An Indian Christmas 1944-Style

 I had not intended to write anything more for the blog before next month, but thanks to the Prime Minister I find I have more time on my hands than I had expected. This Christmas will be like no other. By coincidence, I read recently Jan’s father’s letters to his parents from India and Burma. On 31 December 1944 he described the celebrations of his army unit in Comilla, India (now Bangladesh), in the tropical lowlands, so a white Christmas was impossible. The party was held in the basha (a thatched bamboo hut) which served as the enlisted men’s’ mess. The men had turned this, as far as they could, into a pub called the Bullock Inn to resemble home. Here was a little bit of England in a corner of the Empire. Ron Waddams’ description of a 1944 Christmas describes celebrations which were very different to those he was accustomed to at home in London.

 

Ron's photos from Comilla and Imphal, modern Bangladesh. The basha is pictured in the two photos top left

“We started our celebrations last evening [Christmas Eve] with a little drinking party in our new recreation hut. This hut we had previously decorated and it looked most cheery with bunches of leaves to replace holly, a large painted Christmas tree with pin-up girls stuck all over it, around the walls were sketches of more beautiful girls, and some cartoons of the boys, the one of me is very good so I intend to send it to you with the Programme, and in one corner of the hut we have a very interesting bar fixed up. So the stage was well set for the evenings [sic] fun … [W]e started of [sic] with a darts competition. In this I managed to reach the semi finals, but then I was knocked out. Boiled sweets were handed round and we each had a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, just like being at a kid’s party. The rest of the evening was whiled away with a few rums, and as the drinks flowed among the boys, so did the chattering grow and the jokes became more savoury. Indeed, the atmosphere soon became thick and blue, like that of our worthy hostels in England, and when  bawdy song broke over the gathering the likeness was even more true. The boys made me sing: ‘Popeye the Sailor’.

 

Cartoon of Ron drawn for Christmas 1944

On Christmas morning in accord with old traditions the sergeants came round to wake us up, and brought us all coffee and rum to help clear the cob webs away. The day was gloriously sunny, and nothing like the cold snowy day you had in London which I have just read about in a newspaper. It was so inviting, that after breakfast I decided to go for an easy stroll, partly to enjoy beautiful natures and partly to clear my head, which wasn’t exactly thick but a trifle muzzy. I went down a footpath all closed in with leafy bushes and overlaying palms. This eventually brought me out onto a river bank, where on a strip of grass I had a rest. Rivers always seem so soothing to me. I remember I used to go down to watch the Thames at lunch time when I was working in the Strand. This water was just as muddy as the old Thames but not half as wide. A few native dhows passed me by. These were propelled by long bamboo poles used like punt poles, and were very flimsy affairs, in which the scruffy occupants seemed to be continually baling water out. The land on each side of the river is naturally fertile, though at the time it looked pretty bare as the rice has been harvested, and now the farmers are beginning to flood the land once more in preparation for the next crop. Next they will plough up the mud with their wooden ploughs drawn by two bullocks, and then plant out the rice seedlings which look like blades of grass six or nine inches high. After a little meditation on the humorous fact of being surrounded by such country on Christmas Day, I returned to camp for dinner. This was remarkably lavish, considering our distance from civilization. First course was cream tomato soup, followed by roast goose (a bit tough) and suitable vegetables; then came a really good Christmas pud with stodgy mince pie floating in cream; there was also beer, but I did not fancy this with dinner so I had tea. After a weighty consumption there was nothing left that I could do, but return to my bed, and as is the habit of gentlemen at these times, to slumber. I regrettably had no appetite at tea time, and there was fruit salad, trifles, and cake, but I made the best of this misfortune almost to bursting point. The evening’s fun passed very similarly to the previous one, though instead of darts we had ‘Housey-housey’, and a quiz contest, while the supporting surroundings were remarkably the same. I went to bed early at midnight, while I believe some of the lads were up till after four.”

Note: Housey-housey was a popular children’s fairground game. It was essentially the same as bingo, but without bingo’s gambling for money.

The lavish Christmas 1944 fare was typical of catering for celebratory events far from home, as demonstrated by the 1943 Christmas Programme, designed and printed by Ron’s unit, the 61 Indian Reproduction Group R. E. I. E. (Royal Engineers Indian Engineers: Ron and his English colleagues were soldiers of the Royal Engineers, but they were worked with Indian troops). Their mission was to print maps to plan the Burma campaign, so they had the skills and equipment to print programmes for Group events. In 1943 they were in Dehra Dun, in the foothills of the Himalayas, the headquarters of the Indian Survey.

 

 

 

 

The Christmas 1943 Programme

 

Reading Ron’s letters, I have learned that while an orange or lemon was an almost unobtainable luxury in the headquarters of the Empire, food was abundant in India for soldiers and the expatriate British. When Ron reported to his parents what he had eaten on a visit to a Chinese restaurant (there seem to have been Chinese restaurants everywhere in 1940s India) he would often preface his description with “this will make your mouths water”. One letter includes a description of a mango, a fruit previously unknown to him and his parents. And, extraordinary as it may seem, he was able to send his parents regular parcels of foodstuffs or textiles (also scarce in England but plentiful in India). Attached to one letter are two small swatches of cotton prints sent home so that his mother and sister could make summer dresses.

We had planned to share our Christmas turkey, open gifts and play our traditional games, with two of our three sons in our home. Now, all that will happen, as far as possible, by Zoom. Ron’s equivalent of Zoom was a much anticipated weekly exchange of letters with his parents. News of the Waddams Christmas in London reached him around 21 January 1945.

 

Let’s hope our festivities can be as jolly as those of Comilla 1944, but perhaps without the pin-ups.

The Road to Glory

 

I have been reading some things to make last minute additions to my history of Guerrero from 7000BC to 1600AD. The University of New Mexico Press has sent it to academic readers for reports before considering it for publication. Fingers crossed.

 

One of my readings was a report of an expedition by four archaeologists (Miguel Pérez Negrete, Hans Martz de la Vega, Guadalupe Paoky Rueda Robledo and José Aguilera Almanza) to study and register petroglyphs high up in the Sierra Madre del Sur at a place called La Gloria. Armed with official authorization from their employer INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History) the first stop was the office of the Presidente Municipal (roughly, the mayor) of Atoyac de Álvarez. The Presidente gave his official blessing and a municipal vehicle. The municipal delegate of La Gloria offered to accompany the group.

 

The next stop was the local radio station for an interview to inform the people of the municipality of the expedition. The motive for this interview was partly publicity, but above all the safety of the archaeologists. In these mountains, unfamiliar people might be mistaken for members of organized crime gangs, of the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) guerrilla who operate in these mountains, government officials on some unwelcome mission, or simply suspicious characters. These are dangerous parts, to be travelled with enormous care.

 

Not far into their journey the group encountered their first retén (a roadblock), staffed by officials from the Procuraduría General de la República (the federal prosecutor’s office) and municipal police. Because they were travelling in a municipal vehicle they were waved through without inspection. The next retén, higher up in the mountains, was a more serious affair. Here their INAH permits were examined with care.

 

As the group passed through small settlements along the route, residents called out to the municipal delegate that they had heard he was coming on the radio. When they reached the summit of the Cabeza de Perro (Dog’s Head) they stopped to look back at the Pacific Ocean many miles below, but soon they were deep in wooded, secluded mountains. In several small settlements they saw remains of prehispanic structures on the roadside.

 

After five hours they reached La Gloria, a ranchería (roughly, hamlet) of about 50 people whose livelihood is coffee growing. The residents live far from the services provided by the Mexican state: schools, clinics etc. Although huge pylons and thick cables carry power overhead to the cities of the coast, La Gloria has no electricity. The people of La Gloria grow their coffee under the ever present threat that a drug gang or a guerrilla group may pass by, perhaps even worse the army.

 

One’s first impression from the archaeologists’ description is “What a remote place”. But here the archaeologists recorded 27 petroglyphs carved on large rocks among the coffee trees. They depict jaguars, human figures and assorted non-figurative designs. The arrangement of the petroglyphs may indicate that they functioned as some kind of astronomical aids to mark significant events such as an equinox. Also scattered among the coffee trees and carved rocks are remains of at least 21 small prehispanic settlements.

 

The jaguars petroglyph at La Gloria

It stuck me that this place, which in the 21^st century we see as remote from society, was buzzing with life, ceremony and ritual, several hundred years ago, in an age of no roads and no wheeled vehicles. It also reminded me of another story, the journey in 1970 of a Mexican expert on Indigenous manuscripts, Joaquín Galarza, from his office in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to Chiepétlan, also high up in the mountains of Guerrero, further inland and to the East. News had reached Paris of previously unknown manuscripts in the village. Paris to Mexico was the easy part of the journey.

 

One of the Lienzos de Chiepetlán, combining Indigenous and Spanish iconography: two jaguars with crowns

Once he had reached Guerrero, Galarza had two choices of transport: a long and arduous journey on horseback, or a small plane that plied a route through the mountains and touched down on request. The landing area at Chiepetlán was a cattle pasture. The locals, alerted that a visitor wished to land, could clear the cattle, or, if the visitor was judged unwelcome, could leave them to munch the grass and prevent the plane from landing. Galarza was allowed to land and escorted to the plaza of the village, where he was asked to wait – for several hours while the village leaders debated whether they should show this unusual visitor their precious documents. Eventually Galarza was asked to the  community hall to face the leaders and the population of Chiepetlán. After answering many questions he was allowed to see the documents.

 

Chiepetlán, Guerrero. Where would you choose to land your plane?

Like La Gloria, Chiepetlán is now “remote”, but in the 15^th and 16^th centuries it was certainly not. It guarded trade routes for precious goods from the coast to the cities of the Valleys of Mexico and Toluca, and Morelos, in central Mesoamerica. Aztec warriors passed through the town on their way to conquests further south and Aztec Tribute (i.e. tax) collectors were familiar figures.

 

A festival in the plaza of Chiepetlán

Places like La Gloria and Chiepetlán are by no means unusual in modern Mexico. A country with a modern economy, and a number of the richest men in the world, has left anciently vibrant and thriving communities to languish far from the benefits of a modern state society. Nevertheless, resilience, advisable caution (to let the plane land or not; to allow this vehicle into a community or not) enable the people of these places to live lives every bit as important and fulfilling as those of modern urban dwellers. Their resilience and determination are extraordinary.

 

Celebrations in Chiepetlán. The structure to the left is the Castillo, a framework for a firework display

This will be my last item before Christmas. A Merry Christmas and happy 2021 to all who read this. Please stay in touch and safe.

How to dress a flea without getting a flea in your ear

 

At 06:30 Sundays BBC Radio 4 airs a programme called Natural Histories. I listen to it as I prepare breakfast. This is one of the many wonders of our public service broadcaster that would be lost if the mendacious plans of our current government to abolish the BBC come to pass. This Sunday 6 December the topic was the flea. The flea, it turns out, is the object of scientific study, but also a trope in erotic poetry since Roman times. An editor from the OED informed listeners that ‘flea’ occurs in many English idioms: we can be a fit as a flea; when in trouble we get a flea in our ear; we might watch a film in a fleapit (so called because fleas were endemic in early cinemas); we can shop for curios in a flea market. Fleas also made an appearance in music, at least once, in Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’ song:

 

There was a little Spanish flea
A record star he thought he'd be
He heard of singers like Beatles
And The Chipmunks he'd seen on TV
Why not a little Spanish flea?

 

Fleas influenced fashion in Medieval Europe: a flea trap was an accessory consisting of a tube of a sticky substance that women wore round their necks. The evolved to be expensive items of gold jewelry filled with honey to tempt the flea to its death. Fleas also had a role in advertising and marketing: the flea circus originated as a means for jewellers to display their skill in working on a very small scale to make harnesses for performing fleas using very fine wire.

 

A flea circus in Seattle

And, to my surprise, they had a place in the history of tourist art in Mexico. Octavio Paz, Mexico’s greatest poet wrote about fleas in his meditation about the essence of Mexicanness, El laberinto de la soledad (‘The Labyrinth of Solitude’):

 

Todas nuestras facultades, y también todos nuestros defectos, se oponen a esta concepción del trabajo como esfuerzo impersonal, repetido en iguales y vacias porciones de tiempo: la lentitud y cuidado en la tarea, el amor por la obra y por cada uno de los detalles que la componen, el buen gusto, innato ya, a fuerza de ser herencia milenaria. Si no fabricamos productos en serie, sobresalimos en el arte difícil, exquisito e inútil de vestir pulgas. Lo que no quiere decir que el mexicano sea incapaz de convertirse en lo que se llama un buen obrero. Todo es cuestión de tiempo. Y nada, excepto un cambio histórico cada vez más remoto e inpensable, impedirá que el mexicano deje de ser un problema, un ser enigmático, y se convierta en una abstracción más.

 

All our faculties, and also all our defects, are opposed to this notion of work as an impersonal effort, repeated in equal and empty slices of time: the slowness and care taken in the task, the love of the artefact and of every one of the details it is composed of, the good taste, now innate, by dint of being a millenarian inheritance. If we do not make mass-produced products, we excel in the difficult, exquisite and useless art of dressing fleas. This does not mean that the Mexican is incapable of becoming what is termed a good worker. It is all a question of time. And nothing, except an historical shift which is ever more remote and unthinkable, will prevent the Mexican from ceasing to be a problem, an enigmatic being, and becoming just another abstraction.”

Mexican dressed fleas made in 1905, Natural History Museum, London

The Rothschild family plays a significant role in humanity’s interest in the flea. One Miriam Rothschild solved the mystery of how the flea manages to jump so high and so fast. It evolved to lose its wings, an encumbrance that could get tangled in the fur of its host. At the joint which once articulated the wing sits a rubber-like substance that is compressed and released to bounce like a rubber ball. Walter Rothschild achieved his childhood dream of owning a museum when he opened Walter’s Zoological Museum in 1892 in Tring, Hertfordshire. His collection included dressed fleas made in Mexico in the early 20^th century. They are now in the collections of the National History Museum in London. American friends can find dressed fleas in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

 

Dressed fleas from the Walter Rothschild collection

The curious art of dressing fleas is thought to have begun in the state of Guanajuato, possibly in convents. After a time, dressed fleas became popular tourist souvenirs, especially scenes of a bride and groom serenaded by a mariachi band. The art lasted until the 1930s.

 

Mexican dressed fleas in the collection of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Mexicans still make and sell tourist art on the country’s beaches, in its cities, on major archaeological sites, and in the shops of the Fondo Nacional para el Fomento de las Artesanías (National Foundation for the Promotion of Crafts). But they have now also proved Paz’s prediction to be correct: they work in high tech jobs in manufacturing, they run multinational businesses, their food and drink is consumed worldwide. Alas, they no longer dress fleas.