Passage To India Part 5 - My Father's Flight To India In 1934
My father continues the story
My father continues the storyThey started getting very abusive and tried to force us to put the machine back as before which of course was impossible, and we had our work cut out to prevent them trying to turn it back again themselves. Our own tempers by now were not too good, but we felt they must be kept at all costs, as after all, the odds of three men, two of them with guns, and all with knives, against us two with nothing but a spanner between us were a bit too much of a good thing, and we had no reason to doubt that they would shoot if given the chance.
To get away from their ceaseless grumblings we decided to get into the machine, my father in the front cockpit and Lady Blanche in the back. This however, only made them worse as they wanted to get in themselves, and Haidar after much shouting and gesticulating actually caught hold of the collar of Lady Blanche's coat and tried to pull her out. His ugly dirty face so close to her, and his hand on her collar, was too much for her and after having done nothing but impress on Oggie the absolute necessity of keeping our tempers at all costs, it was Lady Blanche who now nearly caused war by losing her temper and shouting back at Haidar and nearly hitting him.
However, all this good and bad come to an end sometime and by now the rain was stopping and the dawn was breaking, and with the light our troubles seemed to shrink to half the size they had been during those hours of darkness. The only friendly gesture of our guards up to now had been sometime during the night one of them had given us a handful of a kind of thin dry bread called Chipatti, but as we couldn't see what it looked like and were not sure then if their intentions were good or not, we had not dared to eat any of it, and Oggie had buried his in the sand and Lady Blanche had stuffed hers in the pocket of her coat, but with another day arriving and our hunger increasing we were only too pleased to fish it out of our pockets again and share it with the small amount of chocolate we had left, and that is all we had to eat on that Saturday December 1st.
As soon as it was light our three ruffians had a try to get some more money out of us - Ali the Jew particularly being very persistent and unpleasant, and even going so far as to try and put his hand in the pocket of my father's coat where he knew the money of the night before had come from.
Oggie kept pushing him away, and although sorely tried kept his temper admirably, and eventually seeing we were quite determined they gave it up.
Also by this time our audience of the day before were re-assembling, and being of a most sly and secretive disposition, our guard were much against showing others where money was to be got. So, anyhow for the time we were left in peace -if you can call it so - for our audience never left us from 9 a.m. till about 4.30 p.m., and to have a hundred pairs of eyes sitting round in a circle watching and commenting on your every movement is, to say the least of it, disturbing.
After this we found that our only time of real solitude undisturbed was for one hour at day break when our guards went off, presumably for food, and before our everlasting audience returned for the day. And then for one hour at sun set when the audience went back to their homes and before our guards returned to take up their nightly watch.
Nights made hideous by their perpetual talking, singing and especially spitting - a habit which these native never ceased to indulge in through the nights and as well as days.
Copyright (c) 2009 Michael Ogden
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