The Ways In Which Our Words Outlive Us

When my grandfather was eighteen or so, he was stationed in India during World War II. What he did there or what he thought about the experience had always been such a mystery to me. He passed away when I was young, and no one else spoke much about it.

My grandmother died a couple of weeks ago, and as we resigned ourselves to the task of going through drawers, shoeboxes, and musty footlockers long shut, we began to glimpse these two people who, to us, had more often been "Grandma and Grandpa" than Dorothy and Howard.

In our shifting, we found my grandfather's dogtags, newspaper clippings, discharge papers, and a curious one page narrative that he had typed. There were letters that had been typed over to change spelling--mostly "a" became "e." He had misspellings. He used the old method of typing "x" over lines he apparently felt failed to capture his meaning.

Here is what he wrote from the perspective of a young man from New England in 1940's India. Some of his observations seem rooted in that historical context. Others do offer a peek into the person my grandfather was.

"Todi"

By

Howard Rudd White

In the ancient, tired land of India, a great many souls are crowded together; not in the sense of living close together, but of living with so many other people in the same economical, social, and religious status. The poor are to be found everywhere. In every nook and corner of the country, a poor man is begging, always begging for anything. He is probably unable to work in the rice fields or the hemp mills because of sickness or age. His sons are working; dawn to dark, standing in stagnant, stinking water, tending rice, watching for the ever present snake, or working in long line in a rotting hemp mill. At the holiday festivals, they all pray to their God of Gods to make them happy by lifting age-old burdens from shoulders and hearts. Even in the height of the celebration when eyes are blurred and minds are filled with religious passion for Siva, hearts pump against hollow chests and stomachs.

Todi had been living in this world about sixteen years when our paths met. How he had survived disease and death that boost infant mortality rates in India is a mystery. Two or three of his brothers had been more fortunate. Cholera had singled them out when they were born, and they were burned on the crude wooden pyre near the holy Hooghly River. He was born in the country and lived in the country. Calcutta, mecca of the multitudes, was actually only ninety miles away, but to Todi, it might well be an eternity, for the few annas he received as payment for endless days in the rice fields were earmarked for food, just enough food to tantalize a starving hunger.

Our most important task in India, at Kandenpur actually, consisted of the storage and maintenance of high explosives for aircraft. Kandenpur, a large, barren American airbase was a starting point for air transports flying over the hump of China carrying heavy loads of bombs, shells, and all manner of aircraft artillery. These necessary components for aerial warfare were kept in one big “Ammunition Area” located just within the confines of Kandenpur Airbase. Our basha, with its thatched roof, alive with bugs, sat with its back watching this “area,” while the front served as a sentinel for the main base road and the roadway to the ammo dump. Below us, on the other side of the road to the dump, was a large tract, used for grazing land for the sacred cows and bulls. Many evenings our entertainment consisted of sitting complacently on our basha porch watching two rival bulls in the field below, fighting, not because they enjoyed fighting, but because the open, running sores on their backs and legs covered with black flies, drove them insane. Upstairs, vile vultures, impartial as to the outcome, sailed around and waited…………………..

The persistent enemy, Time, sauntered on, day after day, meaning only hot sun, sand, letters (sometimes), and French toast. Our first Indian “Fukaru” had proved useless; we were making our own beds, shining shoes, cleaning up, etc., and not liking it. There were three of us, and a great many times when it was unbearably hot, or something had gone wrong, there were three too many in the narrow confines of our little “home.” We unanimously decided, strangely enough, to ask the local Indian foreman to find us a good boy who would at least steal without immediately bringing it to our attention. The baboo foreman was all smiles. “Yes, sahib, yes, sahib, yes, sahib.” “Oh, very good man for you, sahib.” “The best for you, master.” “This man, very good man.” “Okay, master?” We said, “Okay,” and received one Todi Nokarajaha, Hindu, for forty five rupees a month, part of which went to Anthony, the foreman. Todi had to pay him back for the privilege of having Anthony get him the job with the white masters. He stood, now, behind Anthony, grinning, eyes sparkling, saluting each of us. “Salam, sahib,” he said to each of us. In that simple way, Todi came to “take care of us,” and to be kidded and also to teach us a bit about this heathen, sick, and strange land, a land he both hated and loved.