Stinking Sewer

THERE’S A STINKING OPEN SEWER TO THE NORTH OF CHANDNI CHOWK

The rattling taxi gave the sacred cow a wide berth as it passed the Red Fort on the right and the riotous hell-hole known as Chandni Chowk on the left, passed through Kashmiri Gate, still bearing the pock marks of shells from the days of the Mutiny, honked at cyclists wobbling past Oberoi Maidens Hotel, belted along Mahatma Gandhi Road skirting the Old Secretariat and pulled up in front of the ear-clean wallah outside the entrance to the mouldering warehouse. My Friend Harry had arrived. Or very nearly.

Harry had come from England to photograph an odoriferous open sewer.

* * * * *

Come back to New Year's Eve, 1944. The warehouse was then the Khyber Pass officers' mess, housing an agreeable multi-lingual hotchpotch of corps and regiments of the British and Indian armies. It was presided over by a Scottish Colonel who, when sober, was a stickler for military etiquette and custom but when not sober - which was more usual - was an effervescent, florid-faced Hooray Henry. We all rejoiced in him in both manifestations.

Harry had joined the mess from Bombay via Karachi, Simla and Lahore, which is a hell of a journey by rail involving a double crossing of the Sind Desert and a narrow-gauge climb to the foothills of the Himalayas where the air is thin and there is frost at night. The reasons for that roundabout route were military and thus can have no explanation. Suffice it to say that Harry had set off from Bombay as a Lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps and arrived at Delhi not only as a Major but as a General Staff Officer (2), HQ, India Command.

When he descended from his Jeep at the mess in 1944, confronting him on the pavement was a grinning ear-clean wallah — not, of course, the same operative who faced Harry on his return visit 30 years later, but most certainly a forbear. The wartime wallah was accompanied to his left and right by a cut-com-and-ingrown-toenail wallah, a haircut and shave wallah, a fortune-tell wallah, a shoe-clean wallah, a char wallah and a lemonade wallah. Their descendants were all there, happy, voluble and busy, on the return visit. India is the very fount of individual enterprise and family tradition.

Back in 1944, the dhoti-clad entrepreneurs beamingly salaamed their greetings as Harry arrived glittering with his brand-new, red-backed crowns of office shining like beacons on his shoulders.

The duty officer at the mess regretted that the Colonel was not available — being, of course, a little the worse for wear - and conducted Harry to his quarters. These comprised a concrete slum with one bug-infested charpoy, one ditto armchair, one small table and wooden chair housing termites and one pot, chamber, officers for the use of, and one canvas bath. And one oil lamp containing dead moths.

Six bearers lined up, all holding letters testifying to their honesty, all of which, no doubt, had been written by the appropriate wallah on the pavement. As befitted a General Staff Officer (2),

Harry made an instant decision. He picked the one who was the dusky double of a film actor of those days, Gerry Colonna. He proved to be a gem.

Harry soon made friends with another Scottish chap, one Capt. Tommy Walker, former Scotland, Hearts and Chelsea footballer, who occupied the slum next door. It proved to be a lasting friendship, Christmas cards being exchanged right up to the time of Tommy's death three years ago. There were lots of Scots in Khyber Pass mess and naturally they weren't going to be fobbed off with just a milk-and-water English Christmas celebration. They got together to organise a rip-roaring Hogmanay night for themselves. A privileged few south-of-the-Border types were graciously invited, Harry among them.

He was lying on his charpoy with a mug of tea after lunch on New Year's Eve when Tommy looked in. "Get a move on," he exploded. "Party starts at two o'clock." Harry struggled into his Service dress and dashed over to the ante room. No ceremonial, mind. Just a bottle of firewater and a tumbler apiece.

Up to then, Harry had always been a gin man, but surrounded by hairy-legged monsters in kilts, he cravenly got cracking on the Black and White. Wild, heathen songs rang out and although he recognised only the obscene words - which were many - he lustily joined in. Uproarious mess games followed, not excluding the time-honoured climbing round the walls and riding a bike on the billiards table, and the hilarious lunacy went on until 6p.m. Then all sweating and panting celebrants shambled back to their slums for baths and running repairs. Wow, thought Harry. So that's Hogmanay! Little did he realise it had barely started.

In a couple of hours, all were back in the dining room. Harry realised he was still squiffy. So much so that as he slopped up the brown Windsor soup he wondered why he, who didn't smoke, had a big cigar in his left hand. He also had another bottle of whisky in front of him, a fair quantity of which had already been swallowed. Harry was having a whale of a time.

In came the Piper. He, too, had been having a whale of a time to judge from his glassy stare, but he did his duty nobly and downed the half-tumbler of whisky which the Colonel offered him in one gulp. To the cheers of the mess, he marched rigidly - and very, very carefully - through the door. The appalling crash that marked his collapse outside into the crockery table evoked grins of understanding but no comment.

Came midnight and one paralytic Englishman had had as much as he could take. Stoned out of his mind, cigar in hand, he lurched out to the lawn in the moonlight and headed wobblingly in what he believed to be the direction of his slum.

It was not.

It was, as the squatting servants and bearers could plainly see, in the direction of the brimming open sewer. Resolute and game to the last, Harry clung to his belief even as the fearful fluid closed over his head.

* * * * *

When Gerry Colonna brought Harry his mug of tea at 8 a.m. and he took the first, scalding sip, he was surprised to see the doorway and window filled with grinning faces. "Get that lot out of here," he croaked, and Gerry banished them. Then he told the Major sahib the horrid truth. He had been dragged out of the sewer by the Untouchable thunder-box servants. He had been stripped on the grass and water had been sloshed over him until he was bearable. Then he had been put to bed. His uniform had been washed, starched and ironed by the dhobi-wallah. And there he was, good as new, the Celebrity Sahib of Old Delhi. The only General Staff Officer (2) to take a plunge into an open sewer and survive.

The servants and bearers had a monumental tamasha that night at Harry’s expense and the Colonel called for a special toast to The English Sewer Rat at dinner.

* * * * *

All that was past history when Harry went round the back of the warehouse that was once an officers' mess, found the slum that was once an officer's quarters - almost hidden under jungle growth - and came upon the legendary open sewer. It was still wide, deep and still stinking to high heaven.

Local villagers watched in wonder as the sahib took picture after picture of that fearsome place. Truly, sahibs are not as others.