MYSURU (MYSORE) 1947 - 1949
Mysore 1947 - 1949
Standing next to my favourite tree in our Mysore home. I then thought it was an enormous tree!
Primarily because of the experience my mother and we small children had faced with the vigilantes, my father obtained a transfer in the Mysore Electricity Board from Bangalore to Mysore.
He
had two powerful mentors in the Mysore Electricity Department. They
were Mr. Hayath and Mr. George Chandy, so getting the transfer on
compassionate grounds was not difficult.
He was appointed as the Superintending Engineer of Mysore with additional charge of the Mysore Palace which is illuminated during the Dasara Celebrations, witnessed every year by many hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.
The Palace is lit by a 100000 electric light bulbs. An amazing sight.
Among his many responsibilities the most exciting was being in charge of the lighting of the Mysore Palace, which even till today, is a spectacle around the festival of Dasara.
We used to watch the celebration, as the elephants came to the brilliantly lit Palace, from one of the special VIP cubicles in the main Palace building.
With this job as Superintendent Engineer came accommodation which was the wonderful house at the corner of the Electricity substation premises. As Bangalore to Mysore Road enters Mysore, it arrives at the Fountain Circle, where it splits into the BN Road and Ashoka Road. At the corner of BN Road is a large compound in which, even today, sits the main electric substation for Mysore. And the Superintending Engineer's house, was at the entrance to the Substation compound
It was a huge residence with an enormous garden with all sorts of trees. It was a truly wonderful place for us children to grow up in.
It had a main building and the staff quarters were separate from it. There was an enclosed courtyard between the two.
There was no better private residence in Mysore at that time. Even today it stands as the Guest House of the Karnataka Electricity Board.
The job meant that the touring my father had to do for his Bangalore job was now over. We children did get a chance for us to know him as a dad. His office was in the garden compound and and he would be home everyday for lunch.
Mysore is still a wonderful small city with many thousands of tourists, even in 1940s. The Dasara celebrations have been truly wonderful and an enormous draw.
India got its independence in August 1947. I remember the celebration in Mysore as the army barracks were then near to the house. I remember the morning bugle sounding and the music of the bugler at sunset of the Last Post as India celebrated its freedom.
One of the perks we enjoyed was free access to the Maharaja's garage and his stables. The garage housed his fabulous collection of cars from Rolls Royces, Bentleys and numerous other vintage cars from all parts of the globe. It was a sheer pleasure to see this collection.
In the stables was a horse riding machine which mimiced the ride on a horse. This was a great hit with us kids as we could pretend we were riding one of the stable beauties!
Another advantage of living in Mysore was that we could drive up the hill to visit the second Palace there if the Maharaja was not in residence. Dad knew the Maharaja's schedule so we took any visitor to see the Chamundi Hills and the Summer Palace which had a great collection of art. We would visit the Nandi Bull statue which is halfway to top of the hill. It is a temple and prayers are said everyday at the statue.
We frequently visited the various halls in the main Mysore Palace to see the amazing collection of paintings and other art works. Although we were little children, we stood in amazement of the wonderful things that were there. We roamed from hall to hall appreciating the various artifacts and paintings that depicted the history of the family of the Maharaja. Some parts of the Palace would be cordoned off, which meant some official function was taking place there, but largely we had free access to most of the Palace.
As anyone driving from Kerala to Bangalore passed through Mysore, we used to have a constant stream of visitors, many of them stopping overnight with us. We had guest rooms where they could stay. While there, we would take them to see the sights of Mysore and its surrounds, which included the Krishnasagar Dam and Brindavan Gardens, which used to be brilliantly lit up every evening. Another regular spot was the Tippu Sultan Summer Palace.
I started my kindergarten schooling in the Good Shepherd Convent quite close to the house. My elder brother took me there on the first day. I did not let him go to his class the whole day.
Our Bangalore friends, the Wilsons, had also moved to Mysore. They lived in the Police Lines just behind our house. The entire Wilson family consisting of Marge and Doug Wilson, and children, Abner, Beverly, Cedric, Dinky and Zena became our closest friends in Mysore.
Marge was an effervescent character and she was more than a second mother to us. We played with the children every evening. Marge and my mother were friends from the local church in Bangalore and the friendship continued in Mysore.
Marge was a Protestant and her husband was a Catholic. When the got married, Doug was asked to sign a declaration that his children to be would be brought up in the Catholic faith. He refused to sign such a declaration and hence was ex-communicated from the Catholic Church!
Dinky was the same age as me. On my second day of school she took charge of me as she had already joined school a month or so before me. After that I had no problem at school. Dinky and I would go together in the morning and walk back together in the afternoon. She used to drop me home and then run to her house.
We played cricket in the field behind our house, played lots of children’s games as hide and seek, cops and robbers, climbed the many trees in the garden and had a wonderful childhood.
One day, while playing cops and robbers, my brother was wielding a piece of wood as his weapon, it had a nasty nail sticking out of it. It gashed me just lower than the elbow behind the forearm. Soon as it happened, I looked down to see the gaping wound. Surprisingly, I did not cry but ran straight to my mother who was in the house.
My mother acted quickly, rushing me to hospital, getting the wound cleaned and stitched and ensuring I got the tetanus booster shot. Even till today I have the scar on my arm to remind me of our childhood days of fun and games.
My mother did warn my brother that what he did was inappropriate. She also made sure that playing games had to be done without endangering anybody.
The above picture was taken when we were living in Mysor. We had a visit from Miss Brookesmith who had been the Principal of the school in Kottayam when my mother was a little girl. She was a very prim and proper English lady.
Many years later when I was studying in London, Miss Brookesmith called my elder brother, Ranjit, and me to a posh restaurant in Oxford Circus for lunch.
As we sat at the table, the soup was served. As I started eating, Miss Brookesmith looked sternly at me and asked me why my mother had not taught me the basics of table manners.
I was eating my soup with my arms resting on the table!
My mother had taught me many things including this and I reacted immediately. I apologised to this wonderful lady who had instilled all the important values of life, all and large, in my mother!
I was constantly not well with sore throats. My mother took me to the local doctor. After a thorough examination he conluded that the problem lay in my tonsils which was acting as a filter for all the infection entering my system.
Never have I since seen a doctor sell the idea of an operation, me not knowing what an operation meant. He told me that i would be able to live off ice creams for a week after the operation. Never was a young boy counting the days to the tonsils operation, which was scheduled to be done soon after my 5th birthday in 1948.
I went to hospital full of anticipation. I was sedated and was taken to operation room. I was later told that the moment the gave me the chloroform I literally flew off the stretcher across the room. I was later given an alternate anesthetic because of my dramatic reaction to chloroform.
When i came too after the operation, true to his promise I was fed a continuous stream of the best icer creams easing the pain out of my mind. I was sent home 5 days later, and after that I never fell sick again and at the same time spurting in growth which made me a head taller than my brother who was 2 years older than me.
It was from then onwards that my mother started her ginger juice, lemon juice and honey daily morning dosage. On Saturdays she would grind a little gold from her wedding ring and add it to the teaspoon. This kept me in good health thereafter, and other than the normal childhood diseases as chicken pox and measles (and mumps later in Bangalore) I was never ill!
My mother loved animals so we had egg laying chickens, pigeons, rabbits. My dad got a dog as an Englishman leaving Mysore wanted a good home for his dog. So Dumbo, a black ageing cocker spaniel became a hot favourite in our house.
I found a baby squirrel in the garden and took it as my personal pet. It used to live on my shoulder,That summer we went to Kottayam for our holiday. I left my squirrel in the care of our house boy, giving him detailed instructions how he should care for my pet. When we got back from our holiday, the first thing I asked for was my squirrel. The boy broughtk a large squirrel and handed it to me. It promptly bit me and ran away.
My mother got the story out of the house boy. My squirrel had run away just after we left. So the house boy had found another one and put it in a cage and tried to pass it off as my squirrel! Was I angry!
Our trips to Kottayam were made by car. Dad had a Hillman Minx which was just big enough for our family of six. We drove through the Bandipur forest, through Theppakadu, the elephant forest, over the Gudalur ghat and down to Cochin and on to Kottayam to the waiting arms of our maternal grandparents.
As we dove through Bandipur forest, dad was joking that we could have tea with the tigers which were aplenty those times in this forest.
It was said that the Maharaja had to bag a male tiger so as to produce a male heir to his throne.
Just as dad was telling us this story, not more than 5 metres from the car we saw a magnificent tiger walking in the forest parallel to the car. The size of it was as long as the car.
An amazing sight for us children!
In 1949 my father got a transfer back to Bangalore as he wanted his kids to go to Bishop Cotton's school as it was the best school in India at that time. And the Matthan family tradition was to be a Bishop Cottonian. Also his parents were getting old and he wanted to be close to them. Additionally, several of his younger brothers and sisters were scheduled to get married, and he had the responsibility of acting as the responsible elder brother.
So our stay in Mysore came to an end.
We were fortunate that the Wilson family was also shifting back to Bangalore.
Our stay in Mysore had been short but very sweet. The city was small, but spick and span as the Maharaja kept it that way. Leaving the beautiful house and garden to return to Bangalore was painful, but Bangalore was our real home and all of us were looking forward to getting back there.
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