The Raj on the Move

By Rajika Bhandari

Rajika Bhandari researcher and writer, is the author of four books on international higher education. She is also an avid traveller who enjoys documenting her experiences of travel within India and abroad. Her personal and travel essays have appeared in independent magazines and on National Public Radio in the United States. Originally from Delhi, she lives in New York City.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Dec 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9789351940371

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Prologue

It was early in the month of July in 2005 and the monsoon had not yet arrived in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The air was heavy with the weight of water-laden clouds pressing towards the earth and the anticipation of the first drop of rain on the parched ground. In the horizon the wilting trees seemed suddenly greener against the dark grey sky. My mother and I were visiting Jhabua, a small provincial town in Madhya Pradesh, home to a large tribal population notorious for being farmers by day and highway bandits by night. We were on our way to visit the women’s self-employment groups that my mother’s NGO (non-governmental organization) supported. Our long and arduous journey had begun at 6:30 a.m. that morning in Bhopal, the state capital. Eight hours later, after navigating pot holed roads and a town under curfew because of impending communal riots, we arrived in Jhabua, our backs sore from all the jerking and rattling in the jeep.

The town of Jhabua is replete with all the quintessential relics of the British era: an abandoned church with tall grass growing within, an old movie theatre, and an imposing building that was once a high court but now houses an assortment of government offices, its walls stained with red paan juice. Like so many other small towns in India, Jhabua is an anachronism with one foot firmly planted in the twenty-first century and the other embedded in the past. While it boasts an STD and ISD phone booth to connect its twenty thousand people to every corner of the world, it lacks even the simplest of hotels. It was this lack of shelter that led us to our final destination of the day, a classic government-run guest house or circuit house located in the neighbouring town of Sardarpur.

Our jeep spluttered and coughed as it heaved us up the steep hill leading to the circuit house. And by 6 p.m. in the evening, as the sun was beginning to set, we found ourselves perched on a steep hill where the circuit house was located. It overlooked the small town of Sardarpur and, at a small distance, the twinkling lights of the neighbouring town of Rajgarh were visible. The NGO staff posted at Jhabua had assured us that we would be comfortable and that the caretaker, true to his appellation, would take good care of us. Mr Sharma, our escort from the NGO, ushered us onto the wide veranda that wrapped around the building where I immediately sank into a classic plantation chair, its original cane-work still intact. The waning sun cast an amber light on the whitewashed circuit house and the surrounding trees. Giridhar, the cook-cum-caretaker of the building, brought us tea on the veranda in a spotless white China teapot with matching cups and saucers and Marie biscuits, bland in themselves but a perfect and subtle accompaniment to the strong Darjeeling tea.

From my spot on the veranda, I could see the silvery rush of the river Mahi below and hear children playing. The air was also filled with the raucous cries of flocks of birds heading home to roost, a harbinger of dusk I have always associated with India and that I long for in America where the darkness usually descends suddenly and silently. Perhaps it is a unique feature of tropical countries for the only other country where I have witnessed similar sights and sounds during dusk is Mexico when the sound of roosting parakeets fills the air.

With tea taken care of, Giridhar told us he needed to go into town to buy provisions for our dinner, ideally a fresh chicken that he could make into a tasty curry. He made for a striking figure against the backdrop of the dramatic sunset as he peddled down the hill on this rickety bicycle. The sun that had blazed incessantly all day took mere minutes to dip beyond the horizon. As if on cue, the crickets and cicadas started up, and the heady scent of night jasmine permeated the air. The mosquitoes buzzing around the old-fashioned lamps on the veranda till then began to veer closer and closer to us as they sought new pastures. It was time to move indoors and unpack after our long journey.

Our room, the master suite in the bungalow, was dominated by a large four-poster bed of dark mahogany. A secretary’s desk stood against one wall of the room, flanked on either side by matching armchairs with graceful carved arms. High above the bed, above the crisscrossing beams, was a skylight. I hadn’t noticed it before and now, with the darkness outside, it was just a black rectangle. The bedroom of the suite opened into a large vanity and dressing area beyond which lay the bathroom. The dressing table was an old fashioned one, with three sections to the mirror that could be adjusted to view oneself from various angles. I recall my grandmother having a similar antique dressing table and mirror which, when I was five years old, would entertain me for hours on end as I would adjust the magical trio of mirrors to see my endless reflections. I was obviously too young then to understand the laws of physics. The stool accompanying the circuit house dressing table was also of dark wood, like the rest of the furniture, and covered with dark red velvet frayed at the edges. It was eerily quiet in our suite even though I knew that Giridhar was just a few rooms away, putting the finishing touches to our evening meal.

The dining room was huge with thirty-feet-high ceilings and exposed wooden beams. A Hitkari china set with a floral pattern was laid out on the carved wood table that could seat twelve people in chairs with imposing high backs. Giridhar had set out a sparkling white damask tablecloth but, being a good and cautious Indian, he had covered it with a sheet of clear plastic to protect it from clumsy diners. The dishes arrived one by one: stuffed lady’s fingers roasted to a delicious crispness, piping hot daal with just a hint of ghee and fresh coriander, a pea and potato curry, and creamy yoghurt. But this was not all: the highlight of the meal was a very special chicken dish, unique not so much for its preparation but for the fact that it was made of a type of rare feathered biped that was indigenous to the area and that apparently can still be found only in parts of western India and China. The legendary chicken known as Kadaknath is reared primarily by the tribals of the region and is considered by them to be a sacred bird, offered to the gods after Diwali. The unusual and startling feature of the Kadaknath is its black flesh whose stark contrast to the typically pale meat of poultry can test the enthusiasm of even the most adventurous of gourmands. I helped myself gingerly to a small piece of the chicken and concentrated on the vegetarian dishes, while Giridhar lurked behind the curtain to refill the dishes. The chicken was surprisingly succulent. Black flesh aside, the bird remains famous for its taste and its legendary restorative powers, from curing chronic diseases to serving as an aphrodisiac. These birds are almost extinct in India today and I cannot help but remember with some measure of guilt that we unwittingly contributed to their dwindling population.

We retired for the night at about 9 p.m. The sounds of dusk had given way to a silence that was punctuated occasionally by the howl of a jackal down by the river below, reminding me of my boarding school days in the isolated and wild Himalayan foothills, when hyenas could be heard laughing just some feet away from our dormitory. I wondered whether wild animals ever came right up to the circuit house and whether Giridhar had battled with his share of midnight visitors. We were the only travellers staying at the circuit house that night. That made four of us: my mother, me, Giridhar, and his noble aging dog, Pantu. After a generous application of Odomos, the indispensable mosquito repellent that was a must during any travel in India, I snuggled into my side of the bed after inspecting it for lurking insects and other creatures. After all, who knew what might turn up in this isolated building on top of a hill? The crisp, white bed linen bore the faint bluish tinge of a dhobi’s whitening agent, and S.C.H. (Sardarpur Circuit House) was neatly printed in indelible ink on the corners of the sheets. My mother was already snoring softly while I was still on the first page of my sleeping aid, a book. I turned off the light and looked up at the skylight above me. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I thought I could spot a star or two, a welcome and unusual sight, for starry nights and the Milky Way are all but obscured by the dense smog in India’s cities.

I hadn’t fallen asleep completely, suspended in that twilight zone between awareness and deep sleep, when I heard a distinct pitter-patter on the roof above.

‘Did you hear that?’ asked my mother, sitting bolt upright in bed. A light sleeper, she had heard the sound right away.

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Antique dresser, Kumara Krupa

State Guest House, Bangalore.

I nodded and put my finger to my lips to shush her so that I could concentrate on the source of the sound. There it was again: one, two, pit pat, patter. It was a warm summer night but I felt goose bumps spread from my arms down to my legs. I moved a little closer to my mother. Then, as if on cue, we heard the sound of a door opening and banging shut. Once, twice, and then back and forth, back and forth. We didn’t wake up Giridhar and instead turned on one of the lights in the bedroom. We must have eventually fallen asleep, exhausted from following the clattering above us and the creaking and swinging door somewhere outside our room.

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I have always been fascinated by dak bungalows and their newer version, circuit houses, ever since I was a child, accompanying my mother to small towns in India that she visited on work and where we had no relatives to stay with. As a government officer, my mother had access to these buildings that are typically reserved for travelling officers and, occasionally, their families. They also offered an incomparably cheap option for the cost conscious traveller. Perhaps my interest in these old and isolated buildings was also triggered by having been reared on a healthy diet of writers like Ruskin Bond, British by circumstance but wholly Indian by choice, and Rudyard Kipling, the great chronicler of the British Raj, both of whom often sought inspiration from these buildings for their bone-chilling ghost stories. Or perhaps it was a growing sense of appreciation for India’s history and architecture in all of its varied facets, from the romantic fifteenth-century monuments of Mandu to the imperial British buildings of Lutyens’s Delhi. An appreciation which, ironically, became sharpened and nuanced only once I moved away from India to live in the United States.

I was drawn to these old travellers’ bungalows for all of these reasons: the architecture, the remote and often spectacular location, their eerie and haunted atmosphere, and their tribute to a bygone and genteel era of white tablecloths and fine china, of gracious wood and rattan colonial furniture. Even today, many of these buildings retain this ethos, complete with wide and long verandas, high ceilings and polished wood interiors, landscaped lawns, and, most indispensable of all, a well-trained khansama, much like Giridhar at the Sardarpur Circuit House. These buildings are imbued with the romance of travel for they witnessed generations of travellers over the centuries, especially in the days before the automobile and airplanes, and even before train travel. When officers of the elite Indian Civil Service (ICS) travelled on horseback through the deep interiors of the Indian heartland in the nineteenth century, it was in these buildings that they halted, often for just a night and sometimes for a few days at a stretch.

In post-Independence and contemporary India, too, the notion of dak bungalows and circuit houses has clearly occupied an important place in the lives and imagination of those in the civil services. While gathering material for this book and upon discussing it with anybody who cared to hear about it, I was surprised at the number of acquaintances who told me that ‘so-and-so’ or ‘my uncle who is now retired from the IAS’ had many anecdotes and stories to share from their stays in musty old dak bungalows. The most enthusiastic raconteurs were current or retired IAS officers who regaled me for hours with amusing anecdotes of their encounters at travellers’ bungalows where they had stayed during their tours of duty across India. When I asked them about their experiences, a playful gleam would enter their eyes, they’d settle into their chair comfortably, lean their heads back, and the opening line would invariably be, ‘When I was a collector…’. Although many recalled the discomfort of the spartan accommodation, their recollections were always tinged with nostalgia for a bygone era of crotchety old khansamas and dak bungalow food that could range from the inedible to the sublime, a true blessing especially after a hard day’s work in the nearby villages.

As I looked for more information on dak bungalows and circuit houses, I discovered that while much had been written about British architecture in India and on the public buildings, government houses, palaces, churches, and hill stations of the Raj era, there was almost no organized documentation of the various types of travellers’ bungalows, even though these were an institution of legislative, social and cultural significance that originated during the Raj and that continue to exist and function in contemporary India. Indeed, their history, their location in even the remotest corners of India, and their architecture makes them a heritage of unique value, not replicated anywhere else in the world. In the absence of any existing material, my search ultimately led me to an important source of information: hundreds of travel journals and memoirs written by the British in India from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and in which travellers’ bungalows make a frequent appearance. Many of these were written by English memsahibs who, despite their delicate constitution and aloofness towards all things native, travelled extensively across the subcontinent and documented their perceptions of the foreign land with fascinating detail and candour.

I learnt also that many dak bungalows and circuit houses had been silent witnesses to important episodes in India’s colonial history. During the 1857 revolt, the fleeing British from Delhi, many of them women, sought refuge at these travellers’ guest houses. British soldiers also bided time at these buildings, either while waiting to be called into service or simply escaping an onslaught by the mutineers. While travelling across the Indian plains to report for the Times shortly after the revolt, William Howard Russell, regarded by many as the world’s first war correspondent, came across writings on dak bungalows’ walls that urged British soldiers to seek vengeance: ‘Revenge your slaughtered country women! To hell with the bloody Sepoys!’ Just outside Delhi too, many British soldiers were murdered in dak bungalows while waiting for the city to fall to the British. Harriet Tytler, one of the most prolific chroniclers of British life in India in the mid-nineteenth century, mourns in her memoir the plight of a young soldier under her husband’s command who was preparing to leave the dak bungalow just outside Delhi to report to his colonel, when he was killed on the spot along with a number of other soldiers.

When the revolt began in Meerut and then spread to other parts of northern and central India, William Tayler, the powerful commissioner of Patna, declared a preemptive strike on the Wahabis, the most orthodox sect of Sunni Islam founded in the mid-eighteenth century by Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, who was born in the Nejd Region of the Arabian Peninsula. In the beginning