'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' [‎14v] (28/118)

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it from behind and then seizes it by the throat and throttles it by
gripping its windpipe in its mouth* It does not bite through the
buck's throat and hardly leaves a mark on the skin. Then the keeper
comes up and the buck with a knife and when the cheetah has
at length been persuaded to release its grip the buck is degutted on
the spot. That part was rather foul.
The first chase struck me as rather beastly for the buck did
not seem to have a chance of getting away but on the next two occasions
it outdistanced the che&tah and the latter, after going flat out for
about 80 yards just sat back on its haunches and refused to budge.
The best part of the hunt was the chase, not the kill, and
seeing each animal going at maximum stretch one began to appreciate the
real meaning of poetry in motion.
Baroda was a well run State, and apart from the roads outside
the City, which I have already mentioned, its schools, hospitals and
general administration were well up to the level of British India. This,
I think, was largely due to the high standards set by the Dewam (Prime
Minister),Sir V. T. Krishnamachariar, who was in fact a Madrassi from
the far side of India. We saw a good deal of him in 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. and
he was a charming and very able man.
Early in December 1936 the Abdication crisis of King Edward VIII
came to the boil, and telegrams between the Viceroy in Delhi and the
Resident in Baroda were exchanged in some profusion. It was my job to
decode the incoming telegrams and encode those going out, a tedious and
time-consuming job, and on the night before the news of the abdication
became public I sat up until the small hours decoding allegedly top
secret messages only to see them printed word for word in the newspapers
the next morning. The Europeans in the station were, I think, mostly
deeply shocked at the news but most Indians simply could not understand
why the King had had to go at all. "Mrs. Simpson was only a woman, so
why the fuss” was their re-action.
On Christmas Day I was inundated with Christmas cakes, six or
seven if I remember rightly, but luckily there was an orphanage nearby
and they were glad to relieve me of them. It was the custom throughout
India for Indians to call on the local District Officer or Political
©-t Christmas time and if presents were offered one had to be
very careful not to accept anything of real value. Cakes, fruit and game
were permissible but not liquor, and I can remember on one occasion later
on, during the war, being offered, and refusing the same bottle of whisky
which was passed down the queue from hand to hand as each new "mulakati”
arrived. There were cases of valuable jewels being concealed beneath
the fruit in a basket but such temptations never came my way.
„ th f NeW Year of ' ,9 ^ 7 Beatrice Weir then aged seventeer
came out from England to join the family. She, like her elder sister,