a goan village in nagpur
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Diary of an Infantryman
© Brig. Ian da Costa (Retd.), 2013
Published in 2013 by
Saligão 403511 Goa, India http://goa1556.goa-india.org goa1556@gmail.com
M: +91-9822122436 P: +91-832-2409490Publishing Goa... not by accident
Project co-ordinated by Frederick Noronha
Copy editing by Pamela D’Mello
Cover design by Bina Nayak http://www.binanayak.com
Typeset using LYX, http://www.lyx.org
Text set in Palatino
Printed by Brilliant Printers Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore
http://www.brilliantprinters.com/
Published with financial assistance from the Directorate of Art & Culture (Govern-ment of Goa) scheme for Goan authors.
See Goa,1556’s complete online catalogue at http://bit.ly/Goa1556Books2
ISBN 978-93-80739-48-9 Rs 300
Contents
Foreword | Lt. General DD Saklani (Retd) 8
Acknowledgements 10
1 A Goan Family Away From Home 13
2 The Doctor and his Garden 21
3 A Goan Village... in Nagpur 29
4 Marriages... and School 42
5 On a Maiden Voyage 48
6 Beyond the Adolescent Years 53
7 The Best Days, at the NDA 56
8 Zojila Company, IMA 64
9 A Young Officer in JK 68
10 Starting Life with 14 Kumaon 72
11 First Major Skirmish 78
12 Two Steps Up 84
13 The 1965 War and the Battle for O P Hill 90
5
CONTENTS
14 Getting Married... and Goa 115
15 Pathankot, Poonch and Thereabouts 121
16 Srinagar Then 124
17 End of an Era 131
18 Peace Station: Madras 135
19 Raising the Naga Regiment 138
20 1971 and Bangladesh 145
21 The Battle of Dharmadaha 149
22 At Wellington 164
23 Back to 14 Kumaon 168
24 The Mountain Brigade and a ‘mad river’ 176
25 Life at Mhow 184
26 The Low, Picturesque Clouds of Nagaland 190
27 In the Desert, Moving Stealthily by Night 196
28 Mhow, Seat of Military Education 214
29 Life At Kumaon House 216
30 A Visit to Gangolihat 227
31 An Old Army Club 232
32 Of Holiday-Homes and Memorials 242
33 Calling it a Day 250
34 Setting Out, to the Plains 258
6
A Goan FamilyAway From Home
C HATEAU d’Emilia was where home was for us in Nagpur, inthose days the capital of the Central Provinces and Berar1. I
was born on September 26, 1940 at the Mure Memorial Hospital2.Our big and beautiful home was named after our mother Emilia.
Yvette, my eldest sister who was in charge of feeding me and like a
second mother, told me that to get me to eat, I would be taken to the
compound wall to see ‘Moriya’s ghoda’. The Billimorias next door tied
the horse, which they otherwise used to drive their tonga, to a stake
under a tin roofed cycle-shed at the back of their compound.
On the other side of the compound that housed Chateau d’Emilia
and Olaf Manor, was a barbed wire boundary with the Dongajees’
compound. To the west was the Government Nursing School, called
Marie’s compound. Marie Fernandes, Yvette’s B.Ed classmate on the
Seminary Hill, was my god-mother. She married Major (later Brig)
1 The Central Provinces and Berar was a province of British India, comprising Britishconquests from the Mughals and Marathas in Central India, and covered much ofpresent-day Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states. The CentralProvinces was formed in 1861 by the merger of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territo-ries and Nagpur Province. The Marathi-speaking Berar region of the Hyderabadprincely state was annexed to the Central Provinces in 1903 for administration andlater to form the new Central Provinces and Berar from 1936.
2 http://www.murememorialhospital.org/
13
DIARY OF AN INFANTRYMAN
Arnold Rodrigues of the Ordinance Corps. The couple settled down
in Bangalore at 20 Cline Road, not far from my other sister, Dr. Marie
Mignon’s place in Cooke Town. Marie’s mother, Dora, was the prin-
cipal of the nursing school. She and the family lived in the quarters
within the school complex.
Earlier, I was told, we stayed in an old thatched-roofed house in
Buty’s compound about a kilometre away at the junction of Sadar
Bazaar Road and Mount Road. My own early memories go back to
sitting on the front steps of Chateau d’Emilia, watching the world go
by on the Kamptee Road in front of our house.
In some ways, it was a small and connected world.
Our dad purchased the land around 1935 from some Parsees. Olaf
Manor was built in 1936-37, around the time my elder brother Olaf
was born. Chateau d’Emilia was built in 1940. For both the construc-
tions, Brother Harold who lived in St. John’s High School, was the
engineer and builder-in-charge. He was thorough in his work and su-
pervision. He moved around in his tonga. In summer, we all slept in
the backyard, which was sprinkled with water by Rama, our house
help. I always gave the area under my bed an extra dose of water to
make the ground cooler for a sound night’s sleep.
Rama, our handyman, lived on the premises with his family – An-
jini, his second wife, Shanti, his daughter from his first wife and one
late born little son Girdhar – in one of the outhouses. The other out-
house adjacent to the girls’ bathrooms was used as a coal and wood
godown, and a storehouse for old spares. Around the back veranda,
with its small forest of trees behind, it tended to be cooler. In summer,
we often dined just outside the back veranda after the dining table
was moved out.
In keeping with the Army style, enforced by Daddy, we all used
mosquito nets to keep malaria away. Sometimes, just after a fleeting
summer shower of rain, many insects hovered around the veranda’s
electric light. Sliced onions over a basin of water were kept below
the electric lights, working wonders. Somehow, possibly due to the
scent of the onions, the insects fell into the basin of water below, and
drowned.
The house had a smaller veranda and two godowns, besides two
chicken coops on one side. Later, a big and thick steel mesh poultry
house was built adjacent to the garage, under the big sweet tamarind
14
A Goan Family Away From Home
tree. Once this came up, we did not lose any more chickens to the
mongooses.
When I was about six, I took charge of the poultry. I used to run
to collect the eggs early in the morning and at afternoon, on returning
from school. Mum paid me at the rate of one paisa per egg deposited
with her. Most of our chickens had names. Our elder siblings, Ossie
and Yvette bought these chickens from the Seven DayAdventist Farm
in Pune (then Poona). The chicks grew and multiplied. There were
White Leghorns, Black Minorcas, Rhode Island Reds, New Hamp-
shires and a grey and white speckled variety called the Plymouth
Rock.
The da Costas in Nagpur, in 1950.
In summer, Daddy slept in his bed near the breezy garage, fur-
therest away from the house. Mummy was the first to get up in the
15
DIARY OF AN INFANTRYMAN
morning. She attended the 5.30 a.m. cathedral Mass daily along with
Sara Roque, Mary D’Souza, Effie Paul and the others of the ‘5.30 gang’
as they were known. Daddy went for the 6.30 a.m. daily mass in his
Morris 10, and later Morris Minor, cars. We started his car by crank-
ing the handle in those frugal times. Dad believed that this prolonged
the life of the battery.
Nagpur had pleasant earlymornings, cool even in summer. In fact,
they were so nippy that one needed to cover up with a bed sheet. If
we were thirsty at night, we would walk up to the kooja – a traditional
pot of claywith a narrow neck used to store water – which was kept in
the veranda on a high wooden stand. The moonlight and stars made
the sky quite bright and the setting romantic.
Palace Talkies, later renamed Bharat Cinema, was round the cor-
ner. The cinema was bought from some Parsees by Shyamji Kheta,
a city businessman who also bought Billimoria’s property. Liberty
Cinema was just beyond Marie’s compound and it belonged to the
Naidus, some of whomwere my sister Marie Mignon’s school friends.
Late night summer shows at the two cinemas often kept us awake
well past midnight with their extra loud sound. However, all in our
brood enjoyed this. We kept talking and discussing the film being
shown.
It was a simple lifestyle, lived with great pleasure. It was such fun.
Summer nights somehow saw quite a few house fires in town. Fire
Brigade engines and their warning bells and sirens kept us both fear-
ful and wondering whose house would be next. Nagpur by then al-
ready had telephones in people’s residences. Our telephone number
was the three-digit 636, before Nagpur grew into a Telephone Circle.
Before the sun came up, all our beds were carried back into the
veranda, and the bedding rolled and put away. Holidays coincided
with the summer. Summer days were spent either on homework, or
cycling, playing a traditional game that needed hand-eye coordina-
tion called gullie danda and ‘packets’ (a game with cigarette packets),
marbles and more. There was also kite flying with the sharp cutting-
thread called manja, playing carom, millionaire, snakes and ladders,
visiting T. Fernandes’ compound, and also going out in groups on cy-
cles and shooting birds and chameleons with the catapult, at which
we were all pretty skilled. Olaf was a master at this skill, though not
without picking up the occasional wound.
16
A Goan Family Away From Home
Dad and Mum in Nagpur in 1952.
In our home the piano was played for most of the day. Yvette and
Gilda learnt fromMissWest who lived on Mount Road and the rest of
17
DIARY OF AN INFANTRYMAN
us from Marie Mignon. Olaf, myself and Emile were taught by Mrs.
Flory Almeida, closer home on Kamptee Road.
From 1950 to 1954, Gilda, Emile and I were the only siblings at
the Chateau. Gilda got married in 1954 and Emile then went to St
Mary’s School in Bombay. Yvette, long since married, went to Devgad,
a small port on the Maharashtra coast, with her husband, Osmond
Gonsalves. Olaf went to school in Darjeeling at St Joseph’s, North
Point.
Gilda, my elder sister, gave me monthly pocket money of a rupee
and four annas, then a princely amount! Olaf, Emile and Iwere always
very close for many reasons, though I really missed my siblings who
had already left home.
Daddy’s bedroom was converted into a family sleeping room dur-
ing summer afternoons. We slept on mats on the floor. The rear door
was initially fitted with a khus-khus tatti, a simple mechanism to beat
the heat of those times. It was periodically drenched with mugs of
water thrown on it from outside. Later, we had a desert cooler fitted
on the side window with a powerful exhaust fan that made the room
very cool. Sometimes we would go for a swim in the Corporation’s
public swimming pool near Mount Hotel on Mount Road. We also
read books brought from the British Council Library run by Mrs. E.
Hymeon, wife of Justice Hymeon, of what later became the Madhya
Pradesh High Court. Mrs. Hymeon was fond of India and had stayed
on in Nagpur for many years, even after the death of her husband.
She traveled about in a rickshaw and seemed to enjoy it.
There were no televisions, compact disc players, two-in-ones or
even transistor radios in those times. But Yvette and Gilda listened to
music from our Phillips radio bought from Unique Radio belonging
to Mr. Kumar, a Sindhi refugee who lived in Kamptee3. The Commer-
cial Services of Radio Ceylon4 was the most popular music station.
3 Kamptee was founded in 1821 when the British established a military cantonmenton the banks of the Kanhan River. According to one account, Kamptee was pre-viously named Camp-T for its geographical shape. The town quickly became animportant center for trade, but trade dwindled with the arrival of the railway inthe late 19th century to Nagpur.
4 Radio Ceylon is the oldest radio station in Asia. Broadcasting was started on anexperimental basis in Ceylon by the Telegraph Department in 1923, just three yearsafter the inauguration of broadcasting in Europe. The station’s Commercial Servicereached many parts of Asia.
18
A Goan Family Away From Home
Greg was its most popular announcer. My sisters took down words
of songs and entered them into a song book, which was used when
practicing the piano and entertaining guests during parties. One such
guest was the affluent Seth Gulab Das Saraf Tumsar Wala. Gilda
played the piano and sang Gloria for him. She was promptly re-
warded with a crisp one hundred rupee note, a shockingly high sum
in those times!
I also remember being driven to Mure Memorial Hospital in our
Morris 10 car a few days after Emile was born on December 17, 1943.
After distractingmyself on a hospital swing, Yvette held my hand and
took me in to see my newborn brother. But he was too small for me to
be allowed to carry.
There was, a dhunkeen (hand water pump) in the rear compound
as well as drumstick and chickoo trees. I had taught Blackie our dog
to climb upto the first fork of the chikoo tree.
Blackie, atop the chikoo tree, with Emile, Olaf and the author.
In summer, we took turns to pump and fill the tank, then took
turns lolling in it, to keep ourselves cool. It was only four feet deep.
The tank had been built to soak bricks and for watering the walls of
19
DIARY OF AN INFANTRYMAN
Olaf Manor and the Chateau when they were being built in 1936 and
1940.
The mochi (cobbler) would come once a month with his bags, sit
down, and repair all the shoes. What with us kicking stones and
playing football in school with these, the shoes needed heavy repairs.
Once in a fewmonths, themanwho applied polish (kalai) to the inside
of the brass cooking pots and pans would come and set up shop. He
had an air bellow which pumped hot air onto a charcoal-wood fire.
After heating the pots, he would perform what we would call magic
and all the insides of the brass pots would be shining and as good as
new. These are things of the past, forgotten in our stainless steel and
Teflon generation. Our days were fun and living was robust, with out
any fuss. Our children and grand children miss all these things today.
Another frequent visitor to the Chateau was Leo ‘Pip’ Dias. He
was a thin old man, good at playing the mandolin and mouth organ.
He often led the crowd in group singing, especially at Christmas and
New Year bonfires and picnics. He also used to give my sisters a good
oil head massage and they enjoyed it. Pip often had lunch with us on
Sundays. He died in Nagpur and was buried in the Jaripatka Catholic
Cemetery.
The Joe Dias family were earlier in Karachi, then still a part of un-
divided India. After a couple of decades in Nagpur, Joe’s family then
moved to Goa, before migrating to Canada. Gladys (Honey) Dias,
the eldest, and her husband visited Goa around 2003 and dropped
in at Miramar and my sister Gilda hosted them to a pot-luck lunch.
She looked the same – the thin, smart and smiling Nagpur girl. Her
younger sister was Celine, nicknamed Siloo, a nurse who also mi-
grated to Canada. I happened to be visiting Gilda and we sat down
and recalled old Nagpur days. These few lines give a hint of what life
in Nagpur was like for us in those times.
20
The Doctor and his Garden
D AD was born on January 13, 1889, the eldest son of BaptistaCaetano da Costa and Rosalinda Cordeiro e da Costa at Bairo
Alto, Arrarim, Saligão, Bardez, Goa. They say that he was a live wire,intelligent, playful and naughty as a little boy. Both his parents diedin 1910, within ten months of each other.
He had two sisters and two brothers – Sylvia, Melita, Bernard and
Euclid. Sylvia married Dr Joe Fernandes of Assagão. They settled in
Nagpur where he had a private medical practice. Their son Walter
joined the Indian Air Force as a pilot and retired as Air Commodore.
He was a Master Green, who was allowed to fly any plane, even in
bad weather. Melita, the second sister, was very good looking, pretty
and known for her culinary prowess. She was sought after for mar-
riage. She married Advocate Carlisto Nazareth of Nagpur and lived
at Angelic Nest in Tent Lines. Advocate Romulus Nazareth, Carlisto’s
younger brother also wanted to marry Melita, but it was decided by
the Nazareth parents that the elder son wouldmarry her. Carlisto and
Romulus lived in the same building in similar styled north and south
wings which were joined together at the middle by a common wall
and common big wooden doors which were opened during parties.
Dad’s younger brother Bernard (Benny) did his schooling in Nag-
pur and later passed out from the then Thomason College of Civil
Engineering (the predecessor of IIT Roorkee). He was one of the few
Indian students there. He was a well known engineer in government
service and was married to Dr Flory Machado of Jhansi. Benny died
21
DIARY OF AN INFANTRYMAN
young of blackwater fever, a complication of malaria, which he con-
tacted while he was posted at Dharamjaigarh State in Central India.
Dad and mum in their office. 1964.
Dad’s youngest brother, Euclid did his schooling in St. Joseph’s,
Nainital, and was a brilliant student who passed out first class first in
the BA exam from Nagpur University. He was a bit of a spoilt child
being the youngest. He played the piano and sang very well. He was
also good at mimicry and telling stories to children. He married Irene
da Silva of Bombay. Their son Vernon migrated to Australia. Euclid
and Vernon have both passed on, the former in Nagpur and the latter
in Bombay when Vernon was on one of his visits to India to see his
Mum.
My Dad was 21 and was yet to complete his medical studies in
Bombay when his parents passed away, casting a very heavy bur-
den on his young but broad shoulders. He was later awarded the
LM&S (Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery) from Grant Medical Col-
lege. Later he went on to do a DTM (Diploma in Tropical Medicine)
from Calcutta and was awarded the prestigious FRCS (Fellowship of
the Royal College of Surgeons) from Edinburgh, in the United King-
dom. He was a hard worker and one of the very few Indians then to
complete his FRCS in the very first attempt. Dad first saw to the stud-
22
The Doctor and his Garden
ies of his brothers and sisters and then got his sisters married before
getting married himself at the age of thirty four. He married Maria
Emilia Rocha Heredia in 1924 in Nagpur. She was the third daugh-
ter of Dr. Manoel Agostinho de Heredia of Piedade (Divar), Goa and
Bombay.
Dad with army medals and the
Bene Merenti awarded by Pope
Pius XII, 1952.
Dad served in the British Indian
Army as a medical officer during
World War I. He was the Regimen-
tal Medical Officer of 2/9 Gorkha Ri-
fles, which was part of the Indian
4 Infantry Division of General Al-
lenby’s famous Middle East Expedi-
tionary Force (1916 to 1918). Dad
took part in the famous Battle of
Shumran near Basra (in present day
Iraq) just across the Tigris River,
where the British crossed over and
pushed back the Turks and the Ger-
mans. It was here that an Indian
Engineer Regiment built one of the
longest floating pontoon bridges of
that time over the Tigris River. Dad
performed surgery on Lt Wheeler of
2/9 GR in a tent in the Regimental
Aid Post and removed a bullet from
his lung with a penknife! Lt Wheeler
lived on and was awarded the Victo-
ria Cross.
Dad himself earned the Volun-
teer Officers Decoration (besides
other medals during the War and in later army life). He told us how
most of the men in the Battle of Shumran, died because their wounds
festered due to sandstorms, heat and flies. They were moved down
the River Tigris in open barges and left to their luck to survive. Of
course, most succumbed to their injuries. Medical aid in the field
army was primitive in those days.
In 1981, I presented Dad’s Armymedals to Lt Gen E.A. Vas, PVSM,
AVSM, the Colonel of the Ninth Gorkha Rifles at a function at the Col-
23
DIARY OF AN INFANTRYMAN
lege of Combat, Mhow1. The medals are now displayed in the officers
mess. Incidentally, Lt Gen E.A. Vas also hailed from our home village
of Saligão, while his wife Maureen de Lapa, a charming lady and an
excellent person, was from Pilerne, the village just above Saligão, on
the other side of the hill! She was the daughter of Captain de Lapa of
the merchant navy.
Dadwas in the IndianMedical Services when he transferred to the
civil services after his FRCS in the mid 1920s. He then served as Assis-
tant Civil Surgeon and Civil Surgeon in the district towns of Central
Provinces & Berar. He served in Hoshangabad, Durg, Jabalpur, Buld-
hana, Chanda, Amravati, Raipur, Bhandara and finally in Nagpur. He
was later alsoMedical Officer of the Nagpur Rifles located at Sitabuldi
Fort, Nagpur, that was later converted to 118 Infantry Battalion Terri-
torial Army (Grenadiers2). He took an early retirement in 1940, the
year I was born. At this point of time, he was the Civil Surgeon and
Professor of Surgery at Robertson Medical School, Nagpur. He fol-
lowed a strict army regimen all through his life and was very strict
with himself and others. He was a good horse-polo player and also
played tennis and won many prizes in both sports.
A God-fearing man, he worked tirelessly for the Church and the
Catholic community. He served Mass whenever he could on Sundays
and also on weekdays, right up to the ripe old age of seventy. He
was General Secretary of the Catholic Union of India during the late
1940s and early 1950s when Mr. M Ruthnaswamy, MP from Madras
was the President. He fought against the Niyogi Enquiry Committee
and its questionable stance on the freedom to practice religion. He
1 Mhow is a cantonment in the Indore District inMadhya Pradesh, India. It is located23 kilometres (14 mi) south of Indore city towards Mumbai on the Mumbai-AgraRoad. The town was renamed as Dr Ambedkar Nagar in 2003, by the Governmentof Madhya Pradesh. This cantonment town was founded in 1818 by John Malcolmas a result of the Treaty of Mandsaur between the English and the Holkars whowere the Maratha Maharajas of Indore. There is total lack of unanimity on howMhowgot its name. One possible source of the namemight be theMahua (Madhucalongifolia) tree, which grows in profusion in the forests aroundMhow. Some articlesin popular literature state that MHOW stands for Military Headquarters Of War.
2 The oldest grenadier regiment of the armies in the Commonwealth belongs to theIndian Army. The concept of ‘Grenadiers’ evolved from the practice of selecting thebravest and strongest men for the most dangerous tasks in combat. The Grenadiershave the longest unbroken record of existence in the Indian Army.
24
The Doctor and his Garden
was decorated with the Bene Merenti Gold Medal by Pope Pius XII in
1951 for his services to the community.
The author, with wife Gladys and daughter Nafisa, before Chateau D’Emelia,
Nagpur, in 1994.
Dad was a person with high personal standards of integrity and
honesty. He expected the same standards from all of us, his children.
He had a quick temper. We all used to try and be away from him at
those times. He was a self-made man who stuck to his principles re-
gardless of the consequences. He used to say: “A place for everything
and everything in its place. A time for everything and everything in
its time! Waste not, want not!”
He worked very hard and went out to visit his sick patients on
their request, even on a hot summer afternoon. We could hear and
recognize the sound of the horn of his car and he blew it often before
he arrived at the gate which was about 50 meters in front of our house
and we went out running and tried to be the first to open it for him!
He enjoyed it when we helped him with changing his clothes when
he returned home tired from a hot afternoon’s work after one of his
medical rounds. He enjoyed a dish of fish every day. Mumwould see
to it that he got it somehow.
He arranged for his friends to buy, fry, pack in banana leaves
and send him some pomfrets, shark, king fish, salmon and mack-
25
DIARY OF AN INFANTRYMAN
erels through their friends in the railways. They obliged him, and
the parcels reached us through the railway dining cars from Bombay
or Kalyan as they had a Frigidaire on the train. I used to go to the
railway yard, locate the dining car that had just come in and pick up
these parcels and bring them home. In Nagpur, Bachu Seth was the
local fish vendor in Gaddi Gudam who provided fish when nothing
was forthcoming from our sources in Bombay. This was mostly river
fish, like murrel, rahu and katla. Dad always advocated light meals in
summer.
Dad was the personal physician to Governor Pattabhi Sitaramaiah
and Chief Minister Ravi Shankar Shukla. He was family doctor to
most ministers of the C.P. & Berar Cabinet. He had a nice waywith his
patients and would bring them quick relief. He had a large number of
patients from across all faiths and religions, including Muslims who
had blind faith in him. He also did a lot of honorary work for the
poor, including the Sisters of Charity and their huge orphanage at
Nagpur. There were always a handful of patients hanging around his
consulting room at the house.I remember one incident when one of
his old patients came to the Chateau at about 2 a.m., with his sick child
and insisted Dad should attend to his little son. I told him repeatedly
that Dad was now old, over 74 years and unwell himself. The man
would have nothing of it. After half an hour of arguing with us, he
got his way. Dad asked me to sterilize an injection set (there were
no disposable syringes in those days). He said he would give him
an injection of distilled water. He did accordingly. The old patient
left after thanking Dad profusely. He was back in the early morning
to inform us that his son was quite well now and that the injection
had acted like magic on the boy as he had predicted. Here was a case
where faith had provided the cure, if not exactly moved mountains!
Both Olaf Manor (built in 1936) and Chateau d’Emilia (1940)
which he built, are now part of the Pilar priests’ homes and have been
renamed as Mother Teresa Ashram and Pilar Niketan.
Dad was fond of flowers. He had a rose garden on either side
of the driveway from the gate. On the inner side of Olaf Manor he
also had a bed of cannas behind the roses. There was a rockery under
the mango tree along with a cement water tank with a tap to water
the plants. We had plants all along the front periphery of the com-
pound. The side towards Dongajee’s compound had a hedge along
26
The Doctor and his Garden
the barbed wire fence. Closer to the Chateau as the In and Out, Dad
had a roundabout in the shape of a heart with a lawn in it. He had
evergreen trees, flowers and cannas closer to the Chateau and in front
of the porch. On the porch, steps and in the front veranda were pots
with crotons, ferns, and exotic plants of different kinds. All these were
carefully selected and cared for by Ramawho watered them regularly.
In summer all the pots and cannas were removed and put at the rear,
under the shade of the tamarind tree, with a bamboo matting roof.
Daddy kept a close watch on them and Rama would get a scolding if
any plant was neglected.
Dad always wore a rose in his bundgala coat, like Pundit Jawahar-
lal Nehru. He often went around the garden with a spade in his hand
tending to the plants himself. In the afternoon, birds used to congre-
gate here to enjoy the relative coolness of the place.
Mum was born on September 16, 1904, in Bombay. She was the
third child of the Heredia family of eleven, three brothers and eight
sisters. Her father Dr. Manoel Agostinho de Heredia (1870-1937) was
a physician, a diplomat and a businessman. He was a founder of
Asian Assurance Company Limited and he was the Honorary Consul
for Brazil. Mum grew up and passed her matriculation from Bombay
in the first class and was employed as a school teacher. Fr. Albino Fer-
nandes of Nagpur recommended her to Dad who readily agreed to
take her as his life partner after seeing her. She had charm and good
looks. She could speak well and could converse on any subject with
ease. Frugal in her ways and simple in her dress, she and Dad some-
how got known as the best dressed couple at parties in the districts
and in Nagpur.
Mumwas understanding and compassionate. She was not a party
cook, but was good at everyday cooking and in making pickles and
cakes. She always helped the poor and the underprivileged. She had
trained her voice in Europe when Dad was busy doing his FRCS (Fel-
lowship of the Royal College of Surgeons). She sang well and accom-
panied herself on the piano.
Mum always said I was the only child who knew all about the
house and what to find where. “If you want a nail, nut or bolt, ask
Ian and he will pull it out for you from the godown.” She told the
others, “Ian eats whatever I place on the table, that is why he is tall
and strong.” I cannot forget Antoni-ma, our cook of more than twenty
27
DIARY OF AN INFANTRYMAN
five years. She was thin and small, a Christian of South Indian origin.
Mum always gave her a sari and blouse as a Christmas present. She
was always punctual and regular. She came to work even when she
was sick, as she knew that Dad would give her some medicine and
she would get hot tea and something to eat. Servants are as good at
their work as you treat them. Antoni-ma and Rama both worked with
us happily for about 25 years or more.
I was fond of growing vegetables and Mum said that I had
green fingers. I had a small vegetable patch behind the kitchen and
godowns, where I grew lady-fingers, kadu or red pumpkin, beans,
brinjals (eggplant), chilies, tomatoes and other common vegetables.
Besides, I would go to the Gaddi-Gudam daily market and to the
Tuesdaymarket to bring discarded green leaves of cauliflower, radish,
cabbage and turnips for the poultry at home. These were cut into bits
and mixed with mashed eggshells, kitchen waste and leftover food
including rice and grain for the poultry. The birds gobbled it up and
wanted more.
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