PLAYING THE WHITE MAN

William Dalrymple visits a

strange retirement home, a final refuge for the Anglo-Indians

New Delhi `IT WAS the lavatories that did it. They were the final straw.'

`That's right. The lavatories.'

`They put in Indian ones.'

`His daughter and my son. Our own chil- dren.'

`You've got to draw the line somewhere.' `That you have.'

`There's not one of those Indian lavato- ries you can sit on properly.'

`And one thing I'll never do is squat on my haunches.'

`Never.'

`Not on my haunches.' , `You've got to draw the line somewhere.' Emile Roberts and Eric Imlay were sit- ting on Mr Imlay's verandah sipping home- made ginger beer. Mr Imlay makes it himself with a Boots kit brought back by his son Thomas from a trip to England.

Mr Roberts is very black; at first sight you might mistake him for a Tamil. His friend Mr Imlay is very fair and wouldn't look out of place in an old folks' home in Cheshire. But instead both men live in what is almost a tribal reserve, a special

A quiet night indoors 1992

home for Delhi's last Anglo-Indians.

During the Raj, the Anglo-Indians — the half-caste product of then banned inter- racial marriages — occupied a strange position, at once reviled yet privileged. By the time of Kipling, Anglo-Indians were ridiculed as chee-chees, Blackie Whities or Chutney Marys. They were given the rail- ways and the telegraph offices to look after, but were disliked and ostracised by both rulers and ruled. As Independence approached, an idea was mooted for an Anglo-Indian homeland in the Chote Nag- pur hills in upper Bihar. But the scheme never came to anything.

Realising there was no longer a place for them in India, the Anglo-Indians emigrated en masse. Some 25,000 made new homes in America, Canada and particularly Aus- tralia, where their hockey team, the Harlequins, gained brief celebrity.

Only the old, the lazy, the unemployable or the nostalgic stayed on, usually in a degree of poverty. Several homes were set up, charitable foundations sponsored by wealthy Anglo-Indian emigrants. In Delhi, the Grant Govan Homes were built in the early Fifties: a series of simple bungalows within a single walled enclosure. It was a place for Anglo-Indians to retire, then die, among their own kind.

I finally found this refuge, after days of searching, in early December.

There are four principal bungalows, and Mr Roberts and Mr Imlay occupy the first two. They are related now, by marriage. Mr Imlay's Thomas is married to Mr Roberts's Edith. Driven out by their children's plumbing, they have taken shelter in the Grant Govan Homes. During the day, they tend their gardens, pruning their roses and straightening the hollyhocks. Each evening they meet for a drink on Mr Imlay's veran- dah. There they talk about the steam trains they used to drive between Lucknow and Calcutta.

`I always say you can't beat a train for seeing a country.'

`That's right. Up on the fender. There's nothing like it.'

`It was a good healthy life on the rail- ways. Plenty of fresh air.'

`Have you visited the Taj Mahal?' asked Mr Roberts, turning to me. 'That's a lovely place, the Taj Mahal.'

`Up on the fender you get to know a place,' continued Mr Imlay.

`The languages,' said Mr Roberts, 'the people, the habits . .

`And they're a fascinating people, the Indians. I'll say that for them.'

`I've always had friendly relations with them, mind. It's their country. That's what my father always used to say.'

`That's right. The Indians are a nice peo- ple. Provided you treat them as human beings.'

`But they never could drive trains, in my experience. The new diesel ones perhaps. But not the old steam trains.'

`A bit too laz . . sleepy, some of them Indian drivers. With all due respect.'

`You have to be awake on a steam train.' `Always something to do. Never time to be idle.'

`That's where we came in. The Anglo- Indians. The locomotives were our respon- sibility. If anything went wrong we could mend it. Do it up and get it moving.'

As we sat, Mr Imlay spotted a large rhe- sus monkey moving stealthily towards the fruit bowl on the table between us.

`Get on! Out! Bloody animal.'

Mr Roberts heaved himself up from his chair and threw a pebble at the monkey. The monkey loped off into Mr Imlay's hol- lyhocks.

`Never trust a monkey. That's what my father used to say.'

`It's because of that Hindu temple down the road,' explained Mr .Imlay. 'They've started giving their monkeys bananas. Now they all want them.'

`He's coming back. This fellah's after something. He's after these plantains.'

`In British times they used to export the monkeys for laboratory experiments. But they worship them now.'

`Shoo! Get away with you.'

Apart from family ties, Mr Imlay and Mr Roberts have one other thing in common: Mr Scott in Number 3. Mr Scott is a Roman Catholic.

`I'm a religious man myself,' said Mr Roberts. 'But not a fanatic.'

`Not like that Mr Scott.'

`Moderation. That's what my father used to say. Moderation in all things.'

`Mr Scott! Ha! Scot my foot. Mr Por- tuguese, more like.'

'Just be careful when you go to see him, young man,' said Mr Roberts to me. 'That's all I'll say.'

`He's always on about the Jesuits this and the Holy Father that. Him and all his holy medals.'

`Between you and me he's . . . not quite all there.'

`Missing a piston somewhere, that Mr Scott.'

`Never been quite right. Not since his daughters married those Hindu gentlemen. Shocking affair.'

It was the Jesuits,' said Mr Scott, dust- ing the framed picture of the Sacred Heart. `They persuaded them to do it.'

Mr Scott was a small, precise man with dark horn-rimmed spectacles. His skin was walnut brown. He talked slowly and delib- erately, with a thick Indian accent, and as he talked he shook his head. But his voice was high-pitched; and when he got angry it rose to something like a scream.

`I wrote to the Holy Father and told him about the Jesuits. The best thing he could do would be to suppress the whole order. Like his predecessor did to the Knights Templar. The Templars were seduced by Arab sodomites in the. Holy Land. Now the same has happened to the Jesuits. Look!'

Mr Scott disappeared over to his writing- desk and rummaged around in a drawer. He found what he was looking for and returned to his chair, holding a file.

`No, no. This isn't it. This is from Opus Dei. Ah! Here it is! Here is the Holy Father's reply.'

He proudly waved a piece of writing paper bearing the Papal seal. "'The. Holy Father thanks Mr Scott for sharing his thoughts . . ." What do you say to that, eh? To be honest with you, I have solved some two-thirds of the crises the Holy Father has faced during the last 30 years: Vatican II, Cardinal Lefebre, Humanae Vitae . . . But the one thing he won't do is take my advice and suppress the. Jesuits. Sodomites and Masons one and all! They are the Abomi- nation of Desolation! They are the ones who are dragging the world to perdition!'

`I don't understand,' I said. 'What exactly have the Jesuits done?'

`Have you heard of the number 666? Have you read the Book of Revelation?' `Not since I was at school.'

`Well you won't have understood it. Only the Mother of God can explain. As she said herself: "Join me in battle, little children, against the Black Beast of Jesuit Masonry." It's all there. It's all in the Book of Revela- tion. Everything that has happened to my daughters is in the Good Book.'

`But what has happened to your daugh- ters?'

`It was the Jesuits. They married my two precious daughters off to . . . to Pagans.' `Pagans?'

`To Hindus. Our girls were educated. All the Anglo-Indian boys had emigrated, so they couldn't find any nice Christian boys to suit them. We raised our objections, but the Jesuits let them do it. They said the girls were of an age to decide. They inter- fered. Even accused me of blasphemy. Me! Xavier Aloysius Domingo Scott!'

Scott removed .his glasses and shook his head mournfully. The children got their sin from the religious orders. If the clergy is all on the road to perdition who can help my children? Answer me that.'

There was a moment's pause while I tried to think of an answer. 'There is no black blood in my family,' he said slowly and clearly. 'Between you and me there may be a little bit of Portuguese, way back. Christian folk from Goa. But no Hindu blood. My father was particularly fair. I wanted my children to marry from our own community. Then the grandchil- dren would be brought up as proper Chris- tians.'

Scott put away the Holy Father's letter in the cardboard file, then hugged the file to his chest. 'I have run the race, fought the Good Fight. Above all I have kept the Faith. If a calamity like this can happen to a family like mine, then what is the future of our community? We'll gradually die off. Or, worse, we'll become pagans. One of the two ...'

Noreen and George Symms live in Number 4. They have a front room, and in it stands their two single beds. On the wall above, hanging from a peg, is a picture of the Queen from the royal family calendar, 1987.

'We got that from the UK. On our visit.'

'Very picturesque, England,' said Mr Symms. 'It was our first visit, but we both felt quite at home there.'

'They eat all the food we like. All the recipes we were taught by our parents. Steaks. Old English stew. Mixed fruit pud- ding. Apple crumble. None of this curry and rice.'

'And they treat everyone the same in England. Not like here.'

'Of course we expected it to be a nice place. Ye olde England. That's what they called it in the brochure.'

'But to be honest with you, we were a bit surprised to see so many Indians there. After we had our visas refused twice.'

'The second time we applied for citizen- ship we really thought we'd make it. We were fully prepared to go. Then we had to unpack all over again.'

'It was that Mrs Thatcher. She never liked the Anglo-Indians. She made it very hard for us. All her rules and regulations.'

'Colour prejudice. That's what it was. Colour prejudice. Colour prejudice pure and simple.'

'Yet she let the Indians in.'

'We did feel it about the Indians,' said Mrs Symms. 'There weren't so many in Stratford-on-Avon. Or in Surrey. But in London! There's more of them on that London Underground than there are in Delhi.'

'When we saw that we felt very let down. They played us dirty, the British. I don't mind saying that. They should have ,made provisions. Some sort of guarantee we'd be looked after. We'd served them all our days.'

'We ran the railways and the mines. We sang in their canteens. You've probably never heard of Tony Brent, the singer?'

'I don't think so.'

'You'd be too young,' said Mrs Symms. 'Tony Brent, "The Singing Engineer" they called him. He had a wonderful voice, Tony Brent did. He was one of our boys from Bombay.'

'Very popular was Tony Brent.'

'And handsome! I say. Used to give me quite a flutter when I was a girl at Kolar gold fields.'

There was silence for a second. Mrs Symms blushed.

'I was in the Auxiliary Force — like the TA,' said Mr Symms, changing the subject. 'Served the British for 40 years. A loyal cit- izen of Her Majesty. Never sympathised with the Congress. Not for one day.'

'And then they give them Indians the visas to run all those ruddy grocery stores — and tell us we must stay here. It doesn't seem just.'

Outside, darkness had fallen. Mr Symms turned on the bedside light. 'It was born and bred in us that the British Empire would last for ever. They promised us that they would stay. It was quite a shock in 1947 when they suddenly said they would hand over to the Indians. We never thought they'd do that.'

'It was like a Golden Age for us, the British time,' said Mrs Symms. 'We had all the high positions in the railways, in the Posts and Telegraphs. But when the British left we were all sacked. Every one of us. Whatever our record. It became very diffi- cult to get a job anywhere. They always put obstacles in our way.'

'The young all emigrated . .

. . to Australia mostly.'

A long silence followed. Somewhere a clock chimed, Big Ben chimes. I got up. George Symms saw me out.

'I still worry for Noreen,' he said as we stood by the taxi. 'When I die I don't know what will happen to her. She's 20 years younger than me. She'll be left on her own. She's a diabetic, Noreen is. And she doesn't know a word of any Indian lan- guage.' He shrugged his shoulders, help- less.

We shook hands. 'Tell them in England what's happened to the Anglo-Indians,' he said.

I promised I would.

As I got back into my taxi, George salut- ed his old Auxiliary Force salute. 'Long live Her Majesty the Queen,' he said. 'God bless her.'

The taxi pulled away. In the car's head- lights I could see the nightjars swooping down after the moths.