The Maitre D’ was a short man with a thick black mustache that curled upward to a point at each end. He commanded the room as he walked about, ramrod straight, in tails and a large white bow tie on a crisply pressed shirt with short collar tips. He glared at the guest waiting to be seated then escorted him to a table in the rear of the restaurant where he stood at attention until the guest had seated himself and placed the starched white napkin in his lap. The guest ordered a gin and tonic and watched the Maitre D’ direct the order to a tall waiter in a turban who saluted-his palm flat, and facing forward in the English style- before executing a smart about-face andmarching away toward the bar.
There were, perhaps, forty-five tables in three rows, each set with crystal and silver and a long,thin candle. It was cool, poorly lit and a bit musty, but little of the din from the Chowringhee Road, Park Street intersection, except the distinctive honking of Calcutta taxis, was able to make it up the flight of stairs and past the heavy curtains at the door. There were thirty other waiters, all at attention; each dressed in a white and gold tunic, each with the traditional double Patti head wrapof a Punjabi Sikh, each with his facial hair combed neatly and rolled tightly under his chin and up his jaw line into the turban, each wearing a pair of white gloves. They stood at attention, eyes averted, seeing everything. He fiddled with his knife and fork waiting for the gin and tonic and as it arrived and was placed in front of him, previously unnoticed hands from behind placed his fork and knife back in their proper positions.After a while, a large menu card was brought forward carried by a small boy, too young for facial hair, but dressed identically as the others, except for a less formal Keski turban. The card was handed to the waiter nearest his table, who opened and examined it, then handed it to him after which the waiter stood next to the table, at attention, eyes averted, waiting silently for an order.
He had been instructed that Firpo’s was the one place in Calcutta where real beef was served if steak was ordered. After nine months living in a country village 100 miles up the Hoogly tributary of the Ganges, a steak was what he wanted- even if it was only lunchtime. He closed the menu and looked into the red rimmed dark black eyes of the waiter, cleared his throat and ordered a steak, medium rare and, oh yes, could he have a refill on the gin and tonic. The waiter lifted the menu handed it to the boy and both proceeded on their missions. Again, hands previously unseen made the table setting neat. Only two other tables were occupied. At one table sat a man and a woman. She was pretty, tan, in her early thirties, and dressed in a light summer skirt and matching blouse. He was probably fifty-five and wore the uniform of a British officer. They paid no attention to the four waiters who hovered about them, straightening silverware, removing each and every crumb, adding ice to a depleting drink, or occasionally passing a folded note to the man. He chained smoked small cigarettes that he extracted from a silver case in his breast pocket. His mustache was full, butneatly trimmed above his lip, and his white hair was combed straight back to the high military collar. His tie had a deep olive field, with the red and black rep stripes of a Gurka Regiment. Though their conversation was muted and nearly without gestures, you could hear his emphasis in an upper class British accent, as he made points about the deteriorating conditions in Calcutta, especially the golf course known as Tollygunge Club. While the Royal Calcutta Golf Club, RCGC as it is known locally, is more famous and is the second oldest golf club in the world after the Royal and Ancient in St. Andrews, it is flat and uninspiring as a contest. The 14th at Tollygunge requires the golfer to hit over a huge water tank filled with lilies. In typical understated British humor, it is named the Hydrophobia Hole. His complaints centered on the badly manicured greens, inattentive staff, poor clubhouse food and especially the declining bar- all since Tollygunge’s ownership had passed into local control.
The other table was occupied by what appeared to be three Indian businessmen; each dressed in a khaki coat, and open sandals. They too paid no attention to the covey of waiters making themselves busy as their meal progressed. Dish after dish of pungent and colorful food appeared along with yogurts, dishes of seeds, plates of flat bread, locally called chapatti, and pitchers of fresh juices. There was no silverware to contend with, as all the food was consumed using the bread as a scoop or eating utensil. Their table talk was both loud and animated, in the Bengalidialect, often with all three eating, laughing and talking at the same time.
His second drink arrived and was placed in front of him in exactly the same spot as the first drink.
Trying to act cool, he had asked for McDowell’s Blue Riband Gin, which he knew had been distilled locally since the late 1950’s. It was sweeter than English and American gins and later got the attention of the Bee Gees in their song “Indian Gin & Whiskey Dry”. The British soldiers in the 1700’s experienced high incident rates of malaria and were required to consume massive amounts of quinine, a bitterly sour chemical. Eventually, some bright soldier mixed gin with quinine, added a slice of lime, and the gin and tonic was born. In late July of 1966, twenty-four months after graduating Clarkson College of Technology with a degree in chemical engineering,the mixture of chemicals in front of him fit the moment perfectly.
His food arrived.The steak looked real. Not like the buffalo that passed for steak in other restaurants. He cut off a piece, chewed and swallowed; Wonderful. Perfect. Juicy. Sweet. Almost like home. He tried to put the taste of the “Truck Stop” out of his mind; a small café near Bandel, set on the southbound side of the two lane tar and sand highway aptly named the Grand Trunk Road, a major artery of commerce between Delhi and Calcutta. During the monsoon season, the road developed deep ruts that filed with water, and traction was non-existent. In that season, the “Truck Stop” oftenbecame a triage center. A number of crude tables were randomly placed under the café roof and drivers and their helpers would pull off the road, grab a plate of curried chicken, another plate of chapatti and a glass of water then take a short nap on one of the twenty beds in the parking area consisting of mattresses made with hemp laced tightly between two wooden rails. The trucks, called lorries in most Commonwealth countries, continued to idle in the nearby lot, and owing to the fact the café had no sides, the diesel fumes added an interesting flavor to the curried chickenwhich was cooked 24/7 in a very large cast iron cauldron in the middle of the café, kept just short of the boil and to which water, curry, rice, bits of raw chicken, vegetables and other un-named goodies were added from time to time as the level in the cauldron was depleted by sales. Twigs and other small sticks of wood were kept in the middle of the café, near the cauldron, but the fuel of choice was the dung patty made with straw and cow dung and pasted to any vertical surface until it dried sufficiently to be removed. Next to the pile of sticks was an enormous mound of “cowchips”.
The lorries were highly decorated with Hindu Gods, chrome accessories, tassels and bright colored artwork. Neither the driver nor his helpers had any other place to live, so the lorry cab became home. Each driver had at least two helpers who kept the lorry clean and maintained. Any breakdown, even a flat tire, became a crisis because roadside shoulders were very rare. The lorry merely stopped wherever the breakdown occurred, and the helpers jumped out waving towels trying to divert or halt oncoming traffic in both lanes after which they would place whatevernumber and size of rocks they could find around the lorry in faux protection while a jack and tools were extracted and repairs undertaken. If replacement parts were involved, a helper would bum a ride to the nearest “truck stop” where the part might be available or, alternatively, a phone from which an SOS could be sent. Rarely would police or traffic officials arrive on the scene, so the jam would expand for miles in both directions and the art of dare devil passing between oncomingdrivers would become high art; if a northbound lorry was able to pass a broken lorry obstructing the northbound lane, other northbound lorries behind it would ride up close to the rear, horns blaring, in an attempt to forestall southbound lorries from gaining any advantage. And so it went for hours until the repaired lorry was able to rejoin the endless caravan of commerce along that narrow, but essential backbone.
Half way through his steak, the British couple received another folded note and he heard a forceful, but guttural “bloody hell” from under the Englishman’s breath. The four waiters stood at attention and motionless, surrounding the table, eyes averted from the couple and from each other. The Englishman put down the note and lifted a finger. One of the waiters immediately sped away in the direction of the bar. The note unfolded slightly and he could see the blue monogram and signature logo of the Royal Calcutta Turf Club. At 2:15 pm, it was apparent someone had lost a substantial wager on the first afternoon race and was about to drown it in a Pimm’s Number 1. The woman at the table yawned then made a slight move and two waiters grabbed her chair as she rose. Her companion rose as well; one waiter grabbed his chair as the fourth returned with his drink. He bowed graciously as she left, then sat down in a slouch that betrayed great defeat.
The three at the other table paid their bill with a very large wad of rupees, rose and left without glancing about. He noticed two of the men wore dhotis, a sarong-like skirt that reached to the ankles, rather than western trousers. The third wore pleated khaki pants creased sharply in the front: Western and eastern, cultures now mixing as memories of the British Raj continued to fade twenty years into Independence.
While the soldier at the table near him sipped on the Pimm’s Number 1, he finished the last of the steak and his dish was removed and his table straightened before he had finished chewing. “Would sahib prefer coffee?” spoke the waiter, looking straight ahead. Coffee would be fine, and might there be ice cream? “Yes, sahib. Right away.” For the first time, he noticed the framed photographs on the wall near the entrance. He moved to stand, and two waiters grabbed his chair. As he walked to the wall, his table was completely bussed. He didn’t turn to look. Though the bussing was silent, he could feel motion. The photos were of young men, all white, each in some sort of flight uniform. In the early stages of World War II, Claire L. Chennault formed the First American Volunteer Group. These were ex-military, civilian Americans who fought side by side with the RAF defending Burma- and the Rangoon, Burma to Kunming, China road, often just called the Burma Road. They were skilledpilots who flew P-40 aircraft and whose kill ratio was 15:1, many times higher than the RAF kill ratio. The famous tiger tooth design on the front of their planes had been copied from an illustration in the India Illustrated Weekly: The Chinese simply called them the Flying Tigers.They were disbanded on July 4, 1942, after the fall of Burma and Thailand and some of those pilots as well as pilots from the 10th Air Force stationed in India joined the Air Transportation Command and flew transports over the Himalayan Mountains to provide the Chinese with supplies needed to defeat the Japanese. These were the famous Hump Pilots. He stared at the young, smiling faces of these pilots, most of them about his age, wearing short leather jackets and long silk scarves, and thought of their skill and bravery and their commitment. Visible in the background were patrons- formally attired, a dance band and the perfectly set tables of Firpo’s of the 1940’s and in his mind he could hear Glen Miller, Dorsey and Sinatra, and thought of Bogart and Casablanca, as he wondered about each man’s personal story. He turned to return to his table but the English soldier was standing directly behind him. Close now, he could smell cigarettes, gin and see deep lines on the man’s permanently tanned face. He looked directly into the clear, grey eyes and was about to excuse himself and step aside, when the Englishman said, “Jolly good boys, those Yanks, what! They could bloody well fly airplanes.Knew many of them.”
They shook hands, and Major John W. Heath (retired), invited him to take coffee at the Major’s table. Before he could nod either way, and probably before they had stopped shaking hands, a pot of coffee appeared at the Major’s table, and his former corner table looked as if it hadn’t even been used. The Major’s retirement had been effective in 1954 and he had decided to continue living in India, where his pension would go much farther and last longer. His wife, however, had decided otherwise and had returned to Staffordshire in 1960. He remembered many of the HumpPilots and often was present when their cargo planes were being loaded at Calcutta’s Dum Dum airport, 20 miles north east of town. Often a pilot would instruct the cargo officer to add more crates, knowing he might have to alter course and fly a lower altitude over the hump between Himalayan peaks. Dum Dum was the site of the British Royal Artillery Armory in the early 1890’s where Captain Bertie Clay removed the steel jacket of a bullet exposing the soft lead interior, thus inventing the dum dum, or hollow point, bullet. A wonderful hour of conversation passed too quickly during which the Firpo’s of the 1940’s and 1950’s was fully divulged including how arestaurant, owned and operated by an Italian family, in the midst of a very Hindu city could consistently find and serve excellent beef to its western clientele. After the war, business declined, hence the new upstairs location, with no dance floor or band.
Yes, also the country now was adjusting away from western to the more traditional subcontinent culture, and Calcutta was caught in the throes of a very serious Communist insurgency. The union movement was gaining strength, and was pushing for less reliance on the United States. The USSR-India Summit took place in January 1966, during which Prime Ministers Shastri and Kosygin met in Tashkent after Shastri had made such a mess of domestic politics during the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Shastri had died at the Summit: He told the Major how lucky he had been to book the last seat on a Calcutta-Delhi flight in time to witness Shastri’s enormous funeral pyre along the banks of the Yamuna River. To the Major’s great joy, he explained that he had arrived India in the fall of 1965 to blackout curtains, and air raid warnings in the Bandel area. “Bloodycrazy, what! Did you see any action? What were you doing in the jungle anyway? You a CIA chap?”
CIA chap? No, his job was to help the West Bengal State Electricity Board commission India’s newest power station. He stood the 8 pm to 8 am shift, and the only action he had seen was a WW II Pakistani P-36 Hawk fly out of the eastern sunrise, across the half-mile wide Hoogly River, toward the power plant. He was on the roof of the plant, about 200 feet above grade. The plane was about 1000 feet above him as it passed over the chimneys and he could see a bomb tucked under the plane’s belly. The Pakistani pilot make one pass then banked north and flew toward Tribini, the next upstream village. At 5:30 am, people were standing waist-deep in the river,washing hands and faces and scrubbing teeth. Farm animals were walking along the riverbank chewing on soft green morsels and taking a morning drink of water. Women would carefully balance large ceramic jars full of water on their head and walk back to their kitchen to prepare the day’s meal. Cow chip smoke could be seen rising from the town center as the new day began.
The pilot flew parallel to the riverbank for a short distance, finally banking again toward East Pakistan. As he did, the bomb dropped in mid river and exploded with a crushing boom and tower of water. The Major roared in delight. “Originally, P-36’s were fighters. The Paks retrofitted them with a single bomb rack and a mechanical release,” he said. “I bet the Pak was pushing on it hard as he flew over your plant: Jammed, what! Bloody lucky for you: The series of banking maneuvers probably caused it to release over the river. Otherwise, he would have bloody circled back and tried again.” The Major roared thinking about the whole scene: animals
scurrying in all directions, men and women running to the river to see what had occurred and the buzz of the plane, now distant and hidden in the morning sun.
He had to leave to catch the 6:00 pm train from Howrah back to Bandel. Names, addresses and phone information were exchanged, with the usual disparaging remarks about the local phone system. At the base of the stairs, he looked for a taxi or a rickshaw. The heat was oppressive, and immediately his upper lip and forehead grew beads of moisture. People and machines were everywhere. The noise was loud and confusing. Several beggars moved in his direction, one touching his arm, another pleading for money. He saw the taxi just as its driver saw him andhonked awareness, so he made his way to the curb and got in. He looked back to the sidewalk:
The beggars had moved on. The cab driver was a Sikh who drove madly through boiling afternoon streets swarming with smoking diesel-trucks, cars, taxis, carts pulled by oxen and piled high with all sorts of cans, sacks, wood logs, rags, and newspapers; busses that leaned as the driver turned a corner with people sitting on the roof or hanging on the sides and back; rickshaws pulled by rail-thin bare-footed men wearing only T-shirts and shorts, and all manner of animals .They crossed the Hoogly River Bridge and arrived at the thick taxi stand alongside the red brickfacade known as Howrah station at 5:50 pm. Howrah station was built by the British in the 1850’s to gain access to the coal mines of eastern India, but restored in the early 1900’s now was home to 5,000 indigent living in makeshift tents or cardboard shanties tucked into nooks and crannies as well as the main waiting rooms. He jumped out of the cab and dashed to the window to buy a ticket: Train on time, track 4. Remembering he hadn’t had the ice cream, he stopped and bought an ice cream bar from a vendor near the track entrance, throwing the wrapper in the trash bin and
ran to track 4 to find his compartment. As he boarded the train, he turned to see a large commotion at the trash bin. Small children dressed only in loincloths were fighting for a taste of his ice cream wrapper and more were running toward them. A little girl with short, matted hair and saucer shaped eyes stood next to the train looking up at him. She was shoeless and wore a torn and soiled jumper with a ripped breast pocket and shoulder straps held in place with rustedsafety pins.
“Baksheesh,” she said, touching her outstretched hand to her forehead. He handed her the ice cream bar.The train pulled away at 6:01 pm.