The Guhas of Brooking Street

By Anwita Basu

Jatindramohan Guha

My great grandfather, Jatindramohan Guha  was the first in his village Qutubpur in the district of Faridpur in East Bengal (present Bangladesh) to venture, after completing his studies, as far as Rangoon, the capital of Burma in the 1910s[1]. It was a long journey of over 1500 kilometres that could only be covered by taking the ship from the ports of Calcutta and Chittagong. Jatindramohan joined the Audit and Accounts department of the British government as a clerk, a position that members of his community in Bengal were known to serve with diligence. He married the young Prabhabati Dutt whose family was from the city of Dhaka (now capital of Bangladesh) on June 2,1918. At a time when children came soon, his daughter was born 7 years later, not before the larger family was beginning to despair.


 Jatindramohan was thrilled at the birth of his daughter even though in his society, a son as the first born would have been preferred. He took Leena, his daughter (my grandmother) to Rangoon when she was two and a half years old. She was born in Dhaka but he was determined to give her a ‘proper’ education in English, inaccessible to girls in rural Bengal. In bringing his family abroad for this purpose, the extended Guha family scorned at Jatindramohan but this had little impact on his resolve. 

Leena was soon enrolled at Sharada Sadan Vidyalaya for Girls[2], a local English-medium school which was run by Indians, chiefly from the province of Bengal. It was solely for Indians and therefore no local Burmese girls studied there. It was Jatindramohan's dream to have her study in an English medium school, somewhat of an indulgence for a girl at that time[3]. 

Idyllic Rangoon

Life in Rangoon was peaceful and very orderly. For my grandmother, there were major contrasts to living in India. In her later life, she fondly remembered the serenity of Rangoon in comparison to the manic hubbub of Calcutta, where she would spend some of her adulthood. 

The Guhas lived on Brooking Street[4]. Back then, the area was mostly occupied by Indians.[5] The family lived on the top floor of a four-storied apartment block. Leena recalls how there used to be a narrow alley running behind the buildings, set aside for throwing garbage that was cleared every morning. The frontage of all houses, therefore, always looked spick and span, something she missed when she had to navigate through the littered streets of Calcutta later. There were pedlars who sold things of everyday need, including food and wares of a whole variety (from pins to elephants, my grandmother, jokes). Customers had to clap their hands to draw attention to be served. 

Leena blossomed in Rangoon; she did well in school, made friends who were to remain her lifelong companions, and as she wistfully remembers started her lessons in playing the sitar when she was fourteen. She loved music and cherished the experience as music became her life-long passion. Domestic life for the Guhas, however, was not always smooth, as they had to reckon with their share of tragedy along with happiness. Jatindramohan and Prabhabati’s son, Moloy, was born in December 1929. He died at the young age of 8 in the autumn of 1937 of typhoid, a common but incurable disease. Their second son Ashis was born in Rangoon two years later in 1939. An older cousin who lost her mother at birth also came to live with them. It was a full house.

Against the backdrop of their life, the world was fast changing. Though the Second World War began in 1939, it hit the shores of Burma in 1941 when the Japanese started bombing Rangoon.[6] Following the second bombing of the capital, the British government ordered that all Indians must evacuate Rangoon[7]. By August 1942, the situation had turned dire and the Guhas realised that they would have to leave their home in Rangoon. Jatindramohan’s office had moved to a suburban town and a large number of Indians had already started their journey back to India. Slightly unprepared, the Guhas packed whatever little they could carry and moved to the port town of Tinanjan (as my grandmother remembers it) where an extended part of their family lived. Prabhabati with her two children (the cousin was already married and had moved out) finally boarded the last ship that was leaving for Chittagong in August 1942. The passage to Calcutta had stopped. In the few trunks that they were allowed, the Guhas packed the essentials. Leena had to leave her beloved sitar behind. They also could not put in an enlarged photograph of Moloy, the son they lost. 

Leena & Ashis, few years later

Jatindramohan walked back with thousands of other emigres later that year when it became practically impossible to stay on. Leena with her mother and brother reached their village in Qutubpur when they received a telegram from Jatindramohan that he was setting out with thousands others. Then for a month, there was no news. Just when the family feared the worst for him, Jatindramohan appeared like an apparition, emaciated and very ill from walking that long distance home. 

The family then moved to cities in northern India. Leena married an army officer in 1946 and had her share of travelling the country. But she never went back to Rangoon, nor could she ever take up lessons in sitar.

Anwita Basu lives in London

[1] Today's Yangon. 

[2] Vidyalaya means school. This was named after the wife of a 19th century Hindu preacher. 

[3] Studies in school and colleges in India are conducted entirely in English or in any one of the several regional languages. In the first, the ‘vernacular,’ is taught and learnt as a separate subject. In the latter, ‘English’ is taught separately. Education is therefore bilingual. In Leena’s school, English was taught by Anglo-Indian teachers. 

[4] Called Bogalay Bazar Street, it is now where older residents of the city live. 

[5] In May 1930, soon after the family moved to Rangoon, there were mass anti-Hindu and anti-Indian protests staged in Rangoon. This did not seem to bother the Guhas. 

[6] More in the nature of air raids, the Japanese Imperial army bombed between December 1941 and March 1942. They eventually seized Rangoon and Burma was to remain under their occupation for the next 3 years. 

[7] Burma itself had turned hostile towards the Indians and under the Japanese such animosity would only grow.

From Jersey, Channel Islands, to the African Continent

By Anita Cameron

My father Richard Durell married Edmée Gruchy in Jersey on 21 December in 1934. 

After marriage, Richard accepted a job in the Bank of British West Africa as he had previously been in banking in London. He was able to take advantage of the opportunities available at that time as the British Empire was still intact, and there were opportunities in countries in Africa and elsewhere to investigate for anyone with a pioneering spirit and sense of adventure.[1]

During Richard’s time there he became a Bank Manager in Warri, West Africa after moving around the country (now Nigeria) to various branches. The country was called “The White Man’s Grave” because of the many diseases for which there were no cures or inoculations. Richard was a particularly robust individual, and survived with only a lifelong recurrence of Malaria. He always said he had been promoted to Manager “because everyone else was dead!” On arrival in Freetown, Sierra Leone West Africa on the way to Nigeria, he was taken early off the ship and told that he was the bank branch Accountant there, as the incumbent Accountant had died. After that, he spent time in the Gold Coast, Lagos and Kano in the north of Nigeria as a bank employee.

The northern part of Nigeria was, and still is mostly Arab, and the people further south black. He told me that the drums sending the news across the country when Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901 had transmitted the message quicker than the telegraph of the time. There were very few Europeans in the country then, and they were considered the elite amongst the population, whatever their station in life. He also said that whenever a European walked past an indigenous person, they bowed down in the dust as the European went by. I always had a suspicion that he considered that people should still do that when he passed! 

Richard and his fellow bank employees enjoyed a style of life which they could not have had in Britain, which had suffered from the world depression in the 1930s. There was a general shortage of jobs, and he was offered the job in West Africa because of his previous bank experience. He had a team of polo horses and played polo regularly, joined a boxing club where he was billed as “Dicky Durell from Dulwich”, had servants to see to his every need, and made lifelong friends who shared the experience. At one time he had rescued 2 orphaned Cheetahs who were like house pets and could not be returned to the wild. On one long leave he took them to Edinburgh Zoo which had wildlife preservation facilities there. He went to check on them before leaving, and discovered that one of them was very thin & refused to eat. Richard told the zookeeper to try putting his food on a plate – which solved the problem! 

My mother followed him to West Africa in 1937, as they had been living apart for the 3 years since their marriage (she in Exeter, UK and he in West Africa). She had trained as a teacher before her marriage, and taught at a variety of schools in the UK, teaching French, English and domestic science in London & Exeter. After arriving in West Africa, Edmée was employed as the manager of the “Government Rest House” in Sekondi, West Africa, which was a place where government employees stayed – a club with sporting & hotel facilities and place for recuperation. Her culinary skills were superb, and she had a French attitude to cooking – to her it was an art form. 

When World War 2 broke out, Richard travelled to the UK to join the army. The Germans were bombing all ships sailing out of West Africa, and “the ships went out in the morning, and the survivors came back to port by evening.” He was lucky all of his life, and got on the only ship that got from West Africa through to the Bristol Channel. 

In 1940 Edmée travelled overland to South Africa through all of the African countries until she came to Johannesburg where she had distant cousins. This was because she was pregnant with my sister Jacqueline (Edmée Jacqueline Durell – called Jacqueline) who was born on 13 June 1941. There were no medical facilities available in West Africa at the time, and most European women who were pregnant usually died. The option to return to the UK was not available and in addition, the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey & Sark were occupied by the Germans for 5 years until the end of the war. Edmée’s parents survived the war, but suffered the deprivations that everyone else did – mainly the lack of food. 

Richard followed Edmée after leaving the bank, and they settled in Johannesburg. To begin with, Richard was employed as an accountant at a mining house (Anglo Vaal) in Johannesburg, and Edmée taught at a private girls’ school (Kingsmead).

The Road Sign to Rondavels
Tea Gardens

We initially lived in a flat in Johannesburg, and then Edmée & Richard bought a property in Illovo on the outskirts of Johannesburg, which they improved and Edmée and Richard ran as a tea garden and residential property. They called it the “Rondavels[2] Tea Gardens” 

In the 1950s Richard and Edmée took theopportunity to purchase a hotel in a small town in the Eastern Transvaal

Sabie Falls Hotel

(now named Mpumalanga) called “Sabie” where we spent most of our childhood. The hotel was called “Sabie Falls Hotel” after the local river and waterfall. 

Our journey from Johannesburg when I was 8 was quite an adventure. The 4 of us travelled in our small Morris Minor together with our mongrel dog Rusty, and a goldfish in a bowl! The road over Mount Anderson to Sabie was not tarred at that time, and in rainy weather became treacherous with cars sliding off the road and down the abyss. My favourite view of Sabie is from Mount Anderson, when our first view of home was looking down the mountain and seeing the village amongst the emerald green heavily forested area, with a whisp of smoke coming from the sawmill. 

Sabie is still a small dusty town in a valley amongst mountains covered in pine trees, and is a major forestry area. It is fairly close to the Kruger National Park, and is a tourist destination because of the beautiful scenery – mountains, a lot of waterfalls, and green vegetation. The post office still has a horse-hitching post outside it from the 1800s when gold prospectors panned for gold in the rivers of the area. 

I still remember an elderly gentleman long term resident of the hotel who we kids called “Uncle Mac” who still used to prospect in the rivers of Sabie, Graskop & Lydenberg areas in the 1950s. The area is not far from the Kruger National Park wildlife reserve, and was where military action occurred in the Boer War[3], as Lord Kitchener chased the Boers across the country. The “Long Tom Pass” on Mount Anderson – is named after the long gun used by the British, and which is still there. 

We lived there for 15 years, having lots of adventures with our friends when we were home from boarding school. We went swimming in the natural pools in the area, picnicked next to the waterfalls in the forests, and had lots of parties with the local English speaking children, most of who were also in boarding schools. 

Richard & Edmee in Front of their 5* Hotel

Richard & Edmée then became partners in a new venture in 1963 – the building of a 5* hotel on a hill overlooking Nelspruit. The partnership broke up, and my parents took full ownership of the hotel which soon gained a reputation for its haute cuisine and excellent situation near the Kruger National Park. They received many regular guests who became firm friends, and when they retired in the late 1960s, they retired to Johannesburg, where most of their visitors came from.

Edmée passed away from cancer in 1973 (age64) and Richard in 1996 (age 91). Their ashes were distributed over Bouley Bay in Jersey, Channel Islands where they met each other as teenagers.

[1] British possessions in Africa in 1937 were:-

In West Africa - Gambia, Port Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, Nigeria.
In North & Central Africa – Egypt, British Somaliland, Kenya, Uganda, N & S Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).
In Southern Africa – Bechuanaland (Lesotho), Swaziland and the Union of South Africa.


[2] “Rondavel” is the name of a round hut with thatched roof similar to the houses made by the indigenous population.

[3] “Boer” is the Dutch name for “Farmer”. The Boer War (11 October 1899 to 21 May 1902) was fought between the people of Dutch descent who began to arrive in South Africa from 1562 and began to farm, producing crops for the Dutch East India company ships when they called en route to the East Indian spice route. They were called “Afrikaners” and their language “Afrikaans”. The language is a mixture of Dutch, English and some Malay words. A group of them moved (“Trekked” in ox wagons) to the interior and formed a separate Republic in the Transvaal as they objected to being under British rule. When gold was found in the Transvaal, the British initiated the Boer War and eventually won. The enmity between the 2 sides lasted many years. The country was handed to the majority of the population 1998 & Nelson Mandela Became President. Since then English & Afrikaans speakers, have become more a part of one “White Tribe”. South Africa has had many immigrants from all over the world and all of them have left their mark. Slaves & indentured labourers from Malaya, China, India, and Mozambique (reflected in the food in the parts of South Africa they were transported to). Immigrants have come from all over Europe - the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece… Soldiers from the Jersey Militia and from Britain arrived during the Boer War, and if they wanted to remain as immigrants, were given farms in the areas in which they had fought. Jersey surnames such as Le Sueur & Antoine crop up as street names in Cape Town of Jersey men who stayed. 

Anita Cameron lives in Cambourne, UK.

The Journey

By Joan Duncan

 The beginning was difficult-I was in a traffic jam going to the airport! Would I get to the check-in in time? I began to get agitated and restless, and the clouds which had been threatening all the way, began to look darker and I grew apprehensive. What was I doing here? Why had I come? I had a feeling of foreboding. Was I headed for a disaster? Then suddenly, traffic cleared, and we went bowling into Heathrow just in time. There were traffic delays in the air as well, it seemed, and French and English controllers were having some kind of dispute. We finally made it to the runaway, but we had missed our slot, and the temperature in the plane as we waited was getting more and more oppressive. At last our plane was given the all-clear, and the now long queue of planes took off at high speed, and like peas in a pod we shot off into the sky, one after the other.

The journey across the channel was uneventful, but the cloud which had accompanied us all the way began to make the ride more and more bumpy as we crossed France. Obviously a bad storm brewing, and I became more and more depressed. As we descended into Bordeaux, over the confluence of the two great rivers, the sky took on a sort of yellow colour, and we seemed to suddenly lurch round the last bit at considerable speed, screeching to a halt at the end of the runway. I had arrived safely! Les Douanes[1]were being extremely slow, and I was scrutinised rather closely as I went through. Do I look suspicious for some reason, it was creepy! I found out later that they were looking for some drug smugglers whom they caught next day.

By now I was getting late for my train, and I was getting worried about letting someone know that I would possibly be on the following one, as I was due to be met on my arrival at Bergerac. The clouds were getting darker, and more menacing, and thunder was rumbling in the distance. What have I got myself into now? Luckily the navette[2] turned up at the bus stop as soon as I had found it, and I got to the main line station, just in time to get my ticket, and catch the train. As the train ran along, I began to practise my rather long forgotten French, and my depression took over again. I was going to an unknown family in the heart of the countryside, and I knew that nobody was likely to speak English. Oh, why had I come? The clouds looked blacker still, and the thunder seemed to be following me. Then the train stopped and I realised that I had arrived in Bergerac. I climbed down to the platform, and looked about me, not knowing what to expect next, when suddenly a young woman, who had been looking anxiously at a photo, obviously the one I had supplied, ran forward, and introduced herself in a great flow of French, most of which I did not comprehend, but I gathered that she was very pleased to meet me. I realised that my ear would take some time to become “en accord.” I wished that I done a bit more preparation before I had come, but we managed quite well on the car trip back to the farm, a few miles south of town. She said they were expecting a severe storm in the next few hours, and my spirits dropped again, wondering what was to befall me.

The Farmhouse

We arrived at a large gateway. “Voilá Le Saintonger” shouted the young woman, and we started the drive up a long winding lane, which was lined as far as I could see with large trees and bushes. With the storm clouds above, it looked very dark and foreboding. Then out of the gloom we came to the farmhouse. It was just as I had imagined it-a rather old crumbling building with shutters, and I wonder why the French never seem to do much to their old buildings on the outside, unless they are regarded as national monuments, when they scrub everything from top to bottom, and destroy the history. We stepped inside a very dark hallway, and the floor tiles felt very cold to my feet, and once more I wondered what was to befall me. An inside door opened and Madam H emerged with a welcoming smile, and enquired anxiously about my journey. “Would you like a cup of tea?” Rather surprised, I said I should like that very much, and she bustled about showing me up to my room with my luggage. She appeared soon with a tray of tea, and began to pour. I thought the tea looked a bit odd and then I realised that Madame likes fruit tea, with rather more than a dash of milk. She then proceeded to tell me about the other guests, one of whom was another English lady who was to occupy the next bedroom. The next were the Rules of the House-no English was to be spoken in the house, at least within her hearing, after all we had come to improve our French. The furniture of the house looked as though it hadn’t been changed since the 18^th century, and everything had an air of grandeur. I had noticed there was a supply of electricity, but I wondered about the plumbing. However, the bathroom which I was to share with Caroline was a little old-fashioned, but adequate. That evening I came down at the strike of the dinner gong (strict time keeping was another house rule), and met the family and other guests.

The family

The young lady who had met me was Madame’s daughter-in-law, and she and her husband and two little boys lives in one wing of the sprawling building, while Madame and her husband, now retired, occupied the other with the guests. Everyone was talking about the worsening storm, and there seemed a desire to batten everything down. What will happen next, I wondered? Are all the windows locked, are the shutters secure? I wondered if France suffered from hurricanes? The answer came soon enough. Because I was very tired after my journey, I suggested that I should go to bed early, and after a really lovely meal, which encouraged me no end, I went to my room. The heat was stifling, and I decided that I should open the windows behind the shutters, which I pulled to, but didn’t fasten too well, I think. It was already pelting heavily with rain, but I finally rolled on to the bed and dropped off to sleep. Loud crashes, a banging as though a monster was in the room, woke me, and my senses were reeling! Was this the awful thing I had been worrying about all day? As I came to, I realised that I had broken the rules, and opened my windows, and released the shutters, which were banging backwards and forwards, in a violent manner. The rain had become large hailstones, and the lightening flashed and the thunder rolled. I got completely soaked fighting to catch the shutters and control them somehow. The rain poured into my room, and I struggled to mop it up. I feel I am in trouble; I can just hear Monsieur commenting on the stupidity of the English! I go back to bed, and in the morning am amazed to hear that everyone else in the house had gone downstairs during the storm, because of the thunder and lightening, and some people had water come through their ceilings, because tiles had blown off the roof. Outside, it was a scene of devastation. Trees were blown down, leaves had been stripped from their branches, water was everywhere, and the family were grieving for the nest of baby golden Orioles, which had been blown from its tree, and was completely destroyed. So began my stay with the family at ‘Le Saintonger,’ a certainly dramatic beginning to one of the best holidays of my life[3].

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[1] Customs

[2]^↩ The shuttle from the airport

[3]^↩ Joan stayed with the family for two weeks to improve her French.