Danny
Regarding 'conduct unbecoming of a Sahib' during your time in India when it was still part of the Empire, there was still some vestiges of the 'old order' when I spent time there in the 1980s. I recall stopping for the night in a mountain village, when doing a multi-day hike. I was in a hut, surrounded by a good many local people, all interested to see this 'Britisher'. There were no seats to hand so I joined everyone else on the floor. There was an immediate murmur from my audience and quickly a seat materialised. Happy to be treated no better than anyone else, I declined to use it, until it was pointed out to me that it was unthinkable that I should sit on the floor, and must, as befitted me, make use of it. Later, at a Hill Station, I commissioned a local craftsman to make me a wood-carving knife to my own specification. This chap, whose father had been a servant for one of the British families in the old days, insisted on calling me 'Master'...
'yes Master, but what is the purpose of this knife?' I was quite shocked to be called as much, as it sounded far too subservient, as if we were living in Victorian times. But of course it was a 'master and servant' relationship to this man, and he was only showing me respect, as his father might have done.
My mother recalls the use of Tongas: horse-drawn, two wheeled carriages, with a canopy over the top. She took many such taxis with my father. At Quetta in 1942, she was 19 and not so long out of school. She recalled that the horses were very prone to 'backfire', and being young and innocent, absolutely didn't know where to look, as she sat opposite my father!
