BUNGALOW NUMBER ONE, YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN
In 2012 Susie and I were in Varanasi for our every other year month in Varanasi and decided to visit the Agricultural Institute in Allahabad, 60 miles away, 60 years after I lived there with my parents in the photographs of the previous post. We took a taxi in the morning and returned in the evening. We hadn’t made arrangements for a visit and just wanted to ask permission for an informal sentimental visit of our house and the grounds of the college. But at the Principal’s office where we inquired, we were ushered into a prayer meeting attended by the Principal and about twenty staff members and were each given a Bible and asked to join in. After the prayer meeting, in which we wre silent, we were given a tour of the Institute.
The Agricultural Institute where Christianity and the Presbyterian mission connections were very low key 60 years before is now a center of Christian Fundamentalism which is also causing tensions with the surrounding community and India’s growing Hindu Nationalism. While we were there a 12 foot wall was being built around our garden with an armed guard at the gate protecting the current principal, Dr. Lal. And on the flat roof of the house is a Christian broadcasting studio beaming the evangelical message out to the surrounding area. Across the street in the old soccer field is a small stadium where sermons are directed at a large audience, with seating for a large number of people under murals of Biblical scenes.
The house, as you can see, is still there. But it is different in every way. The life of Americans under the British Raj is over. Only the house is the same. Indian decorating tastes are different from American decorating tastes, at least of my family. We had some low teak furniture made in the wood shop of the Institute and a large dining room table and chairs in the dining room. (If you look very closely at the ceiling of the dining room you can see the punkah hooks.). In the archways between the white walls of the living and dining room my mother had large vases filled with four foot high sprays of dried grass, a very low key decoration.
Now the white walls are painted many colors and the rooms are full of bright furniture and even a fake never needed fireplace along with pictures of family members and Jesus on the walls. The kitchen looks about the same except for the oversize refrigerator, but nothing else looks the same. You can’t go home again.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 