Bill Brady and the riding ‘ustad’ at Mount Abu

Nehchal Sandhu

Oppressive temperatures in the sultry plains of northern Gujarat ceded ground to a cool environment as we lumbered up the winding road towards Mount Abu, a verdant oasis on the trailing edge of the Aravallis in Rajasthan, in April 2018. An enthusiastic mix of 40-odd septuagenarians and sexagenarians, travelling in two buses, craned their necks in anticipation of a view of the brainery that they had joined four-and-a-half decades earlier. Not sharing the enthusiasm of their spouses, the accompanying wives and widows of three fallen colleagues remained unmoved by the wondrous portal of the hallowed institution that had transformed their husbands from naïve lads into strapping police officers.

This six-hour transit to Mount Abu was nothing like our 36-hour peregrination from Nagpur to Abu Road in the winter of 1973. From the fecund Vidarbha, known for oranges and sugarcane, our unrushed train took us to famine-stricken Nandurbar; parched fields bore testimony to the misery confronting the majority Bhil tribal population. Having traversed that tragedy-hit stretch, we coursed into a prosperous Gujarat culminating in Ahmedabad, seat then of the broad gauge-metre gauge conflux.

The connecting steam locomotive-powered train pulled out on schedule but its slow speed and stops at obscure railway stations made for halting progress. A dash to the head of the train at one of such halts revealed a delight — Bill Brady, the engine driver in his mid-fifties. An Anglo-Indian settled in Gujarat, he looked every bit an Irishman like his forefather. Bearded and dressed in impeccable white with a peak cap to match, he was an impressive figure. Invited into the engine driver’s open cabin, two of us were spared the smoke and coal particles being blown backwards onto the passenger compartments. And so we rode with the unabashed Bill, who would occasionally break out into an old English number mindless of the company and the evident inability of the fireman to comprehend what was being intoned.

Dedicated to the point of being reverent, Bill’s alertness did not flag; he would dutifully lean out at intermediate stations with the train at full clip to throw the ball-shaped ‘signalling token’ onto the platform and to collect the next one with his forearm from the Station Master holding a hoop aloft. A bundle of energy, Bill outdid his fireman in shovelling coal from the tender into the firebox. The sight of men in white clothes and brightly-coloured turbans proceeding for work in the fields and women in a smorgasbord of bright and swirling dresses with brass pots on their heads made a memorable impression, which is yet to lose its original intensity and vibrancy.

Determined we were to savour every moment of our short stay and to show our wives what we had endured over a period of 12 months. Home to the Central Police Training College (CPTC) since 1950, two years after Sardar Patel had fostered the formation of the All India Services, the Abu Lawrence School, built in 1849, had not changed. Nor had the parade ground. Only the gymnasium had been turned into an indoor chamber, which we used for an event to pay homage to our fallen colleagues.

Our digs in the Rajputana Hotel Estate, not too far away, had sadly deteriorated. It had been run as a hotel for Rajasthan royals and well-heeled Europeans quite profitably for 45 years by the Merwanjis since 1905. Peeved at the government decision (1950) to requisition the premises for housing IPS officer trainees, at a rent not even approximating the hotel’s revenue potential, the Merwanjis allowed it to degenerate. Cash-strapped, the CPTC, rechristened as the National Police Academy in 1967, could not put up adequate money for satisfactory maintenance. And so it decayed, until the Academy moved to Hyderabad in 1975, leaving the campus to the CRPF for its Internal Security Academy.

Barracks that CPTC trainees had originally occupied (1948-1950) had reverted to the Army. The Sirmoor Rifles, the first Gurkha unit raised by the East India Company in 1824, which became 5/8 Gorkha Rifles after Independence, was the incumbent in our time. The then CO, Lt Col Jasbir Pal Singh Randhawa’s commanding presence, commitment to high standards and ability to do better than most of his younger colleagues was a source of inspiration. No wonder, reporting on the Chhamb battle in 1971, veteran broadcaster Melville de Mellow had portrayed him as “an officer with enough ‘josh’ to set the (river) Tawi on fire”.

Visits to Guru Shikhar, Dilwara temples, Nakki lake and Sunset Point, for acquainting the wives with the sights, were disappointing with tourists in significant numbers thronging every venue. Fortunately, the game sanctuary built by Col GH Trevor, an engineer who wrote “Rhymes of Rajputana” about the chieftains and leading families in Rajputana at the turn of the 20th century, appeared unscarred by visitors. The significant crocodile population in the lake central to this wildlife habitat might have been the deterrent.

Trevor likewise built the Oval, a stadium used for our parades and advanced levels of equestrian training. Bystanders would revel in our humiliation as we tumbled off our steeds amidst bids to jump over fences with stirrups crossed. Artless efforts by unsure riders to feed jaggery to the horses before the session did nothing to ingratiate the mounts. While conducting our wives around what is now Barkatullah Stadium, we chose not to reveal the ignominy heaped on us by the riding ustad whenever we bit the dust.

As the sojourn concluded, we departed with refreshed memories of happy times spent together, deepened bonds and a silent prayer on our lips for our 17 fallen colleagues.  

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