مذكرة عن السيرة المهنية للسير توماس إدوارد روجرز [و‎‎٩] (١١٨/١٧)

Karachi in the Frere Hall which bore the name of the greatly admirable
Sir Bartle Frere. Although there was previous friendship to bind the scholarly
Hassan and myself happily together, I continually met Indian and Pakistani
diplomatic colleagues in my Foreign Service career with whom it was always easy
to be on friendly terms because of our common background.
Only once in Mymensingh did a dozen of our 'colony' of officials and wives
break out and put food, drink and a gramophone on a small river boat to drift
lazily between the high banks for an hour or two to the wonder of the boatmen
so unused to our or any other such merrymaking. We might have repeated the
outing had not some of us felt self-conscious at sharing our frolic with strangers,
unlike the high jinks at army messes where discreet servants merged into the
background as if members of the regimental family.
When I left the District Magistrate's house for a primitive 'three down'
bungalow with a heat-attracting corrugated iron roof scrambled over all night
by iguanas so that I slept on my veranda to avoid them and the heat, I threw my
first modest dinner party. I was to have the disconcerting experience of many
junior colleagues. That the District Magistrate's cook should present himself
to help out mine was fair enough, but not that my quite passable dinner set and
silverware should be left aside for admittedly superior changelings smuggled in
from at least two senior officials' households. All this to honour the article
of faith of the freemasonry of district headquarters servants - that if top people
attend a dinner party, especially top man, the District Magistrate, then their
servants must see to it that the table ware is top to match. I swallowed my pride
and said nothing. Later I conceded to myself that we had all eaten and drunk
better and more elegantly for the communal infrastructure so thoughtfully
provided for a chota sahib's first party that might just possibly be failure-
prone .