Passage To India Part 10 - My Father's Flight To India In 1934
My father continues the story:
The walls of the house were of mud plaster with the ceilings spanned by date palm poles laid flat and woven together by the fronds of the palms. No windows and no doors except the large entrance one which was bolted and barred at sunset and opened again at sunrise. There was no furniture of any kind in the guest rooms except some lovely Persian carpets on the mud floors, and everyone sat on the floor round a brazier put down in the middle of the room. An added bit of discomfort being the smoke from this brazier, which completely filled the room as there was no chimney or outlet of any kind.
Till one got used to this smoke it was almost unbearable, and at first both of us used to spend our time jumping up and going outside to clear our lungs and smarting eyes. Hardly had we been in the house an hour when the most awful storm sprang up. First rain, which did not matter so much, and then wind, and eventually a perfect hurricane. To make it worse we realised that since we had left the aeroplane the wind had changed completely round and would of a certainty blow her over.
My father thereupon started off to run the four miles back to her in this tornado, slipping out of the hut and past the sergeant who was really more or less keeping us under guard. One of the soldiers tried to run after him, but soon gave up the effort and they concentrated on keeping me more or less prisoner till Lady Blanches could bear it no longer, and insisted on starting off too as she could not believe that any aeroplane unpicketed and down wind as ours was could possibly survive against such a storm as this. Before she had managed to trudge three parts of the way back to our landing place, she met my father completely exhausted and wet to the skin, returning once more to the village and carrying some more of our belongings. He begged not to go any further as he felt sure she should hate to see the machine as she now was - soaked with rain and sunk to half way up the "spats" in the wet sand. He also said that when he had got to a quarter of a mile of her and could run no further, he had seen her lifted bodily off the ground by a gust of wind, the first thing to hit the ground again when she landed being her left wing which was buried in the sand to the extent of at least a foot. Incredible as it may seem no harm was done to her at all although we had to take off her "spats" before we could move her next day as they were completely closed upto the top with wet sand, and therefore prevented the wheels from revolving. As there was nothing we could do and the storm had passed over, we returned to our "hostel" and found food prepared for us and the soldiers, also for two or three hangers-on out of the village whom we subsequently discovered were relatives of the headsman, and nearly always turned up either at mid-day or evening time for a free meal. These twice daily meals never varied and were brought in on enormous brass trays and placed on the floor so that we could all sit round them and help ourselves. They consisted of a large plate of dates to commence with, and then even larger quantities of rice and meat and a pile of the flat Chipatties or bread. All this of course, to be eaten with the fingers only as there were no knives or forks, and before every meal a brass jug and basin was passed round to every guest so that they could wash their hands before eating. To be more correct, we should say their "hand", in the singular, as it appeared not to be etiquette to eat with anything but the right hand.
Copyright (c) 2010 Michael Ogden
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