'A Grandfather's Tale: Memoirs being mainly concerned with service in the Indian Army and the Indian Political Service in India and the Persian Gulf from 1932-1947' [‎21v] (42/118)

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but I was lucky to get awa y without damage to the horse or myself. I ^
cannot remember anything particularly exciting happening the next day, out
the locals were pleased to be temporarily at least relieved of uneir menace
and the lower caste villagers to have a supply of free meat.
After this playing golf both in Bhuj and in Mandvi, seemed rather
tame, though very agreeable.
There were very few Europeans in Cutch but oddly enough I found that
the tutor to one of the Maharao's grandsons, Sparks, had been at school with
me. Another Englishman in State Service was Sir Geoffrey Archer, lately
Governor General of the Sudan. He was managing the Cutch Salt Works, which
seemed rather a come down after his previous job, but why he had left the
Sudan so abruptly I never learnt and the mystery still intrigues me.
On the Friday evening (April Tth 1939) we heard that after all Gandni
was coming back to Rajkot, so we left Cutch the following morning, this time
by a slightly different route by launch via Morvi instead of Jamnagar, and
reached Rajkot that night. The next morning, Easter Sunday, Gandhi and
Mrs. Gandhi arrived, followed a few hours later by Vallabhai Patel, the
Congress strong man, who came by air from Bombay. I wrote that same day
to my mother "Wires have already started humming and I spent half of this
morning encoding and decoding. I hope we shan’t be prevented from going
to Abu next month. There will almost certainly be trouble here soon between
the State and the Congress. I hope it won't be long delayed. It will be
infuriating if, when Jane has wangled to stay in Mount Abu I am kept down
here". (Jane had been invited to stay in Mount Abu by the Phillips, old
friends of her mother. He was then Inspector General of Police in Ajmer
and Abu was his summer headquarters, as it was indeed for my own Resident,
as although it was 300 miles from Rajkot, it was the nearest hill station
and about 5 i 000 ft above sea-level).
On his arrival Gandhi had announced his intention of staying in
Rajkot "until the Rajkot affair- was settled". So much for the compromise
allegedly come to in Delhi the previous month. The Viceroy had still a lot
to learn about the wily Hindu, particularly of Gandhi's calibre. As
neither side looked like giving way, a lasting settlement was not going to
be easy.
On the 14th April 1939 I wrote again to my mother:
"On Tuesday the 11th April, Gandhi came to the Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. to see
Mr. Gibson and I had to receive him and usher him in. He leapt out of his
car like a two year old and looked surprisingly well. We wished each other
good afternoon and shook hands warmly. It was all rather comic. He looked
like a rather jovial old male witch. All the same he is a confounded
nuisance".
"However it is amusing to be in on the inside of this Rajkot affair.
The public gets a very garbled version of it. Mr. Gandhi imbibed far too
much glucose with his water during his "fast" ever to be in dseffgeg==^