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| Thomas Waterfield with Korobi, Bikram, and Nandita Saikia (Pune, early 1990s) |
A mention of the British officers of the Raj does not necessarily send one into raptures. However, there are exceptions. Thomas Waterfield, affectionately called Dada, who fought to acquire Indian citizenship after independence, was one of them.
He was finally granted Indian citizenship in 1950, and lived in India till his death on the fifth of this month, his final years having been spent at a riverside home in Warje. In later life, he used the surname, 'Gay', as it was easier, he said, for Indians to pronounce.
Dada was born in Devonshire, England, 96 years ago and grew up in a luxurious home. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and first came to India as a young Indian Civil Service officer, as had his father and grandfather before him, in 1928. During the Raj, he served as a Magistrate, an Assistant Collector, a Judge, as the Registrar of the Bombay High Court, and as a Commission Chairman.
He met Barbara, who would later become Mrs Waterfield, while he was in India. They had four children: Roger, Rodney, Hugh, and Susan. When India finally became independent in 1947, Barbara went back to England along with their children. Dada, however, chose to stay on in India and adopted a number of children, whom he brought up as his own.
After independence, Dada worked as a journalist, a ghost writer, a film consultant and as a teacher at the Mayo College in Ajmer, Rajasthan. He knew Marathi perfectly, and translated Marathi classics into English. He wrote a book of short humorous stories, Androcles and the Tiger, which was published in 1962, as well as a book of poems, The South-West Monsoon Has Withdrawn, which came out in 1984.
Thomas Gay spent several years at Pratibha Advertising in Pune, which was then a part of the Kirloskar Group. It was there that I was first introduced to him as a child several years ago; my mother, Korobi, worked with him at the ad agency. All that stands out in my mind of that first meeting is a large bowl of water and some chapatis on his windowsill, kept there for birds.
That Dada was an ardent nature-lover was the first in a long series of things I was to learn about him. In those years, he often took me for long walks teaching me about the flora and fauna we encountered. In doing so, he also taught me one of the most important things I have ever learnt: to take time off to appreciate the wonders of nature which surround us all the time, but which we often fail to notice.
Dada was deeply interested in wildlife; he wrote a book on Indian butterflies, and tried to do everything possible to eradicate the superstition that surrounds snakes. I remember an incident he once narrated to me describing how he convinced the inhabitants of a small village in Maharashtra that the green tree snake does not kill people by landing on their heads from tree tops. In fact, it cannot do so: its head is soft and feels like rubber.
Nature was far from Dada's only interest. He was an avid philatelist and numismatist, making intricate coin holders using customised plyboard sheets stacked in bread boxes. He often said, "When you collect coins or stamps, you learn a lot about history, geography, art, and culture. All countries represent the best of themselves when they design their stamps and coins." Dada freely shared his hobbies with children and seemed to be able to bring those inanimate objects to life.
He was also the only person I have ever come across who could talk about Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit with just as much ease as he could discuss the classics in Greek. He was interested in music and had an extremely large collection of classical music, which he often listened to along with audio recordings of Shakespeare's plays. However, it was not the variety of Dada's interests and his knowledge that made one admire him. It was his character.
During a recent visit to his home, I met a lady named Monica. She was an orphan who'd known Dada before independence. "I met Dada on the Deccan Queen. It was a very different train in those days. There were separate sections for the Indians and the British. Dada treated me in the dining car. After that, he often came to visit me and brought me presents," she recalled. "Dada was planning to adopt me, but, after independence, we somehow got separated and I had to leave without even saying good-bye to him, although he had been so kind. I came across his name entirely by chance more than 50 years later and I thought he might have forgotten me. When a mutual acquaintance mentioned my name, he said nothing for a few moments and then pulled out the page of his diary wherein he had described our first meeting."
When I met Monica, she had come to spend time with Dada in his time of need. The wheel had come a full circle.
(A version of this piece was first published in the Times of India on 7 October 2001, a few days after Dada passed away.)