Coincidence

I

1906

Simla was the closest James felt at ease in Hindustan. As a child of 13, James couldn't fit in Calcutta, the air was too warm and sticky and the threat of malaria too much to play outside. He remembered his mother constantly fussing over him and his sister, putting mosquito nets over their beds and forcing quinine down the throats of the servants in their house, lest they carried the parasite.

After an upbringing in London, Calcutta was indeed a shock, even if he had lived there only for a year. The crisp air of England replaced by the blistering humid winds of the Indian summer. His father, Lt. Bartholomew was a well-respected figure in the British Indian Army, stoic with all the ideals of true British gentleman. Even when he was in India, he didn't indulge in the vices of native girls and hookah. He kept to his whiskey and cigarettes, and attending church on Sundays.  

Like all children of Britons, James and his sister Cynthia, too were sent back to London to get a good education. He went off to Eton and later Balliol in Oxford. Back in his homeland, James spun tales of his time in India, impressing his peers with tales of Indian ghosts, snake charmers and the thronging crowds.

Once done with university, and feeling an adventurous spirit come over him, he decided to give the exams for the Indian Civil Services, because the opportunity was such. India was a big country with a teeming population, and only about a thousand whites were employed in the senior administrative positions. His father used to often tell him about the lack of people who they could trust. Very few Indians were literate enough to carry out tasks for the British government as well as be trusted enough to not riot. The memories of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 were still fresh in the minds of some. 

But for James, Simla was a chance meeting. Soon after he got a job in Calcutta after clearing his exam, he was slogging away at typewriters and reading telegrams from Madras and developments in Delhi, dealing with more than thirty Indian lawyers under him. He had heard about the summer capital in hurried letters written in shorthand, but never got the chance to visit it. All he knew was that it was cool and pleasant, full of Europeans who had created a hamlet out of a cantonment, where the retinues and secretaries of the Viceroy shifted to escape the blazing heat of the summers.

Simla was a hidden beauty. A home away from home, carved in the foothills of the Himalayas with lush forests and cool winds to drive the stress of working in a country which became increasingly hostile by the years. For James, Simla was different, not just in geography, but in its nature itself. His eyes would scramble over the mountainous landscapes, the Great Himalayas, a feast for the eyes. This was not the India he had previously experienced as an adolescent or as a clerk sitting in the Writer's Building, full of beauty which he had never seen.

When Wordsworth and Keats talked of meandering rivulets and snow-covered mountains, he didn't expect it to be found in a small village in India. From This was a town of serenity and poise, where he dined with the finest gentry in Hindustan. Here men mingled with the each other in a meeting over the table while having dalliances with each other's wives at night. Simla was like an enchanting mistress, beautiful and classy but riddled with sins.

James was working under Lord Curzon when he was chosen as one of the officers of the retinue who were to shift to the Viceregal Lodge. He was 26 at that time; now at 32, James looked forward to settling in every year. Infinitely better than blistering hot winds of Delhi and agonizing stickiness of Calcutta, James had lived in the town for over six summers now. He knew the best points to see the landscape of Simla from the Upper Bazaar and offered prayers at the Christ Church more often than he did in Calcutta. The Viceregal Lodge, a beautiful brick building with remarkable architecture and some of the best landscaped gardens in all of land, was where he worked surrounded by the clean air of Simla and Burmese teak. It was exactly what the British had intended, a small piece of the best Britain has to offer, in a village in India. 

However, the beginning of the Summer of 1906 was slightly different. Unlike the usual administrative work, he was approached by the Secretary to the Viceroy with a survey project. In a village in Oudh, they needed a reassessment of the land. The files regarding the topography, previous taxation, demographic data and returns from the village had been brought in. He along with six other officials were to analyse nearly ten years of data to reassess land and tax the harvest. Unlike most ICS officials, who loved to regurgitate knowledge, James actually  knew how to put knowledge to use.  

This wasn't very difficult work, tedious yes, but not difficult. What James didn't realise was that the Summer of 1906 would change Simla as he knew it forever. How beneath the piles of office files and cocktail dinners, lay hearts darkened with single-minded ambition and how they would do anything to get what they want.