The last time I saw Dr Baker was when he came over for Baqrid last month. ‘Came over’ sounds easier than the demanding expedition it was for him. He had come in Cuckoo’s car, whose taxis he had been using for over forty years and who had now upgraded to a brand new Swift Dezire, and was accompanied by his College provided minder Shakeel. He was using a walker, as he had been doing for a few years, and wore a brace to support his back. He worked hard, without flinching, to traverse the few steps from the car to the gate. He was quieter than I had known him, and ate more sparsely and more slowly than before. He had made this enormous effort, I suspect, simply to keep his obligation of visiting friends on Id, as he continued to spell it. He often came over on Id but the lockdown, more than his frailty, had prevented any celebrations the past two years. I had visited him a couple of times with another of his student-friends Prashanto Sen during the past year. We had even taken him some food on one occasion. He still kept a strict daily routine but there were now many things missing from his world.

There were no students in his block (nor in College), he was confined to his room except for dire emergencies or rare visits to the Church, but most crucially, he wrote and received few letters. He despaired about the new entrants to College who may never learn what Stephania was in the absence of physical classes. Still, his father had lived to be a hundred years, and one always felt that his inexhaustible willpower might see Dr. Baker reach that milestone. He did seem to go on and on.

He had got a phone connection, after his retirement, and had even succumbed to the necessity of keeping a mobile phone. But he kept his phone in his room, even when he ventured out, thus beating the mobility out of it. He rather disliked phones. Letters were his life, and medium of expression, even more than personal conversation. He wrote me when he first got a phone, way back in 1999,

“Your letter of July just tumbled out of my address book just now, and I thought I’d write; though of course we did meet after that. I thought we might meet again. I’m sorry that writing seems to be a formality, but even though I now have a phone (albeit subject to constant interference from the AIR aerials at Mukherjee Nagar!) I thought I would ‘warn’ you in advance; and I or you can phone subsequently at 7256812”

Back in those days we sometimes corresponded by letters, despite being in the same city. Nearly ten years after the note above, he wrote to Anusha and me (always Anusha Rizvi for him, since this is how he addressed her in class, and in corridors outside where he often ticked people off for smoking):

24 June, 2009. Tikona Park, Jamia

“Dear Mahmood and Anusha Rizvi

I have your ‘small’ note dropped in at the College, after ‘unsuccessfully’ trying to locate…[me] for over a month, felt I ‘owed’ you a reply, though we did speak on the phone—a medium I don’t much care for—but naturally better than nothing.”

Except in the last decade, when we met frequently, we corresponded regularly by letters. Some of them quite long, testifying to the enormous labour he invested in maintaining his friendships. He wrote in a close hand, or sometimes typed his letters, using all the space possible, employing symbols and abbreviations to save space, underlining (since he could not italicise), using exclamation marks copiously (almost like emojis) and sometimes, when he began a sentence with the word ‘Now’ one could hear him talk, or chuckle even, as he often did in conversation. For a forbidding man he had quite an impish smile. For him Stephania, which he both defined and was himself an apotheosis of, was more than the College and its immediate students. Stephania was also the wide, and energetically cultivated, world of student-friendships he had formed over the years. A couple of years before his retirement, more than twenty years ago, he wrote me a long reflective letter when I was at Oxford, about his life vis a vis his students, his vocation and life after College:

“Yes, I do feel part of Stephania, but I remind you that one is not an island. I am not an island, and if there’s been some interaction of a positive kind, it’s because students (such as your class have accepted my initiatives, and come for tea, talk, dinner—Sayyam even went on a rather frightening ‘spiritual odyssey’ from which he has fortunately returned. These things, dear Mahmood, are never one-sided. So, I, too, thank God for the students of 26 years from whom I have learned so much. I don’t have much to learn from ear-rings, caps worn back to front, Guys and Dolls, the weekly Stephanian party, the brittle relationships and talk of the front verandah, though.

But yes, I will be leaving all this. I don’t want to remain a day longer than I have to. I’m not saying this in a silly sense. My time is drawing to a close, and I accept it. I don’t know where I’m to live, or how. My father is giving me a legacy to buy or rent something decent, and I’m grateful to him. But I had to operate as if I had nothing except my rather meagre savings (PS Dwivedi told me today he had none, so that I was more fortunate than he; but then he is having a house constructed at Mayur Vihar, I think.) Its not that I’m actively looking forward to the day I leave, but that I accept it as the end of a very important, even crucial phase in my life, and the beginning of another, different phase. It will all take some doing, but I know God will guide me and help me in the new way.

Yes, the ‘frightening, wearying, getting used to, liking, not liking, affection, some closeness may be—the ticking off—all this will one day be a thing of the ‘past.’ Of course, in some it will continue to live, where there’s been an effective two-way relatedness. To others it won’t have been anything much. But if anything I have said exercises any check on the rash lawlessness of our fellow countrymen, or in anyway creates or adds to God’s overflowing love for human beings, then I’ll have done what He wanted me to do, against all odds, with my life, from the beginning. The setting and students of Stephania have called out the right tune…the Cakes are really a ‘sacrament’ of the above, whatever it is. So please gobble on, whenever. I’m sorry I can’t pack some up and send them! The little round cookies are here; plus some of Harriet Raghunathan’s excellent cake.

Yes, my desk is overflowing. I’ve cleared it of several things today—Friday afternoon, so no classes, but NAI tomorrow, preceded by the early walk over the Ridge (to Mass) in the cold. It’s been intensely cold, as we had 24 hours of very intensive winter rains last week. These have washed clean the sky and the environment. The air is clear and cold, though the increasing light in the early morning and evening is even now apparent, 3 weeks from the equinox. A slight easing of the cold, but with me in two socks (long) two sweaters, two vests, a thick ‘police’ shirt and pants, and black blazer, it’s difficult to feel anything. I feel a bit clogged up with clothes at times, but walk about in my ‘steel frame’ unaware of the bitter cold. I close my rooms early, and draw curtains, close the roshendans, and put on my heater, though the door to the block is always open, as you know. Piles of essays—I’ve begun to check the 3^rd years this week; while doing Eng Revn discussions with the 2^nd year, and Science with them next week. Termly essays are in the offing for both. I may be going to Shahdol (with PSD) on 25 Feb—but no information yet. [He is insisting on 2 Ac train fare!!!] And I’m supposed to be the expert on Vindhyanchal where Rewa is.

You ask about my work. It goes on slowly. I was in Rewa in May. And then to Cal. I think you know that. In Setptember/Oct I went to Bhopal to begin work on the Rewa State bastas unseen by anyone since they were all bundled up decades ago. This Christmas I finished work in National Library Cal, and my NAI work plods on steadily. There is at least several years of very solid and unrelenting work ahead, before I can even think what it all means. At the moment, I’m thinking along the lines of the incorporation of a region into the ‘nation’, but it’s just a feeler. Nothing more. From a Vindhyan man (pre-historic) to the incorporation of Vindhya Pradesh in Madhya Pradesh in 1956 is a long and very strange story. I wonder if it’s worth telling, or whether I ’ll work things out in another way. Let’s see.”

The long, closely typed 4 page letter, sums him up better than I could. However, contrary to his plan, his life in College, went on another twenty years after he first prepared to say it goodbye. Three more books would come after this, post retirement.This was his life. The students, the teas in his room, the academic work, the travelling, and all his prejudices. He could be very prejudiced and very open-hearted all at once, as he could be forbidding and disarmingly fun, dry and humorous, intimidating and welcoming. He was a man from the 19^th century, who survived, and made good, in the 21^st. This was, in more ways than one can know, an astonishing life. A monk who loved to live in our mad Delhi, and survived it too but whose monastery was more than St Stephen’s, it was in fact the dusty, grimy world of Indian streets in its entirety.

When I first joined College, I used to closely observe a few teachers, even though they didn’t teach me. Arjun Mahey in the English department was a heartthrob for many, and he always looked dapper, even in Kurta and jeans. Shiv Shankar Menon was a Sufi rockstar, and he turned out to be an equally brilliant teacher. Ashish Roy, who taught us English was surprisingly passionate in class. But Dr Baker looked more remote from any of them. In the winter he alternated between a red and a black blazer, and in the summer he wore bush shirts, but always of the same pattern. Later, I learnt that, typically, he had been getting the same sets stitched year after year, with the same material, bought from the same shop, sewn by the same tailor, over decades. However, to my first year eyes, with his satchel, his busybody air, his accent and his sprightly movements he cut quite a figure.

I first encountered Dr Baker before he taught me, in the compulsory morning Assembly for First year students and my first brush with him too was outside class when he ticked me off for smoking in the front corridor. Dr. Hala and Amin Saheb had both left as we joined College, but still there were enough senior faculty to remind us of the days gone by: Dr Gupta in philosophy, Dr Arya in Hindi, Dr Iqbal in Urdu and Persian, were some of the old luminaries one could still encounter.

The paper that Dr Baker taught us, in our second year, was the oddly named Social Formations and something, which was as boring as it sounds. I was then plodding through the equally unreadable Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism by Perry Anderson, of which I did not fathom a word although I did read nearly 3/4ths of it. The saving grace of the Social Formation paper was Ancient Greece and Rome but Dr Baker’s method of teaching was not conducive to any kind of gushing. He was a hard working teacher alright, he would carry illustrated books and even paintings to class, write down bullet points on the board, take us methodically through the topic, but nevertheless the lectures were dry. He didn’t brook too many questions either, which made the class less interesting for me since I had styled my reputation on boldly raising questions (some said too many), which is rather different from raising bold questions, but I only understood the difference much later. He also taught us Early Modern Europe but again our journeys through European Renaissance and Christian Reformation were more workmanlike than exciting intellectual discoveries. The labyrinthine debates about predetermination, redemption by faith or by works, were all given a rather short shrift in his point by point by lectures. He disliked romantic affiliations between students and could sometimes cruelly tick people off in front of an entire class. In a small documentary made by a former student he explained that he didn’t like couples who only hung out with each other because he found it restrictive socially, in terms of their experience of College, or of life in general

He explained this to us in a letter too, saying,

“I have 2 and 1/2 years to go, PSD 3 and 1/2. Its not as painful as I might once have thought. Everything goes on changing in College, though the ‘guys and dolls’ of the dhaba area (or state of mind) seem less prominent and triumphant than in earlier terms. I step on their toes whenever I can, to nip unfortunate anti-College tendencies in the bud. But the block first years lack the College spirit, by and large—look on me with ‘fear’ as I’m always ticking them off—bad manners, having air guns in the block; not speaking when they meet me in the street; They’ve come from pushing homes, and don’t have much sense of what Stephania is all about. I lean a bit heavily, though many of them are not worth much, but then, who is? We’re all rather flawed, it strikes me. So, I don’t take things too far. But teas go on; notes; Christmas cards even; Monday is sacred as the afternoon I meet a few students, from here and there. Nothing can interfere with Monday afternoons.”

As one heard from friends in the residence, he could be borderline fascistic in ensuring conformity with rules, some manufactured by himself. He wrote little–dreaded– chits, slipping them below the doors. He liked to establish authority and wanted compliance. He didn’t like certain styles of dressing, or hair do, or music. He was certainly not for too much freedom. But at the same time he informally met students in small groups, with unfailing regularity, although one is not sure how much fun it was for them. He gave block parties, took them out, often to Karim’s at Jama Masjid, and also accompanied history students on outstation trips, which we never had unfortunately.

His tutorials were a little more fun than his classes, although in those days one didn’t associate that word with him at all. He kept a meticulous attendance, not just in class, but also of tutorials. I remember my tutorial on the rise of Humanism in Europe, where he, rightly, made fun of my penchant of using adjectives in doubles, a habit I am still trying to shake off.

In those days my friend Shardul and I operated as a pair, in the Shakespeare society, in class, in the café, at Jai Singh’s Dhaba in the College across the road, and somehow one afternoon we found ourselves in his room.

It was a two-set room, a kind of a living room and a bedroom, separated by a small passage and a bathroom. The entrance opened in this passage and the jali door needed to be shut, the wooden door, on one side, was to be left open. He had instructions pasted on the door, and would make sure his visitors complied with them. This routine never changed. He stayed in that same two room set for the fifty years he spent in College, declining to move into a proper house which, as a senior teacher, he was long entitled to.

The rooms were always laid out in the same fashion, with the (same)chairs placed precisely on the same left side, the durry in between, the nematkhana, as it used to be called, placed in front of the door, the cooking heater to the right, and his desk, facing away, placed right next to the door leading out to the small verandah. In those days I deeply admired unemotional people, people who didn’t seem to be deeply dependent on other people, self-contained, detached, free. This is what he seemed to us, but while it is true that still waters run deep, it is also true that nobody on the outside can know what they hide. Anyway, I already deeply admired him for his discipline and for his spartan material and emotional needs.

On that first visit to his room, as always on numerous occasions afterwards, he made us coffee, from a small cooking heater, using milkmaid, and served us Britannia Chocolate cake, which I rather gobbled up. I asked him leading questions about his life, some of which were embarrassingly cliched. As emotionally heady as we were, his bachelorhood aroused many questions from us, which he parried with good grace. I learnt more about his routine, that he woke up at 4 am, that he went to bed at 8, that he walked to Church every morning, that he often listened to broadcasts of classical western music on the Radio, that he did his own academic research apart from all the work he did in College with and on students. I admired him the more as we met more often in his room. He allowed me to smoke there, which I thought was quite revolutionary of him. The sparse setting of the room, the abstemious lifestyle, the order, the organisation, the meticulousness, the ideal of scholarship that one wanted to strive for was right there. He turned up for the plays I put up in College, and admired me for it, not because he enjoyed drama, or understood our plays, but because it was in the true Stephanian spirit. He could do without many amenities. Here he is describing his concession to some basic requirements later on:

“I am typing this in my verandah, and my life seems to either have taken a plunge into the absurd, or else all these devices are going to make me more human. Since meeting you, I have invested—after considerable thought, I must admit, in an exhaust fan for my study. Well, that is a relatively modest affair, and knowing how close it gets in there, not too far from reality. Then came a geyser for the bathroom, which of course I’d enjoyed in the flat (but this is far superior to that!) At the same time I decided to invest in a modest standing fan (Usha) for my verandah, so that I can work out there when the climate and time of day permits. So that is where I am at the moment—but perforce, because after that catalogue of consumer items, at the instance of Raghunathan, I went in for two false ceilings in both major rooms. I’m normally not interested in the false, as you know, but this is a leap in faith. So, I am here on the verandah (chicks down) with all my worldly possessions.“

I finished College, and got the Rhodes, and he was one of my referees. I am pretty sure he gave me a very high recommendation. But I could not go up that year and I remember writing him a letter in an anguished frame of mind. He replied a long beautiful letter describing the Ridge and its changing colours in the Indian spring of March. That is how our correspondence began, in and from Delhi. But at the same time he wrote a recommendation about another friend, in which he described him, without foundation, as a drug addict. A couple of years later Shardul, one of his favorites, asked him to write a recommendation for a scholarship. Later, he told Shardul, in all simplicity, that while had written the reference he had not been able to recommend him for the said scholarship as he felt he was not deserving of it, given that it was mostly meant for students pursuing something in the field of the Arts. Shardul was very upset and did not meet him for a few years, but of course one had to admire Dr Baker’s forthrightness and they made up before Shardul tragically passed away.

P. S. Dwivedi was the other senior History teacher we had and he could not be more different from Dr Baker. He was cavalier with his lectures, which he gave without notes (sometimes scintillating, when he was in the mood, and was done with sneering at leftists), smoked in class, and was generally contemptuous of many things, especially the new Principal Anil Wilson with whom he had a feud which he nursed with passion. But Dwivedi saheb was Dr Baker’s best friend, and remained so till he lived. It is difficult to imagine two individuals more dissimilar to each other. After smoking had been banned in the inner section of the café, Dwivedi saheb, who had otherwise ticked me off for smoking, would insist that I sit and smoke there just to spite the authorities. Where Dr Baker was all about appointments and prior permissions, Dwivedi saheb kept an open house and was often politically incorrect. Hearing him speak of Dr Baker sometimes sounded sacrilegious because he made fun of his ways. Dr Baker would sometimes drop a note about a ‘Thursday walk at 5.30’ on a Tuesday, which Dwivedi saheb would, of course, forget. They had joined College within a few years of each other, and while both maintained strong relationships with former students their methods could not be more different from each other. One could write a book on Dwivedi saheb because he too was an exceptional teacher. Dr Baker sums up the nature of their friendship in an anecdote he relates about a mali on the ridge in the documentary I have mentioned above. They both came for our wedding which took place after I finished my M Phil at Cambridge and had bid history goodbye. It was a decision that evoked Dwivedi saheb’s strong displeasure. Even at my reception, he could not help lamenting my decision to leave history. But Dr Baker strongly disagreed with him and said I had a right to pursue what I wanted to do. They had a little argument over this right there. Well might Dr Baker have encouraged me, for he had been my confidante in this decision. In fact he had written my recommendations when I applied to Theatre schools from Cambridge. He wrote me then,

“I have your two letters with me in distant Jamshedpur, in my lighted room, with heater, here the early morning. I am desperately awaiting my bed-tea though I’ve been up since 4.30 am. Happy St Stephens day—after Christmas. You, at least,  have not run away from CB. Aparna Vaidik turned up here again, after only 2 months of CB which I thought was cheating slightly, though she claimed it was cheaper to go than to stay. Shardul, according to you, must also be here’ though I have not seen him, though I am not back till 15 Jan, I am unlikely to meet him at all. So be it.I’m so glad you’ve found CB a more cheerful and less burdensome experience than the earlier Oxford. Good for Trinity, though its very regular, mathematically precise chapel with its red and blue stained glass must seem a little strange to you. God has given you the BEST supervisor in Chris Bayly. You are all fortunate; pl give him my best wishes. He gave me a lovely dinner in CB, which I can only “return” in Delhi!For an ‘indecisive introspector’ your life sems remarkably full; it all sounds good to me. I think your idea of going to Theatre Schools in the US is absolutely right and I responded intuitively to it in my TG to you.  I would eschew the academic. It has done its part, but I don’t think (except for may be a side job or two) it is your real METIER. You are going to get one/all schools so you should throw yourself in the whole business, as I am sure you will. I am not sure what will follow, but one has to take a step for the next one to follow.”

He had spent some time in Cambridge before, as part of his research. He had not much liked the English whom he found rather boorish and ‘awful’ at mixing. But despite knowing all this, and despite knowing that he was unfailingly at the Archives every Saturday, one often overlooked the fact Dr Baker was also a professional historian since that seemed so incidental to his life. One can hardly pay a better tribute to his intellectual simplicity. When we joined College he had already published his first monograph, Changing Political Leadership in an Indian Province: CP and Berar, 1919-39 (1979). He had published this within a decade of joining College, which he had decided upon after his first visit to India in 1966. He had come from Australia, was already working on modern India and had probably earned his Doctorate, and was determined, already, to make his life in India. He wrote the then Principal in College seeking an opening and was told that there was one, since an English teacher was about to leave. He joined immediately, never to leave, until his last journey, except for a brief stay outside College upon his retirement. He moved out to an apartment at Mall road, for a couple of dreadful years, until Anil Wilson, the then Principal offered him a tutorship and some modest teaching assignments and he gladly accepted it, and moved back. Post-retirement he continued his research in the archives spread around Central India, Delhi, Calcutta and in fact published two more monographs, which I dare say is more than most full time Professors produce. Here he describes the conditions in which he worked, which were arduous, but always with student-friends in mind. He wrote me this when I was at Oxford,

“You mention my post-lecture existence + I must say that I’m quite proud of my intinerarium (!) which began with a visit to your old school in March (at Unmish’ insistence). After a gap of a few days I went to Jaipur to stay with Thanvi, another old history student in the IAS. At Thanvi’s the father enveloped me in a cocoon of Hindustani vocal music of the Kishori Amonkar type (in classically evolved Ragas), since everything else fitted, I just slipped into the vocal stream. Ketu had a sprained arm so we could not go out everyday, plus it also rained. At the end of March I was rather tired of College and Rudra South so took my self off to Bhopal on 2 weeks earned leave, on 9 days of which I explored further the Rewa Durbar office files. There are long racks of bastas (in Hindi) of which I’ve seen about 30 only. I saw my few old student friends there (all 2 of them); stayed in govt accommodation, no longer cheap, arranged by a 3^rd; spoke to a 4^th. I washed my clothes daily + had them ironed in the bazar; went out at 6 am to Mass in the old Bourbon church in Jahanigra; found my breakfast in the Coffee home; lunch in the Secretariat canteen; + khana (in hindi) in one of several cheapish bhojnalaya (in Hindi) in the market. You’d have loved a small excursion I made one ‘second Saturday’ to Islamnagar, tramping, busing kms out of the town into a village, with fields inside the outer gates +wall, and a  beautifully restored Mahal (in Hindi) and its own minor reproduction of the Persian “paradise garden” with restored fountains, lawns + paths,; a painted mahal with all glass work restored; hollyhocks in bloom, {+ me sinking to rest in the early summer heat in the middle of such beauty] I simply couldn’t get over it so wrote to the Archaeology department (MP) + have had at least 3 letters of acknowledgements, with a full list of their protected monuments. What a find (Vijay Tankha had told me of the place). What a gem!”

Here was a solitary reaper, a scholar whose wanderlust was strongly fastened to his vocation, but who could make the best of everything, on his own, like a true and timeless Indian Karmyogi. Or like one of those intrepid 19^th centurycolonial explorers or missionaries who ventured far and wide, but never lost the starch on their collar, except that his mission was St Stephen’s and the friendships he made through that, and also, this functioning anarchy, which he lived, smelled and wrote about. I mean the smelling business, because until he was almost seventy, he always travelled only by sleeper class–

“But Vienna…ah + Salzburg: Lovely that you are seeing it. Yes, some how I can visualise myself in all that but may never actually be there. (I tremble on the brink of buying a heater-blower, and of spending the money it will involve, And till now, no AC trains for me, but the plebeian (and dirty) sleeper class, of which I am heartily sick.”

He genuinely loved the Rewa region, where he travelled extensively, devoting nearly 30 years of his life to it, and beautifully described the places he saw–

“Now, I’ve got your post-card of 22 March and + no, I didn’t see you before I left—clearly. I had a wonderful month away in Madhya Pradesh + Nagpur, climaxed by a visit to Rewa. I finished all my research work (so now totally complete) and did the things that I normally do—visited old friends, found the Church, walked etc.

The Rewa visit was wonderful. I had to make a few visits to the archaeological or architectural sites, so was fortunate to get a jeep/car at a reasonable rate; so on four successive days visited the Kalachuri (9^th c) temple monastery at Chandrche on the far side of the Son River + across the Vindhyan ghat, in very remote countryside—the road ended there!! The stupa complex and rock caves at Deur Kothar, a rocky, almost barbaric site on the edge of the ghat, looking down 100 feet into the Ganges valley—misty + hazy admittedly but not often that I sit and have lunch in such a place. I was thrilled too because the ASI has restored some of the Stupas; the big new dam…to be called Banasagar after Banabhatta, who reportedly grew up in the Son valley. The impressive hill fort of Kalinjar on the Southern part of Banda district across the MP border. This was the longest trip of the five, joining the old Kanpur road at Nagod+ pushing into the interior thought hese wonderful summer forests of MP, often leafless and breathless in the heat, up + down precipitous ghats—an extraordinary trip.The last of my ventures was to the tiny (restored) Gupta temples at Nachna in Southern Satna district. Nachna was once tributary to the Gupta kings, hence this extension of Northern classical architecture into the wild country of the centre…Next Thursday I fly to Sydney for a week, and will be in Delhi on 29 May, leaving for 3 weeks in Orissa with Dev and family—to get re-‘oriented’! I shift to College on the 26 June. I wonder if we will meet there ‘ one day’.”

Out of these exertions emerged two monographs, one long into his retirement: Colonialism in an Indian Hinterland: Central Provinces, 1820-1920 (1993) and Baghelkhand, or the Tigers’ Lair: Region and Nation in Indian History (2007).He virtually wrote this region into History. But important as these research trips were, he was an inveterate traveller otherwise too who could observe and evoke a great sense of place, its geography, its natural beauty, its historical monuments and even its trees and flowers–

“A few notes on your final hope that I am well, travelling and vigorous!!! I still feel a bit like the traveller in Auden’s “Atlantis” dialectic and bizarre, certainly a Musafir (in Hindi). I have been four times out of Delhi since July, in places as far distant as Bhopal, Nagpur, Bombay, Sanchi, Ambala, Balasore, Puri, Bhubaneshwar, now Jamshedpur. A combination of research, friends, + weddings, all of which seem to merge as I tend to carry my work about with me. At present I am preoccupied with a review of a monograph on Bastar for IESHR. I was at the ChristMASS yesterday, in Hindi, in the presence of Bihari “tribals”, South Indians and Anglo Indians + the thing struck me as a little incongruous, especially trying to sing ‘O Come ye all faithful’ in Hindi, to table accompaniment. ‘In-culturation’ gone MAD?!!!Yours ever and to Shardul, Yug et al”

As a traveller too he often found himself on the road less travelled, often at the instance of other unworldly fellows at College.

“I’m not sure that I told you that I’d gone with Dr Shankar to the old capital of the Deccan Sultanates—Bidar, Gulbarga, Bijapur—to find a very wonderful collection of old masjids, forts, halls, madrasahs, and tombs. I was particularly astonished at the Sufi tombs in several places with their medieval coloured interiors—red, purple and blues +fully functional. In Bidar there was a mela with mainly Hindus present or so it seemed + in Bijapur a tomb complex. Everywhere the sites were conserved, under repair, many in characteristic ASI lawn-and-garden settings. We stayed in each town, + bussed, taxied or trained here and there.To round off; I also was in Lucknow for a long weekend in April, renewed my old acquaintance with Kahtak, noting again its highly secular ethos +courtly seductiveness. An unknown (to me) Bengali girl dances. Of course one had to visit the Imambaras again or to see (again) that ‘foreigners’ are not allowed to enter mosques!”

He nurtured his friendships, all across the country, but maintained that 

‘I carry my own life round with me, wherever I go—Cambridge or Cal doesn’t make any difference, so I’m always ‘at home’ in a sense. But I guess that’s unusual.”

After he was done with the Rewa books he began to research his book on St Stephen’s College. This was his ultimate mission. He had been working on this book for several decades, poking at the College archives, meeting and cataloging old students, trying to write a history of the College which was at once a history of Delhi.

I had seen this work grow, as the cards mounted up. An entire almirah contained the stacks of those cards. He spent more than a year sorting those cards and then began to make a lay out of his chapters. I remember asking him how he was progressing, some 8 years ago, and he had said he was now working on the sorting of the cards according to rough chapters. Then he planned to assemble those into notes for each chapter, after that he intended to write the rough drafts of the chapters before he began typing them. It was exhausting just to listen to his plan. But he kept at it, day by day, card by card, page by page. He had collected an enormous mass of material for this history.

Here he speaks to another student-friend, also a longstanding colleague, Aditya Pratap Deo, or APD  as we know him, about this book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a53qLvQOEsU.

He wrote us that he was trying to

“absorb as much of the ‘flavour’ of Delhi as I can, but this can only be fully complete with the NAI+ Delhi Archives holdings—the latter being held off till the Qutub Metro is complete and commuting being relatively easy with the Adhchini area where the Delhi.”

He used public transport as often as he could. Well into his eighties, he was travelling by Metro and once badly injured his leg which got trapped between the platform and the train. He was bedridden for a few weeks but continued to use the Metro after he recovered. Only on such frugality could he have got around so much. APD was closely helping him on the College history, and I will return to its fate a little later.

He was a traveler’s traveler alright, but he was also a great minder– of our institutions, our heritage and our monuments. He tried to instill civic sense everywhere he could. Just as he ticked off students, he would also tick off Malis, and carpenters, and janitors in college, or write to its estate department for better maintenance. In one of the letters above he mentions writing to the ASI. He did that a great deal. I am sure his correspondence with ASI alone could be turned into a book. But he also wrote to other institutions: to the Railways, to the city’s horticultural department for its parks, to the Municipal authorities for roads and pavements, to the University. He was an inveterate reformer of the country he had made home and a nation-builder in the tradition of our founding fathers.

He visited Australia at intervals, and kept up his connections there. His father, as I said, lived till he was hundred. When Dr Baker converted to Catholicism in 1990, his father threatened to cut his legacy off, but mercifully he did not act on it. This legacy was a bit of a joke between Dwivedi saheb and him as they both competed on who had less. He had a brother and a sister, almost his age, who are probably still around. However, he did not much care for Australia.

“I’m writing this from a farmhouse in the West Australian wheat belt, where I’ve come for a day (and two nights) with cousins I grew up with more years ago then I care to remember. They live (or he and his wife live) in a new house, but we are opposite the old farm where I spent a long time in childhood + early adulthood (when does one become an adult??) I hope to walk over there today—the old house is empty + rather forlorn and, as they claim, haunted! I wonder what you would make of all this.”

And in another letter,

“And while you were becoming less and more self indulgent at one and the same time, I flew off to Terra Australia by Thai Airways, the experience being like a box one opens form time to time, full of things and people you know, but which has nothing to do with your normal life. That is what India hasbeen to me. So I could observe the weather, the cleanliness, the efficiency, the entertainment oriented society, the easy availability of everything, without being the least influenced. It was wonderful to see my friends, and relatives, very wonderful of themto put up with me But within a month I was ready to come back to our ram-shackle state, with its rotten systems, but wonderful individuals, who keep the country alive and going. I’m with one of them now, who has built a factory up from nothing, with no capital, is now independent and ready to diversify. He keeps a strong hand on labour, is an expert technician, and is the brains behind everything. He has deep persistence, is inwardly strong, and can face almost anything. He is a Stephanian and a former History student.”

This gentleman, Dev Mohanty in Orissa was a particularly close friend of his, and as he says, after his heart. He went there almost annually. He had a roster system for visits to friends, in and out of the city. Sometimes this caused clashes, as another student friend Najeeb Jung and I once competed to have him over. He also had a roster system for responding to or writing letters. He used to have a correspondence list, and an order of preference for it. I have sometimes glanced at that list, which often lay next to his typewriter.

He was a devout Christian and his faith played a very important role in his life. He would find a Church wherever he went, sometimes, as he mentions above, even an outlandish one. However, there was, withal a catholicity of practice as he observed Id, Holi, Diwali, Onam with conviviality. He once explained what faith meant to him. It was not duty for sure.

“No, DUTY as such plays little part in my life. My love for God is something in me since childhood—a mercy, since it has always “taken care” of those darker sides of life, with which we are all endowed as “Sons of Adam.”  I have always—well, since late adolescence/early manhood, had to work hard at being good, such that dear God has filled my life with a  constant bubbling of positiveness and a kind of creativity, rather than with the powers of destructiveness and negativism which undo the lives of so many. I’m not being superior when I write this, merely stating the ‘facts’ as I see them. So duty is not a notion, or a guide, at all, ever!”

He wrote me at almost all the places I have lived in. On more than one occasion he visited my parents’ in Batla House for Id, spending almost the entire day quite comfortably with people who did not speak much English. He was quite convivial in that sense. He made small talk with great flair, chuckling and laughing, sometimes in a self-deprecatory way, or expressing mild amusement at others. Given his reputation for being uptight in and around College corridors or the Mess, his social ease was surprising. He was easier to meet off the class room, easier still off College and almost a different person when writing letters. Withal there is a Collegiality, a loaded word in his case, which extended to students and acquaintances old and young. He could converse with friends about weather, books, buildings or even clothes. These qualities allowed him to make friends with innumerable former students, despite his seeming sternness. As our friendship grew I found that I could express myself to him frankly and unabashedly. In response to one such long and introspective letter he wrote,

“I cannot compete with your dazzlingly articulate + introspective letter so I will write something ‘of my own’ in so far as a windy fan, slippery table surface, my fingers sticking on the gummy side flaps + sweaty hands will allow.I’m just reading your letter again, for it came in while I was in Bhopal, + before I went to Australia. The meaning of this is that I was ‘caught up’ with jobs prior to my departure for Oz (where I think I saw “everything” but the wonderful Wizard!!) You refer to your ‘idleness’ + “restlessness” as well as to “Eurocentrism.” I wont comment on the former but Bhawani Raman (3^rd year history 1994-95) has loaned me “Black Athena” which describes with shattering conclusiveness what I had begun to see in the temple of the ________, namely the Afro-Asiatic roots of Greek civilisation. It dashes the autonomy of the Greece to the ground + exposes the racist roots of such a thesis, originating at least in the @18^th c if not earlier.”

He surprised us once, not so long ago, when he turned up home on Id because he had done a virtual round trip through the city before he arrived. He had visited his friends the Kidwais first, had then gone to Connaught Place to collect Ashish Roy’s framed photograph which he wanted put up in the English class, had deposited it back in College, and had then made his way to us. Dr Baker was doing this not because it was his job but because he felt the College owed this to Ashish Roy who died suddenly, and tragically, and had taken it upon himself to do the deed. But of course he had many reservations, not just about College, but also the discipline of history and its latest turns although he reserved his stridence for his life alone–

“Would you believe that Malay Neerav has gone on leave briefly, and asked me to take some of his classes in the Social Formations; so it’s been back to Knossos—and—Myecenae week, with all the unsatisfactory imponderables of the latter.

But when we don’t quite know how it happened, I always fall back on Auden’s Homage to Clio where he describes the muse of history as ‘some girl one has not noticed…each time you had nothing to say, and did not observe where you were; use of the unique historical fact, defending with silence each world of your beholding…’ It gives me heart at times, especially in the face of the old Marxist ‘certainties’ and the equally certain post-modernists (we even have one on our staff. But how people who don’t believe in the validity of documents can teach history, when in fact there is then nothing to teach, simply boggles me!!!!!!!!!!!)Well enough of all this nonsense. Let us meet in October-November if you have the time and the inclination. As ever, to you and your family (and Shardul the silent)”

He was a master, of himself, his life, but also a master who was well aware of his slightly put on draconian ways. But he persisted because he saw it as the right course. I don’t mean only to say that the crusty exterior hid a softer persona, which it did, but that the crustiness itself was a moral attitude.

“At the same time as mali(Mr Dwivedi’s mali) is cleaning up the downstairs in the garden, both as a regular matter, but more especially for the block party—my first in several years, which I’m giving as a welcome gesture to the block which is not a bad old place (including the students). They seem to have accepted my strange ways (block attendance, and no over loud music) without too much demur. I feel like some old Zen master at times…(though not as wise, I know). In fact, one old student, whom I’m very close to, calls me ‘master’ quite often. I’m never sure how to take it, and he never says!”

Undoubtedly there was a zeal to the way he lived his life but a zeal that was well circumscribed by the relentless pursuit of correctness. One could call it zen, as the ponderousness was upheld with a light touch. Or so it seemed.

Overtime he became, rightfully, Baker Saheb for all of us. He took on Indian nationality in the early nineties, after a tiresome process, much helped by another old student friend Probir Sen. That too had to be enforced because he was not one to take any favors. To the end he carried himself, meeting his needs from what was available. He ate in the College Mess all his life and when the Mess was shut during lockdown, or vacations, he ordered his meals from a restaurant nearby. He was steeped in India, irritated by it, but also fulfilled by it in a strange manner. No two things could be more unlike than Dr Baker and this teeming, tyrannical country. His early response to India was heavily coloured by the remnants of Old Delhi Muslim culture and so he remained a secular Indian, after his own fashion. He could admire temples, and Indian civilisation and history, and its festivals while being exasperated by its systems. It spoke of a streak of great tolerance. For all his officiousness he could let things be, or take things as they were, but without surrendering. He turned up for my Dastangoi performances, of which he probably did not understand a single word, in College, simply out of solidarity with my endeavours.

Finally in the last five years one could see that he had begun to age. But he stubbornly stuck to his first floor digs because he could better watch over the block. The first floor of the College hostels is actually high enough for the 3^rd floor in ordinary Delhi buildings.

He would negotiate those stairs with his walker, then with Shakeel’s help, and finally, in the last few months, Shakeel had to carry him up and down, but he refused to change residence. He had been writing the history of College for some years. He continued to work on it during the lockdown, but with diminishing vigour. He stuck to his plan and worked on it with Sisyphean dedication but his output was more meagre than one expected. The college was desolate in those days, there were no visitors, he could not go anywhere. While that protected him from Covid it must have been awfully difficult to negotiate the isolation. But he never complained. Not once during the last 19 months or so did I hear one word of lamentation for his lot. He worried for College, and for the new students and their sense of place and purpose, but he never said he found his circumstance trying. He finished the book, and APD typed it up for him some months ago. He had long donated his extraordinarily diverse collection of books to the library. But he re-read old books, and pored through the newspapers, still trying to stick to some kind of routine. Whenever I called him, which I tried to do once a month, he sounded calm, in control. In fact on more than one occasion he was pleased that I sounded calm, despite my circumstances.

He made light of my troubles, and only ever said that these things happen. On a visit a few years ago, when my future was uncertain, and he was still mobile, I asked him to pray for me. But he refused with a straight face and said ‘I don’t know Mahmood, there are so many things to pray for.’ I was momentarily stunned but realised immediately how right he was. There were other more pressing things and people that needed His attention and our friendship would not allow him to waver from the righteous course, even in supplication. However, he did launch my book when it was released in my absence. We went out on that visit with Prashanto to the newly opened Nazeer’s in Kamlanagar. Later, he came to have lunch with Anusha and I at the IIC.

On the two occasions that we met in the last six months he seemed determined to go on as he was going on. It was a tribute to his immense fortitude that there we never had any sense of skepticism, or incredulity, in his ability to go on. And that there could ever be even an iota, even the slightest trace of pity in one’s understanding of him. He was manifestly made of a different mettle. Not saintly, but certainly monkish. He treated the world, and all of us, like his monastery. It was a frame that held for 89 long years, even if it needed the support of braces and a walker towards the end. He remained erect even when bent over. That is one of the most remarkable things one can praise in a human being, and with him that exceptional ability to be himself was a palpable thing. One could see it, touch it almost, although he was not a physically demonstrative person.

Few letters came for him towards the last year, and I am not sure whether he wrote any himself. The end was as feared. If he had taken on full time assistance he might not have had the fall that took him away. But to concede to a kind of dependence, to invalidity, and to be at the mercy of others for living would have been the greater fall for him. His God ensured that he escaped that.

All the little  household gods

Have started crying, but say

Good-bye now, and put to sea.

Farewell, my dear, farewell: may

Hermes, master of the roads,

And the four dwarf Kabiri,

Protect and serve you always;

And may the Ancient of Days

Provide for all you must do

His invisible guidance,

Lifting up, dear, upon you

The light of His countenance

Mahmood Farooqui (Class of 1993)
Delhi, 27^th August.

Photographs : Anusha Rizvi