CALCUTTA

a miscellany

Bengal Club

We were not members, and we paid no sub
To that august concern, the Bengal Club,
But we'd a member friend whose lineage, name,
And very aspect spoke his rightful claim,
And so with him we ordinary mortals
Entered emboldened through the sacred portals
To many a stately ritual at the table,
Where everything proclaimed how fixed and stable
Were British trading interests in the East
(Did we say 'British'? Scottish ones at least)
Immutable, the staid mahogany,
Wine-dark as ever was old Homer's sea,
Mirrored the changeless changes in the men
Who came, then died, then came as sons again—
Small variations on a merchant theme
In an efficient, dull, unending stream.
But Oh! the glory of a lunch-time curry!
The placid meal without a thought of hurry,
But with the leisure of Victoria's era
Slowly proceeds to coffee and madeira.
Cigars, perhaps! And then we'll go downstairs
And sink into enormous leather chairs
Or better, browse upon the library shelves,
Certain that here we shall enjoy ourselves.
For here are all the books that no-one reads
And so just suit our epicurean needs—
The minor novelists of eighteen-eighty
Reserved and prim, not slap-your-back and matey,
The dimmest poets of the dear Queen's time,
Turgid in sentiment and stiff in rhyme.
With these let us escape these loathsome times
Steeped in the horrors of a million crimes
Now war's the only full-time occupation
For the poor herded fools of every nation.

Royal Asiatic Society

Where Park Street's traffic joins Chowringhee's tide
A building stands, retiring and aside
From whose demurely classical façade
No earnest student of the East is barred.
Enter at once these hospitable doors
If you would study early Sanskrit laws
Or Muslim mosques, or Hindu arts and letters,
Lore of our elders and (perhaps) our betters
The Sanchi stupas, or the Indus cities
The Vedic šlokas, or odd Tantric ditties,
The iconography of Indian saints,
The style the artist of Ajanta paints—
The answer comes, as from that automatic
Slot machine—The Royal Asiatic.

(Now the society that Jones once founded
Stands like a learned oasis, surrounded
By all the crew of Barclay's Ship of Fools
Hee-hawing like a pack of doltish mules:
Some minor clerk from a provincial bank,
Who brays the loudest, fills appropriate rank,
Glares round the Mess with pale blue gooseberry eyes,
Favours a moustache of quite fantastic size,
Enjoys the exercise of petty power
And struts upon the stage his little hour.)

But we forget unpleasantries like these
In the cool library's be-punkah'd breeze—
The Indians flutter ghost-like in the gloom,
Dhotis like cere-cloths from some opened tomb.
And what's that monstrous walrus there? Oh, gosh,
A life-size bust of old Sir Asutosh,
Who, most benign of all the Mukerjis
Has never ceased us versifiers to please
As, huge in bronze and academic gown
He beams upon the traffic of the town.

The Ochterloney Monument

Of monuments we've seen, quite the most phony
Is that erected to old Ochterloney.
The English genius for compromise
Is here displayed to our bewildered eyes.
Each nation's style was choicely picked and blended
(Presumably lest someone be offended)
And so a base in the Egyptian mode
Bears an Ionic column's heavy load.
But lest the interest wane towards the skies
The architect thought up a fine surprise
And on the top of that he neatly set
The upper storey of a minaret.
A macedoine of styles without a peer—
Except the far worse hotch-potch which we fear
Must be referred to—that appalling jelly-
Mould architecture Lutyens built at Delhi.

between 1942 and 1945

NOTES

Calcutta; Calcutta miscellany
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