'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' [‎42r] (83/118)

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the Easter weekend with the Sakers at Mastung, the Headquarters of the Kalat
Agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. , thirty miles South of Quetta. Their garden was lovely with all the
Spring flowers coming out, but it was very cold, as there had been a fresh
fall of snow in the surrounding hills, and we felt the change in temperature
after Panjgur where it had already started to heat up considerably. On the
Monday we went on to Quetta and stayed with the Hays at 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. . I had
a good deal of business to see to, and Jane did some shopping, and also
managed to book rooms in the ’’abandoned wives” quarters for her to move into
at the beginning of May, as Mekran would be far too hot for the children and
her to stay in during the Summer. Jane saw various friends in Quetta,
including Patricia Pettigrew who hoped to get a passage home fairly soon.
Another old friend, Mary McVean, had already got home safely to Scotland.
We arrived back in Panjgur on the 10th April. We were already getting
excited at the thought of long leave in England, as I had had a provisional
warning for July 19^+5» J had not been home since 1937, while Jane had come
out on a three months' holiday in 1938 and still had her return ticket unused!
She had, of course, never met any of my family but she was batting on a
strong wicket as she had produced the only two grandchildren to date. After
just two weeks in Panjgur we had to go up again to Quetta to get uane and
the children settled in their summer quarters and for me to take my Higher
Standard Baluchi examination on April 30th. We managed to achieve both these
objectives successfully and had quite a gay time in Quetta before I had to
leave once more for Panjgur on May 6 th. I had become very fluent in the spoken
language of Baluchi through constant daily practice but learning to read and
write it was more difficult as my only teacher was an old Baluchi munshi A term used in the Middle East, Persia and South Asia to refer to a secretary, assistant or amanuensis. Munshis were employed in the British administration in the Gulf.
(clerk) in my office who spoke no English and only rather bad Urdu. However,
we wrestled together over the written language practically every afternoon I
was in Panjgur and by the end of April I had achieved a fairly high standard,
and passed the whole examination quite easily.
While in Quetta I was told that my second in command and probably
temporary successor, was to join me before the end ox May. xhere had been so
many false alarms during the past nine months when I had been told that someon
was coming only to hear a few weeks later that he had been posted elsewhere
that I was a little sceptical but this time the news was true and on the 20 th
May John Soringford arrived. He was a wartime officer from an Indian Eegiment
and in real life an archaeologist, aged about twenty-seven, and ha PPi ^
liked each other on sight. I gave him a few days to recover from the journey
and settle in, and then we went off on a long tour south, where I showed him
the whole area and, besides the usual visits to Jiwani and Pasm, inspects
every Levy Post. It was already over 100° in Panjgur, which was 3,000 ft.
above sea level, and in the desert, between there and the Coast it was
incredibly hot, and it may have been on this occasion a ov „ r inO 0 at
halfway house, I recorded a shade temperature o 35 an hears
midnight. Springford was very intrigued with Mekran and recogni
of stones meaningless to me the traces a C1V1 “ indicatiors also
years before the country had been forested and there were ^
in some daces, of a long dried out canal system It ~ a “ he
coast, too, thkt Alexander had made his way back from India to Persia
4th Century B.C. when it was known as"the Coast of tne j?isn -a ers .