Reverend Brodie, the Mission House, and DCYF
But before the cataclysmic mass defection unrolled, there was a welcome intermission which, in fact, also paved our gradual exit from the Church and its hidebound conventions.
Sometime in the very early 1960s, the Church of Scotland appointed Reverend JM Brodie as the Pastor of St Columba’s Church in Darjeeling. He replaced the departed Reverend HC Duncan who had occupied the official Mission House for four decades during the Raj. It was alleged that his duties were not only to religiously shepherd his flocks in the District of Darjeeling but also to keep his left eye on Sikkim and his right eye on Bhutan as the Imperial Political Agent of the British Empire in the Indian Northeast. So the virtual management of the church and its spiritual leadership were entrusted to a local Nepali pastor who was the de facto shepherd of his flock.[break]
Reverend Brodie arrived at a time when he had no more of the “White Man’s Burdens” as were borne by his imperious predecessor. Still, he arrived in Darjeeling as the official emissary of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Young as he was, he played centre forward with the Church’s football team, which he had created in the first place, to motivate the youth of the Church. Mrs. Brodie herself was an excellent classical concert pianist, and she voice-coached us for our Church choir which was a joint concept of the Brodie couple. They had two young children, a girl and a boy, and I think the latter was born in Darjeeling.
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The Mission House was a large octagonal structure which occupied a spacious plateau in the Mission Compound above Turnbull High School. Since the hurly-burly days of the Raj were over at the Mission Compound, the Mission House itself had many empty rooms. These were leased to American missionaries who had begun arriving in Darjeeling in the post-Korean War period and pre-Vietnam years. What the Brodie family occupied was comfortable and roomy enough for them.
On his own, Reverend Brodie went a few steps forward. Besides planning his extracurricular activities for constructively engaging the young male members of our Church, he apportioned a large section of the house and appointed its semicircular enclosure and the inner room with a table tennis, chessboards and bookshelves. While we had our indoor exercises, sports entertainment and fellowships, we also looked at the books and the contents.
Reverend Brodie named the “Club” Darjeeling Christian Youth Fellowship – DCYF, in short. It was his version of a sort of YMCA for us.
It was here where I saw and felt hardcover books for the first time. There were perhaps two hundred volumes in the library which was carpeted and had soft sofas and chairs. I still remember my first three pickings: Grimms’ Fairy Tales, The Prisoner of Zenda, and Annapurna. I don’t remember much about these books except the imaginary kingdom called Ruritania in the Anthony Hope novel (I later read a comic and saw a film based on the book). But reading about the alpine adventures of Maurice Herzog and his French team to climb the first 8,000plus-meter peak in the Annapurna Range in the Nepal Himalaya was most thrilling at the age of sixteen. The mountains of the Nepal Himalaya assumed more importance for me when I arrived in Kathmandu in 1966.
It was indeed at DCYF that I discovered The Reader’s Digest Condensed Books series. Currently famous and bestselling novels were condensed by the editors of the then highest-circulation monthly magazine in the world with many foreign editions. Richly designed, bound and colorfully produced, the contents carried relevant drawings and sketches to highlight the stories. Each volume carried four novels on average, and it took me quite a few weeks of careful reading to complete the bulky book which, incidentally, was also a great showoff in town.
Meanwhile, our local Christian brethren looked at Rev Brodie suspiciously for indulging their youth in heathen activities like football and sports and taking them to reading the unconventional writings of liberal authors instead of the holy words of the Bible.
It is futile to recollect all the books and their authors I read in the DCYF library. It would simply be bragging. It is far more important, in truth, to say at this point that Reverend JM Brodie and his brainchild, DCYF, by and large, helped me face the outer world before actually venturing into it. My Christian world had become too shrunken, and I was rapidly growing up; therefore, it was time to leave and look elsewhere, which I gradually did.
Thus, in one particular way, at least, it took another Scotsman – perhaps the last one in St. Columba’s Church’s imminent scheme of things in having to join the larger confederation of the Protestant churches in modern India – to undo what his past predecessors had so unknowingly and unwarily designed and delivered, which was to translate the Holy Bible, hymns and other sacerdotal scriptures into Darjeeling’s native languages, and to make the same chosen people literate enough to understand the translated works in their conversion to Christianity according to the denomination of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. But their converted faithful took the balmy messages of Christ and the pragmatic meanings of Christianity to such lofty spiritual heights of metaphysical understanding and interpretations that the practical and worldly aspects of the faith were rendered null and void at St Columba’s, as if the monkey had understood the coconut in its hands beyond reason.
It was the lot of Rev Brodie, therefore, to remind, once again, the call of Christ to “Go forth” and not remain inward, as if in the cocoon of their ghetto, which the St Columba’s community was still wont to continue doing even when the world around them was changing like never before.
Incidentally, Reverend Brodie was in Kathmandu in the 1990s and led an international church in Patan for sometime. I met him at a poetry reading event at Pulchowk. I introduced myself; however, it was somehow difficult to have myself registered on his memory and remembrances.
Mad Magazine!
As I grew up, advanced up at school and gradually outgrew my needs for cartoons and comic books, per se, I came upon a great eye-opening magazine. This was Mad Magazine, and I discovered American lampoon for the first time. It was mostly about the United States, and its World Power contender’s competitive status in The Cold War was demonized and trashed in each edition’s satirized lambasting. Each issue of Mad was full of visceral and cruel artworks and juicy write-ups – be they about feminist rights in San Francisco, Judo lessons for unprotected females’ self-defense in crime-ridden Bronx or Harlem, or political or industry leaders’ capers in Washington or New York, all in no-holds-barred caricatures and interpretations. So it was with sporting heroes, Hollywood icons as well as contemporary US issues and newsmakers. This was Art Buchwald (whom I read only occasionally, due to scarcity of syndicated newspapers at that time) in pictorials, only too frank and all-baring in contents, and on the verge of always provoking libel suits.
Some seasonal issues of Mad also came enclosed with discs. They were recorded only on one side of the plate. These wax or vinyl records were 45rpm (revolutions per minute) discs but had to be played at the LP (Long Playing) record speed of 33rpm, and the correct track had to be found on the right groove path of the record on the record player’s turntable. This was a painstaking process but worthwhile when successful. One particular issue of Mad I bought in Calcutta in the winter of 1961 had a recorded song called “I love you because you let me watch your mom and pop fight!” It was sung by an adult teen in a Frankie Avalonesqe trill to his girlfriend.
Well, those were innocuous times before multi-entendre lyrics arrived from the fertile minds of Bob Dylan (‘Blowin’ in the Wind’), Paul McCartney and John Lennon (‘Please Please Me’ and ‘Love Me Do’), Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (“I Wanna be Your Lover, Baby,’ ‘Get Off My Cloud,’ and ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’) et al not too later on! It was also well before the “Pills” hit the airwaves of the Country Western radio stations. An era of censorships, bans and media outcries was born while a large segment of the general public embraced and consumed such revolutionary protests, proclamations and products.
To be continued next week
The writer is Copy Chief at The Week/Republica.
pjkarthak@gmail.co
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