My grandfather, Robert Maclagan Gorrie (known as Bob, or sometimes a touch disparagingly by the ‘heaven-born’ in India as Jungli-Gorrie), served in the India Forest Service from 1922 until Independence in 1947. He was a forest officer in the Punjab, beginning in Lahore, Changa Manga and Rawalpindi, and then in Simla and Bashahr Province (in the Himalayan foothills) with secondments to Dehra Dun as lecturer in the Forest Institute and ‘foreign service’ in independent Mandi State in the 1930s. He became an expert on soil erosion and conservation but the big promotions eluded him in the British Raj, perhaps because as a forthright Scot he spoke his mind in ways that weren’t always diplomatic. While acknowledging his huge enthusiasm, energy and initiative – calling him ‘a tiger for work’ – his superiors noted that ‘in his early years he was considered to have rather too high an opinion of himself and to require suppressing’ and was ‘apt to ignore procedure and financial implications’.
My grandmother, Sydney Easterbrook, was equally intrepid, travelling out from Edinburgh to Lahore to marry in 1923 and live the itinerant life of a forester’s wife. She defied one of Bob’s bosses by insisting on going into camp with her husband for months at a time rather than being left behind to fill in the endless hours of cantonment life with other British wives. When my mother Sheila was born, they took her with them and she was carried into the mountains along with the camping equipment!
In other respects they enjoyed the social life typical of the British ex-pats; both were keen tennis players and were very sociable with a wide circle of friends and their letters and diaries mention numerous fancy-dress parties and dinners, especially around Christmas and New Year. Looking back, my Uncle Duncan (their second child) thought that his parents were probably unusual in that they had Indian friends at a time when Raj society was rigidly segregated. They appear to have had the most diverse friendships in Lahore, which was a cosmopolitan city with a rich heritage and mix of people.
During the Second World War Bob was seconded to the Army to help with timber supply and products. Based in Jubbulpore, his job took him all over India. My grandmother, who had gone back to Edinburgh in the summer of 1939 to see her ailing parents, was separated from Bob for the duration of the War. She remained in Scotland doing voluntary work and providing a home for the children when they were home from boarding school. After the War Bob returned to the Punjab as Deputy Conservator of Forests in charge of the Silvicultural Research Division. With Independence approaching, Bob (unlike many of the British) was determined to try and secure a job in the new India. With his expertise in the Punjab, it was the newly formed state of Pakistan who offered him a position. On the 15th of August 1947 my grandfather was in his new post and attending the Independence Day celebrations in Rawalpindi ‘in a heavy shower of rain’.
While Sydney chose to remain in Edinburgh, Bob continued to work for the Pakistan Government until the end of 1949. In mid-December eighty people attended his leaving dinner. The following day Bob left with a handshake to all the staff, a lump in his throat and clutching a shield bearing the names of twenty-three colleagues and an inscription thanking him for his years of service:
To R Maclagan Gorrie, D Sc., F.R.S.E., I.F.S.
Pioneer of Soil Conservation
in the Indo-Pakistan Sub-Continent
From
His Pakistani Colleagues
as a mark of
Esteem and Love
on his retirement from Pakistan
17th Dec. 1949
The India Tea Series, though not directly based on my grandparents’ story, draws some of its inspiration from their experiences of being British in India, their observations, their daily lives, the Indian background and settings – and the emotional hold that the Subcontinent continued to exert over them long after they had retired back to Scotland.
(You can read more about my child’s eye view of Bob and Sydney in Edinburgh in my childhood memoirs Beatles & Chiefs.)