The romance of a forgotten
Anglo-Indian summer Photograph: Preeti Verma Lal

And then they came - the Mendis', the Christensens, the Booths, the Bonners, the Camreroons….They bought acres and acres of wild land, they built a church, a club, an abattoir, a post office, a poultry farm and nice little Anglican homes with flowers on the periphery and tiled, slanted roofs. They brought their pianos, their horses and their mahogany chests and teak four-poster beds. The sal forest was suddenly agog with music, guffaws, the smell of fresh meat, of rum cakes and tangy beer.

He stares out of the frame - a strapping man, his sparse hair gelled and combed back pleasingly, his black bow perched nattily on a crisp white shirt; you can see the arrogance in his eyes and you would conjecture he only mumbled monosyllables. There are not many photographs of Ernest Timothy McCluskie, this one is from the 1938 edition of The Skipper magazine. You should know the man because if you see McCluskieganj as a scratch on the map, it is only because E.T. McCluskie contrived a dream.

During the tumult of the swadeshi movement in the early 1930s, this rich businessman from Calcutta got perked with an idea - he wanted to bunch together the Anglo-Indians in a verdant hamlet and was looking for that some place on earth. He found it nestled in the bountiful sal forest of what was then the fiefdom of the Raja of Ratu, a small principality not too far from Ranchi. He acquired 9,500 acres from the King for an undisclosed amount and sent circulars to nearly 2,00,000 Anglo-Indians in India inviting them to settle in this newly found place where the jackals roamed, the river flowed silently and the forest grew wildly. That was 1932.

And then they came - the Mendis', the Christensens, the Booths, the Bonners, the Camreroons….They bought acres and acres of wild land, they built a church, a club, an abattoir, a post office, a poultry farm and nice little Anglican homes with flowers on the periphery and tiled, slanted roofs. They brought their pianos, their horses and their mahogany chests and teak four-poster beds. The sal forest was suddenly agog with music, guffaws, the smell of fresh meat, of rum cakes and tangy beer. In the beginning there were nearly 300 Anglo-Indian families. All was well till 1946 and then just as they had come they left… one by one, taking the train out of McCluskieganj station and going wherever Fate took them.

But not everyone left. Kitty Teixeira's grandfather luxuriating with a pension of Rs 112 a month, chugged from Assam and bought 9.10 acres of isolated land in McCluskieganj. He could have opted for London but he chose to stay back and rear his rather large brood.
"I was born in McCluskieganj, I know no other world," says Teixeira as she holds on to a bag full of puffed rice and haggles over the price of bananas in her basket. She sells fruits at the McCluskieganj station and rambles between impeccable English and the local dialect with a drawl. Kitty is 56, porcelain skinned, brown eyes, her hair with naughty curls and the colour of gold. Wiping the sweat on her blue nylon saree that is carelessly draped on her rather fragile casing, she wanders into a world that seems so lost and forgotten now.

"There were no schools in McCluskieganj but I remember wearing my Sunday best going to the church and winning Rs 18 in a three-legged potato race and a tin of pickles in a lucky dip," her voice fading into a nostalgic whisper. "Oh! I also won Rs 6 at a fancy dress competition where I dressed up as a paan-bidiwallah," she hurriedly adds.

Bryan Christensen was teaching in Calcutta when his mother called him to McCluskieganj to look after the family property. That was in 1963 and Christensen stayed on, now running a hostel for students of Don Bosco Academy. "When I came there were no macadamized roads, I actually liked the dirt road; the people were friendly and the place much more homely. Of course, things have changed…" Tracy, his daughter, is happy in house that is stacked with books and garden where the large magenta hibiscus grows.

McCluskieganj today is still as beautiful as when the Anglos would punter on their horses and come to the post office to pick mail or dance all night as the gramophone kept churning melodious tunes and slung their guns during Christmas parties (there were too many wild animals then). Of the nearly 300 original settlers, only 20 families remain, others have been bought by rich brown sahibs as summer homes. McCluskieganj changed when Alfred de Rozario, an Anglo-Indian opened a branch of Don Bosco Academy. A number of families now house boarders - might sound incredible but there are 27 hostels in McCluskieganj. There are tourist lodges and some houses still bearing marble plaques carrying very British names.

Dr Alison Blunt, a geographer who teaches in Queen Mary College in London, still remembers "the beauty of the place and the warm hospitality of current residents". She came to McCluskieganj to research for her book Domicile and diaspora: Anglo-Indian women and the spatial politics of home. There are others who come from far off land looking for their ancestors - any trace, any memory of them. McCluskieganj holds stacks loads of nostalgia and history for them.

It is getting dark and as I get ready to drive back, I notice Teixeira as she plays with her curls and balances the basket of bananas sitting precariously on her golden hair. She goes back to the fineries and joys of a lost world, but the sound of an empty freight train drowns her voice. You know tomorrow is not another day for Kitty Teixeira. Yesterday was.

Published in Discover India magazine, November 2005