It will make a better story if I recount my life, not straight from its start to its present, but begin instead at that crucial period of it which I now think of as the time when I was kidnapped by the British Army. If my many English friends feel pain at my use of the word “kidnapped”. I ask them to please note the inclusion of the word “Army,” which is in contrast to their good individual selves.
It was in that distressed period of my life that I made the decision which has set my whole the on the path it has followed these past forty-five years. And my decision was made under the influence of events of this same period. This same distressed period also held for me what I have heard many writers describe as the “moment of truth.” Why use a phrase which I know to be so well-worn?. Because it fits the circumstances precisely. Not one, but several truths faced me during those few short weeks. The truth of the moral inadequacy of my life to date, with my changing from one friendship to another in a search for romantic love; the truth of my countrymen's sufferings and problems to which I had blinded myself in preoccupation with personal and largely selfish pursuits; the truth, however limited, of the world's politics which I had persistently and successfully ignored all my adult years.
World War II brought the British Army into Burma. In its train came events and actions which lit up convincingly enough for the blindest, the truth of nationalists' accusations of gross arrogance and discrimination against the subjects of Empire. Already, reverses suffered by this army and its allies had shattered the illusion of power, so strongly impregnated in Burmese consciousness, that one lone Indian watchman, without arms or uniform, could without recourse to higher authority, keep the public from entering or despoiling any government edifices. Besides this, even the non-political animal that I was, had seen quite early on, the ridiculousness of expecting the Burmese to feel that this war was in any way their war.
The only concern of the Burmese people with this war was the safety of their families from invading Japanese or withdrawing British armies. They exerted themselves to find residence in towns which would be free of both.
My mother, then a widow with three daughters younger than I, had decided to go to Henzada on the west bank of Irrawaddy river. It was indeed out of the paths of both powers. She heard that her younger brother, a senior police official, had been posted there. He was childless, and his wife was a gentle, sickly woman always glad of extra company. My three younger sisters had not yet completed their education and were still entitled by Burmese custom to help from relatives able to give it. Mother took them along, leaving me with some of the family property, saying she would send for me when the position proved tenable. Though, at twenty-five I was still unmarried and needed chaperonage, my brother and his wife who were always close to me, remained in Rangoon. So she left me.
It was while I awaited a call from her that I attended a fateful dinner, at the house of a most senior British official, Mr. Swithinbank. This friendly and scholarly gentleman was known to befriend promising young Burmese who were prepared to bask in such sunshine. Going to an Englishman's dinner in this fashion at a time when nationalist fervour for Burma's great past was being revived by the martial standard raised by the Thirty Comrades who had taken hard military training from the Japanese in order to push the imperialist British out, will seem despicable conduct. But my mind was filled with social trepidation only, as I was the youngest Burmese there, and the newest entrant to the Swithinbank coterie. My nervousness was so great, my silence so noticeable, that I was not surprised to hear later of my host's expression of disappointment that I, reputedly an outstanding speaker of English, had contributed so little humour to the evening. And no wonder. The top of the table rang with laughter and talk. Beside the host was his favourite person Ma Than E. I did not yet know her well, but I knew all about her. She had just made a series of records in which she sang songs about the delights of Burmese seasons and woodland flowers. The tunes were imports of the current hits of the west, such as Lambeth Walk. The music was Tin Pan Alley. But the singer sang on and on like the joyous bird which was her spirit.
Now she laughed her whole-hearted laughter and everyone joined in with her. Quite near her was the musicologist U Khin Zaw who had just revived Burmese nursery songs. He spoke English witticisms with a broad Burmese accent which never failed to charm his listeners. Our end of the table was silent by contrast. There was the handsome Shan lieutenant who had got me the invitation to this dinner, and about whom more, lots and lots more, will be told later. Next to me sat silent most of the time, a Major from one of the Gurkha Regiments which had entered Burma. His wife, a gentle woman sat next to the host who was her cousin. This dinner was given so that Mr. Swithinbank could open to his relatives a wider world than their narrow one of the British army. Indeed the Major confessed later that his reaction on seeing U Khin Zaw enter in silk turban and silk sarong, had been exactly what memsahibs are believed to say: “Now who on earth are these people?” on seeing a group of indigenous subjects enter their social precincts. At the dinner, however this Major and I exchanged only a few sentences. But something must have communicated itself strongly enough to call for a second meeting. This occurred a few days later. The military had taken over the buildings of the University which had been shut down and I made my way to his small office in one of the halls.
After greetings were over I sat waiting with great curiosity as to why this Major MacConachie had sent for me.
“Do you know the Women's Auxiliary Corps?” he asked.
“Yes, I even know it is referred to as the Wasbee, with B for Burma.”
“Have you joined it or thought of joining it?”
“No.”
“No, of course not. The only Burmese woman to join is Ma Than E, and I was told she joined only because she wants to chauffeur a military car. I was asked to oblige. Not wishing to lose such a rare volunteer, we have obliged.
“I have something different to ask of you. Without joining the corps or coming under army control you can help us.
“The Corps, is lodged in Inya Hall, previously the chief women's hostel of the University as you know. Up to recently, they have been under some sort of discipline with Miss Hannay as Warden.
“Miss Hannay has now deserted her post. The Hall gates are open to all hours.”
The Major looked down at his papers and kept his eyes trained on them as he continued to speak without a stop now, his tone dead level except for the Scots accent.
“Nowhere else in the Empire has the union of British and indigenous blood begotten such a beautiful result as here in Burma. These girls who form the majority of the Corps members, they look so pretty, they smell so sweet. Here on this estate they work side by side with men in our offices. It is no wonder that the heads of our men get turned. And here is the rub. The destiny of the British Tommy must lie along a different orbit. He needs a wife with strong arms and hardened knees on which to get down and scrub floors. A slender bit of prettiness won't help him. I ask you now if you can take Miss Hannay's place and keep better discipline with the gates being shut at six pm and no more meetings after that.”
I thought for a while and then said “I'll try it till my family commitments call me away,”
“You will?”
The level voice was heightened to a suggestion of gaiety and a smile broke out in which the thinning hair, the sandy freckled face and even the blue eyes were gathered into a smile of positive attractiveness. As we shook hands this smile decided me I would run like Miss Hannay only when my mother called and not for fear of girls, soldiers or bombs.
My first sight of the Eurasian girls at my old University Hall revived sad memories of boarding school convent days when such creamy skins, such soft wavy Chestnut hair and other features of Anglo-Saxon ancestry had won their possessors favour and far better treatment than our dark skins, and straight black hair had ever got me. They now joked in the corridor as I stood by. They were completely easy. One girl, as I learned later, was called Beryl Moment, and another, from a family of beauties from the top strata of Eurasian society swept out, dressed and perfumed.
“Oh. Moment Divine!” she called out in a passable adoption of an English voice. It was indeed their moment divine. My Major had been off target when he impressed me with his analysis of the common British soldier's destiny and these lovely girls. Outside the gates were gathered now not Tommies but officers up to the rank of Lt. Colonel. Unlike Major MacConachie who was of medium build and open sandy countenance, one or two of these were of a noticeably tall height with the aquiline features which must have appealed to the girls as the hallmark of Anglo-Saxon quality. The gates were closed, but not yet locked. Noticing that it was nearly six, I went with some misgiving to locate the Indian watchman known to everyone as durwan. He came forward towards the padlock.
“Hey wait!” said one officer, and then to me, “Did you tell him to lock the gate?”
“Yes.”
“Well now tell him to stop and leave it open.”
“No.”
“Good God!” exclaimed the officer.
The man beside him was a tall slim fellow with a small cap set jauntily on his head. He played with the riding crop with which he struck softly at his trousered leg, as he drawled, “Could this be the young Burmese woman installed by MacConachie?” The other rejoined “The damned Scot!”
They took no notice of me but continued to swear as tears welled up in my ever-teary eyes at the arrogance which could ignore someone they talked about as she stood by. But thank heaven for that imperial institution of the Indian durwan who is trained to work by routine and given orders. He snapped the lock shut with the same finality and sense of duty as he did against the young Burmese students who had to take leave of girlfriends at this hour right through my university days.
I had not long to suffer the unpleasantness of this job. While I wondered why my mother still had not sent word to me, the British forces were abandoning stand after stand up the Tenasserim coast to Moulmein, then across the Sitttang very near to Rangoon as February 1942 set in and I turned twenty six. We were not too surprised to hear one day that our luggage must be packed ready to send up-country to Maymyo, to which town we also would entrain two days after the luggage was sent. Maymyo was about five hundred miles up but I was not unduly upset,. My brother was junior in service, but he was in the top class of official selection in the Burma Railways which was a strong, adjunct of the Government. It would be easy to communicate through him and in any case he had proposed sending his wife with two younger sisters of hers to Maymyo earlier. I sent for all my clothes and packed them thoughtfully.
Like all Burmese young women of my kind in those days, I had stacks of longyis (sarongs), with fabrics of every kind bought from Indian Gujarati merchants who were now no more. The fine white muslin-jackets all identical, and made by the dozen at each order, also stacked in neat starched flat wafers Burmese dress was then undeviating and without such uniformity, no woman felt ease of mind.
On the evening, after our trunks had been sent by train up-country, a bell summoned us all to the Hall for an important announcement. We sat, and shortly after, my Major walked in. An air of expectancy and suspense hung over us. The Major looked straight ahead and in his level tones he said, “Due to recent developments in the war situation, it has been decided to send you all„ the whole corps of the Women's Auxiliary Service, to India by sea, together with families of the armed forces.”
A gasp went up. For me, though the earth gaped and I felt the despair of sinking into it, a thought also arose, “My clothes! What clothes except Burmese clothes can one wear?”
The Major lifted his eyes to the back of the room and without change of tone went on.
“Ma Than E, if you are going out to ask Mr. Swithinbank to get you exempted from this order, don't trouble yourself. I shall only have the painful job of refusing any such request.” So the only other Burmese woman there, though she had no mother or sisters to be bound closely to, but only two brothers whose kinship sat lightly on them, felt just as I did about leaving native soil. If we could not escape our dreadful fate, we could at least share our misery. But I had not yet given up hope. My facile brain, seeking no Swithinbank for help, was working while the Major continued.
“We have to cope with matters of vital importance, so believe me there will he no going back on this decision to get women and children to safety first. Very soon buses will come here. You will pack whatever clothes you have left with you and board those buses at half past four tomorrow morning. Four of you who are on chauffeuring duties will drive the buses.” He read out the list of drivers. They were headed by Ma Than E.
“On board ship you will travel as a corps under your Commandant Mrs. Dean. You will be under military discipline for the task each of you will be assigned. Above all, remember this. If you obey the Army, the Army will love you and look after you. But if you try to disobey you will only run into severe trouble. Gates by the way, will be locked and a patrol will keep watch tonight. Good night.”
He walked out neatly as usual. A rush of women followed. They stopped him in the quadrangle of the Hall. He dealt kindly but firmly with each protest or query, but when it came to the turn of an elderly Polish, woman who blubbered in distress in broken English, his face softened a trifle. He gesticulated vividly while asking a series of questions.
“Your husband? With hair like this? Yes? And moustaches, Yes? His eyebrows like this, Yes?” as the woman excitedly echoed “Yes!” to each query. That smile of positive delight again broke out as he assured her. “There, you see, of course I know him and can find him. He will know tonight that you are going to safety, and he can write to you at a given address.” I had waited on the edge of the group, wondering if I dared say what I had thought of saying, as desperate thoughts raced through my brain during his announcement. He dealt briefly with the few remaining women, and I was left the last.
“Well now,” he said with a smile, “what is it you want to say?”
“I don't want to go to India. In fact I simply can't go to India.”
“But why not?”
“Well, you see, I had decided to get married, and well, suppose I was starting to have a child I have got to be here in Burma.”
Oh, shameless, shameless lie, for which Nature would punish me a hundredfold later. How shameless it was can be gathered from the fact that two friends and one cousin of mine had committed suicide as the only way out for pregnancy in an unwed girl in the climate of moral opinion then. I deserved everything, even abandonment by my family for communicating thus with a British officer.
But how efficient the Major was. “If you are going to be married, you must get properly engaged, unless you are already. No? And may I know who the fortunate young man is?”
I named him.
“Good!” Again the suggestion of gladness lifted his voice, “Now, I will have him found, and then you both can come to dinner at Mr. Swithinbank's where I am still staying. Betty tells he often acts in loco parentis for young Burmese. I have some papers to go through with Mrs. Dean, and while I do that, you get ready for dinner. I will take you along in my car of course. But meanwhile, sit down for a moment and let's talk seriously.”
In a daze I sat beside him on the dining hall steps, up and down which I had jumped so many hundred times as a carefree college student.
“Now,” said the Major, “Tell me truly why you resist so much being taken to a place of safety.”
So he had not believed my silly lie. But I had established to myself my determination to try at all costs to remain In Burma. Now I broke out with the truth.
“You can't imagine what a calamity this is for me. It would rend any Burmese heart to leave Burmese soil at a time of tribulation, but I am also deserting my mother and younger sisters. And worse, I have to go to India. Oh, how I dread being a dark-skinned subject of the British Raj. I know we are British subjects here too. But even in your short stay you must have seen that things are different. As long as we don't want to join those silly clubs like gymkhanas and things, we don't have to confront any hurtful personal situation. I have never met a single British trader to suffer discrimination. The only three English people I have known apart from my good English lecturers have been kind to us. One of them, Mrs. Donnison actually defers to my mother's age and experience. Up to now I have never met a British soldier either. I know you feel kindly towards me, but you are at present within the environment of Mr. Swithinbank and his like. The army officers I have encountered across these gates are quite different. It is their India which I don't want to go to, and in India you will have to return to that fold. I can't bear the thought of being poor, despised, abject and in a foreign country of that sort.”
He heard me out, then said,
“You will never be despised or abject. I could make an out for you as you have not joined the military corps, but I don't want to leave you in the Rangoon that is now burning outside this estate. So you must go along. I will do what I can to ensure some extra consideration. I'll tell Mrs.. Dean to give you officer status on the ship, but later on, your own character will find you a suitable niche. And only when I have seen that ensured will I return to my fold as you put it, the military social environment where I belong. Come now. I'll finish my papers in fifteen minutes, and I'll pick you up at the porch.”
He got up, had a second thought and turned back again.
“I'm a professional soldier you know. I claim no ideals of covering other peoples to bring them benefits which we ourselves enjoy. My job is a clearer one.”
So I went to dinner and got engaged. Mr. Swithinbank even produced a good sapphire for me. As for the hastily summoned fiancé, a bewildered air hung over his usually handsome person.. Perhaps he did not believe what was happening. How often before we talked of marrying, only to have me retract each time my mother went to a close friend of mine, wept and asked her to make me desist from such a choice. This imperious looking stranger came from remote regions, unfamiliar social background of monarchic traditions, with polygamy and pearly creamy cheeked women adept at love potions against which her brown-skinned daughter would have no protection. Why could I not settle for one of other admirers who had normal good looks, pliant manners, senior official service with high regular salary, and the background of official life she knew so well. Well, now we got engaged. And my air of tragedy on what should have been a happy evening was forgiven as my fiancé came with understanding to say softly “Don't take it so hard. I'll find a way to join you somehow, and after we are married we will be happy. And one day your mother will accept me entirely.”
The buses which we boarded at four-thirty the next morning tools us through the deserted and silent streets of the town. All the houses were shuttered. I had not been down town this far since the air-raid of 23rd December 1941 had brought home to us the soft vulnerability of human flesh to sharp metal impact. This had been the first air-raid of the war with such casualties. Earlier raids had been innocuous, and no preparations had been made for quick removal of victims from the streets. We saw every spilled horror of innards and this was when Mother decided on a quick move to Henzada. Now, though no corpses lay on the streets, they wore a desolate air which matched our spirits. We were all silent as the bus continued to the dock area. My own thoughts were on the land of India from which hundreds of thousands of its people had come each year to seek a better life in this green and golden land which now we must leave.
At the littered and silent wharf we quickly boarded Ship and went as directed to our cabins. Kind influences had put Ma Than E and me together. She bustled in. Never would she repine for what was not to be got. She tried to cheer me up, then left briskly to roll-call where they would be assigned their jobs for the voyage. The news she brought back of the assignments was hardly to be believed except as a parody on colour and race discrimination.
Four categories of tasks were allotted, and each category had its prestige and status value equated with the skin colour of the women in ascending or descending order. Thus the first task was the care of wounded, some of whom we carried in a sick bay. They would be tended by the purely British women, a noble task of caring for the wounded. Waiting at table on the families of the armed forces was the next category of work. It was not so noble but neither was it menial nor taxing. This was assigned to the strata where in a family of several sisters one might by chance emerge with near blonde hair and a suggestion of grey or hazel eyes. The creamy complexioned straight Anglo-Burmese mixtures, girls like the Blackmores, Smiths, Mearys and such, were assigned the cleaning of the cabins. Fourthly, the cleaning of lavatories and bathrooms was given to the really dark-skinned de Souzas, Pereiras and Sequiras. Ma Than E, the Burmese oddity, had been placed in the second category.
I said it was a saving grace that the only Burmese had been rated with the highest of the mixed-blood orders. She told me of a more important saving grace as far as she was concerned.
“That nice young English wife, Natalie Lawson, refused to join, her kind. She said she feared that any patient she tended might die of her ministrations. She also said at least one tough Englishwoman would be needed to deal with those ghastly British brats at meal times. THINGS she called them. So I'll have her for company in my table-waiting.”
Natalie proved her point at least once when one of the THINGS refused to eat his porridge throwing bits of it on the floor. She grabbed the boy's neck and held his face firmly down one inch above the steaming, porridge, threatening to push it right in till he begged to eat it.
Thus, except for me, the Wasbees worked their way across the Bay of Bengal. Who knew in which obscure corner the usual ship's crew were lying in the midst of liquor bottles they had brought, with no one to claim the crates on arrival. Every now and again, a sailor would stagger into my cabin, open a drawer below the bunk, and stumble out with a bottle of gin. Otherwise I was alone. My now valued friend Ma Than E had taken out a book of French lessons, telling me there was nothing better than learning a new language to forget one's woes. She herself needed practice. She said, “When I return in the afternoon I shall ask you. Que Fera … ce soir, madamoiselle?” She quickly taught me the pronunciation of various vowels and consonants, and left to myself, I quickly spotted an answer for her: “Rien.”
“What are you doing this evening?” Nothing of course. It would be “Rein” to every question about my activities. I let the book fall and concentrated on thinking out the factors which had got me into this predicament. The seeds of my wilfulness I knew well enough. But I also had to think why my mother had not sent for me. Could it be that, as the major had suggested at dinner the evening before departure, she did not need me at all? Perhaps, thinking of it, she did not want me with her either. Perhaps, She was faring very well. My uncle was comfortably off, but he was ill-matched with his weak wife, being a man of rude health, hard drinking and successful bandit-catching abilities. He always needed more response to the monologues of his drinking hours than she could give him. Mother spoke little, but she was strong like him. She could manage his domestics better than his wife could and sit through the monologues with less fatigue to herself. My sisters were at their sweetest years, from the one of twelve up to the petite one of eighteen. They would serve him to his delight. Whereas I was supposed by now to be earning my own living, and my contrary behaviour of recent months would make my mother fear perhaps that I would spoil the easy atmosphere of this set-up. Perhaps while I thinking myself indispensable, worried for her, she, in her love worried for me, especially if she was faring all right with her brother as she might well be. I was glad the major had suggested sending word by my brother who still controlled trains in Rangoon, let her know I was being taken to safety. “If you meet any Japanese, don't fail to tell them your family is staunchly Buddhist, as they are Buddhists also.” had been one of mother's reminders to me on parting.
Mothers love offspring more than they can ever be loved in return. I thought in my twenty-six year wisdom, and to know I was safe would make her forgive me much in her gladness. I did not include any word of intending marriage in my message to her. So I comforted myself. Having a sanguine disposition and an accommodating conscience it is usually possible to put the conscience to rest for a spell while I engage myself in new plans to forget misery. But this time the new plans could only mean bleaker prospects. No clothes to wear!
Even then, I thought of the allowances which had been promised and the blouses I could design for an Indian dursey to match my longyis passably till I could in time cut and sew my own Burmese jackets. But no. Worse news came at the end of the voyage. We were to go to Simla, over 8000 feet above sea- level. We would need warm coats, and coats were sent for to be brought to the Grand Hotel where we lodged for the night in Calcutta. As only to be expected, the English women took first turns at trying on the coats. I watched bitterly as I saw them trying on soft warm jackets in ivory, grey or beige tones, leaving the dwindling, pile to show more and more of magenta and puce garments of the stiff paper-like fabric, like billiard cloth, without being a nice bright green but these horrible puce tones most unflattering to a dark skin like mine. Ma Than E tried to cheer me up again.
“We can buy what we like later on, dearie. This country hasn't got a war on you know.”
“With what money?”
“We may find work.”
“Here? Where we don't count for anything as you can see by this distribution of clothes.”
How she laughed then. “O Misery Me! Don't give up, I tell you. Remember there is always the oldest profession in the world.”
I must have looked shocked, for she laughed even more merrily. “You don't have to join. I'm sure I can find enough for two.” How could I be sad in such company? Peals of laughter followed on this last thought of hers. How could I help not laughing too?
In Simla where a train took us, we were lodged in a hotel called Longwood, which was given over completely to the Wasbees. There were long views, good walks and books to read. There, during my reading of one book that I remember well, an incident took place which set the tone for the friendship which would continue all our lives between Ma Than E and me. The book was about the first Mrs. Judson, wife of the founder of the American Baptist Mission which reaped such a rich crop of converts among the hill peoples of Burma. My later readings revealed Mrs. Ann Judson as a woman greatly sensitive to Burmese refinement, Burmese friends, Burmese dress which she wore from early days on, and Burmese language which she spoke on her final bed of pain. But the writer of Ann of Ava was a simple minded Christian who put his own thoughts into Mrs. Judson's mind. How dreadful, he said, that she should see the gaudy gold Shwe Dagon in place of the soft grey of her church, and hear the heathen pagoda bells instead of the tolling of the church bell. Pagoda bells shaken by a soft breeze tinkle in the sweetest way in our ears and I burst out indignantly about the barbarism of the writer. Ma Than E's her deceased mother, and her two brothers were helped greatly in their education by Baptist missionaries. Such a sophisticated glamorous personality as hers makes one forget these missionary associations in her life, but she herself has a core which will not deny her God or her benefactors. Without a break in her smile she walked over to me, took the book from me and carried it to the open window and dropped it way down. The houses of steep-sided Simla may have the front-door opening to the street level, and on the other side, looked several stories down to the back street. Ann of Ava dropped plumb down those stories to the lowest street level.
“That book would be an incessant topic of argument between us, so let it go.”
She would always cut off ruthlessly anything which annoyed her, so hardly ever got annoyed. I would worry, what about returning the book, what right had the writer to utter such assumptions etc. So I would be peevish while she laughed.
Her friendship with Natalie Lawson with shipboard waitress days continued and made me a friend of Natalie's too. When the news came as we expected, that the corps would be disbanded, leaving those who wished to rejoin to do so afresh while others went their way, Ma Than E said she would go to Delhi and offer to broadcast in Burmese for the Allied cause. The medium was still new in Burma and like all other fields of work it has its own language which irregular listeners were not all conversant with. I asked my friend fearfully,
“Can you manage all the terms?”
“What if I can't?” She replied. “I may make some horrible bloopers. Everyone who hears me in Burma will say 'Poor girl, she has to tackle work she can't manage, just to avoid starvation. It is obvious that she has NOT joined the oldest profession in the world which would have been much easier for her to work at.” Lots of laughter came with this last thought.
“People, you know, do think the worst of someone who is happy though unmarried.”
Natalie Lawson had quite a different plan which she broached to me.
“You know they are giving railway fares to those who are leaving the corps, to any destination they choose. Why don't we take full advantage of that and choose the farthest place we can to go to. I've always wanted to visit Kashmir, haven't you? Do go with me,”
I asked what we would live on in that legendary and remote place.
“Here is my point,” said Natalie. “They say the army is withdrawing in good order and before long our men should be here. They are giving allowances to wives, to be deducted later from the husband's pay. With my Peter a captain, I can draw five hundred rupees a month. That will be enough for two to live on, on a houseboat in Srinagar. Do come, as I won't go with anyone else from here. After all, you are soon going to marry an officer too. Just bad luck it didn't happen before this.”
Now it was an English woman offering to share all her scant allowance with me. What cause had I to brood?
The train that sped us along towards India's Northwest frontier was taking us farther and farther away from Burma, but Natalie's words kept echoing in my ears,.
“After all you are soon going to marry an officer.” An officer. A wildly attractive officer. A properly educated officer with no Caucasian blood in him. A Buddhist officer. A Buddhist. A Buddhist! I was not going to do anything immoral or un-Buddhist. Surely my mother would bless me.
The dreadful landscape we travelled through, a sandy waste, ravaged by Mohammedan goat culture, was as different as could be from Burma's green and pleasant land, different enough to satisfy my thirst for strange places.
We reached the railhead at Pindi where one gets into a car, usually hired entirely by the affluent or white travellers. Natalie's bright russet hair caused a sensation all the way as we sat in a bus with poor passengers, As soon as we reached Srinagar we hired a houseboat, then made inquiries for the office of the Resident British Officer in this state of a Maharajah. Natalie had been told it was he who would disburse allowances to British wives.
“Would you believe it?” she said to me on returning from inquiries,
“His name is Harrington-Hawes.”
Mr. Harrington-Hawes lived up to his name (important) more than to his years (young, thirtyish). He took out the Blue Book to look for the name of Peter Lawson, “Can't find it,” he said, “What regiment did you say?” Poor Natalie started to falter as she explained. “Oh, an emergency commission,” he said witheringly,
“We don't have any arrangements for those.”
But Natalie was obviously true blue British and could not he abandoned. He gave us a lecture on our recklessness in setting off on a venture like this with no assurance of its soundness.
“I'll have to give you something I suppose. You can't he left like this.” He hummed and hawed a bit more and then said he would give us four hundred rupees a month. “This should suffice till your husband arrives, but you'll have to live carefully. No fancy purchases.” He looked at Natalie's hair. “No visits to the hairdresser, mind you. I'll have my scouts around to inform me if you come too soon for more money.”
We were happy enough. Every time we hurriedly bought some creamy pastries, or a papier-mâché powder bowl, Natalie would look sideways and murmur, “Quick ... Mr. Harrington-Hawes on the lookout.”
She talked much to me of her background, Though I had spent three years studying in England, her world was quite new to me. Her folk were theatre folk associated with vaudeville, and her liaison with Peter Lawson had continued for years before he decided to marry her. This was also a new world to me.
We could not afford any except the cheapest of excursions, but going around the Dal Lake was enough to show me what a truly blessed land Burma was.
The Kashmiris wove beautiful articles of wool and silk and fashioned attractive wares of wood and papier-mâché which were all for offering to visitors, mainly Europeans and British whom they pestered to buy. They themselves wore only drab and mostly soiled voluminous garments. So different from Burmese who made wares for their own daily use and wrapped around their waists the fabrics they wove in colour, with little interest in selling to other peoples. I am glad to say our friendship lasted unimpaired despite the cramped space on a houseboat. When the telegrams arrived, first for me, and then for her, we were still enjoying each other's company. I had to ask for money for my rail fare to be despatched but lost no time otherwise in joining the lieutenant who had succeeded in getting out early.
I now skip forward in the story in order to mention my last important contact with the British military about whom this chapter is written. This contact would be my goodbye, no more connection with it for the rest of my life. So let me say that after we were married we settled in a house near the broadcasting studios of All India Radio. The house was filled to its seams. U Khin Zaw whom we met earlier at the first dinner had come to bolster Ma Than E's pioneer broadcasting efforts. A Christian Sino-Burmese woman had also found her way to this house as many others would later do. There was also the Englishman Mr. Kinch who had long ago renounced his family of the Establishment order and lived among Burmese on Burmese-style income. Then there was Ma Than E. Though she lived on her own, she had recently sprained her ankle and had moved here to save a long cycle ride to work each day from her New Delhi room.
One night, at an hour when young people sleep their deepest, the rattle and jingles of a tonga as the Delhi horse-carts are called, woke us. Then above the driver's shouts to his horse, an authoritative voice called, “Quo hai!” in the best Urdu as spoken by British officers of the army. I recognised the lift in the voice when something good was expected by its owner. Lt. Col. Alan MacConachie, no doubt, of the Fifth Gurkha Regiment, a product of the Staff College Quetta, young service as ADC to the governor of Baluchistan and later on D.S.O. I told Ma Than E of the arrival. She shook the sleep off her, dressed quickly and emerged, Chief Charmer at 3 am. “Tres gai.” she said as the visitor jumped from his front tonga seat, holding aloft a reading lamp which was his wedding present to us.
“These trains from Simla arrive at ungodly hours,” he said. “Can I have a bed in this house?”
Mac, as we all called him now, had two weeks' leave which he spent with us. He sat in the garden and read Lear aloud and in unison with young Rosemary Khin Zaw on holiday from boarding school. He ate meals of my inexperienced providing, cooked and served by only one nervous servant. After he saw I was doing all right, with a job of my own to boot, he left us to rejoin his kind. Only when we lunched later at the house of his colleague where he roomed till his wife could rejoin him did I realise how poor our household conditions were, compared to that. He had so happily accepted our life.
Now and again he made sallies into our world, and our friendship deepened to the point where during long, walks together, he promised to show me the highlands of Scotland if I ever revisited Britain. By the time I went there in 1951, however, he had emigrated to farm in Southern Rhodesia. Much later, his daughter whom I did meet in Scotland told me her father had given up farming and now read piles and piles of books, as many as he could find in Salisbury. That was the last link. It was so long ago that now there is no way of telling If Zimbabwe Rhodesia still holds him or not.
Now I must annoy the reader by going back in time in the next chapter. I myself feel impatient when an author does this instead of getting on with the tale. But as I said, writers of autobiographies, take themselves seriously. They search their souls to clarify to themselves why they acted thus and so. Later, when quite different troubles fell on our family, we were to ask ourselves “Why did we remain here to get into this jam?” Going back in time partly answers that important question for me. Also, if I were to go forward, the reader might find it more entertaining to hear of encounters with interesting westerners in India, but he will get an incomplete picture of this writer who, though she failed to join nationalist struggles, has lived happily and fully and with no pretences in extremely nationalistic Burma, and would still choose to live here through every reversal of personal fortune, even though chances occurred again and again to go to rosier prospects elsewhere.
