About 20 years ago, I visited the waterfalls at Sivasamudra in Karnataka state, India. At one viewpoint, there was a fence to which padlocks had been attached. The fence was special; it surrounded the tomb of a Muslim saint. I had never seen anything like this before.
I asked our well-educated driver, Rahim, about the locks. His explanation was that people who had a wish that they wanted fulfilled, attached a lock to the fence and discarded the key. Their belief was that when their wish was granted, God would unlock the padlock.
Some years after visiting Sivasamudram, I began noticing bridges in Europe to which padlocks had been attached, often in great numbers. Each lock usually bore a name that had been written on it. These locks are known as ‘love locks’. Their supposed origin was at a bridge in Vrnjačka Banja in Serbia in 1914 (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_lock). Loving couples place padlock is on a bridge or railing, and throw away the key. The lock is placed to symbolise their undying live for one another, rather than to fulfil a wish, such as hoping for a baby or a spouse, or success in some other venture, as Rahim explained to us at Sivasamudram.
Some bridges have had so many locks attached to them that the weight of these attachments can threaten the structural integrity of the bridge.
Locks on a bridge over one of the navigli in Milano
Today, 15 September 2026,when visiting the navigli – the canal network of Milano in Italy – I spotted neat clusters of lo e locks, which looked a bit like bunches of misshapen grapes. Seeing these lo ks brought back memories of my visit to Sivasamudram, and inspired me to write this.
In January 2025, while visiting the extensive remains of Golconda, which is near Hyderabad in Telangana, I noticed an old artillery piece that bore the letters ‘VOC’, the initials of the Dutch East India Company. This got me curious about possible Dutch connections with Golconda, and I began researching on the Internet. While doing this, I became aware of Pulicat, which is on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, about 70 miles north of Chennai. This small place was under the control of the Dutch for most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Apart from learning about Pulicat for the first time, I discovered that this now sleepy place was formerly involved in the trafficking of human beings.
Just as the Portuguese had done before them, the Dutch were involved with trading slaves along the Coromandel Coast including at Pulicat. Apart from generating revenues, slaves were needed to provide labour in the Dutch colonies including Sri Lanka and the East Indies. They also exported these poor individuals to the West Indies. Pulicat was a significant centre of the Dutch Coromandel slave trade. An important source of these slaves were boats from the Burmese kingdom of Arakan. These vessels raided Bengal and captured many Indians from that area. They were then shipped to Pulicat (and other Dutch trading posts), where they were bought and trans-shipped to be sent on to places where labour was needed. It was big business. For example, between 1659 and 1661, between 8000 and 10000 slaves were shipped from Coromandel ports including Pulicat. During the heyday of the Dutch occupation of Pulicat, slaves sometimes made up from between 25% to 66% of its population.
Prior to visiting Pulicat in January 2025, I did not know about the slave trading that occurred along the east coast of India. Also, naively, I had not realised that the Dutch had been so deeply involved in the despicable trading of human beings. In July 2023, an Indian publication, ThePrint, noted that the royal house of the Netherlands:
“… had directly earned at least €500 million from the slave trade in modern currency.”
It continued:
“This weekend, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands formally apologised for the role of the Orange-Nassau dynasty in enabling the slave trade. The Dutch East India Company slave traders, the King said, had turned individuals into commodities, a kind of oppression that is ‘the most hurtful, the most humiliating, the most degrading’.”
When the British took over Pulicat in 1814, it was a shadow of its former self. This was partly because by then Chennai was becoming a major port. Whereas Pulicat’s population had reached at least 50,000 in the early 16th century, by 1889, it was about 5,000. Under British rule, Pulicat was a fishing village and a British seaside resort and picnic spot. Although its lighthouse was rebuilt in the 1890s, it served not as a beacon to guide traders into Pulicat, but merely to warn mariners of the hazardous shoals near to the place.
In 2011, Pulicat had about 18,000 inhabitants. We saw plenty of them as we drove slowly though the town’s narrow, congested streets. The main road from Chennai runs through the centre of Pulicat and then along a bridge that traverses the mouth of the Kosasthathalaiyar River next to which the town lies. After discovering the town’s poorly marked, not too pleasant, public toilets, we turned down a road that leads past the Dutch Cemetery and a modern school named Dutch Academy Nursery and Primary School, and reached the AARDE Pulicat Museum. This very basic, small museum is housed in what must have once been a small shop. Its walls have some interesting informative panels attached to them. These outline the history of Pulicat. There were also some reproductions of old plans of Fort Geldria built by the Dutch. As for the exhibits, they are a rather shambolic assembly of unlabelled odds and ends. In one glass fronted cabinet, there were some fragments of ceramic vessels. I wondered whether these were bits of things left behind by the Dutch. On close examination, I noticed one of these broken pieces was labelled “made in Japan”.
The Dutch Cemetery, which is a few yards away from the museum, is fascinating. The stone archway at its entrance is flanked by a pair of carved stone skeletons. One of them has on its head a spindle-shaped object that looks like a double-sided tabla with a wasp-waist. Actually, it is an hourglass (see below). The other appears to be resting its head on its raised right hand while placing its left hand on a skull. Like many other colonial cemeteries that we have visited in India, there are several obelisks to be seen. However, what makes the Dutch Cemetery extremely fascinating is that the lettering on almost all the gravestones and monuments is crystal clear, easy to read. Hardly affected by centuries of weathering, the inscriptions look as if they were carved yesterday. In “List Of Inscriptions On Tombs Or Monuments Madras Vol 2” by Julian James Cotton (published 1946), I found the following:
“The old Dutch cemetery is perhaps the most interesting of its kind in India; and the artistic merit of the coats of arms carved on the tombstones is such that it has been suggested that they were sent out from Holland, though no authority is known for the statement.”
Regarding the gateway, this source related:
“In front of each of the two gateposts stands a sculptured stone skeleton, almost life size. These figures are said to be male and female. One has a hourglass on his head and the other supports a skull on a column. The native legend is that the former figure holds an eggshell and represents a Dutch Governor who, during a terrible famine, doled out eggshells of rice to the starving poor and made a fortune out of their sufferings. His memory was so execrated that every passer-by used to spit at the effigy…”
This same book also lists the graves and quotes the inscriptions on them, as well as those in a second Dutch cemetery, which we did not see. One of the oldest graves that I spotted was of Dirk Maes van Rees, who had died in 1662. Many of the graves were of people who died in the 18th century. A great number of gravestones had family crests carved above the inscriptions. At the far end of the cemetery, we found two graves of people with British names: Henry Forton, who died at Pulicat in 1864, aged 52 years; and Elizabeth Catherine, wife of Mr William Lodge, who died in 1862, aged 56 years. The Dutch cemetery is a reminder that not every Dutch person, who came to India to make a fortune, returned home. What it does not recall is the vast numbers of Indians who were exported by the Dutch as slaves, and had no hope of ever seeing their homes again. Today, the cemetery is visited by tourists: we met a group of Indian students. And it is populated with goats which graze on the vegetation growing amongst the funerary monuments. Apparently, there had been a Portuguese cemetery, but this was either destroyed by the Dutch when they took over Pulicat or, like the Dutch fort, neglected and left to disintegrate.
The coast of India is dotted with tiny places that were once ruled by Europeans. Before viewing Pulicat, we had already visited Daman, Diu, Goa, Mahe, Karaikal, Tranquebar, and Pondicherry. These are all places that have to some extent become unimportant. Some other former European trading posts have flourished and become great cities, such as Mumbai, Kolkata, Surat, and Chennai. We have visited these places several times and enjoyed spotting relics of their colonial eras. Pulicat, which was once an important trading centre is now a peaceful fishing port – a case of ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’.
Much of the above is a slightly modified excerpt from my book “88 DAYS IN INDIA: A JOURNEY OF MEMORY AND DISCOVERY“, which is available from Amazon:.
MY MOTHER’S FATHER, who died young in the early 1930s, was Mayor of Barkly East, a small town in the Eastern Cape (South Africa). He was the driving force in bringing the railway over the mountains from Lady Grey to Barkly East. This was the most expensive (in terms of cost per mile) stretch of railway ever built in South Africa. It included a series of switchback stretches to allow the trains to ascend or descend the steep mountain slopes. Another mountain railway with switchbacks can be found on India’s West Bengal. The narrow gauge railway links New Jalpaiguri in the plains with Darjeeling high up in the mountains. We travelled on this line on December 2019. Here is what I wrote soon after the ride.
The author and the train
Today we travelled on a narrow gauge mountain railway with at least 5 switchbacks. It is the so called ‘Toy Train’ that runs incredibly slowly between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling which is in the foothills of the Himalayas, more than 2000 metres above sea level.
We took almost two hours to travel the first about three miles. This was mainly because of a seemingly interminable wait for a signal man to arrive to allow our train to cross a river near Siliguri. Soon after we began moving, we passed tea gardens and began our several hour slow ascent towards Kurseong, Ghum, and Darjeeling.
The train follows the route of NH55, crossing over it frequently at unguarded level crossings. The serpentine course of the railway is designed to lengthen its route in order to reduce the gradients that need to be tackled.
The wheels squeal and shriek as the carriages wind around the tight curves of the tracks. The diesel engine’s horn blasts very frequently to clear the path for the train.
The views from the train are spectacular. The carriages pass extremely close to buildings, plants along the side of the track, and steep drops. Passing through towns on the route, sometimes we were so close to shops beside the track that it would have been easy to snatch goods from them. Leafy branches sprung through the open carriage windows, shedding leaves and flowers.
The flora along the route was very varied. We passed a multitude of colourful flowers including magnificently exuberant poinsettias.
Because of our slow start we travelled the last three and a half hours in darkness as the sun set long before we arrived at our destination. We arrived over three hours late.
Our enjoyment of this superb railway journey was enhanced by having conversations with a businessman from Bangalore and a couple from Lincolnshire in the UK.
Even though it is very slow, a trip on the Toy Train is thoroughly recommendable.
When we arrived at Darjeeling, it was dark and extremely cold. There were few people at the station apart from our fellow passengers. There were no taxis or autorickshaws, and we had no clue as to where our guest house was located, and how to reach it. Luckily, we had our host’s telephone number, and we rung him. The kind fellow, a Nepalese Buddhist cleric as we discovered later, came in his car to fetch us.
Although our host’s family were very hospitable, we would not stay at that place again. The main problem was that it could only be accessed from the street by a steep outdoor staircase without a handrail. One false step, and one of us might have fallen from the steps and then down the orecipitous slope into the ravine far below us.
I have yet to revisit Darjeeling, which I loved, but next time, I will choose a warmer time of year.
IN AUGUST 2011, my wife was invited to attend a Loreto House School reunion in Calcutta (Kolkata). As I had never been to the city before, I accompanied her. While my wife took part in the daily activities with some of her former schoolmates, I explored, and fell in love with, the great city on the Hooghly River – one of the channels through which the Ganga (Ganges) makes its way to the sea.
Throughout our five-day visit to the city, the monsoon rains fell heavily and incessantly. I walked around Calcutta in sandals without socks – often wading through filthy water that submerged my feet and lapped around my ankles. Fortunately, my feet did not become infected by whatever might have been lurking in the water. However, the monsoon did not affect my enjoyment of the vibrant, but delightfully decaying. city – one could almost say it is India’s own distinctive version of Havana in Cuba.
One day, I visited Jorasanko, the palatial residence of the Tagore family, whose members included not only the Nobel Prize winner, the polymath Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), but also artists such as Abanindranath and Gaganendranath (both Tagore). After seeing around the fascinating rooms of Jorasanko, which I enjoyed so much that I visit it whenever I am in the city, I sploshed through the flooded streets towards the Hooghly River. On my way, I walked along a busy street lined with shops and filled with crowds of people. A steady stream of rickshaws pulled by thin, sinewy men – each of the vehicles laden with two or three passengers – made its way through the busy throng. The huge wheels of these vehicles keep the passengers high above the water flooding the streets, but the pullers’ feet were permanently submerged.
I noticed that some shops – often those of clothing and textile merchants – men were distributing hot food – rice and dal – to occasional passers-by. I stopped at one of the stores, and asked about the food distribution. It was explained to me that during Ramadan, it was a virtuous thing to feed the poor. This kindness impressed me, especially as those who were serving it were fasting.
Howrah Bridge
Eventually, after boldly crossing a wide road clogged with slow moving heavy traffic, I stepped onto the Howrah Bridge, a gigantic steel bridge – a Meccano lover’s dream come true. It traverses the Hooghly – a section of the great Ganges River system. It was constructed between 1935 and early 1943. At first, the bridge crosses over a large market that is strung along the riverbank. Then, after a few yards, it is over the water. I walked along the downstream facing pedestrian walkway, dodging many porters carrying heavy and bulky loads on their heads. I took numerous photographs until I was two thirds of the way across the river. There, I met a policeman with an ancient-looking rifle – its leather strap slung over his shoulder. Politely, he informed me that photography was forbidden on the bridge. By then, I had sufficient images stored in the memory of my digital camera.
Once over the river, I headed through the streaming rain and thick crowds to a boat station close to the Howrah railway terminus. My plan was to travel on a river bus downstream to a landing stage not far from Park Street. I bought a ticket which was printed on such very poor-quality paper that it had to be kept dry to stop it dissolving or falling to pieces. I asked someone on the floating platform at the water’s edge if the boat that was approaching was heading for my planned destination. I received what I believed was an affirmative reply, and then boarded a relatively empty boat with plenty of free seats. We set off.
To my surprise, the boat headed upstream rather than downstream. Soon, we passed beneath the Howrah Bridge. We sailed a long way upstream away from the city centre. The banks of the river were lined with unattractive industrial buildings, and these were punctuated by occasional bathing ghats. We were heading away from the pleasant old part of the city in which Park Street is located.
I disembarked at the boat’s first stop. Had it not been raining so heavily I would have stepped out of the boat station to explore the area around it. Instead, I bought another flimsy ticket to return to Howrah. This time, I asked several people to tell me at which of the two floating embarkation pontoons I should board the downstream boat. I waited close to the water while a large crowd of fellow passengers gathered behind me. I wanted to be sure of embarking first.
The boat approached where we were all standing. I could see from afar that it was ‘packed to the gills’ with people. When the boat was about 18 inches away from the pontoon, I felt a great push from behind me and I was catapulted across the water towards the approaching vessel. Luckily, I was able to grab something on the boat, and this saved me from falling into the water and being crushed between the boat and the pontoon. Had I not been able to do this, I feel sure my life would have ended prematurely.
The boat was stuffed with people – I am sure that sardines are less tightly packed in tins. I wanted to try to take a photograph to capture an image of this crowd, but I could not because so great was the pressure exerted by those around me that I was unable to raise my hands from beside my body. Thus wedged, I looked around and noticed there were only a few lifesaving flotation items. If our boat had sunk, I imagine that only a few of us on board would have survived.
It was a great relief to disembark at Howrah. I was drenched, somewhat shaken, and hungry. I decided to take a taxi to Flurys in Park Street. It is a European style tearoom/restaurant that served what I was yearning at that moment – toasted club sandwiches. I boarded a dented yellow Ambassador taxi in a car park near the railway station. We inched our way forward into a mass of other similarly damaged taxis. The crowded taxis were so close to each other that it felt as if they might become welded together. It took almost an hour for my driver to skilfully manoeuvre his vehicle a couple of hundred yards from where I boarded it on to the beginning of the bridge.
At last, we arrived at Park Street, where, slightly drier because of sitting for ages in the taxi, I settled down at a table in Flurys. I ordered my sandwich and savoured the peaceful atmosphere in the tearoom*.
Despite my near escape from severe injury (or worse) on the banks of the Hooghly, my enthusiasm for Calcutta remained undiminished.
*Note: when I last visited Flurys in January 2025, it had lost most of its charm; it has become a place for tourists and Instagrammers.
This is a chapter in my book “The Hitler Lock & Other Tales of India”, which is available from Amazon
A FEW MONTHS AGO, we visited Claydon House (in Buckinghamshire) – a stately home filled with antiques and decorative features that are several hundred years old. We went to see an exhibition of contemporary art that was being displayed within the historic rooms of the house and in its gardens. I wrote about this show (https://adam-yamey-writes.com/2026/06/17/modern-art-on-display-in-an-english-country-house-setting/) and concluded:
“From the point of view of looking at these artworks, I see little point in showing them in the historic setting of Claydon House. There is something faintly amusing seeing the contemporary artwork almost competing with the variety of picturesque items within the house, which were created many years before their existence …”
In brief, I was not over impressed. So, it was with some trepidation that I set off to see a collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century Punjabi wedding shawls being displayed in the fine, neo-classical interiors designed by the eighteenth-century architect, Robert Adam (1728-1792) at Osterley Park (in west London).
The exhibition at Osterley Park, “Journeys – Wedding Shawls, Baghs and Phulkaris from the Karun Thakar Collection”, is on until the end of October 2026. The ‘journeys’ in the title refer to the fleeing of Hindus from Pakistan during the Partition of India (in 1947) and to the travelling that is often necessary during Indian weddings (for example, the bridegroom has to travel to meet his bride, and the married couple might need to move elsewhere after the wedding celebrations are over).
“Born Kenya, brought up in Delhi. Moved to UK as teenager. Former dealer and collector of ethnographic textiles and antiquities. Major collector of textiles from Africa and Asia.”
About 70 pieces from his vast collection are on display at Osterley. As part of the exhibition, there is a short video of him talking most interestingly and sympathetically about the wedding shawls.
The shawls on display are/were worn during weddings and other festivals. They are all embroidered, and fall into two categories: baghs and phulkari. They are both handmade, traditionally by groups of women working together. Each comprises silk thread embroidered onto a woven cotton cloth or backing. Michael Beste (www.m-beste.com) describes phulkari in his essay “Hopes & Dreams: Phulkari and Bagh from the Punjab” as:
“Phulkari in Punjabi literally means “flower work”and was originally used to describe all types of embroidery. In time, however, the term came to be used only for an embroidered head cloth or shawl…”
And he distinguishes the two categories in his essay:
“The major distinguishing feature between baghs and phulkaris relates to the amount of embroidery. In phulkaris, the motifs are more or less regularly divided over the whole cloth, and large areas of ground fabric are visible. As a rule, the ends have quite different patterns from the centre and are often much more richly worked. The motifs on a bagh, on the other hand, are embroidered so close to each other that the ground cloth shows as just a thin line around each motif. Also the ends of the bagh almost always pick up the motif of the main field.”
The patterns on the phulkari tend to be figurative with spaces surrounding them so that patches of the backing cloth are easily visible. The flowery motifs are like well-spaced plants in a garden. In contrast, the baghs are literally covered with geometric motifs that leave little or none of the underlying backing cloth visible.
All the shawls on display are beautiful and show evidence of painstakingly careful embroidering. At Osterley Park, each of the ground floor rooms, all of which had been decorated by Robert Adam, contains several of the shawls from Karun Thakar’s collection. A few of the shawls have been playfully placed to clothe some of the classical statuary that can be found within Osterley.
The presence of the Punjabi shawls at Osterley is not inappropriate. For some time, Osterley Park was owned by the Child family, owners of Child & Co., a private bank that financed some of the East India Company’s voyages and ships. The company had three trading ships named Osterley. The first of these, which was launched in 1757 was partially financed by Francis Child III (1735-1763). It was this man, who commissioned Robert Adam to redesign his country home, Osterley Park. The house contains several east Asian artefacts in its permanent collection. These were acquired through the Child’s involvement with the East India Company. So, Karun Thakar’s shawls feel, in a way, quite at home in Osterley.
Unlike the contemporary artworks that were being displayed at Claydon Hall and clashed, sometimes violently, with their historic surroundings, Thakar’s shawls seemed to harmonise with the historic environment in which they were being displayed. They are quite different to what surrounds them, but not at all out of place. To my great joy, what had been done at Osterley was far more satisfactory than what I had seen at Claydon.
As it is difficult to judge a book by its cover, here is a brief excerpt from my latest book “Road to Heaven – a passage through India”. It describes what we saw at one of the ruined gateways to Mandu in Madhya Pradesh.
Mandu is a huge hill fort at about 2400 feet above sea level, and 1200 feet above the surrounding plains. This irregularly shaped, undulating plateau extends from east to west for between approximately 3.7 and 5 miles, and from north to south, it measures 3 to 3.7 miles. Deep ravines cut into the steep, and in places vertiginous, cliff-like, slopes sweep almost vertically down to the plains below,
Here is the excerpt:
Our journey continued along a rough track that ended abruptly and without a warning sign at the edge of a high cliff that dropped down precipitously to the plain far below. The view from the cliff edge was spectacular. We could see a couple of lakes or reservoirs amongst the fields and trees, but the horizon was obscured by haze. To our left, there were the impressive, crenellated walls of the hill fort and one of its seven gateways. We had reached the fortress-like stone Tarapur Gate at the southwest corner of the plateau. A staircase leads up from it to a walkway that runs along the remains of the high walls. Near the bottom of this, an old stone roadway, now in a parlous condition, made two right-angle turns before passing beneath an arch and continuing as a rocky track that wound its way down to the plains below, clinging precariously to the steep slope of the drop at the edge of the plateau. Of this path, Yazdani wrote:
“…the fall of the hill beyond the outer arch of the gate is very precipitous, and although there are traces of a paved path descending to the plains, it is very difficult to believe that heavy artillery or chariots could be brought up this way, for the garrison could easily have crushed them by rolling down heavy stones. History, however, records that the Fort was invaded several times from this direction…”
While we were looking around, a straggling parade of farm animals, many cows and goats, made its way quietly through the gateway, and down the rocky track. They were accompanied by a couple of herders. The right-angle turns in the gateway were probably designed to make it easier for those guarding it to control entry to the hill fort. Apart from the farmers and their animals, we were the only people at the Tarapur Gate. It was in a part of Mandu which felt more remote than the rest of the hill fort.
After leaving the gateway, we drove through a hamlet where I noticed a man seated on the ground, weaving a cane basket. Further on, we passed women in saris carrying bundles of straw on their heads. We drove northwards through luscious countryside, passing many country folk chatting and working outside their simple homes. Then, after passing the Jami Masjid in Mandu village, we reached …
[ My book is available as a paperback from Amazon:
It is difficult to summarise a 269 page book succinctly. So, here is something that captures the essence of my latest book.
India is a countrywhose vibrant contemporary life mingles intimately with its age-old traditions. My new book “ROAD TO HEAVEN – A PASSAGE THROUGH INDIA” explores the intimate interweaving of past and present in the life of modern India by describing a journey I made through western, central and southern parts of the country.
In addition to relating our travel experiences – places we saw and their histories, whom we met, what we ate, and how we travelled, I have included other topics. These include accounts of places we (my wife and I) visited written by earlier visitors, and a detailed insider’s view of the formerly British colonial clubs of India. These clubs used to be out-of-bounds to Indians, but since the country became independent, they are now part of the rich fabric of Indian social life.
And as for the Road to Heaven, this really exists, and I have described my journeys along it.
Over the centuries, there have been many notable female leaders. These include Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Boadicea (Boudica), Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria, the Rani of Jhansi, and Indira Gandhi … to name but a few.
During a recent trip to Madhya Pradesh, a state in Central India, we stayed in the small town called Maheshwar, which had a famous resident, a queen called Ahilyabai. I must admit I had never heard of her until we visited the town, and this is not good because she was at least as remarkable as, if not more amazing than any of the women I listed above.
Ahilyabai was born in 1725 in the village of Chaundi, now in Maharashtra. Her father, Mankoji Sindhia (Shinde), a scion of the Dhangar family, was the Patil (village headman). Although it was at a time when women were not allowed to go to school, Ahilyabai’s father taught her to read and write. When the Maratha ruler of Malwa (now part of Madhya Pradesh), Malhar Rao Holkar (lived 1693-1766), was travelling to Pune in 1733, he spotted Ahilyabai and was so impressed by her that he arranged for her to be married to his 10-year-old son Khanderao Holkar (1723-1754). Her husband, who admired Ahilyabai, fought in many battles, and was killed at the Fort of Khumber in 1754. As was the tradition of those times, Ahilyabai wanted to commit sati by throwing herself on Khanderao’s flaming funeral pyre, but Malhar Rao stopped her.
From 1754 onwards, he trained her in military matters and administrative skills. Soon, she became competent in both, and successfully carried out several military operations against enemies of the Holkars. When Mahar Rao died, his successor was Ahilyabai’s 21-year-old son, Male Rao Holkar (1745-1767), who went insane, and died a year after he came to the throne. The writer, John Malcolm (1769-1833), who lived in India between 1783 and 1831 and knew people close to the Holkars, and wrote about them in his “Memoir Of Central India Including Malwa Vol.1” (published in 1824) included descriptions of Male Rao’s madness, such as:
“It was a common usage with him to place scorpions in clothes and slippers that he gave them; he also put these venomous reptiles in pots filled with rupees, which he invited the holy mendicants to take; and, when their eager cupidity caused them to be stung, his joy was as excessive …”
Unwilling to adopt an heir, Ahilyabai wrote to the Peshwa (senior official of the Marathas), petitioning him to appoint her as ruler of Malwa. He sent her a letter, appointing her. Immediately after this, she appointed Tukoji Holkar (1723-1797), the great nephew of her father-in-law, Mahar Rao, as commander of her army and to manage Malwa’s military affairs. This allowed her to concentrate on administering Malwa and other Holkar estates. Until her death, Ahilyabai and Tukoji worked together harmoniously. After she died, he became the ruler of Malwa, and was known as Tukoji Rao I Holkar. John Malcom met people who remembered Ahilyabai, and they told him she was a good ruler:
“Her first principle of government appears to have been moderate assessment, and an almost sacred respect for the native rights of village officers and proprietors of lands. She heard every complaint in person; and although she continually referred causes to courts of equity and arbitration, and to her ministers, for settlement, she was always accessible: and so strong was her sense of duty, on all points connected with the distribution of justice, that she is represented as not only patient, but unwearied in the investigation of the most insignificant causes, when appeals were made to her decision.”
During her reign, Ahilyabai did much to make Indore into a prosperous and beautiful city, but shifted her capital to Maheshwar. She did much work to improve the roads and forts in Malwa, as well as making many religious endowments (including mandirs, dharamshalas, tanks, bathing ghats, etc) in the kingdom. A man, Baramul Dada, who knew Ahilyabai well, related to Malcolm that:
“… she rose one hour before daybreak to say her morning prayers, and perform the customary ceremonies. She then heard the sacred volumes of her faith read for a fixed period, distributed alms, and gave food, in person, to a number of Brahmins. Her own breakfast was then brought, which was always of vegetable diet; for, although the rules of her tribe did not require it, she had forsworn animal food. After breakfast she again went to prayers, and then took a short repose; after rising from which, and dressing herself, she went about two o’clock to her Durbar, or court, where she usually remained till six in the evening; and when two or three hours had been devoted to religious exercises and a frugal repast, business recommenced about nine o’clock, and continued until eleven, at which hour she retired to rest.”
Her good works in connection with her religion extended well beyond the boundaries of Malwa. Using inherited Holkar money, rather than public funds, she ordered the construction of religious edifices in places including Varanasi, Kashi, Gaya, Somnath, Ayodhya, Mathura, Hardwar, Kanchi, Avanti, Dwarka, Badrinarayan, Rameshwar and Jaganathpuri. Ahilyabai. After shifting her capital to Maheshwar, she did much to improve the place.
During her life as queen and after her death, Ahilyabai’s reputation was legendary, and remains so. In what was once Malwa (and elsewhere), she is regarded as a saint. It is worth noting that Ahilyabai was not the only female Maratha ruler. Earlier, Tarabai Bhonsle (1675-1751) was the regent of the Maratha Empire from 1700 until 1708. Undoubtedly,
Ahilyabai was one of the most remarkable women in India’s long history. Indore’s airport, where we landed, is now named after her. To digress slightly, when we were in Bombay, we saw a statue of her – a bust – close to the city’s busy Churchgate train station. It is in a prominent place, but market stalls and vegetation around it make it difficult to view her properly.
When I was aged between 8 and 13 years old, a pupil at The Hall, a preparatory school in London’s Belsize Park, history was taught in an uninteresting way. The emphasis was entirely on the chronology of events rather than their significance. One of these events, which meant nothing to me for many years, was the Battle of Plassey (1754). Little did I know when hearing this name as a young schoolboy that many years later, I would visit India and see places that were important in the events leading up to (and following) the battle. These places are within Murshidabad and its environs, which we visited in early January 2025.
To reach Murshidabad, which is north of Kolkata, we travelled by train on the Dhano Dhanye Express. Despite being called an ‘Express’, the train was anything but rapid. It dawdled along while local trains swept past us. It was after dark when our train drew into a station whose name I had known since the early 1960s, but had meant nothing to me then: Plassey (in Bengali: Palashi). Although I could not see much of the place, I felt a frisson of excitement when I saw signs in the station bearing a name that had been in the back of my mind for over 60 years.
Murshidabad was, until after the Battle of Plassey and the development of Kolkata, a major city in the Indian Subcontinent. Today, apart from the former British cantonment town of Berhampore, the rest of Murshidabad consists of historical monuments, some intact others ruined, scattered around a large, mainly rural-looking district – once covered by the great city. One of the many places we visited in Murshidabad was in the district of Azimganj, where there is a palace – Bari Kothi. It was constructed by a wealthy Jain family in the late eighteenth century,a few years after the Battle of Plassey.
Bari Kothi is now a luxurious hotel run by the Dudhoria’s, who are friends of the Jain family of my wife’s sister-in- law. They live in Kolkata, and had arranged that we could be shown around the historic building that houses the hotel.
The Dudhoria family were originally Kshatriya Hindus living near Bikaner in Rajasthan. They were direct descendants of Raja Chaban, ruler of Ajmer. In about 105 AD, they converted from Shaivite Hinduism to Jainism. Along with other Kshatriya families in the town of Osia in Rajasthan, they converted to Jainism, and all these families are known as Oswal Jains. After moving between various towns in Rajasthan, the Dudhoria’s, led by Harjimal Dudhoria and his two sons, Sabai Singh and Maujiram, moved to Azimganj in 1774. They began life as merchants in their new home, and soon became successful.
In the late eighteenth century Rai Bahadur Budh Singh Dudhoria, constructed the huge mansion, now known as ‘Bari Kothi’. Close to the river Hooghly, its garden stretches to the bank of the river. The huge edifice, which was restored a few years ago, is built around seven courtyards. Its lavish decorations have been recreated in a style that would have been familiar to the family in its heyday. The influence of neo-classicism is evident in many parts of the building. Today, it is used as a luxurious ‘heritage’ hotel, which is famed for its Jain food. When the banker, who lived at Bari Kothi, told the Nawab that he wanted to move away from Murshidabad because he lacked the company of fellow Jains, the ruler allotted land on both sides of the river to the Jain community, and told the banker to invite other Jains to make their homes there. 97 families arrived from Rajasthan.
The combined wealth of the 30 or so Sherherwali (mainly Oswal Jains) families who settled in the square mile area within Azimganj, which included Bari Kothi, was so great that it exceeded that of the entire English aristocracy. After Bengal’s capital shifted to Kolkata, so did most of the Sherherwalis.
Bari Kothi was badly damaged during the Naxalite disturbances in the 1970s. It was beautifully restored under the supervision of the architect Dr Samar Chandra. We visited the place and were shown around its maze of corridors, rooms, and courtyards. Our guide showed us parts of the building that are still undergoing careful restoration. What has already been restored and is used by hotel guests is superbly done. For those seeking a glorious ‘heritage’ experience, a few days at Bari Kothi will not be disappointing. The large dining room is decorated with tiled panels (art nouveau style) depicting rustic scenes, and in several rooms, I noticed trays laden with bottles of high-class imported and Indian liquor.
The hotel serves guests with highly acclaimed Sheherwali Jain cuisine, which is strictly vegetarian. However, for those hoping for a fried egg at breakfast time, this and all other non-veg items are most certainly unavailable. The hotel employs local people as staff, thus bringing employment opportunities into what is quite a depressed district. One of these employees told us that most of the staff are not vegetarians, and so they need to sneak out occasionally to enjoy food that contains meat or fish. Or they starve themselves all day, and in the evening eat non-veg meals at home.
The British won the Battle of Plassey by guile. This was because some leading inhabitants of Murshidabad bribed the general commanding a major part of the forces of their opponent, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah. He was paid not to join the fight. He and his soldiers stood aside during the battle. Some hint that part of the bribe was provided by wealthy Jains (for example the Jagat Seth family) who were unhappy with the Nawab. However, as the Dudhoria’s only arrived in Bengal in 1774, it is unlikely that they had anything to do with the defeat of Siraj-ud-Daulah at Plassey 17 years earlier.
For much more about Murshidabad, read my book “88 DAYS IN INDIA: A JOURNEY OF MEMORY AND DISCOVERY”, available here:
During our first tour of Gujarat, which my wife and I undertook in 2018, travelling on inter-city buses. We stopped at Porbandar, a port on the southern coast of Saurashtra. This Gujarati seaport, which is not on many foreign tourists’ itineraries, is the birthplace of MK (‘Mahatma’) Gandhi. During our stay, we visited the house in which the great man was born.
We spent four days in Porbandar, which gave us plenty of time to wander around. One afternoon, after reducing the amount of baggage we were carrying, we visited a place, where we received a strange invitation …
After the two uncomfortable bus journeys that we had made so far, we decided to reduce the amount of baggage we were carrying by sending one of our suitcases to Bangalore, where we were going to spend the last few days of our sojourn in India. We had already discussed sending it with the owner of a dispatch company in the lounge of the Hotel Natraj, where we were staying. He met us after we returned from Subhas Nagar (a fishing harbour) and escorted us with our suitcase to his small office, which was nearby. The price for sending our twelve-kilogramme suitcase was very reasonable. We learned that the case would be going by lorry to Bombay and then from there to Bangalore by train. We were told to leave the case unlocked so that, should it be necessary, the railway officials in Bombay would be able to examine its contents. We watched our case being sown into a huge sack, and then kept our fingers crossed. For the record, our case arrived perfectly intact in Bangalore five days later.
After dispatching our case, we returned to the Lords Eco Inn near the beach for refreshment. Then, while the sun started dropping towards the western horizon, we walked back along the seafront to the temple, which we had passed on our way to the seaside on our first afternoon in Porbandar. We pushed past the cattle outside it and entered. Some men were sitting around chatting. A couple of cats darted about the temple’s courtyard. The orange glow of the setting sun reflected off the white-painted tapering shikharas which pointed up to the cloudless blue sky.
We wandered through the open gateway of a walled compound across the road from the temple. The internal surfaces of the boundary walls are decorated with colourfully painted murals depicting deities and scenes from the Hindu scriptures. Models of very human-looking figures with monkeys’ faces perch at intervals along the walls above the murals. The walls enclose some buildings, long sheds.
The central, and most important looking, of these buildings was painted white and provided with glassless windows. Through one of the windows, we could see flames flickering. We realised that we had walked into a crematorium compound. An official came up to us, and confirmed our suspicions. Then, as if inviting us to dinner or for a drink in a pub, he asked us whether we would like to watch a cremation. Only in India can an offer like that be made so casually, because as Jon and Rumer Godden wrote in their book “Two under the Indian Sun”:
“We knew, without being told, that in India death was as casual as life, part of every day.”
We declined the invitation.
If you enjoyed this or found it interesting, you can read more about our first trip to Gujarat in “TRAVELS THROUGH GUJARAT, DAMAN, AND DIU”, available from Amazon. The extract above is from the book, but modified slightly.
