Diary of an Infantryman Brig. Ian da Costa (Retd.

), 2013

Published in 2013 by

Saligo 403511 Goa, India http://goa1556.goa-india.org goa1556@gmail.com M: +91-9822122436 P: +91-832-2409490 Publishing Goa... not by accident

Project co-ordinated by Frederick Noronha Copy editing by Pamela DMello Cover design by Bina Nayak http://www.binanayak.com Typeset using LYX, http://www.lyx.org Text set in Palatino Printed by Brilliant Printers Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore http://www.brilliantprinters.com/

Published with nancial assistance from the Directorate of Art & Culture (Government of Goa) scheme for Goan authors. See Goa,1556s complete online catalogue at http://bit.ly/Goa1556Books2

ISBN 978-93-80739-48-9

Rs 300

Contents
Foreword | Lt. General DD Saklani (Retd) Acknowledgements 1 A Goan Family Away From Home 2 The Doctor and his Garden 3 A Goan Village... in Nagpur 4 Marriages... and School 5 On a Maiden Voyage 6 Beyond the Adolescent Years 7 The Best Days, at the NDA 8 Zojila Company, IMA 9 A Young Ofcer in JK 10 Starting Life with 14 Kumaon 11 First Major Skirmish 12 Two Steps Up 13 The 1965 War and the Battle for O P Hill 8 10 13 21 29 42 48 53 56 64 68 72 78 84 90

C ONTENTS 14 Getting Married... and Goa 15 Pathankot, Poonch and Thereabouts 16 Srinagar Then 17 End of an Era 18 Peace Station: Madras 19 Raising the Naga Regiment 20 1971 and Bangladesh 21 The Battle of Dharmadaha 22 At Wellington 23 Back to 14 Kumaon 24 The Mountain Brigade and a mad river 25 Life at Mhow 26 The Low, Picturesque Clouds of Nagaland 27 In the Desert, Moving Stealthily by Night 28 Mhow, Seat of Military Education 29 Life At Kumaon House 30 A Visit to Gangolihat 31 An Old Army Club 32 Of Holiday-Homes and Memorials 33 Calling it a Day 34 Setting Out, to the Plains 115 121 124 131 135 138 145 149 164 168 176 184 190 196 214 216 227 232 242 250 258

Contents 35 A Battle on Goas Roads 36 The Evening of Life... In Saligo 263 270

A Goan Family Away From Home

dEmilia was where home was for us in Nagpur, in those days the capital of the Central Provinces and Berar1. I was born on September 26, 1940 at the Mure Memorial Hospital2 . Our big and beautiful home was named after our mother Emilia. Yvette, my eldest sister who was in charge of feeding me and like a second mother, told me that to get me to eat, I would be taken to the compound wall to see Moriyas ghoda. The Billimorias next door tied the horse, which they otherwise used to drive their tonga, to a stake under a tin roofed cycle-shed at the back of their compound. On the other side of the compound that housed Chateau dEmilia and Olaf Manor, was a barbed wire boundary with the Dongajees compound. To the west was the Government Nursing School, called Maries compound. Marie Fernandes, Yvettes B.Ed classmate on the Seminary Hill, was my god-mother. She married Major (later Brig)

HATEAU

The Central Provinces and Berar was a province of British India, comprising British conquests from the Mughals and Marathas in Central India, and covered much of present-day Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states. The Central Provinces was formed in 1861 by the merger of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories and Nagpur Province. The Marathi-speaking Berar region of the Hyderabad princely state was annexed to the Central Provinces in 1903 for administration and later to form the new Central Provinces and Berar from 1936. http://www.murememorialhospital.org/

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Arnold Rodrigues of the Ordinance Corps. The couple settled down in Bangalore at 20 Cline Road, not far from my other sister, Dr. Marie Mignons place in Cooke Town. Maries mother, Dora, was the principal of the nursing school. She and the family lived in the quarters within the school complex. Earlier, I was told, we stayed in an old thatched-roofed house in Butys compound about a kilometre away at the junction of Sadar Bazaar Road and Mount Road. My own early memories go back to sitting on the front steps of Chateau dEmilia, watching the world go by on the Kamptee Road in front of our house. In some ways, it was a small and connected world. Our dad purchased the land around 1935 from some Parsees. Olaf Manor was built in 1936-37, around the time my elder brother Olaf was born. Chateau dEmilia was built in 1940. For both the constructions, Brother Harold who lived in St. Johns High School, was the engineer and builder-in-charge. He was thorough in his work and supervision. He moved around in his tonga. In summer, we all slept in the backyard, which was sprinkled with water by Rama, our house help. I always gave the area under my bed an extra dose of water to make the ground cooler for a sound nights sleep. Rama, our handyman, lived on the premises with his family Anjini, his second wife, Shanti, his daughter from his rst wife and one late born little son Girdhar in one of the outhouses. The other outhouse adjacent to the girls bathrooms was used as a coal and wood godown, and a storehouse for old spares. Around the back veranda, with its small forest of trees behind, it tended to be cooler. In summer, we often dined just outside the back veranda after the dining table was moved out. In keeping with the Army style, enforced by Daddy, we all used mosquito nets to keep malaria away. Sometimes, just after a eeting summer shower of rain, many insects hovered around the verandas electric light. Sliced onions over a basin of water were kept below the electric lights, working wonders. Somehow, possibly due to the scent of the onions, the insects fell into the basin of water below, and drowned. The house had a smaller veranda and two godowns, besides two chicken coops on one side. Later, a big and thick steel mesh poultry house was built adjacent to the garage, under the big sweet tamarind

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A Goan Family Away From Home tree. Once this came up, we did not lose any more chickens to the mongooses. When I was about six, I took charge of the poultry. I used to run to collect the eggs early in the morning and at afternoon, on returning from school. Mum paid me at the rate of one paisa per egg deposited with her. Most of our chickens had names. Our elder siblings, Ossie and Yvette bought these chickens from the Seven Day Adventist Farm in Pune (then Poona). The chicks grew and multiplied. There were White Leghorns, Black Minorcas, Rhode Island Reds, New Hampshires and a grey and white speckled variety called the Plymouth Rock.

The da Costas in Nagpur, in 1950.

In summer, Daddy slept in his bed near the breezy garage, furtherest away from the house. Mummy was the rst to get up in the

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morning. She attended the 5.30 a.m. cathedral Mass daily along with Sara Roque, Mary DSouza, Efe Paul and the others of the 5.30 gang as they were known. Daddy went for the 6.30 a.m. daily mass in his Morris 10, and later Morris Minor, cars. We started his car by cranking the handle in those frugal times. Dad believed that this prolonged the life of the battery. Nagpur had pleasant early mornings, cool even in summer. In fact, they were so nippy that one needed to cover up with a bed sheet. If we were thirsty at night, we would walk up to the kooja a traditional pot of clay with a narrow neck used to store water which was kept in the veranda on a high wooden stand. The moonlight and stars made the sky quite bright and the setting romantic. Palace Talkies, later renamed Bharat Cinema, was round the corner. The cinema was bought from some Parsees by Shyamji Kheta, a city businessman who also bought Billimorias property. Liberty Cinema was just beyond Maries compound and it belonged to the Naidus, some of whom were my sister Marie Mignons school friends. Late night summer shows at the two cinemas often kept us awake well past midnight with their extra loud sound. However, all in our brood enjoyed this. We kept talking and discussing the lm being shown. It was a simple lifestyle, lived with great pleasure. It was such fun. Summer nights somehow saw quite a few house res in town. Fire Brigade engines and their warning bells and sirens kept us both fearful and wondering whose house would be next. Nagpur by then already had telephones in peoples residences. Our telephone number was the three-digit 636, before Nagpur grew into a Telephone Circle. Before the sun came up, all our beds were carried back into the veranda, and the bedding rolled and put away. Holidays coincided with the summer. Summer days were spent either on homework, or cycling, playing a traditional game that needed hand-eye coordination called gullie danda and packets (a game with cigarette packets), marbles and more. There was also kite ying with the sharp cuttingthread called manja, playing carom, millionaire, snakes and ladders, visiting T. Fernandes compound, and also going out in groups on cycles and shooting birds and chameleons with the catapult, at which we were all pretty skilled. Olaf was a master at this skill, though not without picking up the occasional wound.

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A Goan Family Away From Home

Dad and Mum in Nagpur in 1952.

In our home the piano was played for most of the day. Yvette and Gilda learnt from Miss West who lived on Mount Road and the rest of

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us from Marie Mignon. Olaf, myself and Emile were taught by Mrs. Flory Almeida, closer home on Kamptee Road. From 1950 to 1954, Gilda, Emile and I were the only siblings at the Chateau. Gilda got married in 1954 and Emile then went to St Marys School in Bombay. Yvette, long since married, went to Devgad, a small port on the Maharashtra coast, with her husband, Osmond Gonsalves. Olaf went to school in Darjeeling at St Josephs, North Point. Gilda, my elder sister, gave me monthly pocket money of a rupee and four annas, then a princely amount! Olaf, Emile and I were always very close for many reasons, though I really missed my siblings who had already left home. Daddys bedroom was converted into a family sleeping room during summer afternoons. We slept on mats on the oor. The rear door was initially tted with a khus-khus tatti, a simple mechanism to beat the heat of those times. It was periodically drenched with mugs of water thrown on it from outside. Later, we had a desert cooler tted on the side window with a powerful exhaust fan that made the room very cool. Sometimes we would go for a swim in the Corporations public swimming pool near Mount Hotel on Mount Road. We also read books brought from the British Council Library run by Mrs. E. Hymeon, wife of Justice Hymeon, of what later became the Madhya Pradesh High Court. Mrs. Hymeon was fond of India and had stayed on in Nagpur for many years, even after the death of her husband. She traveled about in a rickshaw and seemed to enjoy it. There were no televisions, compact disc players, two-in-ones or even transistor radios in those times. But Yvette and Gilda listened to music from our Phillips radio bought from Unique Radio belonging to Mr. Kumar, a Sindhi refugee who lived in Kamptee3 . The Commercial Services of Radio Ceylon4 was the most popular music station.
3

Kamptee was founded in 1821 when the British established a military cantonment on the banks of the Kanhan River. According to one account, Kamptee was previously named Camp-T for its geographical shape. The town quickly became an important center for trade, but trade dwindled with the arrival of the railway in the late 19th century to Nagpur. Radio Ceylon is the oldest radio station in Asia. Broadcasting was started on an experimental basis in Ceylon by the Telegraph Department in 1923, just three years after the inauguration of broadcasting in Europe. The stations Commercial Service reached many parts of Asia.

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A Goan Family Away From Home Greg was its most popular announcer. My sisters took down words of songs and entered them into a song book, which was used when practicing the piano and entertaining guests during parties. One such guest was the afuent Seth Gulab Das Saraf Tumsar Wala. Gilda played the piano and sang Gloria for him. She was promptly rewarded with a crisp one hundred rupee note, a shockingly high sum in those times! I also remember being driven to Mure Memorial Hospital in our Morris 10 car a few days after Emile was born on December 17, 1943. After distracting myself on a hospital swing, Yvette held my hand and took me in to see my newborn brother. But he was too small for me to be allowed to carry. There was, a dhunkeen (hand water pump) in the rear compound as well as drumstick and chickoo trees. I had taught Blackie our dog to climb upto the rst fork of the chikoo tree.

Blackie, atop the chikoo tree, with Emile, Olaf and the author.

In summer, we took turns to pump and ll the tank, then took turns lolling in it, to keep ourselves cool. It was only four feet deep. The tank had been built to soak bricks and for watering the walls of

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Olaf Manor and the Chateau when they were being built in 1936 and 1940. The mochi (cobbler) would come once a month with his bags, sit down, and repair all the shoes. What with us kicking stones and playing football in school with these, the shoes needed heavy repairs. Once in a few months, the man who applied polish (kalai) to the inside of the brass cooking pots and pans would come and set up shop. He had an air bellow which pumped hot air onto a charcoal-wood re. After heating the pots, he would perform what we would call magic and all the insides of the brass pots would be shining and as good as new. These are things of the past, forgotten in our stainless steel and Teon generation. Our days were fun and living was robust, with out any fuss. Our children and grand children miss all these things today. Another frequent visitor to the Chateau was Leo Pip Dias. He was a thin old man, good at playing the mandolin and mouth organ. He often led the crowd in group singing, especially at Christmas and New Year bonres and picnics. He also used to give my sisters a good oil head massage and they enjoyed it. Pip often had lunch with us on Sundays. He died in Nagpur and was buried in the Jaripatka Catholic Cemetery. The Joe Dias family were earlier in Karachi, then still a part of undivided India. After a couple of decades in Nagpur, Joes family then moved to Goa, before migrating to Canada. Gladys (Honey) Dias, the eldest, and her husband visited Goa around 2003 and dropped in at Miramar and my sister Gilda hosted them to a pot-luck lunch. She looked the same the thin, smart and smiling Nagpur girl. Her younger sister was Celine, nicknamed Siloo, a nurse who also migrated to Canada. I happened to be visiting Gilda and we sat down and recalled old Nagpur days. These few lines give a hint of what life in Nagpur was like for us in those times.

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The Doctor and his Garden

was born on January 13, 1889, the eldest son of Baptista Caetano da Costa and Rosalinda Cordeiro e da Costa at Bairo Alto, Arrarim, Saligo, Bardez, Goa. They say that he was a live wire, intelligent, playful and naughty as a little boy. Both his parents died in 1910, within ten months of each other. He had two sisters and two brothers Sylvia, Melita, Bernard and Euclid. Sylvia married Dr Joe Fernandes of Assago. They settled in Nagpur where he had a private medical practice. Their son Walter joined the Indian Air Force as a pilot and retired as Air Commodore. He was a Master Green, who was allowed to y any plane, even in bad weather. Melita, the second sister, was very good looking, pretty and known for her culinary prowess. She was sought after for marriage. She married Advocate Carlisto Nazareth of Nagpur and lived at Angelic Nest in Tent Lines. Advocate Romulus Nazareth, Carlistos younger brother also wanted to marry Melita, but it was decided by the Nazareth parents that the elder son would marry her. Carlisto and Romulus lived in the same building in similar styled north and south wings which were joined together at the middle by a common wall and common big wooden doors which were opened during parties. Dads younger brother Bernard (Benny) did his schooling in Nagpur and later passed out from the then Thomason College of Civil Engineering (the predecessor of IIT Roorkee). He was one of the few Indian students there. He was a well known engineer in government service and was married to Dr Flory Machado of Jhansi. Benny died

AD

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young of blackwater fever, a complication of malaria, which he contacted while he was posted at Dharamjaigarh State in Central India.

Dad and mum in their ofce. 1964.

Dads youngest brother, Euclid did his schooling in St. Josephs, Nainital, and was a brilliant student who passed out rst class rst in the BA exam from Nagpur University. He was a bit of a spoilt child being the youngest. He played the piano and sang very well. He was also good at mimicry and telling stories to children. He married Irene da Silva of Bombay. Their son Vernon migrated to Australia. Euclid and Vernon have both passed on, the former in Nagpur and the latter in Bombay when Vernon was on one of his visits to India to see his Mum. My Dad was 21 and was yet to complete his medical studies in Bombay when his parents passed away, casting a very heavy burden on his young but broad shoulders. He was later awarded the LM&S (Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery) from Grant Medical College. Later he went on to do a DTM (Diploma in Tropical Medicine) from Calcutta and was awarded the prestigious FRCS (Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons) from Edinburgh, in the United Kingdom. He was a hard worker and one of the very few Indians then to complete his FRCS in the very rst attempt. Dad rst saw to the stud-

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The Doctor and his Garden ies of his brothers and sisters and then got his sisters married before getting married himself at the age of thirty four. He married Maria Emilia Rocha Heredia in 1924 in Nagpur. She was the third daughter of Dr. Manoel Agostinho de Heredia of Piedade (Divar), Goa and Bombay. Dad served in the British Indian Army as a medical ofcer during World War I. He was the Regimental Medical Ofcer of 2/9 Gorkha Ries, which was part of the Indian 4 Infantry Division of General Allenbys famous Middle East Expeditionary Force (1916 to 1918). Dad took part in the famous Battle of Shumran near Basra (in present day Iraq) just across the Tigris River, where the British crossed over and pushed back the Turks and the Germans. It was here that an Indian Engineer Regiment built one of the longest oating pontoon bridges of that time over the Tigris River. Dad performed surgery on Lt Wheeler of 2/9 GR in a tent in the Regimental Aid Post and removed a bullet from his lung with a penknife! Lt Wheeler Dad with army medals and the lived on and was awarded the VictoBene Merenti awarded by Pope ria Cross. Pius XII, 1952. Dad himself earned the Volunteer Ofcers Decoration (besides other medals during the War and in later army life). He told us how most of the men in the Battle of Shumran, died because their wounds festered due to sandstorms, heat and ies. They were moved down the River Tigris in open barges and left to their luck to survive. Of course, most succumbed to their injuries. Medical aid in the eld army was primitive in those days. In 1981, I presented Dads Army medals to Lt Gen E.A. Vas, PVSM, AVSM, the Colonel of the Ninth Gorkha Ries at a function at the Col-

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lege of Combat, Mhow1 . The medals are now displayed in the ofcers mess. Incidentally, Lt Gen E.A. Vas also hailed from our home village of Saligo, while his wife Maureen de Lapa, a charming lady and an excellent person, was from Pilerne, the village just above Saligo, on the other side of the hill! She was the daughter of Captain de Lapa of the merchant navy. Dad was in the Indian Medical Services when he transferred to the civil services after his FRCS in the mid 1920s. He then served as Assistant Civil Surgeon and Civil Surgeon in the district towns of Central Provinces & Berar. He served in Hoshangabad, Durg, Jabalpur, Buldhana, Chanda, Amravati, Raipur, Bhandara and nally in Nagpur. He was later also Medical Ofcer of the Nagpur Ries located at Sitabuldi Fort, Nagpur, that was later converted to 118 Infantry Battalion Territorial Army (Grenadiers2 ). He took an early retirement in 1940, the year I was born. At this point of time, he was the Civil Surgeon and Professor of Surgery at Robertson Medical School, Nagpur. He followed a strict army regimen all through his life and was very strict with himself and others. He was a good horse-polo player and also played tennis and won many prizes in both sports. A God-fearing man, he worked tirelessly for the Church and the Catholic community. He served Mass whenever he could on Sundays and also on weekdays, right up to the ripe old age of seventy. He was General Secretary of the Catholic Union of India during the late 1940s and early 1950s when Mr. M Ruthnaswamy, MP from Madras was the President. He fought against the Niyogi Enquiry Committee and its questionable stance on the freedom to practice religion. He
1

Mhow is a cantonment in the Indore District in Madhya Pradesh, India. It is located 23 kilometres (14 mi) south of Indore city towards Mumbai on the Mumbai-Agra Road. The town was renamed as Dr Ambedkar Nagar in 2003, by the Government of Madhya Pradesh. This cantonment town was founded in 1818 by John Malcolm as a result of the Treaty of Mandsaur between the English and the Holkars who were the Maratha Maharajas of Indore. There is total lack of unanimity on how Mhow got its name. One possible source of the name might be the Mahua (Madhuca longifolia) tree, which grows in profusion in the forests around Mhow. Some articles in popular literature state that MHOW stands for Military Headquarters Of War. The oldest grenadier regiment of the armies in the Commonwealth belongs to the Indian Army. The concept of Grenadiers evolved from the practice of selecting the bravest and strongest men for the most dangerous tasks in combat. The Grenadiers have the longest unbroken record of existence in the Indian Army.

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The Doctor and his Garden was decorated with the Bene Merenti Gold Medal by Pope Pius XII in 1951 for his services to the community.

The author, with wife Gladys and daughter Nasa, before Chateau DEmelia, Nagpur, in 1994.

Dad was a person with high personal standards of integrity and honesty. He expected the same standards from all of us, his children. He had a quick temper. We all used to try and be away from him at those times. He was a self-made man who stuck to his principles regardless of the consequences. He used to say: A place for everything and everything in its place. A time for everything and everything in its time! Waste not, want not! He worked very hard and went out to visit his sick patients on their request, even on a hot summer afternoon. We could hear and recognize the sound of the horn of his car and he blew it often before he arrived at the gate which was about 50 meters in front of our house and we went out running and tried to be the rst to open it for him! He enjoyed it when we helped him with changing his clothes when he returned home tired from a hot afternoons work after one of his medical rounds. He enjoyed a dish of sh every day. Mum would see to it that he got it somehow. He arranged for his friends to buy, fry, pack in banana leaves and send him some pomfrets, shark, king sh, salmon and mack-

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erels through their friends in the railways. They obliged him, and the parcels reached us through the railway dining cars from Bombay or Kalyan as they had a Frigidaire on the train. I used to go to the railway yard, locate the dining car that had just come in and pick up these parcels and bring them home. In Nagpur, Bachu Seth was the local sh vendor in Gaddi Gudam who provided sh when nothing was forthcoming from our sources in Bombay. This was mostly river sh, like murrel, rahu and katla. Dad always advocated light meals in summer. Dad was the personal physician to Governor Pattabhi Sitaramaiah and Chief Minister Ravi Shankar Shukla. He was family doctor to most ministers of the C.P. & Berar Cabinet. He had a nice way with his patients and would bring them quick relief. He had a large number of patients from across all faiths and religions, including Muslims who had blind faith in him. He also did a lot of honorary work for the poor, including the Sisters of Charity and their huge orphanage at Nagpur. There were always a handful of patients hanging around his consulting room at the house.I remember one incident when one of his old patients came to the Chateau at about 2 a.m., with his sick child and insisted Dad should attend to his little son. I told him repeatedly that Dad was now old, over 74 years and unwell himself. The man would have nothing of it. After half an hour of arguing with us, he got his way. Dad asked me to sterilize an injection set (there were no disposable syringes in those days). He said he would give him an injection of distilled water. He did accordingly. The old patient left after thanking Dad profusely. He was back in the early morning to inform us that his son was quite well now and that the injection had acted like magic on the boy as he had predicted. Here was a case where faith had provided the cure, if not exactly moved mountains! Both Olaf Manor (built in 1936) and Chateau dEmilia (1940) which he built, are now part of the Pilar priests homes and have been renamed as Mother Teresa Ashram and Pilar Niketan. Dad was fond of owers. He had a rose garden on either side of the driveway from the gate. On the inner side of Olaf Manor he also had a bed of cannas behind the roses. There was a rockery under the mango tree along with a cement water tank with a tap to water the plants. We had plants all along the front periphery of the compound. The side towards Dongajees compound had a hedge along

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The Doctor and his Garden the barbed wire fence. Closer to the Chateau as the In and Out, Dad had a roundabout in the shape of a heart with a lawn in it. He had evergreen trees, owers and cannas closer to the Chateau and in front of the porch. On the porch, steps and in the front veranda were pots with crotons, ferns, and exotic plants of different kinds. All these were carefully selected and cared for by Rama who watered them regularly. In summer all the pots and cannas were removed and put at the rear, under the shade of the tamarind tree, with a bamboo matting roof. Daddy kept a close watch on them and Rama would get a scolding if any plant was neglected. Dad always wore a rose in his bundgala coat, like Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru. He often went around the garden with a spade in his hand tending to the plants himself. In the afternoon, birds used to congregate here to enjoy the relative coolness of the place. Mum was born on September 16, 1904, in Bombay. She was the third child of the Heredia family of eleven, three brothers and eight sisters. Her father Dr. Manoel Agostinho de Heredia (1870-1937) was a physician, a diplomat and a businessman. He was a founder of Asian Assurance Company Limited and he was the Honorary Consul for Brazil. Mum grew up and passed her matriculation from Bombay in the rst class and was employed as a school teacher. Fr. Albino Fernandes of Nagpur recommended her to Dad who readily agreed to take her as his life partner after seeing her. She had charm and good looks. She could speak well and could converse on any subject with ease. Frugal in her ways and simple in her dress, she and Dad somehow got known as the best dressed couple at parties in the districts and in Nagpur. Mum was understanding and compassionate. She was not a party cook, but was good at everyday cooking and in making pickles and cakes. She always helped the poor and the underprivileged. She had trained her voice in Europe when Dad was busy doing his FRCS (Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons). She sang well and accompanied herself on the piano. Mum always said I was the only child who knew all about the house and what to nd where. If you want a nail, nut or bolt, ask Ian and he will pull it out for you from the godown. She told the others, Ian eats whatever I place on the table, that is why he is tall and strong. I cannot forget Antoni-ma, our cook of more than twenty

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ve years. She was thin and small, a Christian of South Indian origin. Mum always gave her a sari and blouse as a Christmas present. She was always punctual and regular. She came to work even when she was sick, as she knew that Dad would give her some medicine and she would get hot tea and something to eat. Servants are as good at their work as you treat them. Antoni-ma and Rama both worked with us happily for about 25 years or more. I was fond of growing vegetables and Mum said that I had green ngers. I had a small vegetable patch behind the kitchen and godowns, where I grew lady-ngers, kadu or red pumpkin, beans, brinjals (eggplant), chilies, tomatoes and other common vegetables. Besides, I would go to the Gaddi-Gudam daily market and to the Tuesday market to bring discarded green leaves of cauliower, radish, cabbage and turnips for the poultry at home. These were cut into bits and mixed with mashed eggshells, kitchen waste and leftover food including rice and grain for the poultry. The birds gobbled it up and wanted more.

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