Tag: Great Depression

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Excerpt

The Murder that Shocked the World

 

Titles: The Poisoner of Bengal/The Prince and the Poisoner

Author: Dan Morrison

Publishers: Juggernaut (India)/ The History Press (UK)

November 1933: Howrah Station

For most of the year, Calcutta is a city of steam, a purgatory of sweaty shirt-backs, fogged spectacles, and dampened décolletage. A place for melting. In summer the cart horses pull their wagons bent low under the weight of the sun, nostrils brushing hooves, eyes without hope, like survivors of a high desert massacre. The streets are ‘the desolate earth of some volcanic valley’, where stevedores nap on pavements in the shade of merchant houses, deaf to the music of clinking ice and whirring fans behind the shuttered windows above.

The hot season gives way to monsoon and, for a while, Calcuttans take relief in the lightning-charged air, the moody day- time sky, and swaying trees that carpet the street with wet leaves, until the monotony of downpour and confinement drives them to misery. The cars of the rich lie stalled in the downpour, their bonnets enveloped in steam, while city trams scrape along the tracks. Then the heat returns, wetter this time, to torment again.

Each winter there comes an unexpected reprieve from the furious summer and the monsoon’s biblical flooding. For a few fleeting months, the brow remains dry for much of each day, the mind refreshingly clear. It is a season of enjoyment, of shopping for Kashmiri shawls and attending the races. Their memories of the recently passed Puja holidays still fresh, residents begin decking the avenues in red and gold in anticipation of Christmas. With the season’s cool nights and determined merriment, to breathe becomes, at last, a pleasure.

Winter is a gift, providing a forgiving interval in which, sur- rounded by goodwill and a merciful breeze, even the most determined man might pause to reconsider the murderous urges born of a more oppressive season.

Or so you would think.

On 26 November 1933, the mercury in the former capital of the British Raj peaked at a temperate 28°C, with just a spot of rain and seasonally low humidity. On Chowringhee Road, the colonial quarter’s posh main drag, managers at the white- columned Grand Hotel awaited the arrival of the Arab-American bandleader Herbert Flemming and his International Rhythm Aces for an extended engagement of exotic jazz numbers. Such was Flemming’s popularity that the Grand had provided his band with suites overlooking Calcutta’s majestic, lordly, central Maidan with its generous lawns and arcing pathways, as well as a platoon of servants including cooks, bearers, valets, a housekeeper, and a pair of taciturn Gurkha guardsmen armed with their signature curved kukri machetes. Calcuttans, Flemming later recalled, ‘were fond lovers of jazz music’. A mile south of the Grand, just off Park Street, John Abriani’s Six, featuring the dimple-chinned South African Al Bowlly, were midway through a two-year stand entertaining well-heeled and well-connected audiences at the stylish Saturday Club.

The city was full of diversions.

Despite the differences in culture and climate, if an Englishman were to look at the empire’s second city through just the right lens, he might sometimes be reminded of London. The glimmer- ing of the Chowringhee streetlights ‘calls back to many the similar reflection from the Embankment to be witnessed in the Thames’, one chronicler wrote. Calcutta’s cinemas and restaurants were no less stuffed with patrons than those in London or New York, even if police had recently shuttered the nightly cabaret acts that were common in popular European eateries, and even if the Great Depression could now be felt lapping at India’s shores, leaving a worrisome slick of unemployment in its wake.

With a million and a half people, a thriving port, and as the former seat of government for a nation stretching from the plains of Afghanistan to the Burma frontier, Calcutta was a thrumming engine of politics, culture, commerce – and crime. Detectives had just corralled a gang of looters for making off with a small fortune in gold idols and jewellery – worth £500,000 today – from a Hindu temple dedicated to the goddess Kali. In the unpaved, unlit countryside, families lived in fear of an ‘orgy’ of abductions in which young, disaffected wives were manipulated into deserting their husbands, carried away in the dead of night by boat or on horseback, and forced into lives of sexual bondage.

Every day, it seemed, another boy or girl from a ‘good’ middle- class family was arrested with bomb-making materials, counterfeit rupees, or nationalist literature. Each month seemed to bring another assassination attempt targeting high officials of the Raj. The bloodshed, and growing public support for it, was disturbing proof that Britain had lost the Indian middle class – if it had ever had them.

Non-violence was far from a universal creed among Indians yearning to expel the English, but it had mass support thanks to the moral authority of Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi, the ascetic spiritual leader whose campaigns of civil disobedience had galvanised tens of millions, was then touring central India, and trying to balance the social aspirations of India’s untouchables with the virulent opposition of orthodox Hindus – a tightrope that neither he nor his movement would ever manage to cross.

And from his palatial family seat at Allahabad, the decidedly non-ascetic Jawaharlal Nehru, the energetic general secretary of the Indian National Congress, issued a broadside condemning his country’s Hindu and Muslim hardliners as saboteurs to the cause of a free and secular India. Nehru had already spent more than 1,200 days behind bars for his pro-independence speeches and organising. Soon the son of one of India’s most prominent would again return to the custody of His Majesty’s Government, this time in Calcutta, accused of sedition.

It was in this thriving metropolis, the booming heart of the world’s mightiest empire, that, shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon on that last Sunday in November, well below the radar of world events, a young, slim aristocrat threaded his way through a crowd of turbaned porters, frantic passengers, and sweating ticket collectors at Howrah, British India’s busiest railway station.

He had less than eight days to live.

About the Book:

A crowded train platform. A painful jolt to the arm. A mysterious fever. And a fortune in the balance. Welcome to a Calcutta murder so diabolical in planning and so cold in execution that it made headlines from London to Sydney to New York. 

Amarendra Chandra Pandey, 22, was the scion of a prominent zamindari family, a model son, and heir to half the Pakur Raj estate. Benoyendra Chandra Pandey, 32, was his rebellious, hardpartying halfbrother – and heir to the other half. Their dispute became the germ for a crime that, with its elements of science, sex, and cinema, sent shockwaves across the British Raj. 

Working his way through archives and libraries on three continents, Dan Morrison has dug deep into trial records, police files, witness testimonies, and newspaper clippings to investigate what he calls ‘the oldest of crimes, fratricide, executed with utterly modern tools’. He expertly plots every twist and turn of this repelling yet riveting story –right up to the killer’s cinematic last stand. 

About the Author:

Dan Morrison is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Guardian, BBC News and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the author of The Black Nile (Viking US, 2010), an account of his voyage from Lake Victoria to Rosetta, through Uganda, Sudan and
Egypt. Having lived in India for five years, he currently splits his time between his native Brooklyn, Ireland and Chennai.

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Conversation

‘Home has been a Process of Lifelong Search’

In Conversation with Kirpal Singh

Dr Kirpal Singh

 “Singapore is intimately linked with home and, yet for me, home has always been a process of lifelong search. Partly because of the early months of my birth. The record says I was born in March 1949, but the time was not certain as I do not have a birth certificate. My father forgot to register my birth,” reminisces Dr Kirpal Singh, an internationally recognised scholar. Born in the Straits Settlement of Singapore, before the island emerged as an independent entity, he has lived through much of history. He tells a story of multi-racial, multi-cultural growth that the island afforded him.  

His father, he tells us, was “well known throughout Malaya — Jeswant Singh nicknamed as ‘Just One’ — a boxer who would knock people down with his left hook. In 1954, he left boxing when he killed someone during a match.” His mother, a Jewish Scot who he cannot recollect, he tells us, “ might have been David Marshall’s sister according to my stepsister but no one else has said that.”  Marshall[1] was the first Chief Minister of Singapore from 1955 to 1956 and then Singapore’s Ambassador to France, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland 1978 to 1993. He is the founder of the Worker’s Party. His parents had emigrated from Baghdad to Singapore in 1908 according to current resources.

How did Singh’s parents come to be in Singapore? Were they immigrants or colonials?

He responds with what he knows: “My grandfather and grandmother came to Singapore on board a ship in 1900. They left Jullunder, Punjab, in 1899. By the time they reached Singapore, it was the end of 1900. They left to seek their fortune. They were from the farming community. My grandfather was only sixteen and my grandmother was about twelve. They were in transit in Penang for six months. They came to Singapore in 1901. Actually, it was all Malaya — Singapore was part of the Straits Settlement. They came to Singapore by train. Trains were just starting out. It was around August 1901.

Trains in Malaya

“My uncle was conceived during this journey. They halted in Singapore for only two or three weeks. My grandfather’s cousin was in Perak[2], in Malaya. So, he wanted to be with his cousin. His cousin had cattle. Most of the Sikhs were cattle farmers. They settled in Pahang[3], an area which eventually became a nuclear dump[4] for Australia. It is closed to public now. There was a stone that proclaimed the land was a nuclear dump when I went with my son a few years ago.

“My father moved to Singapore as his prospects were better here as a boxer. This is where he met my mother. I was born here. He actually met mum because my mother’s two brothers had invited her to come from Glasgow. My mother is Scottish, from an industrial background. Her brothers came to the Far East to make money.  She finished her school leaving exams and came to visit her brothers during her vacation. She would go with her bothers to watch boxing, where she saw my father, the champ. She was only fifteen or sixteen. The next thing the brothers knew was she was pregnant with me.”

Jeswant Singh was popular with colonials. Kirpal Singh tells us: “Some Europeans saw him box and offered him a job then in the Base Ordinance Depot. This was the British Military camps in the Far East. There were three bases in Singapore: the naval base, Kranji and one in the South. He worked there for thirty years and retired after that. In 1972[5], after the final British withdrawal from Singapore, dad’s formal employment status ended. After that he just did odd jobs, ending up as a security guard, looking after the factories in Jurong, earning about two to three hundred dollars a month.”

Kirpal Singh spent his childhood with his grandmother and uncle. Before he started schooling, his father left him with his grandmother and divorced his mother in favour of a new bride. Dr Singh tells us the story of how he returned to Singapore: “I was basically in Perak with my grandmother. My uncle, who was the first Sikh to become a Christian in Southeast Asia, left home because his father gave him a beating for changing his religion. My uncle was an Anglican. His conversion saved him from the Great Depression as the clergy was very well looked after. From 1929 to 1933, the church looked after him because he was the priest in Seramban. My father was still young. My uncle was born in 1911 and my dad in 1923. My grandmother bore eighteen children. Five of the infants passed away before they were one month old. But thirteen survived. She passed away at 95… I knew when I left for my doctorate programme in Adelaide that that was the last time I would see her. I had a hunch and was crying on the plane. Six weeks later, I got a letter with the news of her death.”

He adds: “Dad was in not in a position to look after me. The responsibility fell on his brother William. His full name was William Massa Singh s/o Deva Singh. He had studied at the Ipoh Chinese school, topped the school, eventually worked as an insurance agent. He was very good in English. The principal of his school, a New Zealander, arranged for my uncle to move to Singapore. Then my father moved there too. Singapore was the metropolis even then. It was the centre of English education. Penang was the other one. In 1956, I was sent to Singapore from Perak on a train — a one-and-a-half-day journey to my uncle.”

His grandmother joined them within a few months as his uncle was, he says, “more interested in aiding Lee Kuan Yew get rid of the colonials. Lee Kuan Yew was a self-made man. He met Goh Keng Swee[6] and Rajaratnam[7] as students in England. They became buddies and wanted to move out of colonial rule and be independent.”

Then, how did a young child survive? Dr Singh tells us: “I used to earn my pocket money from age five six by watering gardens. I have had very interesting experiences. When I was in primary two, I used to give tuition to primary one students. With enough gumption, you can survive in this world.”

Kampongs in Singapore’s past

“I grew up with my uncle’s wards, who were brought home to be educated. There was even one who was a Chinese-Japanese mix. So, I grew up being familiar cross-cultural marriages and in a multicultural home. I grew up in the kampong with a Chinese boy and we became friends from the age of seven-and-a-half when we were in primary two. His name is Tan Jwee Song — I call him Jwee, ‘my good saint’.  He told me after O-levels he would support me to study further and took to teaching. At that time, you could become a teacher after completing your O level. I joined Raffles late during my time in high school because it was too expensive for me. I taught in night classes started by Lee Kuan Yew and studied. I owed Jwee $80,000 dollars and I wanted to pay his widow back — but she would not accept it. When I graduated in 1973 with an honours’ degree, I was $44 thousand in debt. Then, I was given a scholarship.”

And slowly, Kirpal Singh came to his own. When television came into being, he tells us: “I was often on TV in 1970s — days of early television — debates and interviews as a guest.” Kirpal Singh grew into an intellectual of repute as he worked and studied with the support of the many races and many people who, often like him, were migrants to Singapore.

As time moves forward, these stories — that are almost as natural as the sand, the wind and the sea — ask to be caught in words and stored for posterity, stories from life that show how narrow borders drawn by human constructs cannot come in the way of those with ‘gumption’.

(Written by Mitali Chakravarty based on a face to face conversation with Kirpal Singh. Published with permission of Kirpal Singh)

[1] https://www.roots.gov.sg/stories-landing/stories/david-marshall/story

[2] Now in Malaysia

[3] Now in Malaysia

[4] https://buletinonlines.net/v7/index.php/lynas-radioactive-waste-to-be-dumped-in-pahang-tax-free-while-australia-gets-a18-million-in-taxes-2/

[5] The British armed forces were scheduled to withdraw from Singapore by 1971. https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1001_2009-02-10.html#:~:text=On%2018%20July%201967%2C%20Britain,Singapore%27s%20defence%20and%20economic%20security.

[6] Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, 1973-1980, one of the founding members of the ruling PAP (People’s Action Party) https://www.roots.gov.sg/stories-landing/stories/goh-keng-swee/story

[7] Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore from 1980 to 1985, one of the founding members of the ruling PAP https://www.roots.gov.sg/stories-landing/stories/sinnathamby-rajaratnam/story

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Essay

From Place to Place

By Renee Melchert Thorpe

Formative years can imply simply a growing body or the development of a complex outlook on life.   My mother, born Mary Ann Hostetler in Pontiac, Illinois, lived her formative years in colonial India.   Here is what I know about two formative migrations that made her who she was.  She was a quick study, a keen photographer, and resourceful traveler, but she also had an uncanny sensitivity to the need of people to feel welcome anyplace.

She had a deeply fond memory of arriving with her family in West Bengal when she was a mere 2 years old.  On the dock of Calcutta, waiting to greet the Hostetlers, was another Mennonite missionary, a man who would escort the family to the mission compound.  Dispatched aloft by her mother, little Mary Ann absolutely “sailed into his arms”, feeling sincere love and comfort from this steady and attentive new man.  He would sometimes take her for walks in the farms and villages, letting her reach out safely.  There was nothing to fear in this new place, and she was allowed to build her confidence.

Crates and luggage would have been handled by porters, a first lesson in India’s system of echelons, privileges and defenses, which even Anabaptists would adopt. India would embrace Mary Ann with her cacophony and vibrancy.  There was always the conservative life at home and in the classroom, but she could escape into the chowrasta[1], eat street food, and read the discarded letters such food was wrapped in.

From the age of 5, she boarded at a dreary school in the extraordinary altitude of Darjeeling, wintered in the rural outskirts of Calcutta, spoke street dialect like an urchin, and learned to draw from memory a Mercator map of the world showing the borders of all the British colonies.  During school break back in her parents’ mission compound, she and her brother might pass time picking fat ticks from the tender hide of a little bullock her parents kept, but her favourite activity in those warm days was to climb an old mango tree which stood just out of range of her mother’s call and read a book.  Any book.  She was never without one.

She and her family made two returns to the US, the first in 1936 for a Mission Board furlough, and again in 1944, when she had graduated from high school and the war, closing in first on the Straits Settlements, and soon after striking the Calcutta docks, was too close for comfort. 

For that 1936 furlough, the family stayed a few days in Calcutta’s Salvation Army hotel while her mother shopped for items to bring back with them to the States.  Her list would have included a tablecloth and sheeting, cotton yardage, British wool, perhaps a few sandalwood items. These things would not have been exotic souvenirs but rather, practical items for their year ahead enduring America’s Great Depression.  They were, after all, the family of a pastor, disinclined to appear exceptional or proud.

Through their Salvation Army hotel window, my mother gazed down at the Fairlawn Hotel next door, where well-heeled families relaxed with tea service on white rattan furniture, children scattered gleefully on the vast greensward, late afternoon birdsong above, and a distant Victrola warbling from inside the forbidden edifice.  She longed to experience such pleasures, and decades later, she did finally stay a few nights at the Fairlawn in 1992, with me, as I had chosen the hotel without knowing its gnawing maneuvers deep in my mother’s soul.

Checking in, we met the flamboyant and zaftig British redhead in charge of the place, my mother’s very age, daughter of the owner from those last days of the Raj.  That woman could scream gutter Bengali at the top of her lungs, and the next moment turn to my mother and politely ask about some little thing important only to little girls from a faraway garden city.  I watched as these two disparate women embraced and laughed together.    

The day she and her own mother arrived in the Los Angeles port of San Pedro, she was astonished to disembark and hear sweaty stevedores yelling and chattering in English.  This told her more about America and what was purportedly its classless society, than any adult’s own description could have.  She thrilled at this discovery.  She was unconcerned about fitting in with new school mates, got along well with them, even though they whispered amongst themselves about “her brogue.”

She never told me anything about her trip back to India, a year later.  But she would have sailed again, stuffed into Second Class.  I imagine her trying to lose her parents, availing herself of the ship’s library.  But I don’t know.

She graduated from Mount Hermon School as the “Best Girl,” although if you visit there, you can discover that the clueless new headmaster from her graduation year neglected to have the big silver trophy emblazoned with her name for the class of 1944.  Her brother’s is there with the year 1943 on the school’s “Best Boy” cup.  But he simply forgot to put in the engraving order when it was Mary Ann Hostetler’s honor.  My mother harbored few resentments, but this was a sore point, as she had worked very hard at academics.

I have never seen Bombay Harbour, where she finally left India as a young woman, but this is what she has told me.  It was wartime, 1944, but she was full of hope and thrilled to be out of that grim and cold school in the clouds.   

Mary Ann and her family boarded a passenger liner repurposed to carry a large number of troops.  A little sister had been born in India, making the family five, now billeted in what was once a First Class cabin, as were other American families leaving India.  Of course, no monogrammed towels or French milled soaps awaited them, but she relished the luxury of portholes and her own bunk.

The ship left Victoria Dock in April of 1944, mere days before the catastrophic accident of the munitions-laden SS Fort Stikine accidental fire and explosion, which destroyed every vessel in the harbor.  Wartime secrecy held successfully for decades, and my mother never learned of the near miss until many years after the war was over. 

All kinds of security measures were taken, even though the atmosphere on the crowded ship was convivial and relaxed. No flags flew.  And they sailed a zigzag course as a precaution against torpedoes.  They were in a convoy with two other soldier and civilian transports, but never saw the other ships except when in harbour.  One of those harbours was Melbourne, where boarded dozens of Australian war brides, and every last one of those young women, my mother said, had a screaming infant.  Those women shared second class cabins.  Two mother/baby pairs had bunks and one pair slept on their cabin floor.

Everyone aboard seemed to be flirting with the soldiers and welcoming distraction.  My mother and her new girlfriends, and even a few of the young Australian mothers, were nurturing chaste romances and enjoying their youth.  It was so much fun, and so stress-free, that my mother looked down at her wrist one day, where there had flourished for many months a large filiform wart, resembling some sort of fleshy agave plant; it had vanished. 

They went through the Panama Canal, a surprise for everyone aboard as well as for their stateside families.  All had been told by the war department that the convoy would land in San Francisco.  Instead, they went to Boston.  Plans were upset, lives were disrupted, and thousands of families who had made their way to California were now faced with crossing the wide country to meet their loved ones.  Typical instance, my mother said, of the war and the US government inflicting the population with whimsy, wasted efforts, or red tape in the name of national security.

To glimpse at last the American flag flying in Boston harbour gave my mother an indescribable feeling of safety and delight.  Worries carefully buried were truly gone.  The war would end in a little over a year’s time.  She had the rest of her life ahead of her.  

The USA was a safe harbour for a few years of university before she was off again, this time to Japan.  Decades later, with an empty nest, she and my father chose Italy.   Migrations were just part of living, and wherever she went, if she met another person displaced by whatever reason, she had a new best friend.  I knew them, too.  The Finnish dry cleaner, the Salvadorian woman who answered the phone at the Honda repair shop, or the Japanese lady who ran an art supply store: these people came from away, and so had she.

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[1] An intersection of four roads.

Renee Melchert Thorpe has fiction and nonfiction work has appeared in several Asian journals and magazines.

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Review

Fixing a Fractured World

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World 

Authors: Gordon Brown, Mohamed El-Erian, Michael Spence, Reid Lidow 

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

A nation or region’s success depends on three things: growth, economic management, and governance. The three dimensions are interconnected and affect each other. Growing an economy is a fundamental part of economic development. Factors like productivity, technological innovation, and sector expansion are all part of it. Infrastructure, education, and research and development are key to sustainable growth. Strong growth can create jobs, raise incomes, and improve living standards.

Governments and institutions take policies and decisions to maintain the economy’s stability and effectiveness. Setting fiscal policies, regulating financial markets, and overseeing trade and investment are tasks involved. The goal of effective economic management is to promote stability, increase competitiveness, and grow the economy. For macroeconomic stability and progress, it takes inflation, budget deficits, and exchange rates into account.

Countries and regions are governed by rules and structures. It includes political institutions, legal systems, and decision-making processes. By promoting transparency, accountability, and participation, sound governance ensures power is exercised fairly and justly. Decisions are made keeping in view society’s most beneficial interests, and citizens’ rights are protected. Maintaining stability, attracting investment, and promoting economic development requires strong governance.

Growth, economic management, and governance reinforce each other. Sustainable economic growth requires effective economic management, ensuring resources are allocated efficiently and policies support it. Effective governance promotes stability and attracts foreign investment through efficient economic management. A well-functioning governance system ensures that economic growth benefits are distributed equitably. After the recent pandemic, economists are worried about a prolonged crisis. Could we be experiencing a permacrisis? It is likely that the current state of the world will lead to anxiety, and that is what this book tells us in splendid detail.

Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World by Gordon Brown, Reid Low, Mohamed A. El-Erian and Michael Spence looks at the economic downturn the world is struggling through right now.

After holding the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer for over a decade, Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. During the 2009 London G20 summit, he mobilised global leaders to walk the world back from the brink of a second Great Depression. He is currently serving as the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, spearheading efforts to ensure quality, inclusive education for all children. He is also a Global Health Finance Ambassador for the World Health Organization. Brown holds a PhD in history from Edinburgh University.

Mohamed A. El-Erian is President of Queens’ College Cambridge. As Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz, he formerly served as Co-Chief Investment Officer and Chief Executive of PIMCO. Besides columnising for Bloomberg Opinion, he’s also a Financial Times contributor. He is a Senior Global Fellow at the Lauder Institute and Rene M. Kern Practice Professor at Wharton School. Before joining Harvard Management Company, he was a managing director at Solomon Smith Barney/Citigroup. His books When Markets Collide and The Only Game in Town were New York Times bestsellers.


Michael Spence is Emeritus Professor of Management at Stanford University. He is a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and a Council on Foreign Relations Distinguished Visiting Fellow. He is an adjunct professor at Bocconi University and an honorary fellow at Magdalen College. He authored The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World. He was Dean of the Stanford Business School from 1990 to 1999, and Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1984 to 1990. His awards include the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize for teaching excellence and the John Bates Clark Medal. He won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in information economics in 2001.

Reid Lidow served as Los Angeles Mayor’s Executive Officer. Reid worked on Gordon Brown’s campaigns before. During his undergraduate studies at USC, Reid double majored in International Relations and Political Science. He received a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and an MPhil in Development Studies from Queens’ College, Cambridge. 

As some of the most highly respected and experienced thinkers of our time, these friends found that their pandemic zooms increasingly focused on a cascade of crises: sputtering growth, surging inflation, poor policy responses, an escalating climate emergency, increasing inequality, a rise in nationalism, and a decline in international cooperation. They shared their fears and frustrations with each other. The more they talked, the more they realised that, despite past mistakes that set the world on this bumpy path, there is a better path to a brighter future. Their varied perspectives contributed to their pursuit of a common goal: attainable solutions to the world’s fractures. Those thoughts are reflected in this book.

According to the authors, our current permacrisis is a result of broken approaches to growth, economic management, and governance. Even though these approaches are flawed, they can be repaired. A provocative, inspiring plan to change the world is the need of the hour. The book illustrates how we can prevent crises and improve the future for the benefit of the many and the few. According to the book, problems that remain unresolved for a prolonged period of time will only worsen; this is what happens in a permacrisis, which is why we must act quickly.

This instructive book provides a sensible plan of reform that can be used to create a world that is fairer and more equitable.

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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Categories
Essay

Charlie and I: My Visit to Corsier-sur-Vevey

Nirupama Kotru, a film buff renews her acquaintance with Chaplin and, in the process, learns a life lesson.

“In that dark room in the basement of Oakley Street, Mother illuminated to me the kindliest light this world has ever known, which has endowed literature and the theatre with their greatest themes: love, pity and humanity.”

— Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography

He has been called a genius by scientists, philosophers, writers, humanists, film-makers and actors. His films continue to fascinate generations. They are timeless in the true sense of the word. As children, we laughed at the slapstick and the physical humour in his films. As adults, we have learnt to appreciate the world-view that lies behind some of his funniest films. Charlie being sucked into the giant machine in Modern Times (1936) remains one of the indelible memories of childhood. Later in life, one came to appreciate the thought – the causes and consequences of the Great Depression (1929–39) – that went into the writing of the film.

Charlie Chaplin has been an important influence in Indian films. Take celebrated actor-director Raj Kapoor, for instance. Raj Kapoor absorbed the mannerisms associated with Chaplin’s Little Tramp, including the waddle. It is a tribute to Chaplin’s genius that this Indian actor came to be universally recognised as the tramp, with his film Awara (the title of the film means a vagabond or a tramp) becoming a huge hit at home and abroad. Many actors after Kapoor, among them Sridevi (Mr India,1987), Mehmood (Aulad,1968), Kamal Haasan (Punnaigai Mannan,1986), and Chiranjeevi (Chantabbai,1986), channelised their inner Charlie into their performances. But it was Noor Mohammed who first adopted the Chaplin persona, and even used the screen name “Charlie” in films like The Indian Charlie (1933), Toofan Mail (1934) and Musafir (1940).

In November 2022, when I was informed that I would have to travel to Geneva for work, my first reaction was far from enthusiastic. I thought Geneva would be bitterly cold; also I needed to start planning my forthcoming family vacation to the United States. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), under whose aegis this program of the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining was taking place in Geneva, had asked India to send a women leader in mining.

Over the next four working days, I came to love Geneva Lake Geneve, the beautiful weather, the lovely architecture and the people. But the highlight of my trip was the last day, which I had taken off. The surprising part was that none of my colleagues, including those posted in the three Indian Missions/Consulates in Geneva, had visited the Chaplin Estate (The Manor de Bain). It was sheer luck that I remembered reading about Chaplin spending the last twenty-five years of his life in Switzerland, until his death in 1977. I discovered in the nick of time that Corsier-sur-Vevey was less than a two-hour drive from Geneva. I realised that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A quick booking of tickets on the Chaplin World website and I was off to the Manor de Bain! I decided to combine my Vevey trip with one to Gruyere, the beautiful town which lends its name to a popular kind of cheese.

After a quick trip to Gruyere, I set off for Vevey. My heart started racing as I passed the town square in Vevey which had huge murals of Chaplin on some buildings. Finally, I entered the hallowed portals of the estate where Chaplin spent twenty-five years with his wife, Oona, and his children. Passing through his study in the main living quarters, as I entered the drawing room with its cosy sofas, I came across French windows which overlooked the massive grounds of the estate. I stopped to take a picture. Suddenly, my phone camera froze. I panicked. I tried to close the camera app and switch off my phone, but nothing worked. I thought, this was it, I won’t be able to take any more pictures to remind me of this special day. Dejected, I moved into the dining room. A lady guard came to me and asked me if I would like to write something in the visitor’s book, which I did, sitting down on a chair in the corner.

All this while I was feeling disappointed. Suddenly, I looked up to see a home video playing in a loop, of Chaplin enjoying a meal on a sunny day with family and friends. I thought to myself: Was this a sign? Was Chaplin saying, “Why are you obsessed with taking pictures? You have come so far to see my home; I want you to enjoy my estate, look at my work. Don’t let these modern gadgets rule your life. Slow down.Take it all in.”

The last images on my phone when it froze

I calmed down and went back to those French windows in the drawing room to take in the magnificent view of the estate grounds. A man walked towards me. I asked him if he could help unfreeze my phone. He suggested I switch it off and then on again. I did that, and voila! It worked. Though I was relieved when my phone came back to life, I realised that in those intervening ten-fifteen minutes when my phone was frozen, I was forced to take a breather, to reflect upon the beauty I was surrounded by, and all the blessings which make life worth living. And I went back to the study and foyer of the house to spend some more time reading more about the struggles, trials and triumphs of this great artist.

As I emerged from the main building, I thought of rounding off the visit with a leisurely walk around the grounds. Suddenly I noticed a sign which said “The Studio”. I had deliberately avoided researching on what the visit had to offer, so I decided to just go with the flow and enjoy whatever was on offer. There was a screen outside “The Studio” which said that a film screening was to start in nine minutes. I waited, and finally watched the film, a moving take on Chaplin’s life and work, with ten other viewers.

After the film ended, we were asked to move towards the screen. Suddenly, the screen disappeared and lo and behold, I found myself on a beautifully recreated set from The Kid. We were prompted to go behind the set, and to my bewilderment, what followed was one set after another – The Great Dictator, City Lights, Gold Rush, Limelight, A King in New York, whew! It was such a delight to go through those sets, to see the wax figurines, to sit on the chair from The Gold Rush with Charlie peeping from under a table, to pose next to Charlie in my own bowler’s hat, to sit on the jail bench next to him, to be swallowed by the giant machine from Modern Times. Mercifully, my camera behaved throughout the studio visit and I took many keepsake pictures. After a stroll through the beautiful grounds, I picked up some books, including Chaplin’s autobiography, and other memorabilia. I started reading the autobiography shortly after my visit and it reaffirmed my views about Charlie.

Inside The Studio

During my visit and afterwards, I got a lot of time to reflect upon how Chaplin’s films were deeply concerned with the human condition, with all the miseries and challenges brought upon it by events that the common man has no control over. Chaplin’s work includes The Gold Rush (1925), which drew from real-life events such as the Klondike Gold Rush and the Donner Party, and The Great Dictator(1940), a satire on Adolf Hitler. Limelight (1952), which depicted the frustration of a has-been comedian, can be classified as auto-fiction, as can The Kid (1921), while Modern Times has been hailed as an astute commentary on industrialisation. Levity was Chaplin’s forte, but all his films were deeply rooted in his political and social consciousness. More often than not, he had to pay a heavy price for sticking to his beliefs.

Recollecting the making of The Great Dictator, Charles says in his autobiography, “Halfway through, I began receiving alarming messages from United Artists … But I was determined to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at. Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator; I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.”

The boundary wall of the Manor de Bain. The sounds of cow bells from across the road drifted towards the estate, making for a mesmerising setting.

Chaplin was a genius who understood the power of the audio-visual medium. Since pantomime was his greatest strength, having performed bit roles in theatres during his childhood days of great hardship and penury, he used this technique to convey pathos through humour. Although he was earning quite well as a comedian-writer-director in Hollywood, by 1919, he was so frustrated with the studio system, which did not give him a free hand to write his own scripts, that he co-founded United Artists along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith.

His first major hit under his own banner was The Kid, which drew from his childhood experiences. So strong were his convictions about the silent film that he swam against the tide and released City Lights in 1931, well after talkies had completely taken over Hollywood. Slowly, he started warming up to the possibilities of sound in film. He used sound effects in Modern Times but no spoken dialogue. He composed and sang a charming ditty in gibberish, ‘Titine’,with some random words in French, Italian and English thrown in, for Modern Times which never fails to bring a smile to the face, even eighty-seven years after its release

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2FIt4g9fgcg

Whether it was silent films or talkies, Chaplin continued to tell his stories of universal values, of hope amidst great suffering. As an artist, he never shied away from speaking truth to power. Like most great artists, he did not accept manmade boundaries. Although he was English by birth, he was criticised for not fighting in World War I. He had long arguments with Winston Churchill about Mahatma Gandhi and the struggle of the Indian people for freedom. In fact, he met Gandhi-ji shortly after meeting Churchill, during a trip to London, and questioned him at length about his abhorrence for machinery. He returned from the meeting with great admiration for Gandhi-ji’s strategies for achieving independence and his principles of non-violence and truth. His conversation with Gandhi-ji influenced his writing of Modern Times, especially the Gandhian theory about modernisation and rapid industrialisation being the cause of unemployment and rising inequality. The fearless artist once made an uncharitable remark about the English royalty, telling Churchill, “I thought socialists were opposed to a monarchy”, to which Winston Churchill replied, with a laugh, “If you were in England, we’d cut your head off for that remark.”

Being wary of the ways of Hollywood where an artist was judged by his or her success at the box office, he made few friends in the film industry. Chaplin was happy spending time visiting his childhood haunts on his trips to London, and also enjoyed wining and dining with film stars, princes and princesses, prime ministers and presidents, scientists, philosophers, poets and writers. He was friends with Mary and Douglas Fairbanks, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, H.G.Wells, Harold Laski, Aldous Huxley, Theodore Dreiser, et al. He went to Lucerne in Switzerland to meet India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, expressing his surprise at finding him “a small man like myself”. Chaplin invited Pt Nehru to his estate in Vevey for a meal. They had a long chat on the way, which left Chaplin impressed with the “…man of moods, austere and sensitive, with an exceedingly alert and appraising mind”.

Chaplin was a pacifist and a philosopher, and was derided for his views in America – not just mocked, but harassed by the FBI under its founding director, J. Edgar Hoover. In 1952, the country which has historically been considered the land of free speech hounded Charlie out of its borders under the mistaken impression that he was an avowed communist, and told him to never come back. Chaplin even narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Japan.

Chaplin’s autobiography ends in 1964, on a poignant yet hopeful note, just like Charlie’s films, with Chaplin expressing his sadness at having to leave America, but also describing his happy days in Switzerland, where he befriended several artists who lived in the area. Eight years later, in 1972, Charles Spencer Chaplin was called back to America by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to receive an Honorary Oscar. After initial hesitation, Chaplin decided to attend the ceremony, which would end his twenty-year exile from America. He went on to receive an unprecedented standing ovation lasting twelve minutes. Cries of “Bravo!” filled the auditorium and Chaplin was clearly overwhelmed. It was an emotional homecoming for the man who had left Los Angeles in extremely unpleasant circumstances in 1952.

Chaplin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1975, but by then he was frail and had to accept the honour in a wheelchair. He passed away in 1977, but his legacy lives on. I hope cine buffs like me keep rediscovering him, for The Tramp is timeless.

(The photographs have been provided by the author, except for the book cover)

Nirupama Kotru is an officer of the Indian Revenue Service,1992 batch. Ms.Kotru has served in the Income Tax Department at Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Pune. On deputation, she served as Director (e Governance) in Ministry of Corporate Affairs and as Director (Films) in M/o Information & Broadcasting, where she looked after policy issues such as censorship, India’s participation in film festivals abroad, archiving, film schools and production of films.

As Joint Secretary in Ministry of Culture she has looked after prestigious national akademis such as Sahitya Akademi and National School of Drama, and national museums such as Indian Museum and Victoria Memorial Hall &Museum. She is presently posted as Joint Secretary& Financial Advisor, Ministries of Coal, Mines & Minority Affairs. She has released an album of bhajans called Upasana. She has also written around thirty articles on cinema and other topics such as parenting. She is currently co-authoring an anthology on Hindi cinema of the 1970s.

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