NigG,
...The (British) Indian Army needed more staff for its Ordnance Corps and invited applicants to transfer...
As a Warrant Officer in the RIAOC, he would have carried the traditional title of "Conductor" or Sub-Conductor". Perhaps it might be useful to recall that, after the 1857 Mutiny (or "First War of Independence" [whichever way you look at it], when the former East India Company was effectively "nationalised"), there were two armies in British India. The former was the "Indian Army" ("John Company's" old Army), who were "Regulars", all Indian troops with all-British officers, who would spend their whole careers out in India.
They were supplemented by battalions of British Army regiments, which came out on "tours" of three years or so, and then be relieved by another in rotation. A long service soldier, or a "career" officer could reckon on serving half his time in India.
There was an unspoken purpose in this arrangement. Britain was afraid of a second Mutiny. They had come within a whisker of losing India in the first one. Now that the reasoning was: a mutineeering Indian army would, by definition, be without its British officers (whose throats they had cut). Unled, they would degenerate into a rabble. An all-British army only half its size should easily prevail over it. It was not until the thirties, IIRC, that the first Indian Army officers received the King's Commission. This is usually attributed to racial prejudice, but it was not so.
And the North-West Frontier provided a perfect training ground for the British army. Why run around on Salisbury plain or the Brecon Beacons, firing blanks, when here you had a real live enemy and live rounds were flying round you ? The chaps would learn real soldiering much more quickly this way ! And the training was much cheaper, too.
...By the look of it, it was a 'no brainer'. Having transferred he acquired a typical colonial bungalow, with the servants as follows: an Ayah (nursemaid), a Bearer (waiter), a Mahli (gardener), a Sweeper (cleaner) and a Kansamah (cook)...
One small point: "Bearer" is translated as "waiter" and that is correct. You would use the word to call a waiter in a restaurant. But a single officer would have one to himself, and an Other Rank a share of one, as his "batman" (personal servant and factotum), his "Jeeves". A good bearer was worth his weight in rupees: in my time the going rate was Rs20 a month (£1/10/- or $6 'over the pond').
Somewhere in the past I have Posted a rather nice little story. A young officer fresh out of Sandhurst had been posted to a British battalion going out for a "tour". An equally young local was engaged as his "bearer". He learned very fast, and the two got on very well together for the three years. Then the Lieutenant went home and thought no more about it. Exceptionally, he did not go out again for twenty years, and then (a Lieutenant-Colonel) returned to India to take command of his battalion.
Waiting for him at the foot of the gangplank in Bombay was his old bearer, ready to take charge of his kit. He had heard (in some mysterious way) of his old Sahib's impending return, and travelled a thousand miles from his village (probably on top of, or hanging on to a train), confident that they could pick up where they left off. It was so, and they went on together to the Colonel's posting, the bearer now in the comfort of the bearer's compartment at the back of his Sahib's first-class carriage. So the story (true, I'm told) ends.
Much more in your Post to go at, but that will do for the moment.
Danny.