The last day of the month of Asard hardly lived up to its promise of being the harbinger of the monsoon with a stormy night that made Mohan Rakesh write his masterpiece, “Asard ka ek Din”. But long before that William Fraser, the British Resident at the Moghul court, celebrated the coming of the rainy season with his friend, Col James Skinner, both in the latter’s Kashmere Gate house and at Hansi. They drank to the billowing clouds and the belles in the Haryana countryside. The activities at Fraser’s own house, the mansion that was later bought by Hindu Rao and has now become Hindu Rao Hospital, were more intimate, with the orientalised sahib enjoying himself along with his female companions at the baoli (now in ruins).
Fraser probably never once went back to his native land. His brothers came, lived with him and at least one died after a serious illness (TB) that was treated for some time by the grandfather of Hakim Ajmal Khan with Unani medicines – in which Fraser had developed great faith. A scholar of Persian, Arabic, Urdu and Sanskrit, he couldn’t but have been interested in indigenous medicine, including the Ayurvedic system.
His long-standing interest in the nawabi state of Ferozepore and the young nawab, Shamsuddin Khan, whose guardian he had become, was to later lead to his murder because of his alleged dalliance with his protégé’s sister. But in his lifetime Fraser left no doubt that like Kipling’s Joseph Jelaluddin Mackintosh (who of course was born much later) he was a Hindustani, if not by blood than by adoption.
No wonder he disliked the British stiff-upper-lip attitude of which his personal hate target were the Metcalfe’s, one of whom (Charles) preceded him as Resident and the other, Thomas succeeded to the post after his assassination. May be Fraser was wrong in his assessment, for Sir Thomas Metcalfe too turned out to be as great a lover of things Indian as him. At the monument of Mohammad Quli in Mehrauli, which he made into his country home, Dilkhusha, Sir Thomas, wearing kurta-pyjama and smelling of khas attar, also enjoyed the advent of Sawan. The heat no doubt bothered him, but tub full of ice water helped to keep him and his drinks cool in the trying month of Asard. Those were the days when there was no threat of global warming and the monsoon arrived almost on dot on June 29 (the feast of saints Peter and Paul). Though not a Catholic, he enjoyed the feast just as John Keats, despite his Anglican Church upbringing, was inspired to write one of his best poems, “The Eve of St Agnes”.
The last day before Sawan saw the peal of thunder after flashes of lightning that lit up the monuments of Mehrauli and threatened to strike the Qutub Minar, which had suffered damage earlier, both in earthquakes and lightning strikes, before Major Robert Smith made it safe from them by installing a lightning conductor. That scenario was the signal to Sir Thomas that soon he would have to go back to his Metcalfe House home in North Delhi – the monsoon rains being too heavy then for him to stay put in the old monument. Still the beginning of the end of the hot weather enthused him to make merry, just like Christmas time, but the merriment at Dilkhusha was of an informal nature, when he could afford to take off his shirt ( kurta ) and let the raindrops cool his prickly heat-ridden body. At Matka Kothi Sir Thomas was the pucca sahib who wanted ladies to eat oranges (and mangoes) in the bathroom lest they let the juice trickle down their faces and make a mess of their clothes to the secret amusement of the Indian servants used to getting their ears pulled with their master’s kid-gloved hand for the slightest misdemeanour.
Fraser was partly right when he remarked that the Metcalfes were a snobbish lot, who made a bit too much of their white skin. But probably like R.L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the dual personality of both Sir Thomas and his elder brother, Sir Charles (who actually started the practice of retiring to a summer house in Mehrauli) made itself evident at different times, for they too had became enamoured of things Indian and started regarding themselves as Naboobs.
While passing the teasing days of Asard one sometimes thinks of those times and takes solace from the antics of the “White Moghuls” as the Purva (east wind) blows over pillows wet with perspiration and the smell of raat-ki-rani and jasmine cools the hot, irritating breath. This time the full moon too helped to enliven the advent of Sawan on the 4th of July, US Independence Day, which Sir Charles Metcalfe probably attended as Governor of Jamaica.
