Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
by Subroto Mukerji
In time, the fortunes of the Sena kings, and after them the Mughals,
declined and they were swept into obscurity. Local chieftains grabbed
suzerainty over vast areas and became feudal overlords. One such up-
and-coming dynasty, the Nawabs of Oudh (Awadh), gave employment
to a remote ancestor.
Ram Kanhai Mukhopadhyay, like many other Bengalis, had struck out
west in search of better prospects. He was said to be extraordinarily
proficient in Persian, the language of the court. His eldest son, Raj
Narain, carried on the tradition of Persian scholarship, and so did his
grandson, Madhusudan. But Madhusudan Mookerjee exhibited another
talent, which brought him to the notice of the British masters: he was
something of a scholar of the English language as well.
Appointed as a teacher, he rose to become the Headmaster of
Sultanpur Boy's High School through sheer merit alone, for he had
reverted to the Vedic religion of his ancestors and refused to
compromise with the British in either dress, eating habits, or cultural
preferences.
A yogi, he had the power, siddha-acquired, of bringing back to life
anyone who died of snakebite. My father told me that his mother had
seen with her own eyes the saucer of milk that was kept in one corner
of the bhandar ghar (where provisions were stored) at Sultanpur, and
every evening, a pair of cobras used to come from somewhere, drink
the milk, and slither away, never harming anyone.
Madhusudan's wife, my great-grandmother, known simply a 'Maa-ji' to
all, was said to be a lady of deep learning in the shastras, meditating
for hours daily. She kept a kumundali, an indigenous vessel with a
built-in handle, made from a gourd, of the sort much favored by
renunciants in India for ages. Whenever she was disturbed in her
prayers by her naughty grandchildren - and Father claimed to have
been one of the main culprits - she would fling them a few copper coins
from the kumundali, which always had a plentiful supply of them.
Shortly after reporting for duty at Solan, Shimla Hills, I had been
invited to join the Durga Club as a temporary member, having dropped
a hint to Dr. Day, the Bengali CMO (Chief Medical Officer) of the Solan
Government Hospital, who had an account in the bank, that I was keen
on some tennis and billiards.
We were a merry quartet at tennis, Dr. Batra, the bachelor Dental
Surgeon of the district (a Doon School product who had a 2.5 H.P. BSA
motorbike which he had mothballed away and which I helped to put
back on the road), the local princeling known simply as 'Kunwar
Sahab,' extremely fit and athletic, and I. Every day at 5.30 p.m. sharp,
I'd drive up to my cottage, change into tennis kit, and run up the next
hill to the club, anxious to grab a couple of sets of doubles before the
sun went down behind the mountains.
Biswanath Lahiri, IP, was approaching ninety when I last met him in
1986 at Allahabad. He was still hale and hearty, though his eyesight
wasn't all that good; this former IP (the Indian Police of British times,
precursor of the IPS) officer clearly remembered Professor Abhay
Charan Mukerji who had taught English literature at Muir College,
which institution went on to become the nucleus of what later became
Allahabad University. It was (and many claim still is), a premier
university right into the 1960's, producing a large number of ICS, IP,
IAS, and IPS officers, so much so that the media of the 80's and early
90's routinely railed against what it called 'the Allahabad University
caucus' that ran the country.
In the early 1930s, the British decided to develop an area just beyond
the point where the GT road leveled off after it had tumbled down
Thornhill Road, off Lowther Road (today's Deen Dayal Upadhyaya
Marg). George Town was to have large plots of about 12,500 square
yards each, to be given on 99-year leases to senior civil servants. A.C.
Mukerji, now a 'Rai Bahadur' (a title given by the British for meritorious
services to the State - education, in A.C. Mukerji's case), was allotted
plot number 24, and in 1935, Madhu Mandir stood complete.
Over three acres of land is enough for a dwelling, even one this big,
and so a large orchard came up behind the house, where a well was
dug for watering it. There were, I remember, over fifty trees, mostly
mango, jamun, khirni, jackfruit, and bel, besides neem, eucalyptus,
lime and guava.
The sagar pesha, as the domestic staff quarters were called, came up
along the left margin while at the rear, where the Munshi ji had his
sprawling cottage, stood the horse stables and garages for the phaeton
and buggy. There was enough space left over for a cricket pitch, a
tennis court, a putting green, and a clump of guava and lime trees
(next to which a ramp for washing cars came up in later years), while
eucalyptus and neem trees spread their fragrance from a point not far
from the massive portico at the front of the house. For eleven children,
it must have been just about perfect.
Coming in through the gate was a driveway that encircled a round
lawn with its fringe of flowerbeds. Fruits, not flowers, were A.C.
Mukerji's passion, and it was said that when the gardener grew a
bunch of grapes that won first prize at the local horticultural exhibition,
he received a gold chain as a reward. In an age of plenty, Madhu
Mandir always had plenty more, hallowed ground that Madhusudan
Mookerjee blessed in absentia, and very lucky for its occupants, too,
even for the tenants who came to stay when almost all the original
inhabitants had moved away or had died off.
But for us kids, it was a wondrous place: the trophies of the hunt that
looked down at us stonily from the walls, the guns, the huge display
cases of pens and pencils, neatly arranged alphabetically as per
country of origin, the endless book racks with sliding doors full of books
on every subject under the sun (donated to Allahabad University
library), the ancient fans that ran on DC – Direct Current – there was no
AC in those days. When AC did come, everything needed a little
rectifier in the circuit to convert AC to DC and stay in business.
Subroto
Mukerji