a large head, complete with vicious teeth and red tongue protruding from a snarling mouth, and with fiery red eyes that glared balefully at pedestrians from the front of the car as if to reproach them for cluttering up the road so untidily. The other end of the tube ended conveniently outside the driver’s window in a hand-sized rubber bulb, which the driver squeezed. At each squeeze the device emitted a protesting sound like a squawking crow or a moo-ing cow.
Indian peasants had a habit of walking in the middle of the road, ignoring traffic. Impatient motorists, consequently, felt compelled to sound their horns continually, simultaneously swearing loudly at other road users. Motorists, pedestrians, tongas, 2 ghora gharries, rickshaws, and bullock carts, and their drivers, all ignored traffic regulations, meandering over the road and swearing back loudly. To this was added the shouts of bullock-cart drivers to their animals, the tinkle of rickshaw bells and the farts of horses straining to pull tongas and ghora gharries. A glorious cacophony of noise. But of all these, only the car horn intrigued me in all its variety of styles and tones, and I would try to imitate it.
The mere sight of a car caused me to enunciate a stream of ‘popos’. My parents were delighted with these signs of a burgeoning intelligence and, to help me to become more articulate, they bought me a number of toy cars. This was the pre-plastic era, so my fleet consisted of a variety of chunky wooden push-along vehicles and metal wind-up cars and trucks. I liked the metal ones best. They were more life-like, with miniature windscreens, steering wheels, seats and running boards. Some even had little figures of ladies and gentlemen riding in them. The metal vehicles were always painted in bright gleaming colours: red, yellow, green, blue, and some black like my father’s Chevrolet.
‘Look,’ my mother would cry, just like Daddy’s car-car,’ to which I would reply, ‘Popo popo popo.’ Some of my metal vehicles had battery-operated lights which could be switched on and off, and invariably they had coil springs that could be wound up tight to propel them across the floor. My brother