Chapter 15: Friends Reunited

Krish was dressed in a mundu and was bare-chested. His hair hung down to his shoulders and he sported a full beard, but the smile on his face when he recognised me was that of the Krish of old.

Mimi suddenly realised who he was, and let out a great cry of delight. ‘Krish!’ and rushed into his arms, hugged him to her, and then planted a kiss on his lips.

“Take your hands off my husband, you trollop! Who the dev...” The female voice behind me, although icy with disdain, I recognised at once and spun around in astonishment. Lillian Skinner stopped in mid-sentence, my look of amazement matched by her’s. She then ran to me, wrapped her arms about me, and her mouth came down on mine like a wolf on the fold.

“It would seem to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black,” I heard Mimi say as my mouth was devoured by Lillian. She disengaged from me at Mimi’s outburst, and the two females glared daggers at each other.

I was speechless; the breath sucked from my lungs by Lillian’s passionate kiss. I can only surmise that Krish either had not experienced a similar lung-draining kiss from Mimi else he had more time to recover his breath, as it was he who first spoke.

“This is Mimi Renoir, Lillian my dear. Remember I told you how she saved Jack’s life when he lay in a coma?”

I managed to draw enough breath into my lungs to speak.

“This is Lilian Skinner, Mimi my love. Remember how I told you how she brought me out from the pit of despair after the death of my family?”

Smiles lit up both girls’ faces.

“Of course,” Mimi said, “and I said I would greet her as a sister if ever we met.” She walked over to Lillian and planted a kiss on her lips.

Lillian, no less magnanimous, replied. “And I recall Jack telling me of his love for someone he thought unobtainable,” returning Mimi’s kiss with one of her own.

Krish grabbed my hand and wrung it like a campanologist tolling a handbell.

I hugged him in a most un-English way.

“What... ?”

“How... ?”

“When... ?”

“Where... ?”

All four of us blurted out unfinished and unanswered questions. Krish held up his hand.

“Let us adjourn to our hut and we can ask and answer all the questions we have for each other.” He spotted Nathan, Bron, and N’reeta, standing on the edge of the group looking amazed. “Your friend is now sleeping peacefully, and will recover his full strength by tomorrow evening. He can now be left in the capable hands of my nurses.”

Nathan smiled. “Thank you, Doctor. We will stay by his bed if that is all right by you?”

Krish nodded his acceptance, and we then followed him into a large hut at the side of the hospital hut. We sat around on cushions and I asked Krish and Lillian what they had been doing since the last time I had seen them. As it was Krish who I had not seen for the longest time he gave his story first.

Krish’s story.

The East Indiaman ‘Kent’, with Krish aboard as ship’s surgeon, arrived in Bombay on April the First, 1821.

“Aye and I was the Fool to think life would be any better for me in India than in England. I knew I would not be accepted by the pukka sahibs, as one glance at my complexion would tell them all they need to know – ‘a touch of the tar brush.’”

Krish rented a bungalow in the Eurasian quarter of Bombay, hung up his shingle and began practising as ‘Apothecary and Physician’. For the first year life was good. As an eligible bachelor, Krish was invited to many homes, parties and events, where mothers were eager to have him meet their daughters, but although he enjoyed the company of females he had no intention of marrying. However, overtime Krish became exasperated by the way Eurasians behaved, acting like pukka sahibs with their talk of ‘Blighty’ and of one day visiting the place ‘to look up their people’. Although Krish was of mixed race, he did not speak English with the sing-song accent of a typical Eurasian, or Anglo-Indian as they referred to themselves. One evening, at a banquet with all the most important and influential Anglo-Indian families of Bombay present, he drank too much brandy and then gave the assembled guests the unvarnished truth of how life in England would be for someone like them.

“The English regard all those with a darker shade of skin than them as ‘wogs’. You would be classed with Hottentots and Ashantis. Why do you think I returned to India? I was insulted, disdained, and treated as a nobody because of my skin colour. Not because I spoke different to them, as I do not, nor because I could not understand their politics, or their sport, or their literature, which I do, but solely because of my darker skin. If you ever went to ‘Blighty’ the English would laugh at your accent, how you dress, and what you eat. Anything and everything about you would make the English laugh, because the English think all foreigners are strange and amusing, and you would be classed as ‘foreign, with a touch of the tar brush’, and ignored and belittled, much as you are by pukka sahibs here, except in England the lower classes would be doing it as well!”

After his alcohol-fuelled tirade, Krish was not invited to any more functions, and even his practice suffered. It was about this time Krish learned of the deaths of Caroline and my family.

“I was heartbroken, Jack. I realised the fire had happened the day I set sail for India. Had you not been at Southampton to see me off you might have been able to prevent their deaths. I blamed myself, but worse I felt somehow my envy and jealousy at how much you and Caroline loved each other had raised an evil spirit to fracture and destroy your happiness. I came to believe it was my ill thoughts that had caused their deaths.”

Krish left Bombay, and for several years travelled the roads and tracks of India and beyond. He attended ashrams seeking enlightenment from the gurus and meditated on his life, and what he could do to change his karma. He allowed his hair to grow and wore the common Indian garb of a dhoti, frequently being mistaken for a fakir.

“Two widely spaced events that occurred in Coimbatore changed my life. The first happened about ten years ago when I was part of the large crowd listening to the well-respected guru, teacher, Maharishi Acharya Vijadit. I had heard of him when I was in the north of India and made a special journey to Coimbatore to sit at his feet and learn from him. What he said went straight into my heart. I felt he was talking only to me, although there must have been hundreds listening to him. He sat under a banyan tree, and in a conversational tone of voice spoke about life. How we are the master of our destiny and should learn to control it. After he had finished speaking I made my way to him through a crowd of others who wished to be his acolytes or disciples. The Maharishi did not have an ashram or followers but lived a solitary existence in a hidden valley in the Western Ghats and only occasionally came to centres of population to teach and talk. His eyes met mine and he held out his hand. ‘Ramakrishna! I have been waiting for you’.”

Krish joined the Maharishi in the hidden valley. “I named the place ‘Shangri La’ after a similar valley I stumbled across in Tibet. Both places share the same air of tranquillity and peace, and I regained my karma.”

During the years spent wandering the highways and byways of India Krish had been appalled at the level of poverty encountered. Not just in towns but also the countryside. He had seen mothers dying in childbirth, babies only living for a few days, and had acted as doctor and midwife on many occasions during his time on the road. He decided he would train young girls to become midwives/nurses and be on hand in the villages when needed. The Maharishi agreed the idea was sound. Krish spent what little money he had on having huts built alongside the Maharishi’s hut. These huts became the nucleus of the hospital and accommodation buildings that are now well established in Shangri La.

The plan was for Krish to recruit a dozen or so young girls, none above the age of fifteen and preferably virgins, and give them a year’s training in Basic English, midwifery, and nursing. Speaking English would give them a standing in their communities, and also allow them to converse with British officials when required. The profession of midwife/nurse would give them an income and also attract a husband. The Maharishi would be responsible for their religious training, which would be another boost to their standing in the community.

Young girls were easy to obtain. Every rural family had daughters they wanted rid of. Females were of less value to a community than males, and a dowry had to be paid when a daughter became a wife. Many young girls from local villages were sold to brothel-owners in Palakkad or Coimbatore and led short, unhappy, lives. Krish had no money to buy the girls but the Maharishi’s reputation was such that parents were willing to have their daughters become his servants or handmaidens purely for the esteem it would give the family. Maharishi Acharya Vijadit was well-known for his celibacy, although many Maharishis are not!

Krish started with ten, young, giggling girls, none over the age of fifteen and all recently having experienced their first monthly visitor. It was like herding cats! Neither Krish nor the Maharishi, who was also known as ‘Ayvee’, had experience of living with young females, and both men were of an age when new tricks were difficult to learn. Krish supplied a rich Coimbatore merchant with an aphrodisiac, and with the money raised engaged a recently widowed Anglo-Indian to act as house mother. She soon installed a regime that allowed teaching and training to be carried out in an orderly manner. However, the widow assumed she had free access to Knish’s bed, and he, always the gentleman, allowed her to join him one or two nights a week.

Over the next two years, the system worked well. The girls were bright and eager to learn. Krish and Ayvee were natural teachers, and the local villagers saw the benefit of having trained midwives/nurses on hand. The only fly in the ointment was Martha Longhurst, the Anglo-Indian ‘housemother’.

The woman was insatiable.

“I was not averse to having female company in my bed occasionally, but Martha wanted to join me every night. I could see she had marriage on her mind and I was not willing to be her next husband. She would slide, unannounced and naked, into my bed most every evening and expect me to sexually satisfy her many times during the night. I am not as young as I was and found it difficult to come up to scratch at times; besides I did not find Martha a particularly gifted lover. I finally banned her from my bed, and in a fit of pique she left my employment, leaving Ayvee and me with a score of petulant young girls on our hands.”

Krish travelled to Coimbatore to find a successor to Martha. The second event that changed his life occurred when he met Lillian Skinner.

Lillian’s story.

Lillian continued working at Madam Whipcrack’s after I left for Italy in January 1823. She left the establishment in March the same year and took up employment at the XTC’s pleasure pavilion at Brighton, along with Aggie Ackroyd, Big Mac, Lucinda, the Heavenly Twins and several other girls. The pleasure pavilion was a huge success. After a two-month energetic spell as the main attraction, Lillian began training nautch dancers, the Javanese girls bought from Amsterdam by Paloma. It was not an easy task as the girls, all attractive and sensual in their way, did not have the innate elegance and poise of Indian nautch girls. Lillian suggested she went to India and recruit local girls, and after having them trained in nautch dancing and basic English, dispatch them to XTC in England. In August 1823, Lillian left for India, arriving at Madras in December.

“Although I had been born in the Madras district I had no memory of the place and did not speak the local language, Tamil. I had spent all my early years in Kerala State; at Cochin, Palakkad, and Coimbatore. After two months in Madras, fending off men eager to marry me, I moved to Coimbatore, where I soon recalled the Malayalam I had learned as a child. A local man supplied me with young girls; those who had the intelligence and poise I required were recruited as nautch dancers, whilst those who did not he sold to a brothel that catered to the British military. I employed a former nautch dancer to train my girls to a good standard, and I taught them Basic English. After six months of intensive training the girls, along with a mature Eurasian woman as chaperone, were shipped to England.”

Over the following two years, Lillian dispatched three batches of girls, a dozen in each batch, to XTC’s pleasure pavilion in Brighton and the newly opened one in Harrogate.

When Lillian first arrived in Coimbatore she was warmly welcomed by the British community, and attended all their social activities. She had a string of eligible bachelors calling on her, eager to escort her to balls, banquets, gymkhanas and soirees. In the summer of 1825 the flow of gentlemen callers abruptly ceased.

“I was not too concerned,” Lillian said. “I was not looking for a husband, and the majority of my ‘suitors’ were an unappealing bunch of red-necked Griffins. However, when I made an afternoon call to one of my friends I was told by the chowkidar, the doorkeeper, ‘Memsahib Blenkinsop not at home.’ This was an obvious falsehood as I could hear Meg Blenkinsop talking in the withdrawing room as plain as day -- she has the most penetrating of voices. I ordered the chowkidar to return and inform Missus Blenkinsop that Miss Skinner was at the door. He went, and moments later came back shaking his head. ‘The Memsahib say she not at home to Miss Skinner’.’”

Lillian was dumbfounded. “Why ever not. What have I done to upset her?”

The chowkidar gave an insolent grin. ‘You not pukka memsahib, missus. Memsahib Blenkinsop told by man who knew your father your Ma was half-caste. Memsahib Blenkinsop say you half-caste, chi chi, touch of tar brush bint, and not welcome in pukka sahib’s house.’’ He slammed the door in Lillian’s face.

“Did you not know your mother was Eurasian?” I asked Lillian, who was silent, still lost in her memory.

“I had no idea, but she always kept out of the sun as much as she could, and always wore a bonnet. Her complexion was slightly sallow, but no more than many Englishwomen. I do recall Barton Seagrave once calling me ‘a half- breed slut, just like your mother,’ but took that as invective rather than fact.”

With the doors of the British community closed to her, Lillian moved to the Anglo-Indian quarter of Coimbatore but suffered a similar disconnection with them as Kris had experienced in Bombay. She continued recruiting and training girls to work in the pleasure pavilion, but her heart was no longer in the job.

“Did all the girls you recruit end up as whores in XTC’s pleasure pavilions?” Mimi asked.