A ( British Raj Loyalist ) Europhile's 'Fictitious' Back-Story: Nahoum, Kalman et Compagnie

A BRIDLE-PATH OF HISTORY --> THE STORY OF US! Narrative from the British Raj Loyalist Perspective: a lonesome remnant voice, a-crying out in the wilderness

52 AD, Thomas Didymus, 'Doubting Thomas', one of the original 12 Apostles of Jesus Christ, landed in Muzinis (Cranganore), Kerala. St. Thomas Church, Palayoor is located in Thrissur district, Kerala, India. Established in 52 AD by St Thomas himself, it is the first church in India, certainly one of the oldest in the world, and is called The Apostolic Church. Father Thomas started, in India, the world's oldest continuously surviving Christian community: the Nestorian, later, 'Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch', a.k.a., the Mar Thoma Church of the St. Thomas Christians, still many millions strong in India today & growing, two thousand years after the Crucifiction of Jesus Christ, on Calvary's Hill in Ben Hinnom Valley, outside the Jerusalem city-gate. Over the next millenium, various groups of Christians & Jews from the Near East / Middle East reached, and often settled on the Konkan & Malabar coasts of SW India, dipping regularly into the local (mostly the remnant Judeo-Christian) gene pool for good measure. Legend has it that one such group were the ancestors of the Coorgi people, and yet another resulted in the 'Kokanasth' Brahmin community on the Maharashtra coast. 1292, Marco Polo, the Venetian, sailed into India's Coromandel coast (Tamil Nadu), as an Emissary from (interestingly enough) the Court of Kublai Khan, having reached Central Asia & China by land some years earlier, following the legendary Silk Road. 1420, Niccolò Dei Conti, another Italian traveller and merchant visited India, the Vijayanagar kingdom under Deva Raya II -- traveling overland, through Persia. 1498, May 20, Vasco Da Gama reached Calicut, Travancore. 1542, May 6 was St. Xavier's arrival in Margao, Velha Goa, India, from Navarre in Spain's Pais Basco, en route to Kyushu, Japan. 1615, September 18, Sir Thomas Rowe arrived at Surat port as the Ambassador of the English Tudor Sovereign, James the First, to the Turko-Persian Court of Mughal Emperor Jahangir. 1665, Armenian settlers came to Bengal, pursuant to a Royal "Firman" (Edict) by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. 1686, August 24, Job Charnock landed near Sutanuti hamlet, representing the British East India Company of Westminster, London. 1692, the new British Indian capital de facto, Calcutta, was founded. The 1st Anglo-Indian (mixed-race) families then started, as did Plantation agriculture: Indigo, Jute and more ... in the south, and in the north: Timber, and the world's finest Tea in the Darjeeling Himalayas, Assam, the Dooars and Terai. 1757, June 23 -- the Battle of Plassey was won, by Sir Robert Lord Clive, soon to be the Governor-General, hoisting the Union Jack upon the soil of Bengal. The British colonists soon supplanted and co-opted / absorbed the other (local) Europeans (and other migrant communities), the Portuguese at Bandel and elsewhere, the Chinese near Budge Budge, the French at Chandernagore, the Dutch at Chinsurah, the Armenians up and down the Ganges, the Danish at Frederiksnagar (Serampore), where Christian Preacher William Carey, started India's 1st college, a Christian Seminary, under Charter from the King of Denmark. The Zoroastrians (Parsees) started to arrive from 1767. Sephardic & Ashkenazim Jews started arriving from the 1790s. The mighty British Raj started, on the banks of the Hooghly / Ganges, and Fort William was the Battlement from which the Pax Brittanica was to be administered, for the centuries following, by British Governors-General and VicesRoy, across the fabulous Eastern Empire of the Court of St. James, from Cyprus, to Suez, to Socotra, to Surat, to Ceylon, to Singapore, to Sidney, to the South Seas (South Pacific), covering about one-fifth of the inhabited land-area of the world. And British Calcutta was the Jewel in the Crown, second only to London as the seat of the British Empire! Humbly posited: these were the Glory Days of Calcutta & Bengal. Before the Europeans arrived, there were over 700 separate countries in India, with different languages, races, creeds, cultures, often warring with each other. Bengal itself was divided into at least 12 larger kingdoms, and many smaller ones. British Rule united the Indian Subcontinent, bringing their infernal western education, science, technology, industry, et accoutrements -- modern medicine and surgery, hospitals, cars, railways & airplanes, and MOST of what Indians benefit from today. Most of all -- the language of The Bard of Stratford-on-Avon and of the Queen of Buckingham Palace. There are today more English-speakers in India than England, or in any country other than the USA. This is the driving underlying reason Indian IT / science / tech professionals rule the roost across the 7 seas, and why India is able to produce so many top technocrats, industry and business leaders like L.N. Mittal, Lord Swraj Paul, Vinod Khosla, Chamath Palihapitiya, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Parag Agarwal, Arvind Krishna, Shantanu Narayan, Raghu Raghuram, Indra Nooyi, Kay Kapoor, Naina Lall Kidwai, and on and on ..., and even so many top litteratteurs (in English, no less -- the #1 World Language). Even the 46th US President Joe Biden, the most powerful world-leader, has some Anglo-Indian roots! And for the price of all this, even so-called 'educated' self-attesting Indian 'intelligentsia' routinely accuse the British of -- wait for it -- Dividng (not to be confused with Uniting) India, and of course -- oppression! To combat this 'curse' of Europeanized civilization, Indians struggled for 'freedom' -- from and to what?: being questions, sadly, best left unasked! 1947, August 15, the midnight hour, the British left India as its rulers. Marwari and other Western Indian / Trading Community overlords later replaced most of the European bosses for the local working class, and India, Bengal and 'Kolkata' -- became ... well, you decide for yourself how G-R-E-A-T that's working out! Arguably -- G-R-E-A-T -- for those who enjoy the evangelistic colonial fervor, unfettered by tolerance, of Western Indian Hindutva pseudo-Nativists, who passionately peddle their revisionistic, faux- Puritanical (often forceful, rather compromised and indubitably myopic) interpretation (liberated from both scholarship and fact- pattern) of what they (presumably) believe -- is supposed to emulate the practice of (post-'Manu Samhita') Hinduism (for which any Pan-Indian legacy standards of best practice were, at best, empirically non-extant). Before, during & after centuries of British rule, Christians remained 2.0-2.8% of India's population, & Anglicans < 0.1%. Au Contraire, post-2014, certain political apparatchiki have publicly offered Rs.100K-500K for conversions to (their version of) 'Hinduism'. This absolutely brilliant move must be lauded, and it is hereby oh-so-politely suggested that Non-Hindu infidels be encouraged to convert and repeatedly re-convert to Hinduism, and incentivized to the tune of even more money, and even more often, say, once a week, every week, for the rest of their lives, with no limitations on the amount / frequency of said conversions / bounty! And while the Gora Paltan (British Indian Law Enforcement) intrusively and forcibly stopped the then-fashionable practice of the burning alive of widows, female infanticide, and were generally opposed to 'Dowry-centric' social unrest, & the caste system-based 'Untouchables' practice, etc. -- there really are NOW very FEW pyro-cidic cases after all: like the burning alive of Dr. Graham Staines and his infant children (1999, January 23), the rapes of septugenarian Nuns and recreational Church-burnings. MUCH less, historically, than, say, the place-time intersections under control of the Boko Haram, ISIS, Taliban, Janjaweed, Somali Pirates, Timur, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Bokasa, Idhi Amin, Saddam, Pinochet, the N. Korean / Chinese Communist regimes ... : Indians may surely opine and aver with preening pride! Meanwhile, Christian missionaries quietly continue to make/manage many of India's best schools, colleges, hospitals, many orphanages, eldercare homes, etc., taking care of the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised, and those whom society passes by -- still faithfully carrying out the compelling dictat of that ancient bearded Palestinian Jewish Love-monger, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, 1st Century Galilee! Somewhere 'twixt these lusty, dusty fragments of impassioned (& admittedly somewhat one-sided) narrative, European Gastronomy and Food culture: Cold Cuts -- Sausage, Salami, Ham, Bacon & myriad Cured Meats, Savouries & Puff Pastries, bespoke and specialty Breads, Fromagerie (Cheeses), Sweet Pastries, Cakes, Chocolat, assorted Baked Goods, Pizzas, Pastas and 'Anglo-Indian' (Eurasian) Culinary tradtions took roots in India, particularly in Calcutta, today's (Ugh ...) Kolkata, catering mainly to European post-colonists / domiciles, Anglo-Indians, Christians/Jews, and of course, MOST of all: The 'Brown Sahibs'. Epicurean Icons emerged, like Nahoums, Kalmans, and many others besides Nahoum Kalman et Cie. -- Flury's, Firpo's ... And we started making (Indo-)European foods on this our very own fair Calcutta-on-the-Danube. ... so many centuries after our European forebears arrived to live, love, lust, leverage, lose and leave the markings of their humanity upon this magical land they loved so much, & once called their own... ... in the spirit of that glorious past, to this day ... Sincerely,   * Charnock Clive Mountbatten Sydney, New South Wales **Nahoum, Kalman et Compagnie Tahiti, French Polynesia * Nom-de-Plume The author of the above piece -- a reclusive lady -- wishes to remain anonymous, permanently.  Her European ancestors, Colonists and Soldiers, had arrived in India before the First Anglo-Afghan War (in which they fought the Durrani and Afridi Pashtun Khel), during the 'Great Game' (between the then British forces and the Czarist Russian Empire | White Army, and their respective proxies).  As often with Anglo-Indians, the family has many different bloodlines in their veins. These include Welsh, Danish, French (from Reunion-Mauritius), Portuguese (from the Azores Is.), Algerian Jewish (from North Africa), Ethiopian, Balochi, Garhwali-Kumaoni, Kodava-Toda and Bengali Hindu (from Chittagong-Arakan).  In the 1950s and 60s, the family departed India, emigrateing to Rhodesia (now: Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (now: Malawi), Africa, and thereafter to South Africa, and from there -- finally, to the Far Country, Australia.  ** The above piece, while interwoven with historic facts, was written as a FICTIONAL account, and refers to a FICTITIOUS company. It reflects the perspective of that small, or perhaps not-so -small community of both ex-India Domiciles and (ethnic) Indians, who feel nostalgia for the "better days" (?) of the British Eastern Empire, as they see the course of events, post the British Raj Era, unfold in the Indian Subcontinent, particularly as it has affected their beloved Calcutta & Bengal. They fight to keep down their tears as they see the Calcutta built on the backs of their ancestors -- once India's #1 city, now #3, fast moving down to oblivion -- and observe the exodus of (educated and affluent, as well as other) Indians emigrating -- most who can -- fleeing their "Independent" India. Whence they recollect the days when peoplw from all over India, and far beyind, used to come to Calcutta to seek their fortunes and make their lives! But please, please interpret and treat this narrative as NON-FACTUAL anyway, the mere figment of fevered fancy from an aging dowager "Mem'Saab" lost on memory lane, sipping her gin-and-tonic, listening to the endless, tireless waves crashing gently but relentlessly on the South Pacific beach next to her, as she dreams of the Calcutta of her youth, that she left long ago, forever -- the legacy of her ancestors rejected and degraded by the opinion-leaders of an ancient and yet oh-so-juvenile nation she still loves.