RAMAYANA TATTOOS

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The story of the ‘bibi’ line and the retuned empties

The world we live in is certainly interesting and many of the tales that enliven it come from books that people do not even know to exist. . I spend a long time with those inanimate objects created to outline periods from the past, marveling at the varied life that man led thus far. This story detailed a period like that and though I did know of this vignette from a couple of books, they were by no means complete. This weekend, armed with some research material, I got into the depths of the story and what you read is a result of that effort.

To get to this story, I have to take you to the Britain of the post Industrial revolution period. The Midlands and London were certainly busy places and a good amount of manufacturing took place. The factories were buzzing, the raw material came in freighters from the newly established colonies in India and the Far East and the British ports were busy places indeed. The educated (but from socially lower rungs (mostly though not all) of society) moved to India and found positions in the military, civilian or academic areas or even with the ICS in India and for them then, it was like today’s Middle East for Indians. They travelled far from home, to the heat and dust of India, to make a living and to make a name, earn some money and like in the case of Wellesley and a few others, fame.

But then there were many other sub plots in the story of the British Raj and this is not one you will find detailed, but mentioned only in passing, in most books. Today, you can find a few novels detailing the story of one or two of the many thousands who travelled in what were loosely known as the fishing fleet. And the large canvass of that story has in one corner the tragedy of the returned empties of the story. It was certainly difficult to research, for unlike the meticulously recorded British times in India, this has been given a short sift. Sometimes you wonder why, but anyway let us get to know the members the fleet and its purpose.

In the beginning, the ships leaving Britain travelled around the Cape of Good Hope, much like the earlier Portuguese and Dutch ships and made their beeline to an Indian port, like Bombay, Madras or Calcutta. There they disgorged their load of weary but bright eyed and pale skinned men, eager to make their presence felt among the brown people of India. How they made that presence felt is the story of the Raj. Some of the richer or senior people who paid their fare, brought along their spouses, or probably the EIC paid their fares as perks. The younger men came alone. The need for female companionship for those young and eager men sometimes created local relationships in India and a class called Eurasians or Anglo Indians was born. I had earlier covered this topic in this hyperlinked article, which I had enjoyed writing.

In the early days, the time of discovery as historians put it, there was no feel for class and society, but soon after, came the sad story of class hierarchy and color. That itself is a fascinating subject and the British actually borrowed examples from India’s own caste system to establish themselves at the top of the ladder, equal to or sometimes above Brahmins. They fortunately had the very man who created all the mess, a gentleman by name called Manu, who wrote his Manusmriti, and the class map he created, for the subjugation of the masses, at their disposal. They used varna or color to establish superiority and thus came the concept of the goras and kalas. The British Gora soon became the white master.

But that was to soon create havoc in their private lives. The young and unattached soldier certainly found paid company in the many brothels that sprouted around the forts and towns the British lived in. But the young needed partners and soon the marriage to a local or Desi woman was frowned upon, both the man and the woman became outcastes in the white’s clubs. As Geroge & Anne Forty state in their book – They also served- The [districts] in the larger cities - in Bombay it was known as "the Cages," in Poona it was called "the Nadge" -- were strictly out of bounds. If any white soldier was seen in the area, whistles were blown by the police, all traffic came to a standstill and the soldier would, of course, be caught .. .Any man who availed himself of the "tree rats" or "grass bidis" was properly dealt with. He was given a severe ticking off, had his pay stopped and was sent to Number 13 Block, which was the dreaded treatment center. Many turned, as a last resort, to the "five-fingered widow..."

The British upper crust found this all very disquieting. They had to find a way to keep the young at bay. And the solution was the establishment of what they called (but did not consign to written text and recorded history) the Fishing fleet.

And so, some girls escaped boring country life and made their way east.. Chaperoned sometimes by older married women who would explain to them the ways of India (with graceless and uneducated tact, like - do not shake hands with an Indian, you never know here their hand shave been!!) arriving in India in the cooling Autumn months, before the chill set in, in the northern mountains and the plains where the wars were fought and were governing took place. The ratio of British men to White women was three, five or as some books mention 10:1. So the marriage market in British India was bright indeed and to fill the gap came in the droves of women from Britain…

In the beginning the rules forbade British women in outposts, so the protestant English married locals as I mentioned earlier, or worse (according to the British books) they matched up with Catholics of Portuguese Indian origin. The answer to the problem was to ship marriageable girls to India. That was the fishing fleet. The first fishing fleets were shipped out in the latter part of the 17th century. The EIC provided them ‘one’ set of clothes and supported them for one year, the time allocated to find husbands. If they did not, the EIC warned them formally not to stoop to low morals and they were quickly shipped back to Britian. But this formal practice was however abandoned in the 18th century for presumably cost reasons. Many months ago, I wrote about the Orfaaas Del Rei of Lisbon, the girls who were sent out to India by the Portuguese Lendas Da India for the same purpose, to become partners for needy males serving in India. . Britian’s answer as you can see, was the fishing fleet.

Anyway by the early 19th century, the ships stopped taking the laborious route around Africa, and started using the faster route through the newly opened Suez Canal. It was in 1871, that the canal was opened and soon came to the called ‘The highway to India’. It is certainly strange isn’t it? How Egypt and the Red Sea route were always linked with India from the earliest records of mankind!! That Red Sea route was used by everybody to get to mystical India for all it produced and all it did not. Ah! I am drifting off.. let me get back on to track.


The returning British on the other hand looked brown and tanned, with better toned muscles after the riding and work in India and the stories they doled out after a few mugs at the bar were astounding, to the untrained ear, of maharajas, coolies, ayas, house staff, bungalows and so on. The girls took notice. India was a place many of them wanted to go to.

Whether this enterprise was publically announced, whether it was started by an entrepreneur or whether it was sponsored by the EIC or the government is not clear, but it soon became known to interested girls that those who were looking for a husband could take a steamer to India, for there was many a young Englishman looking for a wife. Many a girl booked a place on an Eastward P&O. This P&O run from Liverpool to Bombay thus got the nickname (name in the nick of time – is that how the phrase came about??) Fishing fleet. The girls were in the ship and going on a fishing trip…fishing for a husband, and escaping the dreary gloomy, dark & dank, smelly and ‘orrible blighty, now destined for the sunny, bright, hot and dusty India…to start a new life. One lady who travelled in 1779 describes the two groups of girls who were in these ships as the old maids or the shriveled lot and the others as girls educated merely to cover their mental deformity. The British India shipping line was called the bibi or lady line (Indian army – Heathcote) owing to the ladies seeking marriage filling them!!.

How did the girls get into the fleet? Girls in Britain or their parents started the husband hunt in right earnest after a certain age. If there was failure after a season or two, they were promptly shipped off on a fishing fleet to India, before they became a member of the spinsterly lot. Where did the girls head to after landing? They moved on to the many cantonments around India, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras where they lodged with friends and relatives or they went to the various Hill stations.

Just imagine the plight of that girl who stepped out of that steamer to start her new life…Margaret McMillan in her ‘Women of the Raj’ provides a striking picture…Sometimes they were magnificent, Sometimes on the other hand, they were awful as only people who are as frightened as can be. When a conviction of superiority goes with fear then the arrogance is heightened and sharpened. The memsahibs …..they stride through that history in their voluminous clothes which denied the Indian climate, their only concession to the heat, the graceless solar helmet, the topi which protected their rose petal cheeks from the alien sun….

After they reached India these girls were led to the balls or taken to ‘ala juggas’ or secluded spots where they sat, danced or came to know intimately, the new men courting them. Some fishing fleet girls met their match on the ship and got married as soon as they got off the ship, and as you can imagine, the long voyage was quite conducive for these matters. But this was not the best catch, so girls were told not to venture out on deck and court the men travelling on these ships unless they were of the appropriate level. Quoting from the Colonel’s lady, Those traveling alone were advised to stay in their cabins, Bible in hand, to avoid the temptations of the East and the shipboard romances. Not for nothing was the British India Shipping Line known as the "bibi" line, the Hindustani word for "woman" or "mistress" coinciding with the Company's "B.B.' monogram. The best catch was of course the heaven born or the ICS cadre men, who were equated to the Brahmins of India by the British.

And thus the annual fishing fleet arrived every autumn, and as the sprightly female passengers were disgorged, the men at the hills stations waited in eager anticipation. As the trains rumbled and steamed on from Calcutta or Bombay to the hills stations with these heady girls, the men stocked up on goods in anticipation of a quick marriage, things like furniture and clothes, to impress on the new and fair arrival.

Once landed they would move off to places like Simla or other hill stations where eager men were in anxious wait and only the ugly or unfetching ones were left unattached after a month or two. Some girls saw the opportunity and flirted a lot and worked their way through a number of eligible bachelors staring from lieutenants to the civilians (more easy to settle down in a town than an outpost, you see!) and hopefully ending with the well paid ICS man with loads of perks… before finally getting hitched. The end of the eligibility line was a district collector, usually. Ironically, the man who has been spurned sometimes ends up hawking off all the furniture and clothes he had collected in anticipation of a quick wedding to the man the girl has chosen over him…possibly his friend or senior.

As Julia Gregson the author of East of Sun mentions, For young girls, the immediate challenge—rarely stated or acknowledged—was to find a man. To do this, one had to meet the right people, to go to parties and polo matches, to fit in with a very small, enclosed, and sometimes frightened group of people. Lots of fun on the surface, but the rules of engagement were clear: you had to conform, to look good, to dress well, and not to say anything that might frighten the horses. Bluestockings and eccentrics were not well tolerated. India itself was another challenge. Some women fell in love at first sight, others hated it: the stinks, the poverty, the heat, the feeling of being cut off from Europe.

As Pran Nevile states in his book Sahib’s India - To keep them chaste for the marriage market, unmarried women traveled under the care of chaperones, usually married women…’Almost all of the fresh cargo got snapped up on the spot. The Sunday Church was a good spot for offering and receiving proposals. The few who did not succeed in securing marriage proposals, spread out into the mofussil towns.

The interest of the ladies was equally intense but for different reasons, as Lady Angela Falkland, wife of the Governor and a daughter of William IV and Mrs. Jordan noted in 1848:-

"The arrival of a cargo of young damsels from England is one of the most exciting events that mark the advent of the cold season (in mid October) with its 4 months of concentrated gaiety of dances, balls and picnics. It can be well imagined that their age, height, features, dress and manners become topics of conversation, as they bring the latest fashions from Europe, they are objects of interest to their own sex."

Statistically - At the Census (1861) 11,636 women above the age of 15, of English origin including 8,356 wives, were enumerated and 98,888 men.

Quoting from a poem in 1813

Pale faded stuffs, by time grown faint
Will brighten up through "art";
A "Britain" gives their faces paint,
For sale at India's mart.

The girls were led through the merry go round for a while and many settled with their prize catches in the fine fishing or hunting grounds up in the hill stations blessed with the salubrious cool weather. Many a special entertainment was organized for the new arrivals from the fishing fleet. Months went by and as summer came, there were some left, who were as they called it ‘short of bait’. Some were truly so, on the physically and attractiveness scale, some had as they said expended all the bait truly liberally ( now you know why it was called a fishing fleet) on the voyage itself and well, they ended up uncalled for, eventually. They hung around till the ships returned and this sad and desolate lot were called the ‘returned empties’, destined for a life of spinsterhood, working their feet off in governess’ing and nursing. Some of the returned empties were actually real returners who hated India, the colonial life style, the falseness under the pomp and lack of meaning in lonely colonial life in a land that hated them and a bunch of customs they themselves hated. They returned empty handed, and thus were the unkindly named the returned empties….

But this does not work out in mathematical sense with figures varying between 3-10 men to every British woman and 100:2 between suitors and fishing fleet girls, the chances of success were very high and that is why the trip was a regular seasonal event. Such being the case, the retuned empty was perhaps a rarity, and one who were sent back must have been terrible misfits…As the poem in an old weekly stated…

Now sail the chagrined fishing fleet
Yo ho, my girls, yo ho!
Back to Putney and Byfleet
Poor girls, you were too slow!

One question still remained in my mind. Who comprised the fishing fleet? Some references state that they are daughters of Indian officers, who went at a young age to England for studies, others mention they are daughters from wealthy families; some others believe they constituted ordinary middle class working girls. Victor Jacquemont, a French botanist visiting India at the time was not much impressed by the English ladies he met at Calcutta and other places. He wrote (1830): “Portionless girls who have not succeeded in getting married in England arrive here in cargoes for sale on honourable terms,” Another question remained; did the fleet spend just one autumn + winter season in India or a whole year? In the very beginning EIC sponsored them for a whole year, but later on with higher frequency of shipping and higher sustenance costs, the returned empties were back in the blighty in 6-8 months after setting out on the fishing trip.

The fishing fleet became virtually institutionalized by 1880. Balls, gymkhanas, moonlight picnics etc were waiting for the arrivals, and as Eric Richards mentions in his book Brittania’s children, the increase of influx of British women was also to decrease the intimacy level between the two races in India. It also appears that the returned empties complained bitterly (somewhat unfair I think) of the local competition from the Gentoo Indian women.

So readers, that is the story of the fishing fleet or the bibi line and the case of the returned empties. A period of time when mans need for a mate meant bridging oceans..One of these days I will cover the Indian marriage bazaar in the NRI circles and the Chinese marriage bazaar in Beijing…

Sometimes girls tell me how humiliating it is to undergo ‘pennukanal’ or the ritual ‘seeing a girl session’ in an arranged marriage. Just imagine how it was for these poor girls from Britain!! Then they will understand the travails of an unmarried girl going off to faraway lands , sometimes uncivilized from their perspective, and hunting or fishing for a husband, after lounging around in balls and galas and getting liberally sampled…well, that was life then…..

Recommended reading
Women of the Raj – Margaret McMillan
The Sandalwood tree- Elle Newmark
Judy O'Grady and the Colonels Lady - Noel T St John Williams.
East of Sun – Julia Gregson
Sahibs India – Pran Nevile
Plain tales from the Raj – Paul Allen
Raj – Lawrence James
The Linnet Bird – Linda Holeman

Many thanks to roortsweb.com for pointers provided in their conversations…and ancestersonboard for the fishing fleet passenger list published on their website that I have included in this article for completeness.

Pics – from google images – Thanks to the owners and uploaders.

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Labels: Aihole, Drama, Folk, Gadegalu, Gamaka, geethe, Janapada, Literature, Madeshwara, Manteswamy, Medicine, Panchatantra, Periyapattanada Kalaga, persia, Poem, Sassaniad, satakarni, Satavahana, theatre, Yellammana

Since I'm about to start teaching my class Multimedia For Photographers at the incomparable Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, I am glad to have caught the news that Samson (Zoom) has announced the H2n, a portable audio recorder that incorporates five built-in mics, and one 3.5mm external mic input, for a variety of sound capture scenarios, and for the anticipated street of $199.

It will come with a bunch of accessories including an audio editing software, and an optional accessory pack with lots of goodies.

It may well be time to retire my Marantz PMD620 after all! But it will have to do until the H2n is released in September....which may allow me to get it before I travel to Kolkata on my Cult of Durga photo expedition.

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Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

I've been on Buenos Aires since Friday morning, and I've already seen tango street performers, as well as spent many hours at a genuine milonga observing the traditional rituals and procedures that govern the tango, the national dance of Argentina.

The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop 2011 has just been inaugurated by a lunch for the faculty, and approximately 130 students are converging towards Motivarte, where the official introduction of students-instructors is scheduled in an hour or so.

Eric Beecroft, in the manner of the Roman emperors, declared the workshop open by saying 'let the games begin'. He didn't really say that...but his speech was infinitely more eloquent.

I ought to get ready to meet my students.

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I have mentioned the favorite animal in Kerala many a time in what I call 'my attempts at writing'. We love the elephant in Kerala and always look at it kindly and with a great amount of affection. But today it reminded me of a story that my friend told me many years ago and at that time, I penned it into my musings and filed it away. Today, as I was wondering what to post, for I was not in a real mood to post anything heavy, I came across this and decided to air it finally.....At that time, some 8 years ago, I had written it as a converstation between me and my second son Arun.For quite some time I did not believe this story after I heard it from my friend Ram. But Ram has always been a truthful chap, and now I am telling it to Arun… I cannot recite the tale like Ram did, it had its own special tones and flavor when told in Tamil and many of the Mannargudi nuances are now missing…nevertheless, it is an interesting tale.

Arun wonders what a pachyderm is and I explain to him that it is none other than our dear elephant. An elephant is very visible in South India, especially Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It is part of most pomp and ceremonies, always a part of temple festivities and religious festivals, both Christian and Hindu. We see them now and then, on the road, being walked by their mahouts from temple to temple, doing work like pulling tree logs and of course at virtually every big temple, serenely eating coconut leaves.. In our own village, we have a temple and there used to be a famous elephant called Pallavur Parameswaran.. Arun is astounded. You give names to elephants? I explain that they have an important position in our society and that the most famous of the lot was the Guruvayur Kesavan…an elephant so famous that a movie was made about its life and times. He thinks I am fibbing. Now what more can I do to convince a kid who prefers to believe what Eminem raps? I guess that if I show him Kesavan’s web page, he would believe me, but there is no such website. Google does come to my help though, I find documented references to the great Kesavan and show them to Arun. He is a bit perturbed though. This angle is new to him….Elephants with names, movies about them?

With the help of Google, I show him that there are books on Guruvayur elephants, Kerala elephants and so on…I show him pictures..he finally seems convinced and so we continue with the tale.

Oh, I love the Indian elephant…..Arun asks why I like the India pachyderm more than the African one, I ask him to look at both pictures and decide. The Indian elephant looks more proportionate and rounded, also less ancient, but he does not quite see it that way, so we agree to disagree.

Ram my friend, I met him at Istanbul, is from Mannargudi, a town in the Tanjavur district – Tamil Nadu. Mannrgudi has a great Krishna temple, visited by many devotees. Remember that many stories and life in South Indian villages are related to temple life and this happens to be around the temple elephant.

Krishna Iyer was a miserly chap, not everybody liked him though he was omnipresent and sometimes overbearing. If something important took place, Krishna Iyer would be there to offer his two cents worth of worthless advice. He was generally considered a nuisance though relatively harmless. He presented an interesting picture, bare bodied except for the loin cloth or dhoti, the weather beaten punul (sacred thread) across his chest…and bare footed, adorned with the discolored thorthu mundu (towel) across his shoulder.

Arun has to interrupt, he wants to know what the Punul is, and why he was not wearing any shirt or shoes. I ask him to recall the sights and sounds from our last visit to Kerala and the temples. I remind him that it was the custom around temples, especially for those who were working in the temple and who had to go in and out of the sanctum sanctorium often…It is easier not to have to wear & remove shirts..that he understands, though it was strictly speaking not the right explanation.

Krishna Iyer did not have any living family, he never married, which was good of course since ‘they’ would have had a miserable life. He lived his simple life, eating free temple food or ‘Nivedyam’ wandering here and there and being himself…mostly a general but harmless nuisance.

The temple had its elephant and this was a very calm and nice elephant. He never harmed anybody, the mahout would even take him around the ‘Agraharams’ and the village to bless children with its trunk…in return for some money (meant for the mahout) or some food (plantains usually).

Arun gets the picture..The elephant is a great big animal who is kid friendly like a giant teddy bear and who would put out its trunk when a coin is inserted in the right place…Aha…OK..good ...good ...go on…cut to the chase..

But elephants do become wild at times, especially when in Musth…I have difficulties explaining this to Arun, as it is a not so well understood phenomenon, a time when elephants become crazy and unpredictable. I tell him that elephants have such bad periods in their life, which he eventually accepts. When a captive elephant such as our temple elephant goes into Musth, it is pretty dangerous, there are stories of these ‘rouge’ elephants trampling masses, killing mahouts and so on..

This was a normal day in the Krishna temple in Mannargudi and Krishna Iyer was wandering around. He could not find anybody who would listen to him, but after wandering around a bit, he saw our elephant and his mahout…(No Arun, Ram uncle did not tell me the elephants name. I am not sure if Tamilians names their elephants like us Malayalis).

Krishna Iyer had with him some Nivedyam plantains and he decided to offer what he had to the elephant..he lifted his hand and the Pazham (plantain) to the animal. What followed was a disaster. Nobody is sure if the elephant was in Musth, the mahout is also confused why all that happened, but the elephant simply curled its trunk around our man Krishna Iyer, lifted him high in the air, spun him a couple of times and dropped him on the floor. A very simple maneuver like you see in WWF these days…only thing was that during the high speed spin, Krishna Iyer was spun on his vertical as well as horizontal axis …

Arun wants to know why the elephant did this. I have no idea, He tells me to call Ram uncle in Istanbul and find out. I tell him that probably Krishan Iyer pelted the elephant with a stone when he was a kid..elephants never forget…(remember Agatha Christe's novel??)

Nothing much would have happened to a younger fella, but K Iyer was by then over 45 years old and he had a lot of difficulty getting up from where the elephant had dropped him. He got up once and then promptly collapsed. The mahout hollered his head off and a lot of good and not so friendly people gathered around our fallen man. They decided to take him to the hospital.

The doctor who checked Iyer, was sure that K Iyer had internal injuries. So he was sent of to the district hospital. They checked him again, and admitted the poor chap, did test after test and said that he probably had his intestines twisted. After a while, they discharged him saying that his condition was stable, but Krishna Iyer was in big trouble, he simply could not eat. Whatever he ate, he threw out. So he had to continue on a liquid diet…There was no reason for a major surgery, so nobody did it.

This continued on for many years. The old Krishna Iyer changed, he became a real constipated, cranky nut as months went by. He viewed life through his pain and suffering and spread gloom wherever he went. He consulted many doctors, he even went to Vellore CMCH, but nobody could help. He was a lost soul. He became more religious and started spending more and more time at the temple, but he fastidiously avoided both the elephant and the mahout, and of course we know by now why it was so.

The only man who could tolerate him was the temple priest. They would talk of all the village politics and the worldly issues during the balmy evenings after the last prayers & ‘Poojas’. On one such occasion, the priest jokingly said that the only person who could set Krishna Iyer right was our friend the Elephant. And by then Krishna Iyer was desperate, he did not want any possibilities unexplored (ask any other constipated guy and he will agree). He went in search of the mahout and asked him if there was any hope for him. The mahout asked Krishna Iyer to come back with some plantains for the elephant (the mahout never actually had any plan, he thought this was a good way of getting some grub for the pachyderm). Krishna Iyer did exactly that..He went to fetch some plantains from the temple kitchen.

He came back with the plantains and stretched them out toward the elephant. Mr Elephant, which was dozing a bit, lifted its head and took a long look at the thin specimen of manhood in front of him. They say ( as i mentioned before) that elephants have a long memory, and this time too, its memory did not fail him. He remembered Krishna Iyer.

Arun is wide eyed…no, dad, don’t tell me ‘that’ happened.. I can’t believe this. I said, ‘let me complete Arun, and ask Ram uncle the next time you see him, he is the one who told me this tale’.

The elephant again picked up Krishna Iyer with its trunk, just like the last time, and spun him. twice, thrice and then put him on the ground..Nothing more, nothing less. Only this time he spun him around the other way, anticlockwise ..on both axes.

When Krishan Iyer came to, he felt like a new man. No more pains or discomfort, so he asked for a pitcher of water and drank the whole of it, without any more pain, just like he used to do in his younger days. He was finally cured…BY THE ELEPHANT!!!

Ram insists that this tale is true, he tells me that I can go anytime to his village and ask around or even meet Krishna Iyer. He swears by it..Arun laughed his head off then and giggled for days later thinking about this, in mirth. But when we went to the Pallavur temple later, he would not go near the elephant. Today I am sure Arun a college going student must be thinking it was one of my 'tall' taes.

Maybe we will visit Mannargudi some day, some time, maybe we will meet Krishna Iyer & the elephant, to expore the truth & get further details..until then, this sure is one hell of a tale!!!

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