From My Notebooks In 1976: To Poona

2nd February 2025 |

In case you haven’t been following me during the last year or two, I am reproducing, word for word, what I wrote in my notebooks on the journey that led to my books, Jupiter’s Travels and Riding High.

I arrived in India at Madras (now called Chennai) earlier in 1976 and have been travelling round the south of India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). It’s November now, and I’m coming up the coast towards Poona (now Pune). When I was young it was still possible to hear old Empire hands launch into conversation with: “When I was in Poona . . .“

But before we get to Poona I have some rather nice pictures I wanted to show you earlier, when I got back to the coast at Karwar. It was a fishing village, and the boats were not only beautiful, but it seemed to me that they wouldn’t have looked any different 200 years earlier.

Boat at Karwar

And this one

Karwar fisherman

And then there was this excellent goat in Goa

Goat in Goa

[I was beginning to make notes of how the clothing had changed as I went along.]

Tamil Nadu, buff cotton round head, loosely, shirts and dhotis.

Hill stations, trousers, cloth wrapped round head over ears, usually woolen scarf.

Maharashtra, topi, jacket and trousers.

Women, same saris, but tied for working in North Karnataka and Maharashtra so that their legs show from thigh down. South more prudish.

Also in Maharashtra some groups wear turbans of purple, orange, etc.

Riding south in Tamil Nadu, narrow tar roads, patches on patches on patches, like sealed corrugations. Few cars, but lorries an buses, all spew out diesel smoke, never look in mirror. Road generally raised above surrounding paddy where ox teams are churning up the mud after last harvest. – men in loin cloth only, seeming very primitive and close to the gleaming wet soil. Women in lines of thirty or more, advancing, bent double, across fields planting paddy – saris brilliant. Oxen often have enameled horns of marvelous shapes, sometimes tipped with brass. Heads high, yoke resting between neck and hump, each one in line with a wheel. Men walk alongside ploughing teams on road carrying their ploughs, indicating that the labour of carrying is not a conscious problem.

[So now, back on the road from Kolhapur to Poona]

A fascinating challenge adjusting to speed differences between animal, pedestrian, cyclist and motor traffic. Maximum safe speed 30 mph. Occasional vigorous outbursts of swearing at buses and trucks cutting in as I overtake – or overtaking each other at my expense. Too hot for jacket. Bike boils in villages, particularly when I get lost in some bazaar street. For the first time horn is essential. Are pedestrians dreaming or deliberately contemptuous. Gopi, later, says that after the war, about the time of Independence, the people resented traffic as a symbol of the rich, and their leaders encouraged them to claim the roads for themselves and their animals.

What do ox carts carry? Baskets, coconuts, wood, grain and straw.

Poona

[Went to visit Lucas, my sponsor. Now called LucasTVS, a joint Indian company, which still exists today. They suggested I visit Perfect Motors.]

Perfect Motors. Mr. Ekbote. Perfectly air-conditioned office, approached by ratty staircase. Mr. E gives me spirited pep talk about India’s progress.

[I asked him if he had visited England.]

His contretemps with Her Majesty’s Immigration.

“Do you intend to stay in UK?”

Mr. E: “What a stupid question. Do you think I’d tell you if I did?”

“You are insulting the Queen’s uniform.”

“I don’t care what uniform you’re wearing. If you ask a stupid question … etc., etc.”

In Germany he tells his friends about Indian technology. They are frankly disbelieving. He points to their fan (Do they have fans in Germany?) and says, “It’s made in India.” Unscrews cover to prove it. Lots of other gadgets too. Mentions that India is probably doing a deal with Dassault for the Mirage, although still supposed to be on Mig 22. Says he knows because specifications of various sub-contracted parts have changed. Sends me to see Bharat Forge Co. and Bajaj Scooters.

Says India has one year’s stock of grain (admits storage facilities inadequate but now being built.)

[I hear stories of mountains of grain under plastic being consumed by rats.]

India has trading surplus. Is repaying the capital on World Bank loans. Big business is selling consultancy abroad. Technology in telecommunication is high, etc.

Go to Poona Club. In evening go for a ride along Laxmi Street. Amazing congestion. At last find my way round a circuit and back. Buy map. Carburetor playing up. Float valve is obviously sticking on low throttle. Had to clean it out again at TVS.

In Bharat Club meet two metallurgists who make sintered metal components. Were in Lichfield. One is manic, the other silent. Invited to dinner following day by two lots. One half Portuguese, the others, Sikhs. Neither ever turned up. Went to M&S house to have dinner. M puts on a sort of show of sophisticated living. Boasts of his pal in Bombay with flat behind the Taj. Promises to introduce me. Never see him again. (BO!?)

Friday 12th

Morning of batteries. After lunch to forging company. Seminal experience, like the Jain school. [Another vast dark space full of smoke lit by fire.] Staggering sights of men in long black fireproof gowns and goggles working at huge steam hammers three times their height. The hammer lunges down constantly, and withdraws, like cobra swaying, waiting to strike. Manhandle lumps of red metal with long tongs, twisting it across the die from one hole to another and Wham! Wham! Wham! The hammer strikes, almost seeming to do so of its own volition – as though in some sort of complicity, but dangerous, uncertain, like wild beast barely trained, elephant, killer whale.

I feel all the old excitement of men releasing great energy and mastering it that must have excited the minds of the early industrial revolution.

But how much of this is my projection? How much is really there? What do the faces show? Grim. Impassive, but not bored. Not even specially fatigued, and they’re on top of it.

[I remember talking to one of them. Very proud of his job, seven days a week. Pretty sure he told me they got one day off a year.]

Saturday 13th to Sunday 14th

Lazy days watching cricket, reading, writing a bit.

Monday 15th

Early away to get a look at Bajaj Scooters before going to Bombay. At factory was kept waiting an hour before a substitute for Mr. Jain could be found to take me round the works. “Mr. Jain is not in his cabin.”

[Bajaj, made the best auto-rickshaws in India as well as scooters. It is still thriving today.]

Met the export manager instead. He was an impressive fellow. Revealed that production for domestic market was rigidly limited by Government. Bajaj has “nine-year order backlog,” though other firms make scooters and can’t sell them. Govt insist that no-one shall become too big and wipe out employment by economies of scale. Bajaj makes 320 per day (including three-wheelers) can rise to 400.

En route [to Bombay] procession, in pairs, with saffron flags and cymbals, women carrying food, apparently going a long way.

Later a family coming back, with lacquered chests on heads.

Road not bad until Thana, where Bombay island begins. Barges unloading sand from dredgers, a huge activity, mountains of sand all moved by the basketful on a woman’s head. (She’ll put it on her head just to go five paces). Anyone who wonders how the pyramids & temples were built need only go to Thana now.

Awful lorry-infested crossings, the expressway to Bombay. One ghastly estate of rehoused slums along roadside.