"أيام ثيم ولَّت" [و‎‎١‎١] (٢٤٨/٢١)

11
identical but the gunners as well as the drivers were Indian.
Our duties were light, but off duty there was plenty to do : we
were expected to play games with the troops - football with the
British gunners and hockey with the Indians. This was of a high
standard, being played on very fast grounds of hard-beaten mud.
But I soon discovered a more congenial occupation when I found
that large flocks of blue rock pigeons flighted in every evening
to roost on the walls of the local jail.
On holidays (Thursdays as well as Saturdays and Sundays were
always a holiday) one could take a rifle and bicycle into the
surrounding flat country and stalk the numerous blackbuck which
grazed unmolested in the fields.
The caste, character, and credibility of one's bearer, or
personal body servant, was a matter of considerable importance
because almost all one's contacts with other servants were
conducted through him. It was considered amongst the Indian army
regiments (and the Mountain Artillery) unthinkable to have a
bearer who could speak English, for such were usually of
low-caste and had learned their trade (and the language) working
for the British troops in barracks. They were thus held in very
little respect by the Indian soldiers and others with whom they
came in contact. Years later in Iraq (where, of course, the same
rules and caste-system do not apply), I had a Kurdish driver
whose knowledge of English had been picked up in the barracks and
whom I passed on to the British Ambassador on my departure. I
often wonder what the ambassador's lady thought when she asked
him a question to which he didn’t know the answer, for he could
only have replied "Fucked if I know".
But I was extraordinarily lucky in inheriting from my
predecessor one Sher Oil (Lionheart), a suitably bearded and
turbanned Muslim from the mountains of North West India. He was,
in fact, from Poonch which lies between the Pashtu-speaking areas
of the frontier and Kashmir, and was thus looked down upon by the
Pathans to the same extent as he despised the Kashmiris and the
other innumerable millions of the inhabitants of the Indian
sub-continen t.
He served me well for very many years in conditions of hardship
and danger which might have proved too much for others "of the
wrong sort". Years later I was staying with a cousin who was the
General Commanding in Peshawar and, being of the British service,
had the wrong sort of bearer, when after Sunday lunch an
earthquake occurred. A flash of white passed through the
drawing-room - which was the general's servant escaping - and
then the door was held open by Sher Oil who said in Urdu "It
would be advisable to come outside. Sir. There is an earthquake."