Happy Times Book_Volume 1

After listening to my account, his reaction was: “You actually said, what you stated you said, to the Head Porter?” On my affirmation, his comment was: “I have to admit that I do admire you.” Thereafter whenever the Head Porter and I crossed each other, he would return my greeting with a smile, and once with a conspiratorial wink! The most unusual of these encounters occurred at around 2 a.m. one morning. I had climbed over the gates, and was making a dash for my rooms, when I bumped straight into the Head Porter, taking his ceremonial rounds—three-piece suit and top hat. “Good night Mr....” I blurted out. “Good morning, Sir,” was his smooth response. And then words that brought me immense relief: “I haven’t seen you Sir”! Arun Bhatia, who was mentioned above, and I met practically every evening when we would gymming, boozing and, occasionally, partying. Every few months or so, my Uncle Dunda (Surojit Sen) would come down to Cambridge, often accompanied by my cousin Rajat, both of whom were at Oxford. Uncle Dunda amd me England and Cambridge | 141

Uncle Dunda was the youngest, most gifted, and most wayward of my father’s brothers. My uncle Mohit wrote of him: His brilliance was concentrated but intense. Prof. Taraknath Sen, perhaps the greatest teacher in all the annals of Calcutta’s Presidency College, would not commence his lectures on the ‘Spring Rhythm’ of Gerard Manley Hopkins till he saw that Surojit (Dunda’s real name) was there. When he died all too young, one of his colleagues, by then an Oxford don said, that so long as English was taught in Calcutta he would be remembered. Surojit Sen (Uncle Dunda) He was a figure out of Shakespearean rather than Greek tragedies, destroyed not by faith but his own inner fury---a rage at the perfection he understood but felt he could not reach and therefore there was nothing really worth trying for. Immortal longings damned by the knowledge of the impossible.” Premen Addy, himself a scholar, who lectured on History in British Universities, recorded the following tribute: Dr Surojit Sen, whose sudden and untimely death, at 52, occurred in London last week [22 November 1989], was born into a well-known Bengali family. He was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, where generations of Bengal’s finest intellectual talent have flowered, then at Lincoln College, Oxford, and Rochester University in New York. His teachers in every one of these institutions were agreed that Sen was one of the most outstanding students of English literature they had encountered. WW Robson, his Tutor at Oxford (later Professor Edinburgh University) wrote in his report that if Sen’s essay on Charlotte Bronte, which had been given to read, together with another essay on Mathew Arnold, was ‘any index of the quality’ of his doctoral thesis on her work, ‘it should be very distinguished.’ 142 | Tales for Grandchildren

Professor George Ford at Rochester, where Sen took his PhD, referred to his ‘extraordinary learning, especially in nineteenth century English literature,’ and to his ‘remarkably fine critical mind.’ He recalled a colleague at the University of Columbia, where Sen began his post-graduate studies, telling him that Sen’s ‘performance on an oral examination was perhaps the most brilliant he had ever witnessed.’ Sen wore his learning gracefully, combining the wit and moral seriousness of the elect. Under a grave and courteous exterior, there lurked an irrepressible sense of humour. He had a penchant for practical jokes in his youth, mention of which in later tears brought a mischievous twinkle to his eyes. Sen was a beautiful conversationalist, bringing to his speech much of the nuance, fluency, and rigour of his writing. He scorned affectation and seemed incapable of small talk for any length of time. Yet he never talked down at the less gifted. His reflections on the things that interested him most – English literature (and the great 19th century Russian novelists) and Western classical music, his engagement with contemporary social and political issues was a continuous source of pleasure and intellectual stimulation to those around him. Following a successful of teaching in the English Department of the Central University, Hyderabad, family reasons brought Sen back to England in 1981. He had been appointed Education Officer in the London Borough of Ealing, where he brought to his work the same high standards of professional commitment that characterized his previous careers. Surojit Sen – ‘Dunda’ to his intimates – was a warm and generous friend. Our association began in school and college in Calcutta; we came to Britain for higher studies in the early nineteen sixties; and following a long period when we went our separate ways, we came together again in London in 1981for what turned out to be the closing chapter of his life. One of my most satisfying achievements was to persuade him to write a review in a London publication, India Weekly, of David Lean’s film A Passage to India, and combine this with a critical appraisal of Forster’s eponymous novel. He did so with customary brilliance and insight. Dunda has left me many precious and delightful memories, for he was a special and unique person. He leaves behind him four older brothers and England and Cambridge | 143

their families, all of whom are in India; also, his wife Gina, and son, Sumit, currently a PhD student in physics at Yale University. The loss of Surojit Sen will be felt most deeply by his immediate family and kin, but those of us who were privileged to have enjoyed his company and his friendship are equally diminished by his death. He had so many fruitful years before him that it is difficult to believe he has gone. Bimal Jalan, who was at Oxford at the same time, after having left behind a formidable reputation in Cambridge, and who was a very close friend of Uncle Dunda, mentioned to me, years later, when he was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, that in the course of his remarkable career, he had met many distinguished minds, but of these “Dunda’s was undoubtedly the most civilised”. Spending time with Uncle Dunda was great fun, but equally a vast and unique learning experience. He was, to use the colourful phrase used by Ashis Nandy, the political psychologist, “obscenely erudite”. He introduced me to poetry and literature, quoting, by casual references in conversations, appropriately and effortlessly — Auden, Cavafy, Rilke, and the American greats—Hemingway, Faulkner, Malamud, Salinger, Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, and a host of others. Cambridge, London, and Oxford had perennial feasts of art films, so whenever and wherever we met, seeing one or more of these films was a must. Uncle Dunda had a taste for, and innate comprehension of, the masters— Eisenstein, Renoir, Fellini, Bunuel, Antonioni, Bergman, Kurosawa—so in a year we saw the lot. I have to admit, that, at that time, to me, most of these films made little sense, till, over several drinks, Uncle Dunda revealed what was remarkable about each, with a lightness that was extraordinary, and insights that were sharp. 144 | Tales for Grandchildren

I have mentioned in my chapter on Calcutta, that my Uncle Tutu spent most of his life acquiring, a taste for, and records of, the masters of western classical music. After exchanges over music with Uncle Dunda, on his return from England, Uncle Tutu confessed that, his younger brother’s impeccable taste in the selection of conductors, excelled his. Whenever I went to stay with him in Oxford, the room was filled with the sounds of the great masters. Bach and Mozart were his favourites, and these added significantly to my ear for, and love of, western classical music. Thus, whatever I carried back of worth in the ‘60s, from poetry, literature, cinema, and music, were not so much the bestowals of the great University in which I had studied, but more the effortless transmission, by this most gifted of my relations. He had the ability to interact with ease with people far less endowed than him, so long sessions over drinks, classical music and cigarettes were enthralling. He would listen carefully to outpourings of feelings and emotions, and speak occasionally, but always with acute insight, which flowed from his innate sensitivity and vast erudition. Many years later when I was with the airlines, I spent a day in London with Uncle Dunda, and his doting wife Gina, in their apartment in Kensington. The entire day passed pleasantly in conversation, with the mechanical but soothing sounds of Bach in the background, interrupted only by a brief lunch at a corner restaurant, after which the atmosphere and flow resumed. I talked and talked of all that had happened in the years that separated us —about my aspirations, my joys and my disappointments—and he listened, with utter stillness, commenting very occasionally, with England and Cambridge | 145

sensitive and incisive insights. I returned, unburdened, and enriched. Little did I realize that was to be my last meeting with him. Over two decades have gone by since that day, and I still miss him, for never have I encountered the likes of anyone like him. The other influence that a close family member had over me during my years at Cambridge came from the letters of my Uncle Mohit. I looked forward to the blue air-letters bearing his strong, distinct script that arrived with unfailing regularity. These were often brief, sometimes telegraphic, but always revealing concern, compassion, insight, and love. One of the things missed by those in their prime today; the cell phone, SMS, e-mail generation; is the richness that letters brought to relationships. Uncle Mohit’s letters dwelt on what Cambridge and London had to offer—the libraries, theatre, concerts, lectures, and intellectual companionship; he wrote also of values, of what one should do after Cambridge; of relationships and the family. He became my father, mentor, brother, and friend. I could, and would, turn to him whenever I had doubt, anxiety, or fear, and he always responded promptly, but after having devoted to the issues all the attention and concern required. His responses emerged from his wide contacts with persons, events, books, and idealism, but were at the same time almost always grounded in reality; his letters to me while I was in Cambridge were therefore at least as important as the experience of the great university itself. It is said that at Oxbridge, that first class students are self–propelled, what the Universities do is nurture a 2-1 into achieving a first, and a 2-2 into getting a 2-1. In life, I was endowed for 2-2 attainments, and 146 | Tales for Grandchildren

Uncle Mohit brought me up to being 2-1, and I was always aspiring for, and occasionally managing, first-class attainments; mo. Me than all that what I received from him, was the morale that came from the consciousness that someone like him had faith in me. I returned to India with a great deal more confidence and clear in my mind that I should try for the IAS, for since serving was imperative, working in the IAS was the least I could do. The rooting of this categorical imperative of serving India in my mind was his gift. Amongst the friends I made in England mention must be made of Ken Jagger and Tom Maley. In King’s there was a wonderful facility called the “Balfour Room” which seemed an extension of a college library, with the added attraction of a sense of intimacy and privacy, with rows of well- bound books, a table, and chairs, and what was most welcome a gas fire. The room was open to all Kingsmen, at all hours of day and night, throughout the year. Once when I took my books to read there, the other person in the room was a slim, brown-haired student, who had a face and fingers that were finely chiseled, and kind, sensitive eyes. We got round to talking, and that begun our friendship. When, at the end of my second year, I had to move out of College into “Digs”, Ken offered to share a cottage with another English friend of his and myself. We had a very pleasant year together, when Ken and I spent many a quiet evening together, exchanging thoughts about life and books, which we both found enriching. My uncles used to say that the British don’t make friends easily, but when they do, it was for life. This I found true of my old school principal, Jack Gibson, Arthur Hughes (an ICS officer, who served England and Cambridge | 147

under my grandfather, and who, much later landed up at Mayo, and taught us history), Robin Thomson, (another acquaintance at Cambridge), the Roses, and David Baker (who taught much after my time at St. Stephen’s, an Australian by birth, but who was everyone’s idea of all a British scholar was). Utterly different was Tom Maley. One evening, when I was in my room, I heard the sound of many voices and laughter, from the staircase, a most unusual occurrence, shortly after which, Tom Maley burst into my room, leading, like the proverbial Piper, an assortment of British undergrads. Tom was blind. This was most unusual, because, practically no one in England, just “dropped in” and the normal With Tom Maley exchange when we crossed each other was a greeting, appropriate to the time of the day, and occasionally a mundane comment on the weather. What were totally unorthodox about Tom, were not only his manner of arrival, but his utterly joyous nature, and his steady flow of cheerful conversation, which impelled others to also join in. That was the first of many visits of Tom to my room and mine to his. Tom’s room always had its fill of friends, and in addition to the cheery banter, were the sounds of the piano, that Tom played with great skill and abandon---mostly Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, and Bach. 148 | Tales for Grandchildren

Always beside him was his wife, utterly devoted to him—and it will surprise you to know, that Tom had more than one marriage, each with someone who adored him. Tom was as lively as life itself. This year, I located him by contacting King’s and resumed an exchange, after a lapse of over half a century. Strangely words flowed, page after page, from both of us, without any attempts to introduce or explain. The years and distance that separated us, appeared to vanish, like the wind. I’ll have to end this piece on King’s and Cambridge, with the tale of my ‘unsuccess’. As I mentioned earlier, having breezed through my prelims, securing a decent “Second”, I thought that if, for my finals, I put in really hard work, I would secure a “2-1”, and with luck, a “First”. I did try very hard. When the results were put up, I went to the Notice Board and carefully went through the list of those who had secured a “Second.” Not finding my name there, I had a moment of delightful anticipation— thinking that I had managed a “First.” To my utter disappointment, I found that the list of “Firsts” did not include my name, which figured loudly and clearly in the list of those securing a “Third.” After my “Second” at St. Stephen’s, this was yet another, far more disastrous setback. My self-esteem after receiving this body blow sank to its depths, something from which I felt I would never ever recover. A somewhat comic post-script was a remark of Provost Noel Annan, who bumping me one morning, remarked grandly, “I noticed you received your degree. at the ceremony at the Senate, with great aplomb.”! England and Cambridge | 149

What helped me to recover, to stand again, were the sensitive responses of my tutor, Christopher Morris and my college, King’s. Returning to my room I found a hand-written letter from Christopher, words of which I can recall exactly, because they meant so much to me: “…The examiners have been most unfair. Having had examination failures myself I know just how you feel; I would like to assure you that King’s does not judge its students by examination results. Why not drop in this evening to my rooms for a glass of sherry?” To add to this was the fine, sensitive touch of King’s. The College had an annual monetary award for the best student from the Commonwealth. Though, by no stretch of imagination, could I, that year, have been considered anywhere near amongst the best, the authorities in King’s decided to bestow on me the funds, suggesting it should be adequate for a brief vacation in the Continent. My own family could not have been kinder. I stayed on an extra year to complete a Diploma in Social Anthropology to distance my completion from my failure. Our Provost, Edmund Leach was the presiding pundit on the subject. Many more memories stream in, but the time has come to wind up, so some concluding thoughts. Ours was a highly anglicized family, and both my family as well as my education at Mayo College and St. Stephen’s, contributed to rearing me in the arts and culture of the West, and in particular, the English. The few Englishmen I came into close contact with— Jack Gibson, Arthur Hughes, and others, I seemed to interact with easily. 150 | Tales for Grandchildren

I therefore assumed that I would find myself completely at home in England, and with the English, which was not the case. At Cambridge I found my colleagues excessively formal; hardly anyone casually dropping into anyone’s rooms, and verbal exchanges though pleasant, routine, precise and brief. Any attempts at contravention or change would result only in added formality, or consequences that were totally unexpected. Though their sense of humour was superb, it was very different from ours, whatever part of India we may have come from. These differences and distances stemmed, Wikimedia Commons in Cambridge, not from any underlying racialism or xenophobia; but instead, to resort to a phrase common in “Indian English,” the fact that “they are like that only”. I could resonate with all of what Jawaharlal Nehru once wrote: …I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere. Perhaps my thoughts and approach Jawaharlal Nehru to life are more akin to what is called Western than Eastern, but India clings to me, as she does to all her children, in innumerable ways. He continues: “I am a stranger and alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also, sometimes I have an exile’s feeling…” Perhaps the clues lie in what Somerset Maugham has written on “being and feeling, English”: W Somerset Maugham England and Cambridge | 151

...I don’t think one can ever really know any but one’s own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can’t come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them. You can only know them if you are them … Even so subtle and careful an observer as Henry James, though he lived in England for forty years, never managed to create an Englishman who was through and through English… So, in all my years in England, I missed India — its heat, its dust, its smells, its disorder, its variety, its spontaneity, its colours, and even its chalta hai syndrome. Given my academic failure, and such feelings and thoughts, were the three years spent in England therefore a complete waste of opportunities and resources, a dreadful mistake that the family and all others, including myself, never cease to regret? From one point of view, “Yes,” because I was not an intellectual, nor academically inclined, and therefore my going to Cambridge, and especially to King’s College, meant depriving another of the opportunity, someone who would have been academically far more deserving than me. I certainly didn’t deserve Cambridge; but such thoughts lead to other, similar questions: Did I deserve to be part of the family I happen to have been born in? Did I deserve the parents I had? — the schools and college I went to? Did I deserve to be a member of the Indian Administrative service? 152 | Tales for Grandchildren

Did I deserve my wife? —my relations, my children, and the persons they married? Their children? The answer to all these would be a clear “No.” But where does this all lead one to? Perhaps, therefore the more pertinent question to ask myself is, given what I was, and all I was, were there sincere attempts, as well as some measures of success, at imbibing what Cambridge and England had to offer; or were all efforts, and their consequences, a total washout? Or, to put it another way, having spent time in England and Cambridge, was I a person, different from the one I would have been, had I not gone; was I a better human being, for having experienced all I had? I think I can, with some candour and confidence, respond to these questions in the affirmative. Thanks to having been a guest of, and later adopted by, the Roses, I was extremely fortunate in having seen and experienced the very best that London had to offer, at a time when London was perhaps at its best—its Clubs, Pubs, fine dining, and in the rituals and magic of its concerts and plays. After having lost its Empire, the ‘60s were perhaps the autumn years of England. The best Englishmen then were some of God’s finest creations— mentally and physically well- endowed, with the confidence that these engender, retaining, at the same time, an excellent sense of humour, modesty, sensitivity, compassion, and restraint—they were, in fact, quintessentially civilized. They had the ability to engage with and often actively encourage dissent. Therefore, nothing gives me greater pleasure than watching films or reading about such men and their times. England and Cambridge | 153

Philip Rose used, jocularly, to comment, that Great Britain would, one day, sink to being, a “group of forgotten islands, off the coast of Europe;” modern Britain seems heading in this direction, at a rate that is alarming. Lest I be accused of pontification, our very own India competes, with its hurtling pace of degradation. So, what had I imbibed, or failed to imbibe, from King’s and Cambridge? Cambridge as a University and King’s as a College are, to put it quite simply, amongst the finest in the world. Scholarship and academic attainments were central to both, but they had far more to offer by way of what is central to life itself. In the past, ICS officers were sent to spend a year in Oxford. They did not have to pass an exam. The purpose was to expose them to knowledge, of course, but also certain values and perspectives which would ensure they were “rounded off”. Emblem of King’s Thanks to the folklore I was brought up on, the presence of my Uncle Dunda in Oxford at the same time, the letters of Uncle Mohit, and finally, my own inclinations and predilections, I can with conviction and gratitude declare that the years I spent in England, were a benediction, something much more than a momentary glimpse or insight, of how life can or should be lived. 154 | Tales for Grandchildren

Acknowledgments T here are many who have contributed significantly, and without whose encouragement and critical comments, this book would never have emerged. My family all of whom urged me to write, in particular, Binoo my dearest and gifted wife, who went through every word, and whose insightful suggestions, when incorporated, greatly improved the narrative. In equal measure, my brilliant son, Prashanto, whose praise and pressure, ensured I was left with no alternative, but to write. My talented sister, Sumita Mehta, who worked assiduously, and with great skill, at editing the manuscript. The gifted Priyanandini Mullick and her creative team at Macro Graphics Pvt Ltd, who ensured that this publication was possible, taking forward the inputs on the cover made by Creative Curve Communication. And finally, my many relations, colleagues, and friends, who patiently and promptly went through all I sent them, and whose encouragement, kept me going. Acknowledgments | 155





ISBN 978-93-5915-138-0