Babar did not like India. In his memoirs, the famous Babar Namah, he set down his views in no uncertain terms:
"Hindustan is a country that has few pleasures to recommend it; the people are not handsome. They have no idea of the charms of friendly society, of frankly mixing together, or of familiar intercourse. They have no genius, no comprehension of mind, no politeness of manner, no kindness of fellow-feeling, no ingenuity or mechanical invention in planning their handicrafts, no skill or knowledge in design or architecture; they have no horses, no good flesh or bread in their bazaars, no baths or colleges, no candles, no torches, not a candlestick...."
The English translators of the memoirs went out of their way to echo Babar’s animus against India. The footnote beneath the passage quoted above reads: "Babar’s opinions regarding India are nearly the same as those of most Europeans of the upper classes, even at the present day."
Fortunately, there were some foreigners who loved India with as much passion as that with which Babar and "most Europeans of the upper classes" hated it. It is a curious fact that few countries of the world have aroused as much loathing or affection—it is one or the other—as India. This was as true five hundred years ago as it is today. It is not very surprising that Indians have become sensitive to other people’s opinions about them.
Indians usually divide foreigners into three different categories. Most numerous are the haters who dislike both India and the Indians. Next come the ‘half-haters’ who dislike Indians but like the Indian landscape and the conditions of living: big bungalows, servants, shikaar, polo, etc. The only natives they can suffer are the Gunga Dins of Rudyard Kipling—faithful as their dogs and who know their place. They particularly dislike educated Indians who are either babus (clerks) or, if Anglicised, wogs-wily oriental gentlemen. The third category consists of lovers who like everything about India and the Indians. They find Indian mysticism more satisfying than Christianity; Indian ragas more melodious than Beethoven’s symphonies; the dhoti more sensible dress than trousers; hot curries tastier than European food. They disdain mixing with their own nationals. They learn Indian languages. They eat with their fingers; their women wear saris, put a red spot on their foreheads and say namaste with the palms of their hands joined together. This third category is very small. Indians treat them as the lunatic fringe.
There remains, however, a fourth category—those whose reactions are uncertain. It is the fourth category which arouse the most lively speculation in Indian circles. Kenneth Tyson belonged to this category.
***
"First white man in darkest Hindustan!" remarked the Punjabi who fancied his wit.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Don’t you know Kenneth Tyson?" he demanded. "A box-wallah of the pucca sahib variety. One of the haters, a species becoming very rare in this country."
Tyson limped up to the bar. The bearer greeted him with an effusive salaam and served him a brandy and ginger ale.
"What is he doing in India when all his ilk have fled?" I asked.
"To have one last chhota peg before he puts in his resignation," suggested the Punjabi. "Too many natives about the place for the likes of Kenneth Tyson."
The Punjabi’s wife took up the theme with greater vigour. "You should meet his wife—a real British memsahib, if there is one!" She mimicked Mrs Tyson’s accent. "M’deah, must keep the black man in his place. Give him an inch and he will take a yard. Wot!"
Everyone laughed.
"I think you’ve got Tyson wrong," protested the Bengali. "I had dealings with him when he was posted in Calcutta. Although he did not mix very much with us, he quite obviously liked living there because he never went home on leave."
"Half-hater!" remarked the Punjabi lady. "A half-hater married to a full-hater. Jennifer Tyson does not mince her words. ‘My deah, I’d rather scrub the floors in me own bed-sitter in Tooting Bec than live in one of them ruddy Oriental palaces waited on hand and foot by a horde of black flunkeys!’."
"Poor woman, she’s had a hard time with someone or the other in her family going down with amoebic dysentery," pleaded the Bengali’s wife.
"Occupational disease of the hater," replied the Punjabi. ‘Ever known a lover go down with it? No. It’s always these chaps. They boil their drinking water and drown their vegetables in ‘pinkie’ but the amoebae gets them. It’s the ‘Delhi belly’ or the ‘Bombay belly’ or the belly of whatever place they happen to be in. Then like the Mullah who runs from his home to his mosque five times a day, the hater’s beat is between his bedroom and the lavatory. It is on the antiquated thunderbox that the White man has the blackest thoughts about India."
Tyson turned around; he had obviously sensed that he was being discussed. The Bengali waved to him. Tyson picked up his drink and limped towards our table. "May I join you?" he asked as he pulled a chair from the next table.
"With pleasure! May I introduce you to my friends..."
We shook hands. We pressed drinks on him. He accepted without fuss. "I don’t mind if I do; a last one for the road. The same for me, bearer, please." He had three double brandies before he stood up. "Now if you’ll forgive me, I’ve got my little girlfriend waiting for me in the car. I must get her home."
As soon as he left, the discussion on Tyson was resumed with even greater animosity. "Not a bad chap, is he?" demanded the Bengali who had introduced us. "One must not make facile generalisations about people. He is quite willing to make friends with Indians."
"Now, perhaps," hissed the Punjabi lady. "And with suckers who will go on offering him drinks. He didn’t bother to return one."
"Now really!"
"Oh shut up!" exploded the lady. "Your kind make me sick. Not a bad chap, Tyson; he accepts drinks from the blacks."
No one took up the challenge. The lady continued her tirade, "His woman is worse than him. She graciously accepts gifts from her Indian acquaintances who keep fawning on her. But she will not allow her children to mix with theirs. ‘My deah, it is not the colour of their skin I mind—my God I am not that narrow!—but I cannot bear to have my kids speaking their awful chi-chi sing-song!’."
"I think you’ve got a chip on your shoulder about this black-white business,’ protested the Bengali. "If they do not like it, what is it that keeps them here?"
"Hasn’t found a good job in England," retorted the Punjabi lady. "His wife is out there on a reconnoitering expedition."
The analysis continued. Someone quoted Tyson’s opinion on Indian sculpture: "Them eight-armed monstrosities, you can have them, and with my compliments!" As to Indian literature, Tyson echoed the views of his distinguished compatriot—"One shelf of a library in Europe is worth more than the entire learning of the East. I did not say that, Lord Macaulay did." Indian music "bores me to tears". He could not play polo or go out to shikar. What then kept him in India? And why did he forgo his home leave year after year? Did he have a native mistress tucked away somewhere?
***
"Stop it, Martha! Stop it at once!"
"Good evening, Mr Tyson."
"Oh, hello." He had not recognised me, but seeing I was a Sikh, added, "Good evening, Mr Singh. Taking a stroll in the park? Lovely this time of the evening, isn’t it? Oh, stop it, Martha!"
Martha scampered back and plunged into the rat hole. "She’s quite happy as long as she has some place to stick her nose into," remarked Tyson, looking proudly at his dog. "All dogs are like that. My last one—I lost her two months ago—she used to do exactly the same."
"I am afraid mine’s a little more demanding in the way of exercise. He’s rather large and we live in a small flat," I explained. The words were barely out of my mouth when Simba, my German Shepherd, loomed out of the dark. He saw Martha’s wiggling tail and applied his inquisitive nose to her posterior. Martha shot backwards, ticked off Simba with a few effeminate yaps and then began to circle around him at breakneck speed.
"Too big for you, girlie! Leave him alone. Come along now, it’s getting very late," he ordered. "Sweet, isn’t she?"
"Very cute," I replied. I sensed that he did not want to linger on. "Good night, Mr Tyson. Come along, Simba."
Thereafter I saw Tyson almost every evening in Lodhi Park. I exercised Simba by doing several rounds of the park. Tyson preferred to stay in the one part which had many rat holes. His Dachshund busied itself ferreting for rodents while her master waited patiently by smoking his pipe and twirling the leash in his hand. There they stayed long after sunset. Some evenings I saw his tall figure against the dusk; sometimes the smell of tobacco indicated that he was still somewhere on the lawn. His parting words were always the same. "That’s enough for the evening! Time to go home. Come along, Martha sweetie." The bitch would extricate herself, cock her head at her master as if pleading for ‘just one more rat’; then have a quick sniff inside the hole, a loud snort outside and scamper off happily at her master’s heels.
The years passed without Tyson taking his home leave. "I can go when I like, you know," he explained. "My leave will accumulate and then I will have a couple of years at one go. Wouldn’t that be nicer?"
"But you can’t accumulate the passage money."
"Oh that! Who cares for a piddling passage!"
After some years people stopped asking why Tyson did not go home. During the winter months when his wife was in Delhi, they did a certain amount of entertaining. In the summer when she was away, people asked Tyson over for supper because they thought he was lonely. He always took Martha with him. He left her in the car: the leash was always in his hand.
The years added layers of fat to Martha. Like all ageing Dachshunds, Martha, who had never been mated, began to look chronically pregnant with a belly that barely cleared the ground. Tyson became more solicitous in his address.
"Nice old gal; she’s getting on, you know. She’s thirteen—which makes her over eighty if she were human. Mustn’t tire yourself out, lady."
After letting her ferret for a while, he would pick her up and take her back to the car. Martha grunted and sighed in the arms of her adoring master.
***
"Bet you’d like to get out of this now if you could," remarked our host referring to the stillness and the heat; the thermometer had been touching 112 degrees every day of the past week. "Think how nice it would be in a country pub somewhere along the Thames near Richmond! I’d give my left arm to be back in old Blighty."
Tyson had been through this before. "I don’t mind it, you know! The dry heat agrees with me. Anyway there are all the remaining years of one’s life."
Tyson did not answer. We relapsed into silence. The only sounds were the tinkling of ice in the tumblers and the chirping of crickets. Tyson lit his pipe.
Martha sneezed in the flower bed. The Bull Terrier bitch joined her. The two snorted in unison, then began to squeal with excitement.
"A bandicoot, I bet," exclaimed our host, turning back. "Get it, Flossie! They are a damned nuisance. Come creeping into the house and leave droppings as large as snails. Get it, Flossie!" he commanded.
The dogs redoubled their efforts, yapping and squealing. Every now and then they looked up at their masters for instructions.
A bandicoot ran out of the hole—crying tikkee, tikkee, tikkee. It ran across the lawn towards us. The dogs chased it yapping at a higher and higher pitch. We put up our legs on the table and shouted encouragement to the dogs. "Here, Martha! Here, Flossie!"
The bandicoot turned sharply and made for the road; its shrill tikkee, tikkee marking a sound trail. The dogs ran after it as fast as they could; the Bull Terrier led the chase by a few yards. The rodent crossed the road and ran down a dry storm-water drain on the other side. The Bull Terrier was hot on its scent. Martha got to the middle of the road when the headlights of a car diverted her attention. She stopped and turned her large brown eyes towards the glare. A second later the car had gone over her.
Tyson leapt up from his chair and ran out. Martha’s back was broken; she wriggled like an earthworm cut in half. Tyson picked her up in his arms and brought her in. His eyes were blurred with tears.
His host rang up for the vet. The vet drove up a few minutes later. He examined Martha and shook his head. He took out a syringe from his bag, loaded it with a fluid and jabbed the needle into the Dachshund. "That will put her out of her misery," he explained.
Martha died with her large eyes fixed on her master. Tyson broke down and wept like a child.
I did not see Tyson in Lodhi Park again. A few days later notices appeared on the boards of local clubs announcing the sale of his crockery, cutlery and furniture. He was not going on leave; he had resigned his job and was leaving India for good.
A fortnight later he was at the airport. His English friends and the Indian staff of his office came to see him off. He was his usual quiet, phlegmatic self. He made polite conversation and bowed his head to let the Indians put garlands around his neck. When the loudspeaker announced the departure of his flight, he shook hands without any trace of emotion on his face.
"Well, Tyson, you are off at last," remarked one of his English friends. "We almost believed you were going to settle down here and take on Indian nationality."
"No ruddy fear!" replied Tyson, waving his hand in farewell. "It’s these damned uncivilised laws England has for animals. How can you leave a dog you love in quarantine for six months, I ask you?"
