Empire's Children

Puri and food

On that same holiday, Margaret and I ate suppers alone in the hotel dining room. We ate at about 6 o'clock, an hour far too early for the grown-ups who would linger over showering and dressing for dinner, and then have their chota pegs or gimlets in the lounge.

My sister and I cleaned up after a sandy day on the beach and we each put on a pretty dress. Left to our own devices here in Puri we never chose to dress identically. I might put on my favourite blue checked cotton frock with white smocking, and Margaret liked most to wear a cream coloured frock of tussore silk with blue flowers embroidered on it. (I quite coveted that dress. For some reason it always evoked The Secret Garden for me. Eventually of course, Margaret outgrew it and it came down to me at which time I found it didn't suit me as well as it did her.)

In the dining room we were perfect little ladies. We didn't knock over the water glasses or fiddle with the cutlery, or get into arguments and kick each other under the table. Our only "naughtiness" was in deciding to try a different Indian dish every night of the week we were there. I say "we" but I am sure this lark would have been suggested by my sister. I was simply happy to go along.

There were two or three waiters standing about. We were probably keeping them from completing preparations before the adults came in, but they were attentive enough. They chatted and giggled a little among themselves - perhaps at these two little missy babas, but never making fun of us. (Indians in general seemed more kindly disposed to children than Britons.) In due course one of the waiters would appear, with a perfectly straight face, to take our order. Over the days we tasted pilaus, and various curries, pomfret molee, biryani and lamb saag, dhals, brinjal and other vegetable dishes as well as chapattis and poppadoms. We avoided okra as we knew already that we hated it. Indians refer to okra as 'ladies fingers'. Perhaps those fingers are supposed to be silky but to us they were simply slimy.

Occasionally with these dishes, our mouths seemed full of flames, but we didn't give up. We had watched Daddy's face perspire at home when he ate curry and we knew you just had to keep on going. There was always mango ice cream or blancmange to finish with and that put out the fire.

Could the waiters have made sure the spicing was adjusted for us? Who knows? We had no way of knowing if they substituted milder dishes for something they thought inappropriate for two little English girls. We enjoyed it all. Our game was only spoiled by my father who one night, when he heard what we were doing, decided that so much Indian food couldn't be good for us and insisted on something blandly English and dull - something as tedious as mince, mashed potatoes and broccoli. Perhaps Daddy was able then truthfully to tell my mother that he had kept an eye on what we ate.

We had traveled to Puri by overnight train. If you could afford to go first class, as business people inevitably could, this was a very comfortable way to go. Meals were much as they are now on first class Via Rail in Canada. I imagine this was a holdover from Victorian times where travel reproduced, as far as possible, a comfortable evening at a gentleman's club. For children the berths were certainly comfortable and it was especially exciting to have the top berth.

I came to love travelling by train at night. The clackety-clack along the track lulled me to sleep. I peeped out of the windows whenever we pulled into a station and my sleep was slightly disturbed. (Much later in life I did exactly the same thing on an overnight journey from Vancouver to Banff.) There were the sounds of train travel the world over: whistles and hoots, the slamming of carriage doors, and the shout of the station master to get going again. In India there were always boys running alongside the train in the stations, selling mugs of tea and tiffin (lunch) boxes although I don't remember anyone of us ever buying from them. I never got sick on a train as I sometimes did in a car.

There was a ritual to boarding a train in India. A servant, or Nanny if she was taking us up to Darjeeling, would feel under all the seats or berths with a long stick. This was supposed to make sure that there were no dacoits (bandits) hiding there. Now, I think this fear of dacoits might just have been an urban myth. Nevertheless we had to wait patiently while the ritual was completed.

Eating at home

Our cook at home in Calcutta, Paul, was a Christian who had been a hotel cook at one time. Each morning at the end of breakfast he would come into the dining room with baskets full of fresh fruit and vegetables he had bought at the bazaar earlier. My mother and he would decide what he should make with them and when. She gave any special orders for food she wanted the next day. I couldn't follow this conversation as Paul and my mother spoke Hindustani.

We ate quantities of fruit at every meal. This is where I began my habit of eating a banana a day. Mangoes were always fun because we sometimes made guinea pigs out of the stones. My mother helped at this, cleaning the stones and brushing them carefully and pushing in matchstick legs. The papayas were big, almost the size of an American football. There were lychees and passion fruit too.

Paul could make all sorts of western and Indian dishes, and my parents enjoyed the wide range of his cooking. We certainly ate well and my parents gave a lot of dinner parties. Paul often made cr