My father had a shooting camp 40 miles northeast of Calcutta, where we spent most weekends in the cold weather.
The camp spanned a few acres of land and on it were several bashas ~ mud huts with thatched or tin roofs, packed mud floors, tin baths, short~ drop loos and kerosene lamps.
We slept on the traditional charpai beds with a mattress on top, snuggled under one (or preferably two) razais, the traditional Indian quilts, as it got fiendishly cold at night.
Christmas Day started with stockings on Mum and Dad’s bed followed by a substantial ‘shooting’ breakfast on a long table outdoors, with friends who were always invited over Christmas.
Two or three jeeps waited to convey the shooting party, the shikars (beaters) and various dogs to the selected paddy (field) where the shoot began. There ensued several hours of walking up and down the bunds (built up mud ‘walls’ separating the paddy fields) frequently falling thigh deep into the mud on either side.
My two brothers’ most unsuitable task was to take charge of Dad’s black labrador gundog Lucifer, who totally lived up to his name. At the crack of a gun Lucifer sped off in any direction, dragging one of my brothers, horizontal and hanging on for dear life, behind him. My dad’s voice ringing out over the paddy ‘Lucifer, you f…ing dog, COME HERE’. It was a bit of a family joke as Lucifer rarely obeyed.
Lunch would be a picnic of sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, cold chicken and bananas, washed down with beer, always in front of a gathering crowd of curious onlookers.
Back at camp, buckets of steaming water were lined up for our arrival home. Socks and boots were peeled off and mud scraped from thigh to toes. Before dinner, Father Christmas visited. He was usually a large male friend coerced into the role, in an ill~fitting Santa outfit, handing out the presents and the ho~ho~ho’s around the Christmas ‘bush’, pressed into service every year and hung with bits of tinsel and hand made paper garlands.
Then came the Queen’s speech, for which we all gathered around the radio. Hearing her rounded vowels ringing out over the Bengal countryside was reassuringly odd! A large dinner followed, sometime snipe, sometime turkey, with Christmas pudding and imported Stilton to finish, all quite remarkably conjured up over a naked flame in a baked mud ‘oven’.
The day finished with stargazing or murder in the dark; though we kids could never quite understand why all the adults wanted to be boring detectives. (They didn’t have to move from their planters chairs around the fire.)
Then tumbling into bed where a hottie took the chill off the night.
Happiness indeed but, sadly, now all long gone.
