Retracing the steps of a historical personality is an oft-repeated trope in travel writing. The technique not only enables the author to describe his experiences but also helps in giving a historical perspective to his travelling. But, while a skilful author can take his writing to a higher level by perfecting the synergy between the past and the present, in the hands of a less than adept writer this can become a tiresome repetition. Kief Hillsbery’s The Tiger and the Ruby falls in the former category.
Hillsbery has excellent control over his art. He skilfully manages to marry the two streams to come out with a book that sustains high interest all through the over 250 pages. The life of Nigel Halleck—Hillsbery’s ancestor who lived a somewhat mysterious life as a British clerk in the mid-nineteenth century India—is the crux of the story. Hillsbery focuses on his ancestor’s life through his travels and, in the process, brings to fore the life and times of that part of British India about which not much has been written—at least from the perspective of an ordinary clerk in East India Company.
Halleck’s ship reached India in the winter of 1841 and he joined the East India Company as a clerk. During his years as a Company employee, he travelled to places as varied as Dhaka in the East to Jalandhar in the north-west via Patna in Bihar. He worked with the Lawrence brothers—John and Henry—in the latter part of his stay in India.
The two brothers were staunch advocates of working with the ‘natives’ and developing good relations with them. Halleck, it seems, agreed with that philosophy. Over the years Halleck travelled to regions now in Pakistan and Afghanistan with an Afghan friend, Shah Shuja, whose family was ousted as rulers of Afghanistan.
On his leave, Halleck travelled towards Nepal, before visiting his family in England for the last time in 1850. He never went back to England and reportedly died in Nepal. He returned to India, ostensibly to join the Company but did not do so. What he did in the intervening years before his death is what adds suspense to the book. Hillsbery’s success is that he takes the reader along with him, looking for clues, searching for Halleck in remote Nepalese villages. He successfully makes the reader a co-traveller and as anxious to find what happened to Halleck.
The various streams of thoughts that navigated British rulers through their stay in India are well elucidated in the book. It makes an interesting read when the author explains the change in policy of East India Company vis-a-vis how to rule in India with a change of Governor Generals.
The conflicting thought processes that jostled with each other for primacy and the lead figures that helmed the groups make for a revealing lesson in India’s past. A good measure of Afghan and Nepal affairs that Hillsbery describes during his quest, adds to an understanding of the political intrigue that was at play in the mid-nineteenth century. The 1857 war of Independence also figures in detail in the book.
The eye-opener though is the description of political past of Nepal, a kingdom that remained closed to outsiders till almost the 20th century. More fascinating is the link that Hillsbery establishes between Afghans, Nepalese and the English. Revealing more would be a spoiler.After a long time, an excellent travel book has been published, one that will not be out of place in resting in the shelf with works of past masters like Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux and Colin Thubron.