The Polyester Prince by Hamish McDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

Indian salesmen and touts, offering cheap cameras, fountain pens, transistor radios and tooled-leather items.
    After making their purchases and taking a quick taxi tour around the arid town, most were glad to get back to their P & O comfort and security. Aden had an air of menace, of repressed resentment at its naked display of foreign military and commercial self-interest. As Gavin observed: ‘For a thousand years or more Aden had essentially belonged to the merchants of the world, be they South Yemeni or foreign, while the people of its hinterland watched with jealousy and poverty-stricken eyes from beyond its gates. But for the young Gujaratis hired by Besse & Co, Aden was a kind of paradise and most recall their days there with great affection and nostalgia. ‘We felt it was heaven,’ said Himatbhai Jagani, a former Besse employee who had been born in Aden, the fifth generation of his family to live there since their original migration from Gujarat early in the 19th century ‘It was tax free virtually, and we never saw an electricity bill or rent bill till we left. For 14 of us in our mess we paid only 400 shillings a month for food. We could save about half our salary It was very comfortable-we all missed that life.’

    Home leave of three months came after 21 months straight work in Aden or at one of the Besse outposts around the Red Sea. The Besse employees went home with their savings to spend by P & O liners like the Chusan or Caledonian, sometimes by Flotte Lauro of Italy, and if nothing else, India’s Moghul Lines.

    While most of the British residents lived on the slopes above Steamer Point, socialising at the Gold Mohar beach club nearby, the 15000 Indians clustered in a few streets of the Crater district-Sabeel Street named after a refuge for stray and injured animals set up by rains and Hindus, Danaraja Street, and Bencem Street, named for the prosperous Jewish trading community that once thrived in Aden and Yemen. The Besse & Co bachelor’s mess occupied four or five buildings nearby in Aidroos Valley.

    The Crater had all the features of the Orientalist watercolours that adorned European drawing rooms at the turn of the century, as described by Governor Johnston: Indian merchant families, the women in saris, the men in their white jodhpurish get-up, are taking the air, immaculate after the siesta. We drive around a market square with fruit glowing on the stalls, and enter a narrow street fairly buzzing with exotic life-pastrycooks, water-sellers, coffeernakers, carpet merchants, all the usual figures of the Oriental bazaar-and pervading the whole thing a strong hot smell Of Spice.

    The various expatriate communities lived in their own social circles, where, in the way of
    ‘hardship posts’, attachments were strong and recalled with nostalgia in later life. The Hindus from India were probably liked the least by the local Arabs-to whom Muslims from India and Pakistan complained about India’s incorporation of Kashmir and Hyderabad, but filled a need for white-collar staff that Aden’s schools could not meet, and had their own social circle too.

    While his brother Ramnikbhal worked in the automotive division, Dhirubhai was assigned to the Shell products division of Besse. As a newly arrived youngster he created an early splash, literally, by taking a bet while out helping bunker a ship in the harbour that he could not dive off and swim to shore. The prize was an ‘ice-cream party’-which he won, by swimming through waters that had seen occasional shark attacks on swimmers outside the nets of its beaches.

    As he developed more familiarity with the trade, Dhirubhai was sent to market Shell and Burmah lubricants around the Besse network, visiting traders in French Somaliland, Berbera, Hargeysa, Assem, Asmara (Eritrea), Mogadishu (Italian Somaliland), and Ethiopia. Some places were not accessible to steamers, so the Besse salesmen would travel by dhow, the traditional wooden sailing vessels of