Ghosts in the House

By Urmi Ray

Whenever I am haunted by memories of the past, our house in Jabalpur[1] invariably floats in to my mind. And I'm not using the word 'haunted' casually. There were quite a few rumoured ghosts floating around the house. 

In 1959, our family — my parents, my brother, sister and I — moved to Jabalpur. My father was an army officer in India and used to be transferred to different places every three years. After a stint in Udhampur a non-family station[2], he was posted to Jabalpur, and we joined him there. My brother got admitted to Class VI and I got admitted to Class II in Christ Church School. My sister was just a year old. 

My father was allotted a huge bungalow with a kitchen garden at the back and a small orchard with twenty mango trees and five to six guava trees. In the orchard were the servants’ quarters, as they were referred to in those days. In front was a garden full of flowers, succulents and cactuses.  

We three with our pet

                                                                                                        
I can still hear the chirping of birds and my father’s jeep honking to announce his return from work. Our dear Joseph Bhaiyya[3] (my father’s orderly) would come running at jet speed to open the gate, and then would run back to the porch to wait for my father to get off the jeep, to carry his things to the house. 

Joseph Bhaiyya’s full name was Joseph Gotham. He hailed from Andhra Pradesh[4] and his strong regional accent was unmistakable. Once we made fun of his accent and what followed (I will never forget) was my father’s vituperative outburst. Joseph Bhaiyya, however, used to be devastated whenever our parents scolded us. I have rarely seen a person with a purer heart and his loyalty and sense of duty knew no bounds. When my father was transferred from Jabalpur, Joseph Bhaiyya was devastated. My father felt sorry for him and requested his seniors to transfer Joseph Bhaiyya too. He stayed with us for another three years and then retired. That day, we all cried, even my parents. Joseph Bhaiyya was inconsolable.

Adjacent to our front garden in Jabalpur, was a badminton court, and behind it a large raised platform, like a permanent stage. We had to climb three steps to set foot on it. My father warned us, never get up on the stage. But as is the nature of all children, we climbed on the stage and played whenever our parents were not looking. 

Our parents

Now, my father had a reason for telling us to stay away from the platform, though he didn't say it until long after we had left Jabalpur. The bungalow that was our home used to be an out- house of a local Muslim zamindar[5] decades ago, where he was said to have been entertained by nautch girls. His son fell in love with one of the dancers, a Hindu; the enraged zamindar buried her alive. The platform was apparently built over her grave. There is no way of knowing if this is a true story, but many people believed it and said the house was cursed. 

The zamindar sold the house to a group of Christian missionaries. They lived in the house until India's independence in 1947 and then it was handed over to the army, who requisitioned it to officers and their families.

There was another story regarding the house that the locals narrated in hushed whispers. One of the Christian missionaries was believed to have been murdered in the room that used to be our living room.

My father, however, dismissed this story and ignored warnings that the murder could have an adverse effect on our lives. Like the platform story, he kept this one, too, under wraps. He didn't even mention it to my mother. We got to know about it years later. 

In the hills with Ma

I don't know if the house was haunted or not, but life did throw us some trying times while we lived there. My sister would frequently suffer from high fever, accompanied by convulsions. It was frightening to see her having a fit, and I remember my brother getting very upset at the thought that she might die; people who worked for us would come running and try to revive her by getting her to smell a half-cut onion. It worked. We were advised to take her on a holiday to the hills which my parents did. When we returned we got to know that the person who took care of her called Pyari, had died in the quarters in our compound. My brother had a perennial stomach ailment, and my mother suffered from nervous breakdown, which traumatised us, especially my father. 

These troubles disappeared from our lives once we left Jabalpur. 

But our life here wasn't all dark and sinister. There were plenty of sunny days. We had a lovely family friend with whom we went for picnics often. Their two daughters, Pronota and Nandita, played badminton with us, and we would perform for our families and friends. I danced to my mother singing, my brother used to recite poetry and the two pretty, talented sisters enacted short plays.

We got close to many of my father’s colleagues and their families living in Jabalpur. We were like one big family. Our picnics to Marble Rocks, at a fort that stood on a single rock and so many other places were a regular feature. My paternal grandmother, maternal grandparents and my maternal uncle would visit us as well, filling our house with love and laughter.

After my Class IV final exams, my father got transferred to Delhi and I was admitted to Lady Irwin School. Now, I am retired and yet every incident in Jabalpur is vivid in my memory. When I close my eyes, I can see the house, the gardens, the stage with the two lofted stairs and the badminton court. 

The house in 2014 and 1959

I travelled to Jabalpur in 2014 with my family and went to see the house. I felt like I was visiting an old flame and wanted to say it like Wordsworth — Ah this is the house! It took us a while to find it though, for it has now been turned into a college. The garden and the flowers, which my father nurtured so lovingly, are all gone to make space for buildings. Half of the round verandah that fronted the house, has been turned into offices, and the badminton court has become a parking lot. The platform, of course, has been dismantled. But one glimpse at the spot, and all the memories came dancing back to my mind. The ghosts of my past are yet to be exorcised.

Urmi Ray lives in Kolkata

[1] A city in the central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh. It has a large cantonment that dates back to the 19th century. 

[2] A city in the northern province of Jammu and Kashmir. Due to its proximity to the border between India and Pakistan, the military station did not allow soldiers and officers to bring their families. 

[3] Bhaiyya, means older brother in Hindi. It is also used as an address 

[4] A province in the south. 

[5] Landlord

Knights by the Table

By Charlotte Mitchell

I do say that it is in my blood to run the Knight’s Fish & Chips Restaurant in Glastonbury. I was, after all, born above this place. My husband Kevin and I, however, did not take over the business till 2010 when my father Bill Knight sold it to us. Our son, George has decided to join us full time and our daughter Claire works part time, and together they constitute the 5th generation of the same family running the Fish and Chips restaurant. That makes it iconic since it is the only one in England to have been with the same family. This was confirmed by the National Federation of Fish Fryers, based in Leeds and reported in a local news website when we celebrated its centenary in 2009.

Frank and Louie Knight 

The Fish and Chips shop was started in 1909 by Mary Lousia Phillis in partnership with Mrs. Hockey. In 1932, Mary’s daughter, Louie and her husband Frank Knight took on the business and lent their name to the restaurant. ‘Knights Fish & Chips’ was born and continues till date. Louie and Frank were my grandparents. They faced some of the most challenging and rewarding times. During the Second World War, fish and chips were not rationed and became significant to the local residents and visitors from outside. There would be long queues from the door out into the street. Louie and Frank had to survive three Cod Wars between United Kingdom and Iceland over fishing rights in the North Atlantic[1]. All of them ended in victory for Iceland and that meant uncertainty and fluctuations in prices. However, after many wars and negotiations, our supply of Cod is still from Iceland. 

My father was a late child, born to Louie when she was over 40. Frank died when my father was young. I have never met my grandfather and my memories of Granny Louie was of an old lady. She made faggots and fish cakes for the shop, but I don’t remember her actually serving. After her husband died in his 50s, my uncle managed the shop before he also died in his 50s. Unfortunately, Granny had dementia in the last 10 years of her long life as she died aged 92.

My father and I

The business passed on to her son, Bill Knight and his sister Iris Look (nee Knight), my father and aunt. They oversaw the business whilst Iris’s daughter managed the restaurant for many years. On the death of my aunt in 1999, Bill took over the entire business on his own. He also renovated his grandfather’s cottages, next door, and now rents them out as self-catering accommodation under a new company.

I have been a sports coach and Head of Net Ball in the well-known Millfield Private School. I used to work at the restaurant during holidays and vacation. Kevin worked as a Manager in a Joinery company and then as the Business and Financial Manager for local businesses in the County Council. My father had been quite keen that Kevin should take more interest in the restaurant business. From 2008, Kevin began to learn how to make the batter and to fry from Dad and my cousin who was working and also started to manage the business partially. 

Kevin with his pail of batter

It was only after assessing the prospects and when we had enough money saved to buy the business that we finally took the plunge and haven’t looked back since. We had decided that I would leave my job as soon as I was able to earn the same amount from the restaurant and I finally resigned from my position in school in the Easter of 2017. George too decided to take this up as his full- time career. 

The success of this business has a lot to do with the nature of the town, Glastonbury and its unique features. When I was growing up, I was aware of the strong presence of ‘Hippies’ in the town. For the last 10 -15 years, it has grown to be a pilgrim centre for mysticism and spiritualism where people from all over the world congregate to experience the aura of the place. There are special festivals to mark different occasions, like the Goddess Conference, Fairy Ball and Dragon Parade. We see people coming in dressed as fairies, pixies, goddesses and green men. It is so much fun serving them. I love the diversity of our customers. As a people’s person, I could not have asked for a better profession.

One evening, during the Fairy Ball, two lady customers came for a meal. I spotted wings sticking out of their bags. While they were being served, they said the town was so busy that they hadn’t found any place to stay and change. They were going to be picked up later that night by their partners. They asked me if they could use our facilities above to change and I said, ‘Go for it.’ They were there for an hour. When they came down they were both dressed as fairies. It took us weeks to clean up the glitter.

Rick Steves, the American travel writer visited us and we feature in his guide book on Explore England. We have also had other celebrities like Nicholas Cage whose son goes to Millfield School, Nick Knowles, Keith Allen drop in for meals. 

The Restaurant now

The present building is Grade II listed medieval construction and certainly adds to the character and heritage of the business. But in reality, Kevin and I have had to make several changes with modern taste and customs. Therefore, burgers, salads and chicken appear in the menu. On Thursdays, there is gluten free menu. In what used to be strictly a cash only business, we have had to introduce the facility of payment by card. There is a huge demand for take away meals that we cater to. We take orders over the phone and make sure that the food is ready on time as people, especially the young, don’t like to be kept waiting. Competition from fast food chains and other take away is strong. But it is the loyalty of our customers that is our mainstay. 

At this table for 60 years

The recipe of the batter, however, is traditional and handed down which is the key to the success of the restaurant. We have four fryers and each of them do their own batter with marginal variations. Kevin’s, for example, is always a little thicker than the others. We cook 95% of the food we serve. Typically, each day we use 2 to 3 gallons of batter, 100 kilos of chips and 80 to 100 portions of fish in the busy season. Our staple continues to be cod and haddock. Our fish is supplied every morning at 6 and the fish is frozen at sea. A couple has been coming for dinner once a week for the last 60 years, sitting at the same table. 

Interestingly, during the Glastonbury Music Festival that is held 7 miles away, the town goes dead and appears like a ghost town. Small businesses open mobile shops in and around the festival premises. We have discussed at length if we should do the same and eventually decided on remaining where we are and doing what we do best-make the best fish and chips in the neighbourhood.

Knight’s still remains with the family at the helm, ‘preparing, cooking and serving the food you love. PROUD TO CONTINUE THEIR GREAT GREAT GRANDMOTHERS GOOD OLD FISH AND CHIPS!’ For future, ‘We will still be here for our 125th Anniversary.’ I feel proud and privileged. 

Charlotte and Kevin Mitchell have always lived in Glastonbury, Somerset.

[1] 1958-1961 The First Cod War, 1972-1973 The Second Cod War, 1975-1976 The Third Cod War. These were a series of confrontations between the United Kingdom and Iceland regarding fishing rights in the North Atlantic.

Palace to Partition: My Mother's Tale

By Manash Chatterjee
I was travelling to Bangladesh for the first time in 2017. I told my mother that I was going for a business trip and if all went well, I would be travelling frequently to Bangladesh. She sat right up, her eyes sparkling. She had spent the first 10 years of her life in Jaidevpur in the district of Gazipur, 30 km north of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. It was then a part of undivided Bengal in India. She told me that she had grown up in a palace as her great grandmother was Princess Indumoyee, the eldest daughter of Raja Rajendra Narayan Roy, the ruler of Bhawal, a large zamindari[1] estate in Bengal. The property of Bhawal covered most of present day Dhaka. 

The Palace at Bhawal

Indumoyee was the elder sister of Raja Ramendra Narayan Roy, who was made famous by the controversy surrounding his death. Ramendra Narayan ‘died’ in 1909, but suddenly re-emerged after 12 years! This then resulted in a widely followed legal battle between the Zamindar (Ramendra Narayan) and the British Indian government, in the course of which it emerged that Ramendra Narayan had been slow-poisoned by his brother-in-law and family doctor, resulting in him falling into a deathly stupor and mistakenly taken to be dead. His body was carried to the riverside to be cremated but because of a heavy storm, the cremation had to be abandoned for the night. When everyone returned the following morning, the ‘body’ had disappeared from the funeral pyre. Nobody knew where the body had gone or how! The British Court of Wards[2] took over the zamindari and people soon forgot all about the disappearance. 

But then Ramendra Narayan suddenly turned up in Jaidevpur in 1921, taking everyone by surprise! He looked very different, dressed like a hermit (or sanyasi) and speaking in Hindi[3], not Bengali. Some members of family accepted him as the Raja, but some didn’t and amongst those who didn’t were his wife and her brother! The British Court of Wards refused to accept him as the real Ramendra Narayan and declared him an imposter. Then ensued a long two-year legal battle, which Ramendra Narayan finally won.

The school

The pond  

By the time my mother was born in the Bhawal Rajbari (Palace), Ramendra had been reinstated as the Zamindar. She remembers him, as a very quiet and solemn man, sitting in a room in a section of the house that the children were barred from going. My mother spent many happy days in the Rajbari - playing hide and seek with her friends in the huge library, going to school that had been set up by her family with her cousin Shipra, escorted by a maid. She loved swimming in the Rajbari pond, along with her siblings and cousins, getting told off for spending too much time in the water. 

Ma remembers the big golden throne, the grand chandeliers, the large modern bathrooms with running water and the silver horse carriage called Tomtom, which used to take the Raja out and about. The Raja would also use his elephant to go out –the elephant would sit down, put his trunk down for the Raja to climb up and sit on the ‘howdah.’[4] The Raja followed a strict routine and my mother still recalls that at 3pm every day, a family retainer, whom she called Sachin-da,[5] would bring fresh coconut water in a stone glass for him. The Raja always had ‘rotis’[6] for dinner, dripping in ‘ghee’! At dawn every day, the Rajbari would awaken to the sound of the conch shell.[7] The Raja loved hunting and there was a room in the Rajbari, where his large collection of guns and rifles were kept. But he also had a zoo with tigers, peacocks and other beautiful birds – his favourite was a tiger called Sundari[8]. He loved dogs and my mother particularly remembers one called Max.

Ma

My grandparents

My mother’s idyllic childhood came to an abrupt end when in 1947, India gained independence but due to Partition[9], had a line drawn through Bengal, making Jaidevpur a part of East Pakistan. Most Hindu families had to pack their bags and flee for their lives to India. Tears well up in her eyes as my mother narrates how her mother hurriedly gathered up her jewels and some cash and left the Rajbari with her seven children and a suitcase. My great-grandfather was away on work when the family had to leave, but he had organised the trip and asked his friend to help the family escape from Jaidevpur. There was riots and rampage everywhere, with looting, killing and other inhuman happenings – these were bad times when most people’s wicked side emerged. Every time my grandmother and her family were stopped, she would buy her way out with a gold ornament or two. When the family finally reached Kolkata in India, she had hardly any jewels left.  
                              

My grandmother’s brother, Utpal Mukherjee, then a businessman in Kolkata, put this family of eight, up in his house. But there were other relatives who had taken refuge in his home, so my grandmother and her children had to all cram into one room. This was indeed a very difficult period for the family – quite often my mother and her siblings would be split up between her uncle’s house and that of other relatives so that they could all sleep properly. There was hardly any money and life was tough. But things started to get better soon - my mother’s father managed to make it across the border and finally found a job with the government in Delhi – this job came with a house and at last, the family was together again when they moved to the Pandara Road[10] house, where they lived for a good many years. The family was still there when my mother met my father and got married. People affected by the Partition were all being allotted land in Delhi and as a refugee from East Pakistan, my grandfather got a piece of land in the locality in the south of the city, called Chittaranjan Park, where he built a house – a house that I have spent many happy holidays in as a child.

The entrance to the Rajbari now

Ma in England

As I get ready to leave and catch my plane to Dhaka, my mother opens her almirah and gives me a card. It was a card announcing the funeral of the Raja when he died in 1946. She tells me that I should try and visit the Rajbari if I can and if it still exists and take some photos of the palace. She says that I should show people the funeral announcement card if they don’t believe that I am related to the Bhawal family. She wonders though, if anyone still remembered the Bhawal family now. I take her blessings and leave for Bangladesh. After my business meetings, I mention my Bhawal connections to my colleagues there – it turns out that not only do they know about Bhawal and the family but they also told me where the Rajbari is, just a few miles out of Dhaka. They took me to the Rajbari, front part of which is now a government office and in good repair. The rest of the house and land seems to be in need of some tlc. It is difficult to describe how I felt as I stood there – on the land of my ancestors, in the place where my mother laughed and played as a little girl. I took several photos of the house, the school, the pond and the gardens, promising myself that I will bring my mother here as soon as I can. 

Manash Chatterjee, a Plant Scientist and Entrepreneur, divides his time between Cambridge and Mumbai. 

[1] Zamindari means Landholding from the word Zamindar who is the Landlord. 
[2] Court of Wards was a legal body created by the East India Company and continued when India came to be governed by the Crown after 1858. The purpose was to protect the interests of heirs and their estates when the succeeding heir was a minor or considered unfit to rule. 

[3] The language spoken in the region north of India. The local language here was Bengali.

[4] Seat placed on the back of an elephant usually with a canopy over it.

[5] ‘da’ a suffix added to the name to address a person older.
[6] Chapatis, not rice the usual staple for people of Bengal. 

[7] A Hindu ritual to blow into the conch shell to herald an auspicious moment.

[8] Meaning beautiful in the feminine. 

[9] At its independence in 1947, India was divided into two nations. Pakistan was born of dividing two provinces in the west and east-Punjab and Bengal. 

[10] In the centre of the capital, New Delhi