Wednesday, November 21, 2018

WHAT IS MY NOVEL CARIGNANO ABOUT?


Foreword

There are those amongst us who prefer a good story to be a "true story,"  stressing on the authentication of "reality," little realising perhaps that all storytelling is, in the event, a process of embellishment.

This one however, is indeed based on fact; even if rather loosely, and drawing considerably more on the footnotes than the exalted reaches of the main text. In fact, most of the key players, were, even without benefit of my tampering, rather obscure creatures, not badly done by at all for the footnotes they did receive.

This is not to say that my hero Peliti was not well known in the Calcutta and Simla of his day. He is mentioned frequently in the restaurant and hoteliering annals of his day, but never extensively, and mostly for the piquancy of the fact that his establishment on Chowringhee was one of the few public venues where upwardly mobile Indians could mingle socially with Europeans. This, at a time when all the celebrated clubs, the boxes at the theatre and so forth, were reserved--"For Europeans Only."

In addition, all the references to Peliti point out that he was in fact an Italian aristocrat, and the very first and only viceregal pastry chef ever appointed. Peliti, the "historical," is also remembered by a series of excellent photographs of Mashobra tea parties, hunts and the like that he took, using the huge glass plate negatives of his day, in what was the first flush of the art under development. And to prove that the world I have talked of in my novel did, in fact, exist, the Italian Embassy still puts them on show internationally from time to time…

And that his mentor, Robert Lytton, was indeed that elegant jingoist, of the "Empress Durbar," the "Forward Policy" in Afghanistan and the muzzling of the "vernacular" press; while being, at the same time, the Italy-loving poet and literateur, the stylish gourmand, the visionary keen on inducting Indian maharajahs into his privy council. And that he was the first of the two Lytton viceroys, father and son, in the position from 1876-'80; is also duly recorded.

Also on record, is evidence of the only Italian villa ever built in the Simla hills, by none other than my hero, Signor, and later Chevalier Peliti, who named the edifice "Carignano", after the baroque palace and garden in Turin. But the hero of my story talks of a more ancient "Carignano", a hereditary estate on the banks of the Po, quite distinct from the historical palazzo commissioned by the deaf mute Emanuele Filiberto and built by Guarini in the 1600s, even though it too was associated with  much Piedmont history. So much so, that it today houses the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano…

The Indian "Carignano," built of pinewood and stone atop a mountain near the Simla suburb of  Mashobra, was  in fact turned over to the United Services Club for its retreat by Peliti and destroyed by fire around the time of Indian independence in 1947. But the area where it stood, still bears its name  Indianised to a more pronounceable "Craignano."

Another leading character of my tale, Bonsard, predates Peliti a little in the historical record, but he too was a viceregal chef who served Lytton's predecessor Northbrook, (1872-'76). But there is no historical evidence that the two ever got together. In fact, they are much more likely to have been rivals, because Bonsard too ran a lunch establishment at Dhurromtollah in the 1870s, ponderously named the "Hotel Grand D'Europe."

There is no Guiseppe Peschi or Rex Knott in the history books at all; nor is there a Malini, as delectable as mine or otherwise; but a Giovanna Peliti was indeed buried in Simla, even if there's nothing to suggest what relationship she bore to the restaurateur, if any…

A rather benign "Leopard Fakir" also walked the earth at the time per the unofficial record; but the poor man was nothing like my malevolent villian! Except, that is, for the fact that he too was French, and went to Bishop Cotton School from where he ran away with a band of itinerant sadhus. But the "real" fellow only came back some years later to sit quietly in meditation at the Hanuman temple atop Jakko. And in any case, his name was never Jacquemont, though a French travel writer by the name of Victor Jacquemont did spend some time in the Simla hills during the same broad period...

All the other characters with the exception of the various viceroys and sundry others mentioned by their readily identifiable names, are quite fictional; though again I must admit that some do bear more than nodding resemblance to actual historical characters. 

In this category I must insert Theophileus Howe, loosely modelled on Allan Octavian Hume, the founder of India's independence winning Congress Party; but the original article, I hasten to add, was respectably married, and with a penchant for ornithology, eventually donating his formidable collection to the British Museum.  He did perform heroically in his first North West Province district in the 1840s, but it wasn't called Medha. And in any case, he had none of the fictional character's sexual predilections to worry him as he went about his noble pursuits! Similarly, my Madame Zhirinsky's portrait does owe something, despite the elaborate and irreverent licence taken, to Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the very respectable Theosophy Movement in India and parts far flung.

My Joseph of Kandahar, too, is based on the equally mysterious parlour-tricking, invisible turning A M Jacob,  previously  featured as "Lurgans Sahib" in Rudyard Kipling's "Kim."

Jacob or Yakub as he originally was, did in fact also sell a diamond named after himself to the Nizam of Hyderabad, according to newspaper reports of the time. And this action did involve him in protracted litigation in the Calcutta High Court. It raked up issues of the "doctrine of paramountcy" in the conduct of administration between British India and the Princely States around them. Jacob eventually won his court case, after years of proceedings that bankrupted him, but to little or no actual benefit. And, like the "Joseph Diamond" of my story, the "Jacob Diamond" is still very prominent amongst the erstwhile Nizam's jewels, even if it is mostly wrapped up out-of-sight in a State Bank of India vault in Bombay.

And Oonch Vihar, the semi-fictional locale of the early part of my story does draw upon aspects of Cooch Behar for its stated ambience, its Indo-Saracenic palace, its famous hunts; but the literary landscape is peopled with creatures of my imagination, their thoughts and actions entirely different from anything that adheres to the historical record on the place.

Similarly Madrassabad stands in for the rich state of Hyderabad, but only the very literal minded would find it necessary to react to its inaccuracies in the context of my story.

Lastly, all the models for the main characters of my story did inhabit the small mountaintop called Simla from where the British administered India for the better part of each year. But, despite the documentation of their individually interesting lives, there is nothing in the history books to suggest that they ever interacted, for magic or the mundane, whether it was to share the warmth of friends, or to hurl around the vitriol of enemies...

Gautam Mukherjee
New Delhi, September 2018

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