The other day, while searching for old school friends on
Facebook, I came across Christopher’s photograph. He hadn’t changed much and, as I stared at
the picture, the years rolled back to the moment when, in the Ninth, I stood
terrified in front of the goal as a packaged tornado names Chris, in possession
of the ball, came charging at me, seventy-two kgs of fat and muscle. When he kicked the ball – kick is an
understatement, for his normal tendency was to propel it with violence, to give
it the third degree – it was at my face.
The resulting swelling on my nose took a week to subside.
Chris, the photograph clearly showed, had only added to his
seventy-two and in no small measure. But
then, he was the quintessential Bangalore Anglo-Indian and all of them, without
exception, loved their meats and their wines (particularly if the wine was a turpentine-hard
rum). They were, somewhat disparagingly,
called Dings, a term I shall eschew, referring to them instead as Anglos. Every old-timer in the city has had his or
her share of encounters with Anglos, each such encounter resulting in a little
unforgettable story. For they were a
unique community of English-speaking, fun-loving, quirky, often charismatic,
live-for-today mavericks. Aah! You have an objection, I see; why am I using
the past tense here? Read on.
Up until the 1990s, most of the Anglos in the city lived in
the area stretching from Frazer Town to Kammenhalli and Lingarajapuram, the
last being designated with wicked humour as ‘United Dingdom’, a particular jibe
on the community’s predilection for all things British. Indeed, the old-timers will tell you that,
until about fifty years ago, when an Anglo spoke of home, it was the British
Isles, even if he had never been there or could not place it on a map of
Europe.
The origins of the Anglos is hardly a mystery. The English, Irish and, in particular, the
Scotsmen in India, for all their sniffing at the natives and inherent sense of
superiority, weren’t averse to dalliances with Indian women, and this was seen
by many Indians amongst the lower middle-class and lower class as a sign of
upward mobility. The resulting progeny
benefited from the inherently British sense of fair play – they had access to
English convent education, British names – Harriet, Alfred, Patricia and about
a dozen others - and some preference in
jobs. The outcome was a rather unique
combination: light skin colour and Caucasian brawn in a physical sense, a
pyschological and demographic profile of the working class, much left to be
desired in academic ability, and a general loyalty to the good life and the
British empire (in that order). The
English that the Anglos spoke was different from the educated ‘natives’ as
well, and brilliantly quaint; I have spent many evenings rolling in laughter
while my friends Vij and Vikas mimicked the Anglo accent to perfection. Vikas’ apocryphal encounter with a certain
Kevin is particularly vibrant. Coming
across Kevin kicking the football listlessly into the net, he asked him the
obvious stupid question (in Anglo language) ,”Kevin, whatchadoing, Bob?” To
which an irascible Kevin apparently said, ”puttinoff a goal in the ‘ole, you
buggah.”
Anglos were outstanding do-ers, not thinkers. You would see them running their own garages
around Bangalore, or being fitters, electricians, or – as is much stereotyped
- engine drivers (communities of them
lived in towns that had railway junctions).
The best educated ones among them were -
I say this in humour - sports
teachers, one such seasoned campaigner, Macbride, being my school’s legendary
hockey coach (“if ya bloody ‘ell not passa ball, I’ll give ya a bloody
whippin’, ya miserable buggah”). Yet,
it is the enduring image of our plumber from the 1980s that comes back to me
today. If you had a problem with the
taps, you called Al. He would fetch up
on his cycle, dressed for a formal evening at the club, with a tie, an
impeccably clean shirt and a pair of black or brown shoes that shone like an
oil-can. His English - polite, calm and reassuring, addressing my
mother with a respectful ‘Ma’am’ - was
only marred by the rather overpowering smell of beef in an alcohol-laden
breath. When he rolled his sleeves up
and got down to work, you saw a muscular forearm, a firm grip and a tendency to
go down the drain (this is no metaphoric statement, do take it literally),
where no man had gone before. Job done
(“have putinitoff one pipe, Sir, no mess for a hundred years now”), he would
wash up, politely state his modest fee and leave, but not before he had had the
tea that my mother had prepared; she found it impossible to treat him as anyone
other than an equal, such was his demeanour.
It wasn’t just the men who were exceptional with their hands, the women
were gifted cooks as well, creating their own brand of hybrid cuisine that, as
can be expected, leaned towards the British culinary method. In the evenings, after the hard work of the
day, you could expect to find Al, with his friends, in a bar in Lingarajapuram,
nursing his Hercules XXX Rum. The Anglos,
in general, were heavy drinkers, a fact that took its toll on many families
among them.
I often wondered what it must have been like for a community
to move from reasonable status on the social pyramid in pre-independence India,
to one of sub-dominance in the economic reality of the last thirty years. In a city increasingly obsessed with
education and the creation of theorists – those who will draw the plumbing
diagram for a skyscraper, but cannot change a tap to save their grandmother –
was the doer, the hands-on Anglo, a lesser mortal now, to be seen as workers or
labour? If so, what must have been this
impact on the community’s esteem?
Until the late 1980s, the Anglos were an integral part of
Bangalore city but, when the process for emigration to Australia eased up, the
younger generation began to move there in substantial numbers. Why Australia? Perhaps it was to do with esteem, for they
must had apprehensions of inequality if they moved to the UK, perhaps it was to
do with the increased income, perhaps it was the Australian belief in fun, beer
and live-for-the-day. Perhaps it was the
World’s finest beef. Many of them moved
via the Middle East, where they had gone to work, while others moved after the
older generation had passed away and they had sold their properties. One fine day, in the early 1990s, for
instance, Al’s number was disconnected.
And that was it. The Anglos who remain, to the best of my limited knowledge, are not as maverick as the generation before them. Hence, the past tense in sepia.
About a month ago, I was driving by the concrete-and-glass
buildings off Outer Ring Road, the part that abutts Kammanahalli and one could
not help feeling a tinge of remorse at having lost a part of our city when a
community chose to move away. United
Dingdom, I recognised, was gone for good.
