Passage to India .
Cliff, CockneySteve and others, I still feel humbled by the vast technical knowledge displayed, especially lately ,with the discourse on the "preignition" subject. I remember that my old Riley used to run on for what seemed like hours especially in warm weather. ( Does the name of Fredddy Dixon and Rileys mean anything to anyone ? No cheating via Wikking !) I feel out of place sometimes with my efforts but I have been encouraged by many and I agree that this Forum IS so interesting and I think that the change of subject is one of the things that I like about it so here goes; back to "The Jewel in the Crown."
Luckily, even with our experiences with the communal toilets and the pi-dogs, we had something that had never entered our lives before...servants. We found that we had entered the most rigid "Trade Union" that we had ever dreamed of, when we started to take on a very neccessary staff to run the household under the very different conditions that we were now faced with. It wasn't called a trade union; it was called the Caste System. I had a bearer who would only touch my clothes but not anything of my wife's; a cook who would cook but not prepare or serve food, a food preparer (potato peeler) who also cleaned the rooms but not the bathroom or toilet which were left to a poor little man from the "untouchables". There was also the Ayah who looked after the children (Very well, actually ) and considered herself above all the others. Thomas, the cook, would come to Dora every morning with a sheet of paper for the day's menu. After the rationing of the U.K. our imagination would run riot, especially the desserts, but, day after day, the prescribed sweet would not be served, with all sorts of different excuses from Thomas. We found out that the only dessert that Thomas knew was creme caramel. To this day the sight or name of creme caramel takes me instantly to India.
Although Air India had hired two of us as Instructors, not enough of the pilots were experienced enough to fly the routes and we were often pressed into service. Air India were fortunate in having as Chief, one of the most dynamic and likeable men that I have ever met in my life. His name was J.R.D. Tata, always known simply as J.R.D. He was already one of the richest men in India, through he and his family's textile mills and multitude of concerns ,but he, alone started Air India before the war. He was revered by all his employees and, I was told, taught himself to fly and I also believe that he held the first Indian Commercial Pilot's licence.
Flying, in India was different, to say the least. One of the first pupils that I had was a very young chap who had only flown small single-engined aircraft and he had to be converted to D.C.3's. His taxying was very erratic and we were fortunate in staying on the taxiway but we eventually lined up and I told him to take off. He took his feet off the brakes, opened up the port throttle and spun the aircraft around. "Ooh, yes, I clean forgot that we had two engines" he said. I eventually found out that his Father had been instrumental in getting his commercial licence "for my Birthday, you know" !
One day, coming in to land at Santa Cruz, we hit a buzzard on the approach . The authorities who had designed the airport had overlooked, or ignored the fact that there was a meat packing factory in line with the main runway and the resulting buzzards, ubiquitous "Kitehawks" and even vultures were a constant menace. This one broke one of the main legs of the extended undercarriage so I had to retract the other one and then fly around Bombay for a couple of hours to burn up fuel and then made a wheels up landing on the grass beside the runway. It was deemed safer to do this than land on the one good wheel. The monsoon helped in having made the grass nice and wet and we slid along for a long way , hotly pursued by what I thought was the safety equipment truck, but turned out to be a lorry loaded with coolies , who jumped on our aircraft, gaily waving to us through the windows and proceeded to paint out the logo, "Air India" with whitewash before it could be photographed by the Press. I had a photograph from "The Times of India" showing the D.C.3 on it's belly with the long white streak effectively hiding the logo but it has long since been lost in the numerous moves that we have made since then....1948 !