The English Crowd and Apprenticing

True to his word, Henry produced Mona to a large number of friends (and their wives) in high Government positions. She had a very busy time “going the rounds” as Bombay, being the capital of the Bombay Presidency, there were a large concentration of British officers, including the military “Big Hats”.

Besides the social tea parties and club meetings for tennis and gossip, at which Mona used to fit in very well as she had the knack of getting on with both young and old, she also got a fair amount of riding with the younger Police and Army officers. The fact that she was braving the “trials and tribulations” of marrying a foreigner (and an Indian, at that!) plus that she had the latest on life in London, made her a much desired guest! The Police barracks were in Byculla, half-way to Bandra. Byculla also contained the bungalows for the British government community as well as the Byculla Club (a residential club for whites only). A number of junior British officers, either bachelors or those with their wives still in the UK, stayed at the club. It was only about 3 miles form the Secretariat -and taxis were cheap. The zoo was also nearby. At that time, the Bombay zoo was considered to be very well maintained and the grounds had a very nice park. One of my cousins, a graduate in Zoology, was the manager of the place and Mona had great fun playing with the young tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to general indifference, the place has gone very downhill.

Mona had a very good flair for languages. She was fluent in French, spoke a little Spanish and German, and was good at her “native language” (Gaelic)! As soon as she got settled in Bombay, she got hold of a munshi (teacher) and, armed with the Army Urdu teaching primer (“The Munshi”), she tackled Urdu. Orally, it is a register of Hindustani (Hindi being the other one) but it is written using Persian-Arabic script. As she was considering becoming a Muslim, she also learnt to read the Koran in Arabic! She was, at the time, a member of the Church of Scotland, the formalities of which have some similarities to Islam. For instance, prayers in a mosque or any place, can be led by any “elder” in Islam. Similarly, prayers in a “Kirk” can be conducted by any lay preacher.

On the subject of Mona’s idea of embracing Islam, I have to make it clear that at no time had I suggested this to her. As a matter of fact, she did become a Muslim and could declaim the fundamental sentence: “Laa Ilahi Illallah, Mohammedan Rasul-illah” (There is one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet). Many years later, I think it was in Calcutta, she told me that she was not very comfortable being a Muslim, as she could feel its depth. I told her that she was free to change to any other religion she fancied as it would make no difference to me since I was was not a strict practicing Muslim anyway. So, Mona then became a member of the Church of England as she said that she loved the music and singing – which was lacking in the Church of Scotland.

Gammons was an engineering firm started and owned by a person who started out working in the Bombay Public Works Department. He was a good entrepreneur and was soon making a success of his business. One of his innovations was to introduce reinforced concrete in a big way for structural works. When I had arrived in Bombay and was looking around for a job, Gammons had a contract for bridge works on roads under Father’s control. He inquired from Gammons whether there was a chance for me to get a job with them. Gammons regretted that things were very tight and they could not accommodate me. However, if I wanted experience and a certificate later, they would let me work in their Head Office in Bombay on designs.

I spent a couple of months preparing designs and drawings for a variety of bridges. One very interesting design was an arch bridge using steel rods as hangers for the road deck. These descended from a reinforced concrete arch but the rods were at right angles to the arch – that is, they were “radial” instead of the conventional vertical hangers. This made the stresses in the arch much lower with the result that it was a comparatively lighter and cheaper. The problem was that the calculations were very complex and took many hours to complete. In these days, with computers, it would probably take a matter of minutes! The design was a patent of a Swedish firm (Christiania & Nielson) and Gammons had the sole rights in India. Fortunately, I only had to prepare the drawings after the calculations had been done by others!

After I had got a good idea of the operations of the office and as I was not getting any salary, I told the firm that I would like to go to a site where work was going on. As it happened, a bridge using the design of “inclined hangers” was being made on a river near Patalganga Town on the Highway going south from Bombay. It was to replace an “Irish Bridge” (also called a causeway) on the tidal river. There was an Inspection Bungalow on the southern bank and Father arranged for me to stay there. The chowkidar (caretaker) was a fair cook and attended to my needs.

I was dropped there by Father and Mona and was able to return to Bandra every 10 days or so as the distance was only about 80 miles.

The reinforced concrete wells for the piers were founded on the rock bed of the tidal river. The tidal waters had a rise and fall of 10 to 15 feet daily (depending upon the season) so the bottom of the wells were sealed by pumping “colloidal” cement groute into the bottom layers of the 3/4 to 1 inch size crushed stone filling. This was pumped in when the water had filled the well at high tide and, on the ebb, the pressure of the standing water pushed the concrete mortar firmly in, sealing the bottom. The colloidal cement was a new and very interesting material as the cement did not get diluted after being made into a colloid solution – as a result, the setting properties were not spoilt.

I returned to Bombay finally by the end of November after getting a very interesting experience in new techniques and other practical elements of bridge building. Later, in my professional career, I was very happy when I was able to tackle bridge works. Fortunately, I was able to get involved with these quite often!