A fairly big surprise
In October 1943 I became known by a number.
I was called to enlist in the Royal Air Force. I stood in the queue of volunteers listening to the numbers being dished out to the men three or four ahead of me and worked out, with sudden joy and a rush of confidence, that my number would be palindromic.
I never ceased to brag about it afterwards. I suppose it was because here was something about numbers that I could actually understand. Once, when I bragged about it, I was within seconds of getting a fairly big surprise.
It happened in Calcutta just after the telling-off from my new Commanding Officer about getting lost on the road from the city (see post at January 4th). I left his office that morning, committing to memory the name, number and location of the unit in which I was now employed.
The place where I would actually be working was a few hundred yards down the Barrackpore Road (for that was its name, by then securely fixed in my head). I was told that the entrance had white gates.
I came to the white gates. They had rococo wrought-iron decorations. Could they possibly lead to anything to do with the RAF, I wondered. They must lead to a private house. And if this was a private house it was certainly a big one. I checked the map again. It insisted that this was the place, so I started up the drive.
In front of me, above me and on both sides of me was a seriously big house. Increasingly sure that I was in the wrong place but nevertheless determined to see what would happen, I went up the flight of curved steps to the open double doors, went in, and gazed round.
The height and width and length and opulence of the hall, with its great staircase circling up and up suggested that the architect had just completed the Taj Mahal and had a few ideas left over. Confirmation that this was the RAF came in the shape of a small Corporal sitting at a trestle table behind a large typewriter and two filing trays and drinking tea.
‘Name?’ he asked.
I spelled out the name.
‘Number?’
I told him and let him write it down. Then I said, ‘It’s palindromic.’
He looked up. ‘It’s what?’
‘Palindromic. Same backwards as forwards.’
His eyes moved to the number, forefinger going left to right, then right to left.
‘You’re right.’ He checked again. ‘So it’s - what?’
‘Palindromic.’
His lips moved slowly and you knew that the NCO’s Mess would get the story that night. He held out his hand.
‘Twelve-fifty?’
My 1250 was my RAF identity card. He glanced at it, handed it back, looked at a list, found my name and told me to go through a door in the distant shadows.
It was then that the big surprise popped up.
I stood for a moment looking round at the marble pillars and gilded sconces and said, ‘Who owns this place?’
‘Oh, some Indian chap, name of Tiger,’ he said.
‘Tiger’ meant nothing to me. But the next day it dawned on me that I now worked in the home of one of our language’s greatest poets, Sir Rabindranath Tagore.
It stands there today.
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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010
April 19th, 2010 - 18:42
When I lived in Warsaw (Poland) with my family, our apartment was on… Rabindranath Tagore’s street. To the taxi drivers that was too many confusing syllables (Eight, when pronunciation is adapted to the rules of the Polish language) . When asked to go to “Tagorka street” they would give one the “look” and admonish that one should’ve said so in the first place.