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When
three of us, i.e a brother and the sister and I, were small children our evening
haunt used to be the Miss Hill’s School. The head mistress was Mrs. RK Hukku –
a family friend – who used to live on the premises. The school was not even a
furlong from our house. Mrs. Hukku had a door opening on to our lane just
before it met the main road with the High Court on the other side.
Her husband had died young. He, I believe, was
from the Imperial Police and was posted at Jabalpur. She had six children, two sons and four
daughters. The eldest one, Shashi, was paralysed from waist down. He couldn’t move by himself. Mrs. Hukku had a
number of helpers and they used to move him on a chair with long arms extending
to front and the rear from the seat. He was very fond of my eldest brother and
couldn’t possibly miss a day without meeting the latter. They would sit
together and talk of various matters and occasionally play mahjong. Mrs. Hukku,
too, was very fond him, and used to treat him like her own son.
Children
of the two families were more or less of the same age – give or take a year or
two. Only difference was that while she had more daughters than sons on our
side we had more boys than girls. Nonetheless, the relationships were always
friendly and cordial. After all, we used to meet every evening for boisterous
and noisy games since childhood and that relationship continues till today. My
eldest brother is still in touch with those Hukkus who survive - most of them,
unfortunately, having passed on except the ones at Chandigarh and Durham in
North Carolina.
Miss
Hill’s School is from where we used to watch the Dussehra procession carrying
the Maharaja on a golden howdah placed on a profusely decorated elephant.
Likewise, the British Resident (representative) used to follow sitting on a
silver howdah on top of another dressed-up elephant.
Dussehra
processions in Gwalior used to be huge celebratory affairs – as I believe they
were in Mysore and Kulu. Villagers would come to town and camp on footpaths in
huge numbers along the path of the procession. It must have been a four or five
kilometers distance that the procession would cover slowly at elephant’s pace preceded
by the various regiments of the Gwalior Army, their respective bands, the
senior officials and ministers in their own horse-drawn carriages or horses
wearing spectacular Maratha ceremonial dresses, complete with the atypical
Maratha headgear. The procession used to be pretty long and, given the pace of
the elephants, it used to last quite a while. I remember the Dussehra procession
of 1946 was more spectacular and stretched out as all the units that the
Scindias contributed for the Great War had come back.
The
procession was occasioned by the Maharaja’s worship of his deity across the
town located at Gorkhi where my brothers used to study in a government school
housed in a converted palace. Gorkhi was, in fact, the seat of Scindias before
they moved into the Jai Vilas Palace. It was here, therefore there was a
cluster of palaces that were later converted by Madhavrao Scindia (Sr.) into
educational institutions. Close by there was a place we called Kampoo which, in
fact was a distortion for a camp and it was here, it seems, the Scindia’s force
used to camp in 18th and 19th Centuries.
As it was a ceremonial outing for the Maharaja
the roads used to be blocked for all kinds of traffic. There was hardly any
traffic those days, anyway. It was mainly pedestrian traffic, especially those
multitudes who had trudged all the way from villages and would camp on the
sidewalks. They would expectantly wait for the hour when the Maharaja was likely to appear. As the time of the procession approached they would dress up
and tie their huge, sometimes colourful, turbans and wait for the Maharaja’s
elephant. I still remember the pervasive din that thousands of people talking –
all at the same time – would hang over the entire area. They would watch the
passing panorama of army units and their bands with admiration and in voluntary
silence. However, as the elephant carrying the Maharaja circled the traffic island
with his father’s statue a huge roar would go up and people will break into
slogans: Maharaja George Jiwajirao Scindia ki jai (Victory to Maharaja George
Jiwajirao Scindia). The Maharaja would acknowledge the people’s enthusiastic
greetings with folded hands wearing a smile.
The
Maharaja would be in his royal finery wearing his family jewels and the famed
necklace of pearls of thirty strings and would be holding a ceremonial sword. The necklace somehow couldn’t be missed
with so many strings of pearls hanging from his neck. But he seemed to
gallantly bear the overwhelming weight for the duration of the procession. As
he passed by and disappeared from view people would lapse into animated praise
for the Maharaja’s beatific smile and handsome visage.
We
would hang around the School playing this or that. Soon it would be time for re-appearance
of Maharaja as he would be going to another family deity up on the hills beyond
the Victoria College. Normally it would not be an elephant that he would use. It
could be a well dressed horse or one of his convertible Cadillacs or Rolls
Royces. We mostly saw him in his convertible Cadillac – the American luxury car
of those days.
It
is not that only Scindia subjects would assemble in large numbers to get a
glimpse of the Maharaja. Even Maharani Vijaya raje Scindia would come to the
High Court building right opposite to the Miss Hill’s School. Special
arrangements would be made for her to watch the procession in complete privacy.
As she would be observing purdah the entire porch of the High Court would be
curtained off for her. I even now do not know from where exactly she would be
watching her husband pass by on an elephant’s back. It was only much later in
1947-48 that she came out in public on a horse-drawn carriage with the Maharaja
and Vallabh Bhai Patel, the first Home Minister of India.
*Photo from internet
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