Destinations :: Delhi

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Sun setting over Ramakrishna Puram

Having been recruited for the Central Civil Services my official career took me several times to Delhi at various levels of the government. Resultantly, I spent more than thirteen years of my service career at Delhi, more than four and a half years of which were spent on deputation with the Union Public Service Commission. That does not mean I did not go out in the field.

Post Beating the Retreat illumination

I worked for almost a tenure in undivided Madhya Pradesh, a tenure each in Maharashtra and North East and for truncated tenures in

Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir. Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal.

I

My wife out on the big verandah with governebt flats in the background

had developed an abiding interest in photography but, unfortunately, I did not have a camera when I was posted in most photogenic place like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. Even during tenure with the UPSC I did not have a camera mostly because I couldn’t afford one. Only in 1975 when my sister came for her

Viewing South Block with a filter on

sabbatical I acquired her Minolta SRT 102 on payment of only the customs duty loveable on it. I still have it but it has since been overtaken by obsolescence with the emergence of new breed of smart digital cameras which too, in turn, have been put in the shade by the cell-phone cameras.

Together after a long time at Delhi in my official house

Delhi was the first place where I learnt to wield what was then a new sophisticated camera. Only a very few of the results of my effort are mounted here

Our Life, Our Times :: 25 :: Restaurants in Trams

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The Tram Restaurant parked ar Esplanade, Kolkata

A new eating joint has come up in Kolkata and, what is more, being mobile it even moves, Kolkata Tramways recently put out one of its trams with The Victoria Tramcar Restaurant that was inaugurated on 13^th October last. The restaurant is one of its kind in the only city with a tramcar service running in the country. During the Pujas it served only delectable Bengali dishes and after Bijoya it is serving every kind of food from Chinese to Continental.

Kolkata’s tram services were dying a slow death in these days of rush and hurry. They were being used and abused for being slow, unwieldy and noisy. For more often than not they were criticized for obstructing traffic on narrow but busy streets during the rush hour. The tramcar services were being neglected and were being starved of funds. In fact the authorities concerned had decided to kill it by gradually closing down routes on which the trams plied. Many of them were closed for the sake of development and speeding up traffic by building flyovers. The closed routes were never reopened. That is how the intricate extensive network of tramlines laid in the early 20^th Century serving practically the entire metropolis has been reduced to current only around 18 kilometres.

The system by now would have been killed and cremated but for the fact that a new virtue that was discovered in them. The new environmental awareness in the city saw to it that the trams remained and continued to render their services without hurting the city in any way. Though running mostly on dirty energy they do not emit any greenhouse gases like buses – their automobile counterparts. Hence trams continue to run in Kolkata, though on enormously reduced lengths of their lines providing the cheapest mode of mobility to the townsfolk.

Besides, in addition to the environmental factor their heritage value also came to their help. While the other cities in India with streetcar services like Delhi, Kanpur, Nashik, Mumbai and Chennai were in a hurry to get rid of the trams people in Kolkata, realizing their heritage value, resisted efforts to wind down the services. One recalls protests in Kolkata when certain routes were contemplated for closure. The people in the city had always an upper hand in settling matters that adversely impacted their interests.

The trams in Kokata were introduced almost 150 years ago though these had then cars that were hauled by horses over embedded tracks. But by 1902 the horses were discarded and electric traction was introduced for haulage. A very extensive network of tracks was laid for the commuting public and the transit in them was really very cheap. Kolkata then was the Imperial Capital of India and it had to have the modern means of locomotion available in those times.

As faster means of commuting within the city became available trams came to be looked upon as a liability. Their slow and noisy movements with their ponderous gait they came to be looked upon as a distracting factor for a city that was striving to beautify and modernise itself. That is why they were being discarded slowly and steadily. There were official plans even to close the service but somehow the officials could not do that.

 In order to keep its head above the rising waters the Kolkata Tramways has been relentlessly trying to keep this slice of the city’s history in the forefront by sheer innovative efforts. While a tram museum was opened another of its remarkable initiative was a restaurant in a tram. People of the city love heritage and they also love food. The Kolkata Tramways offers both in a stationary tram and again now on a moving tram. What is more such trams have also been air conditioned for the comforts of the commuters/customers.

One cannot really imagine the reason for apathy in India for trams which are clean and articulated modes of transportation within the confines of the city. While Metros are admittedly fast they are expensive to build and uneconomical for the commuters. The metro needs not only separate sets of tracks it also needs a station overground or underground for stoppages. Commuters have to get off at the station and then catch a feeder transport for their destinations.  Trams, on the other hand, ply through the streets and a commuter can get off at a stoppage of his choice closest to his destination. Even Light Rails are not as advantageous as for them too stoppages have to be built and tracks have to be laid in a dedicated corridor.

A perusal of the list of tramways revealed various cities in Asia, Europe, USA and North Africa introduced trams as late as in this century. Obviously there are distinct advantages in a tramways system and hence city administrations have been opting for trams wherever they find it beneficial. There are even inter-city tram services. I remember to have gone to Baden from Vienna catching one from the Opera House for the 24 kilometre trip.

For Kolkata it would be desirable to look at what is happening around the world and strengthen the tramways system by upgrading it, reopening the closed lines wherever possible and try and run only air-conditioned trams at cheapest possible tariffs after speeding them up. In that case not only will the system become popular, it will also be able to take the pressure off the Kolkata Metro and road transport systems providing a clean hassle-free alternative commuter service.

*Photo from internet

Our Life, Our Times :: 24 :: Newspapers or rags

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The Times of India (Bhopal Edition) created a record of sorts on 10^th October last by printing ads mostly of full page on more than seventeen and a half of its 32 pages. First 10 pages were nothing but full page ads. One had to wade through these pages to look for the news on the front page. In fact the Times of India is guilty of dispensing with the concept of “front page” of a newspaper. You do not hear the term “making front page news” these days as there is hardly any front page – at least not in The Times of India.

Ever since the print media was commercialized news, i.e. objective news, took a back seat. Commercials took over the newspapers and made money for the promoters. Quite clearly, the editors have lost all their authority over making and organizing of news items into several pages of the newspaper. It is mostly determined by commercial considerations and, perhaps, the commercial officer of the newspaper has a greater authority in this matter. His actions are directed from behind – by the promoters or owners who love their money more than the papers’ readership. The more the money comes, the better it is for them – the subscribers or the readers could go and get lost.

Newspapers are meant to be purveyors of news. News in the modern world is apparently so important that elaborate arrangements are made to gather news through reporters who use the newest of technology to communicate whatever they gather to their headquarters for use in the newspaper that is being readied for the day. The news room in an organization dealing with the business of dissemination of news is, therefore, like a beehive with news editors busy with arranging items and aggregating them in a manner that attracts attention of the readers. The items may include reports, opinions, editorials, photographs, maps, charts, cartoons, graphics et al. All this processing of news has to be done in a jiffy so that the printed newspaper is able to catch the next available transport to reach the hands of the reader.

Although with the progress of communication technology readers of news papers have declined in the developed world, in India printed news business is on the up and up. Out of sheer force of years-old habit millions of keen followers of news impatiently wait in the mornings for copies of their favourite newspapers. People are yet to get used to “watching” the news on the computer or TV. Many like to hold a newspaper in their hands to read the reports or articles of their choice. To give them pages and pages of advertisements before they are even able to get to the front page is, to say the least, highly unethical.

Moreover, a recent scourge has appeared on the scene – the scourge of the “half front page”. The half page could have news or only ads.  I call it a scourge because it is very inconvenient to manage the newspaper in one’s hands with a half front page. Those who hold the newspaper in their hands to read it sitting or reclining in bed with their cup of morning tea would know what I mean. On many occasions when one turns pages the whole paper of several pages gets loose and untangled in a mess of printed newsprint. One then has to collect the pages and put them back together in order of the page numbers.

Another peculiarity that I have noticed with Times of India is the declining size of the fonts it uses. They us around 8 or 9 point font size which becomes difficult to decipher in indifferent light, particularly for the elderly. This is not true of other newspapers like, say, the Indian Express. It uses fonts of decent sizes which are readable to all and sundry. Perhaps, the idea is that a smaller font size would allow far more space for ads and, of course, more revenue.

As regards ads, one does understand that some ads are necessary to sustain the newspaper. After all, promoters cannot run a newspaper by incurring losses or meeting the expenditure out of their own pockets. But they should not go overboard and cram almost the entire paper with ads and various other commercials.

There is a flip side to these ads also. They indicate to me the pinkish health of the economy. The Opposition has been crying hoarse about slowdown and suchlike. But the tremendous investments in ads do not indicate that. None would invest so much on propagating when the products are not being lifted. And, sure enough, there was a report confirming my hunch in the Times of India the other day that along with a boom in the online business there has been a boom in offline business as well. That puts paid the adverse propaganda of an economic slowdown where, apparently, there is none.

*Photo from internet

From the wild zone :: 1 :: Death of an elephant

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A video I recently happened to see was of an elephant trying unsuccessfully to run as if something great was at stake. It came away from the open and wearily looked this way and that and then noticing the shade of a big tree headed straight for it and managed to make it with difficulty. Having done that it stood still for some time as if contemplating as to what to do next. It was seemingly up against the moment of truth – a moment that can make or mar one.

Then suddenly one of its front legs buckled a bit and before it could recover, the other front leg too buckled. Then it fell in a heap on one of its sides and became motionless. Apparently, it had tried to run looking for a shade for its terminal moments. Elephants are intelligent animals. One wonders whether it got an inkling of its imminent end. It looked as if it was being chased by death and chose the refuge of a shady tree for its last moments. Though the death looked as if it was painless but one cannot tell for sure what went on inside it.

A few moments later the mourning rituals commenced. Apparently, from nowhere a small herd of elephants appeared. One wouldn’t know whether it was a member of the herd. It could have even sent a sub-sonic rumble (as the elephants are known to do) to the herd as an SOS that brought the other members to the site.

 For all one knows, the dead elephant was trying to make it to a waterhole before it felt weak and collapsed. Elephants are known to head towards a waterhole when they think time is up for them.  Some waterholes are, therefore, known as Elephants Graveyard. Anything is possible.

Some of the elephants of the herd felt the dead elephant with their trunks. The young ones even mounted their forelegs on the body and then moved around the body to sniff at it. At the end a peculiar thing happened. At least two elephants of the herd walked backwards and mounted the dead elephant with their hind legs and remained in that position for few moments. The heard moved away after they dismounted.

Elephants, the gentle giants, are highly social animals and living almost as long as humans they develop an intricate social dynamics. They grieve just as humans do when one of them is felled by a predator or by nature. They are sometimes known to have buried their dead with grass and other dry foliage. They generally extend a trunk-full of assurance to a dead elephant by way of resting their trunks on it for a while when they come across one on their way during their wanderings. They are also known to get heartbroken when their mate dies and this heartbreak, unlike with humans, could lead it to death. A kind of death wish overtakes them when one loses its mate as the bonds are so very strong.

Did this one die of a broken heart? Nobody knows.

*Photo from internet

Destinations :: North-East :: Aizawl (1990)

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)

Aizawl

To go to Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, I had once again to take the same wretched road that had earlier taken me to Silchar on way to Agartala. The only consolation was the food on the way at Sonapur and those deadly dried red chilies that were crisply fried with their sting intact. Curiously, these fried chilies have become kind of part of a meal. As far as I know, Bengalis could eat an entire helping of rice with these with ghee and salt added to the mix. The flavour of the ghee made out of cow’s milk mixed with the sting of the chilies would make the rice heady.  It was considered poor man’s meal but the stuff is so delectable that it has made its way into a Bengali meal as one of the courses or, perhaps, as a starter.

 Our driver, Lushai, was happy as we were going to his homeland which 

Lushai Hills

carried his name. The Mizo Hills, as is well known, were earlier known as Lushai Hills and the Lushais are one of the several tribes in Mizoram. They lived in dense rain forests of bamboo and brush and lived by “jhoom” cultivation. Nature was kind and the denuded forests would re-grow in course of time when they would again be due for denudation. With the cycle becoming quicker over time Nature was all the time fighting a losing battle when, mercifully, the tribal people gave up their way of cultivating their land.

One can see the forests as one crosses Vairengte in Mizoram after Silchar. Once one is on a plateau of around 3 thousand feet one can see the Lushai ranges, that are part of the Patkai Ranges, running north-south parallel to each other. These jungles are peaceful today but in not too distant past they hosted militancy. Does the name Laldenga

Another view of the forests

ring a bell? It was his Mizo National Front that carried on a rebellion for 16 years until the Mizo Accord was signed in 1986. It was the audacity of a former Assam Government clerk, dissatisfied with the way a cyclic famine in his homeland was dealt with, to organize a powerful militant army and once he found that he had a critical mass of militants he sought outright secession. No wonder, on account of persistent militancy in the region the Government of India established the internationally famous Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairangte.

As one goes further down the road it increasingly becomes worse and at one point it is as dangerous as it could get. The road was cut out of a hill with a deep trough of a valley on the other side. A minor human or mechanical slip could land one hundreds of feet below in a jumbled and messy tangle of metal and human flesh. Mercifully, that did not happen with us and we safely went across that treacherous stretch to find, after a few miles, new yellow and black Maruti 800 taxis parked in a very disciplined manner in single file on one side of the road. It was indicative of our arrival on the outskirts of Aizawl.

Quite obviously, Aizawl is a hilly place with hills and valleys dotted with

A view of a part of Aizawl

houses. Until our visit the place looked pretty green but, in course of time, with a greater stress on housing the hills might get shorn off of their greenery. Hopefully the governments in future will keep them in mind. The Mizos build multi-storied structures using the hill slopes so that around two or three stories can be accessed from the road in front and the remaining floors are along the slopes facing the valley in front. A Mizo house, therefore, is of four or five stories or even more depending on the capability of the builder.

We drove into the Assam Rifles Mess where its DG, Lt. General MK Lahiri had made arrangements for me. Assam Rifles is one of India’s oldest para-military organizations, established somewhere in the first half of the 19^th Century. It was primarily meant to safeguard British interests in those f

At Assam Rifles Mess

ar-flung and remote areas where tribes frequently troubled the British penetrators. Assam Rifles, after having seen several changes in its nomenclature, settled for its current name after independence.

The Assam Rifles mess at its headquarters was centrally located and came under heavy attack from rebels during the rebellion to establish an independent state of Mizoram. It is, therefore, a very important property of Assam Rifles at Aizawl which the Mizos have been eying for a long time. Time and again they have asked the para-military force to move its headquarters away but the government has resolutely declined to move it. Perhaps, logistically this is the best place to be in to operate from when arms are taken up against the government.

There is nothing much to Aizawl that one could talk about except that it is a hill-town with a good deal of greenery which makes it attractive. In the offices the high percentage of educated people becomes palpable as they are able to communicate freely and fluently in English. Nonetheless, when it comes to make oneself understandable to an outsider, say a Kuki or a Naga, it is Hindi that finds greater usage. This is

A valley in the town

where one finds Hindi, even if it is broken and tattered, as a uniting element. On many occasions at Shillong I came across North-easterners talking among themselves in what appeared to me pretty brutalized Hindi. One might even call it pidgin. It nonetheless, made me happy as it was not some other language like, say, English.

 Walking the streets of Aizawl one morning I came across something very attractive in a small pen outside a house. A flash of black and white attracted my attention. It was a very attractive sow with an unusual black and white pelt that was probably being fattened for Christmas. Normally pigs – wild or urbanized – are of a dirty muddy colour. But this one was different – even better looking than the “Empress of Blandings” that PG Wodehouse went raving about. The “Aizawl Empress”, if I might call it, was the most mentionable item of this rather dry piece. 

Memories of an ordinary Indian :: 20 :: On to High School

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Having cleared the tough Middle examination of the Gwalior Board I was ready for high school. Middle examination was, in fact, the terminal examination for the stage of primary education.  After this was the matriculation examination that was as tough as they come. We didn’t have higher secondary in our time. It was two years of matriculation that prepared one for college education, then known as higher education, culminating in a bachelor’s degree. In early 1940s Gwalior did not have post graduation in the only degree college that we had in the entire state. There were even no law classes and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister, had to go out to Lucknow to study Law after he cleared the BA examination from the Victoria College conducted by the Agra University.

There were very few schools which used to run the matriculation courses. The closest to our place was the Jiwajirao Intermediate College which, apart from matriculation, used to run the 2-year Intermediate courses.  Somehow it was considered a college for Marathas and non-Marathas never tried to get admitted there. The only option for me, therefore, was to seek admission in the VC (Victoria Collegiate) High School from where all my three elder brothers had done Matriculation.

VC High School was located at quite a distance from our place. It was much beyond the College where my father used to teach. It was around a couple of miles from our house which was quite a distance for us as we did not have any mechanical means of locomotion. To leg it up to that distance we had to start off around half an hour earlier and walk it up, go past the then up-coming memorial of Madhav Rao Scindia (Sr.). The school was located in a huge property of the government that was inherited from the Maharaja’s estate. While we used to enter the premises from its rear gate that was around a furlong from the building, the building itself fronted on the Jhansi Road with a big iron two-piece gate, from where there was a circular drive-way to a biggish porch. It must have been residence of a big and wealthy man in Maharaja’s establishment and, as was the wont of Scindias, finding no better use, it was later handed over for the school.

Father took me to the headmaster for my admission. The headmaster was a Maharashtrian gentleman called Bhise. His room was at one end of the building. A biggish room, a little cluttered up with furniture and papers, I happened to notice that it was, in fact, a bath-cum-toilet. I saw a chain from a cistern mounted up on the wall still hanging, the marble of the wall had faded with deposits of dirt. The floor was covered with white square tiles as used to be the case those days. This was seventy or more years ago and howsoever rich a feudal might have been he obviously couldn’t have achieved better than this. My question was, as I posed it to father, why should the headmaster have had to run his office from a bath. He could have opted for some other room. My father’s reply was he could have, but he didn’t and that was it.

At the back of the building there was a fairly big enclosed area which also had a bi-cycle stand. And, there were a number of mango trees which in the month of July were loaded with fruits. As used to happen, the school administration would lease the trees out to a contractor to harvest the fruits. One day as I entered the area I heard somebody shout “Barso Bhola”. And the unseen Bhola from a first floor  balcony let loose a well directed missile that brought down more than half a dozen mangoes. The contractor’s man was, to begin with, nonplussed not finding anybody whom he could pin down but later he adopted aggressive attitude – threatening and intimidating virtually everyone. Bhola, nonetheless, remained elusive for him and kept raining down mangoes whenever his friends down below gave him the call on slackening of the watch.

That Bhola was the same Bhola whom we had known from childhood I came to realize when I came up against him. He had passed out of the Miss Hills’ School and had joined VC High School and, as luck would have it, was in my section in Class IX. His father was a railways official and his mother used to be my mother’s best friend. They used to live not far from our house as we would frequently see him running to the school with his school bag on his back to catch up the time. His name was Prasoon Kumar Guha but was popularly known as Bhola, meaning a simpleton, which he was certainly not.

Bhola became a very good friend along with another very decent boy Mahendra Sharma and we three were virtually inseparables at the school. In course of time Bhola endeared himself to everyone in my family, especially my mother who was very fond of him. Much later after I had done with the College and everybody else in the family was busy elsewhere earning their respective keeps he would be spending the hot afternoons with us, mother and me, during his vacations from his B. Tech course that he was pursuing in Bombay. When a telegram arrived in May 1961 from my oldest brother about my selection in the Civil Services it was he who received it and read it out to mother.

As the hot season changed and was heading towards cold weather Bhola too turned his attention towards guavas. In the school complex there was a huge guava orchard that too was leased out to a contractor for its fruits. The two years that we were in the school he was up against Bhola for whom no obstacle was difficult enough to get at the luscious and sweet guavas. Once I remember he crawled into the contractor’s store wearing his new double-breasted grey jacket – all for a few guavas. It was not the fruit that attracted him it was rather the challenge to get at whatever was being contrived to be kept away from him.

Both of us were not fond of studies at that point of time and used to bunk classes with impunity. Leaving all the lectures behind we would go all the way to the Gwalior Mela, All India Scindia Hockey Gold Cup matches at the Race Course or even the Polo Ground where once a mishit of the Maharaja whizzed past him missing him by inches. He was happy to see the Maharaja gallop by saying “sorry”, “sorry” under his breath.

In course of time the Head Master Bhise got changed by a Maratha from Baroda (whose name I forget). He had played cricket with Vijay Hazare, the captain of the Indian Cricket Team around that time. He could bowl a steady length around middle-and-off but age had taken its toll. Nonetheless, with his arrival cricket got a fillip and all the other games for which equipment were available were promoted. So we played Badminton and Table Tennis in addition to cricket. 

A Badminton tournament was conducted in the winter of 1950 in which I won the singles trophy and reached the doubles final with Late Rajni Nagarkar as the partner. Somehow he didn’t turn up for the match and I was asked by the organizer whether I could play without my partner. I played the match all by myself and won it. This was mentioned at the time of distribution of prizes by Roop Singh, the Olympic Hockey legend. In fact, the opposition should have been given a walkover, but, no, this was only a school match. And Bhola, noticing the stale biscuits in the well-packed cardboard boxes given away as the prizes to me, thrust them into the hands of the organizer asking him to feed them to his children.

As both of us, Bhola and I, did not study hard enough for our Matriculation examination we did not do well. While Bhola flunked I scraped through in III Division. It was Arithmetic and Science that killed me. In rest of the subjects I did pretty well. I realized I had no brain for Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and that I should shun them in the college. However, later it did not turn out that way.

*Since a photo of VC High School could not be procured I have borrowed a picture from internet of Amity University indicating modernised education in Gwalior

Memories of an ordinary Indian :: 19 :: Independence and all that followed

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Jiwajirao & Vijayaraje Scindia

I went to the DAV School just a month before Independence. We in Gwalior were not much sensitized about Independence and so when it was upon us there was not much of enthusiasm about it either among friends or even at my new school. My father was, however, excited about the occasion. He was a nationalist from his boyhood days during the first decade of the 20^th Century when probably every boy or a young man in Bengal, particularly Calcutta, was swept into the bandwagon of freedom movement spearheaded by the “Swadeshi Movement”.

For the Independence Day my father went out to buy red cloth to be wrapped around the steel pipes that supported the tin shed on the front verandah. He also bought multi-coloured paper for making buntings. His stock of framed photos of national leaders came in handy for giving the whole effort the air of the struggle for freedom. The table lamps of brass that we had were used to good effect during the dark hours of the night. While the two older brothers were not overly concerned father managed everything with the help of us three younger siblings. Whosoever passed by had appreciation for the way the verandah was decked up, more so for the spirit behind it. They had obviously noticed that none except father had gone out of the way to celebrate Independence from the British regime spending money from his modest resources for ‘merely’ the idea of freedom from foreign rule.  And come to think of it, it was basically a middle class locality of educated people and yet the I Day came and went by without any impact on them. What was perhaps very strange was that our next door neighbour whose father soon was to be anointed Congress president allowed the event to pass by without so much as a faint recognition.

***

Momentous incidents soon followed. When Gandhi came back from Bengal in September 1947 Delhi was reeling under communal violence. While Hindus and Sikhs were agitated for the way their friends and families were being massacred in Pakistan the Muslims of Delhi lived in constant threats of being killed so much so that even Dr. Zakeer Hussain, later to become president, escaped a bid on his life with the help of a Sikh and a Hindu friend. As the passions were so much aroused even Gandhi’s tempering influence did not have any impact. That is when in January 1948 Gandhi decided to go on a fast unto death. In the mean time in October 1947 Pakistan muddied the waters by supporting aggression by North Western tribal people to wrest Kashmir away from India in a move that sought to preempt the Maharaja’s decision to merge his state with India.

What followed soon was more devastating. On 30^th January 1948 Gandhi was shot dead by Nathu Ram Godse for his pro-Muslim stance. I still remember the banner headlines of Amrita Bazaar Patrika that said “GANDHI CRUCIFIED BY FANATICISM”. As he opened the newspaper I saw tears in my father’s eyes. He had seen Gandhi from very close quarters when he escorted the former to East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in a boat about a hundred years ago. The entire country was in shock

Even we adolescents felt our hair stand on end as Mahatma Gandhi’s remains were taken round the city with a life-sized cutout of his photograph. The truck carrying it had a handful of singers who sang “Vaishnav Janto” right through over the public address system. For us it was an eerie feeling. Perhaps it was only human to be moved by the occasion.

***

Soon something happened for which the subjects of Gwalior were not quite prepared. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was touring the nation in his bid to knit the princely states in one single tapestry that was India of his dreams and, perhaps, of many. During his ramblings through the nation he arrived in Gwalior in mid 1948 to persuade the Maharaja to sign the agreement to merge Gwalior State with the Indian Union. Soon after signing the document Sardar Patel along with Maharaja and Maharani came out on the streets in an open horse-drawn carriage with minimal security. This happened to be the first time when Maharani breached her veil and came out in the midst of public. Almost the whole town was out on the streets. The policemen had a tough time in keeping the euphoric crowds at bay.

In June 1948 a new Part B state Madhya Bharat came into being with the Maharaja of Gwalior as its Rajpramukh or Governor. It was a short and tame story that ended the few hundred years old medieval monarchical rule of the Scindias over Gwalior. There was some discomfort as the new state comprised, inter alia, Gwalior and Holkar states, the Governor’s position was taken away by Gwalior. As it is, there was no love lost between Holkar and Gwalior. The new arrangements only accentuated it a bit more.

*Photo from internet