Back to Agartala 1964

Agartala again

By the time we reached Agartala early in 1964, Judy was old enough to start school. She had of course learned her alphabet and was starting to read already. I can remember taking the children for a walk along Takapuna Beach late in 1963 and writing letters in the sand with a stick for her to read; even Terry knew most of the letters at that stage. 

On the ship, which was the P+O liner Oronsay, there were good arrangements for children and we were able to leave them in the care of trained child care teachers several hours in the mornings if we wished, and they were generally happy to do that. 

I remember one morning just before lunch; we were steaming across the Indian Ocean and we suddenly missed Judy. We searched the public areas of the ship, especially including the nursery, without success. 

We then began a more systematic search, with our hearts getting nearer and nearer to our mouths, and with Terry in tow, splitting up to cover all the likely areas more quickly. By the end of this process, when we met in our cabin, I had visions of going up to the bridge and asking the captain to stop the ship to search for a child overboard. 

Terry was crouching down looking under the bunks when he suddenly said: “There she is!” Judy had been hiding from us all for fun all that time! What a serious game to play on your parents! 

From Bombay we repeated our two previous trips across the sub-continent to Calcutta and Agartala, by which time we were glad to be in our own home at last. 

Two new family projects we started at this stage. The first was to arrange for the children’s education. Audrey had some friends in the city of Agartala who wanted an English-language pre-school for their children and asked Audrey to start one. So, with the help of one of the officers’ wives, and about thirty children including ours, the kindergarten was begun in a room at one of the city’s schools. This project continued to prosper for the rest of our time in Agartala, and it certainly involved a lot of work and energy from Audrey, who was determined to make a good job of it and did. 

I did a few guest lectures at a new training course that had been established for secondary school teachers in the city. I had hoped that this might develop into a more permanent connection, but that never eventuated. 

Meantime we had bought a Vespa 150 scooter to enable us to move around the city more easily: to the Training College, the kindergarten, and to visit the many friends we had begun to make.  

We regularly attended weekend social events run by the local officers’ club. This was frequented by people who were employees of the Government of India doing a stint in the far-flung corner where we lived, most of them far from their home districts. There was the Slkh ex-RAF officer who ran the airport, the South Indians who worked for the Agriculture Department, the man and his wife who came from Allahabad, and worked in the Education Directorate and university respectively, just to take three examples. And the bank manager came from Kashmir, and the District Commissioner from Nagaland. 

Some of these people were very impressive: the lady who taught at the university had PhDs in Psychology, Philosophy and Education. The Education Director was doing a PhD, in Education, naturally, and asked me to give him a bi of help with his English, although I thought his knowledge of English was pretty good.