Sketching week 6

This week I have been trying to make progress on drawing human bodies and people's faces.

Here are some samples. This is a group at the beach.

A more formal portrait from a magazine photo.

The people waiting for service at the bank.

Finally a portrait of my grandfather from a 1941 Christmas photo.

Learning Curve 1958-9

For those first two years we were mostly occupied in learning the Bengali language, which was what everyone in those parts used for everyday communication, and to get familiar with the local culture(s) and the way the mission worked on the ground. 

This was a very steep learning curve. Each weekday morning we had an hour’s study of Bengali with our “pundit”, and elderly schoolteacher who taught us to speak, understand and read and write Bengali. In addition, for the three months from March to May we attended the Bengal Christian Council’s language school in Darjeeling.  

Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling

The Language School used holiday cottages in the grounds of Mt Hermon School, a beautiful site on a ridge leading north downhill from the Darjeeling Bazaar, with a clear view on fine days to the magnificent Kanchenjunga range of the Himalayan mountains.

We studied with missionaries from the UK, USA, Australia, Denmark, and other countries. There was a mid-term break halfway through, when those who wanted to could join a trek through the Himalayan foothills. I did this the second year, although Audrey decided to stay in Darjeeling, because by then she was expecting Judy. 

Bengali is an indo-European language similar to other North Indian tongues (eg Hindi, Gujerati), descended from Sanskrit, and has lots of grammar and meanings similarities with Romance (Latin) and Germanic languages like French and English. The first ten numbers are almost the same; the Latin and Bengali for “I will go” are the same. 

As we became more familiar with Bengali words, we discovered with surprise that several words we had thought were standard English had actually come from India, probably with the veterans of the Indian Army returning to Blighty (itself an Indian term) or taking up offers from the New Zealand Government to settle on land grants here. As well as the obvious “curry”, “bazaar” and “bungalow’, “tick” (correct), “dekko” (look), “dekchi” (large cooking pot), “cushy” (happy, comfortable), “cot” (simple bed), and “pajama” (literally leg-clothing) were straight from Bengali and/or other North Indian languages.

We also learned about culture and customs. We learned never to accept anything with our left hand, or to eat with it.  Left hands are kept strictly for washing the backside. Using the left hand to give or receive is insulting. People who do not shower before every meal, but sit in their bathwater like Europeans, are regarded as dirty and unhygienic. 

Mathematics historians tell us the zero was invented in India and the decimal system came from there, but the ordinary Indian uses a 2+2=4 and 4x4=16 system. For this purpose the hand is a useful abacus. They calculate on the left hand, using the thumb as a pointer, and the joints of the other fingers, starting with the little one, as the abacus. Rupees were traditionally divided into four “shika”, shika into four “anna” and anna into four “pice”. Weights and measures also followed this binary system, so calculating prices in this way was dead easy. 

Most people ate two main meals a day, normally mid-morning and late evening. Two other snacks, early morning and late afternoon, called “tiffin” were common among middle-class people.

We watched gangs of workers pulling heavily laden carts, and singing work songs, like sea-shanties, while they hauled, the foreman singing each line, followed by his crew repeating it. Other crews were loading boats, singing together in the same way, or towing them up rivers like the Volga Boatmen. 

We saw men and women breaking bricks to make road surfaces, because there are no rocks or quarries on the flat Bengal plain, but lots of brick-kilns. 

We watched the rice-crops grow, from paddy-fields flooded with people planting seedlings, through plants growing fast and changing colour to the deep green of mature rice. Some parts of the district were able to grow three crops a year, and everyone had at least two crops most years. 

We saw villages where the main crops were oranges or pineapples; one year pineapples were so plentiful you could buy 256 of them for a rupee (15 cents). And there were plenty of other fresh fruit readily available: bananas, lemons, lychees in season, pummelos (huge grapefruit), besides more familiar European fruit imported from cooler provinces. 

We learned that foodstuffs we wanted but which were not produced locally could be purchased from a Calcutta merchant in the New Market, who would send it by plane the same day: biscuits, tinned fruit, tinned meat, and so on. Fresh meat available included chickens (purchased live by our cook), goat, and pork, and sometimes beef from Muslim butchers.

 

A request for 14 February

Mid-morning somewhere in the hills above Rome

and on his doorstep sits a balding senior citizen.

In front of him a group of younger neighbours appears

And one of the better dressed begins a speech.

"We have a special request, your reverence. 

We want you to become our patron."

"So," replies the older man,

"Who do you represent?"

"We are the All-Italy Lovers' Association, sir,

And we hear you have a soft spot for lovers."

Valentinus takes a deep breath and starts to think:

If I am too reluctant they will think I have 

Something to hide,

And if I am too keen they will think I have

Something else to hide.

"What is the job description of the patron

Of your illustrious society?"

"The main thing we need is to add

Your saintly reputation to our image;

Lovers have a bit of a bad press these days

And we have a corporate aim to change that."

"Doesn't the choice of patron require

An investigation by the authorities?"

"Your reverence, we have already arranged that.

We have a committee standing by to start.

The chairman is a former Italian Prime Minister,

And the members are two former US Presidents,

Several members of European Royal Families,

And half a dozen film stars."

Valentinus heaves a great sigh.

"In that case, there will be no problem.

With such illustrious referees I should be

Able to play the part as your patron."

"The one difficulty is, sir, one that baffles us.

We have not been able to find a Devil's Advocate!"

"I don't think that should worry you too much,

There were several popes a few centuries ago

Who would have all the experience you need!"

Family History 1.728

(Shipboard diary of my great-grandfather, Charles Gaze, aged 27)

 

14th February 1860

Dull and damp, calm sea but fair wind.

 

Some Valentines sent about the ship.

 

 

 

 

I made the children a little table of the lid of box of Skittles, present from John Curry. They are always having something made there being a number of pieces of wood lying about the Carpenters bench.

 

A pig killed today.

 

Doctor gave some arrowroot.

 

15th

Dull morning, but clears off after breakfast. Sailors begin to prepare tackling for unshipping anchors etc.                  

 

Fair wind, but rolling in consequence of wind being astern of us. Ship sails much steadier when wind on the quarter, as the sailors say, that is when all the sails drawn which they do not when the wind is direct after of us.

S. Lat. 44+2 E. Long 88=50.

Hospital being prepared for the reception of a single young woman in the second cabin expecting to be confined.

16th

Very fine and calm sea.

2 large albatross and several other birds, Molahawks flying about us today, some seen every day.

17th E Long. 95-7

Fine and strong north breeze. My wife washed and I hung out some clothes.

 

 

 

 

 

18th

Strong N.E. Breeze, reefing topsails, sea washed over several of us this morning.

1 p.m. wind not so Strong and Raining, unreefing and continual rain till night.

S. Lat. 43=29.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Waitangi Day Part 4

If you had been there on 5 February 1840, the first day of the hui, you would have heard the text of the proposed Treaty read out in English and Maori for everyone to think about.

For Hobson this was almost routine; wherever big nations had been taking over little ones they had made these treaties. In North America, near Hobson's stamping ground in the West Indies, the US government had been making treaties with the Native American tribes regularly.

 

It was common for them to be quite simple, with a few paragraphs to make it clear that:

1. The invading government would make important final decisions from now on.

2. All less important ones, especially about traditional tribal property rights, would stay in the hands of the indigenous people.

3. The invading government would treat the natives as if they were its own citizens.

And this was more or less what the proposal was for this new treaty between the Maori leaders and Queen Victoria's representatives.

At least that was what Hobson and the other Britishers understood. And from what Williams said in response to Colenso's objection, they believed the Maori leaders were right up with the play.

 

By the way, to find out what happened as a consequence of the North American treaties, read Dee Brown's 1970 book: Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

 

 

Agartala at last

When we arrived in Agartala in February of 1958, it was the capital of what had been until 1951 a Native State, that is, a territory ruled by a Maharaja, with the UK controlling defence and foreign relations, and advising on some other things, but otherwise independent. After Independence in 1947, Delhi took over the imperial role. And the state had only been forced to agree to inclusion in India properly by the death of the Maharaja. 

The royal family, heads of the Deb Barma, or Tripuri tribe, had done little to bring Tripura into the twentieth century.  There was only a few miles of sealed road, one high school, one rudimentary hospital, and little other infrastructure provided by the government. The airstrip that was Agartala airport had been built by the RAF during the war over Burma. (New Zealand airman Cliff Emeny from Taranaki had been based there for several months while fighting the Japanese). 

The name “Agartala” means “at the foot of the aloes tree”; I never found the aloes tree, but there was a huge banyan at one of the prominent roundabouts in the town, where an important market was situated. 

The mission compound where we were to live and work was two miles from the centre of town, on a twenty-acre property, roughly square, roughly cut into four corners by shallow valleys across the middle both ways.  Front were the hospital on the western corner, school and church on the largest eastern corner, Bible School on the back eastern corner, and school hostels on the back western quarter. 

The buildings were constructed with concrete floors and walls up to windowsill level. This was the local solution to the problem of termites, which regularly ate anything soft, ie wood or bamboo, up to windowsills. Fixed to the brick and concrete wall pillars, at windowsill level, were hardwood (sal) pillars and major frame members, and on them bamboo framework was laid for roof and walls. On the bamboo framework, which was tied together with coconut fibre string, was laid bamboo matting wall or roof units, or in many cases corrugated iron as at home. 

You can see a bit of the construction of our house from this 1960 photo

The simple technologies of bamboo  construction were interesting and cheap; they needed replacement after about eight years, with a process at about four years, to turn the bamboo strips upside down to expose the less weathered end of the strips. 

The house we were allocated was newly built. It consisted of four rooms on end, with verandahs front and back, and through breeze provided by front and back French doors. In the centre was a lounge, with a bedroom on each side of it, and at one end a dining room, with a kitchen at right angles to it. The cookhouse, with its ground-level fireplace for cooking, was a separate small building. 

There was no running water, so every drop needed had to carried up from the wells in the valley below the house by a servant, who also assisted the cook. There was no electricity, so frig and lighting was provided by kerosene. We had several hurricane lanterns and a large Petromax pressure lamp for the main working area at nights. 

Bathrooms had a large tank to hold water which was filled each day by the servant. There was a tin with a handle for ladelling water out and tipping it over oneself at bath time. Toilets were attached to a septic tank. 

All windows had shutters, so that when there was a cyclone the doors and shutters could be closed to block the wind and rain. 

After two years, we did get electricity. This made a huge difference: people were easily able to carry on working in the evenings, we were able to show movies at school, and to operate other modern gadgets like electric ovens and so on.

My Waitangi Day Part 3

If you had been a fly on the wall on 6 February 1840, the apparently most important person around would have been William Hobson, naval captain and Governor-designate, chairing the proceedings.

We sometimes think of him as an outsider, a bit like the angels in the Christmas story, dropped in from a different world. But Hobson was an experienced "Law and order" man. He had spent years chasing pirates in the Caribbean, and he had visited New Zealand in 1837 to check on law and order here, and had written a report for the British Government, especially in relation to the crimes committed by convicts who had escaped from the penal colony across the Tasman Sea.

His most important goal was to get a piece of paper from those in authority in the Maori world, which would authorise him to arrest wrongdoers, along with his warrant from Queen Victoria. Because the main gripe of most people here was that no-one could control the criminals. They considered themselves outside the law, because the British authorities had no power here.

 

So Hobson was in a hurry; he wanted a clear statement of final authority from Maori as from London, and he wanted it before the French or the Americans got into gear.

 

There was no-one else in sight who could have done a better job, and the British Government at that time was in the hands of more liberal and more humane forces than it had been for a while.

 

The deal done at Waitangi could have been a lot worse!