Extract from The Minor Diaspora – Indians in odd places in the nineteenth century, R.K. Chetty, Chattapore University, 1926.

When one considers the talent which goes unobserved in Indian’s teeming masses, it is fortunate indeed to find one such talent that was recognized. Vijay Padurachee was born in the early 1860s in an obscure village in Uttar Pradesh. It soon became apparent to his parents that their son was either grossly stupid or a boy of great precociousness. His parents brought him to the attention of the local headman, a man who had worked in the house of a Burra Sahib. Over the course of many years the headman had amassed a small library from those books lost by the sahib. The books were on display in the headman’s house, and helped to impart a reputation for learning and sagacity.

With the indulgence of the headman, Vijay was encouraged to look at the books, amongst which were Defoe’s Roxanna, an illustrated copy of Maxwell’s Highland Sports and Pastimes, Magnall’s On the Principles of Steam Propulsion, and—most importantly—an English–Urdu dictionary.

By the time the boy was six he was able to read everything in the headman’s library and had become proficient in English, the most important language in India.

When Vijay was about ten his life changed for ever. A platoon of the 15th Corps of Engineers rode into the village one day, and their havildar called the village elders to a meeting. It became apparent immediately that there was a problem, the havildar was a Sikh and was not fluent in Urdu, and the headman, that local paragon of learning, was woefully lacking in English. After several minutes of fruitless haranguing someone had the bright idea of calling Vijay to try his English. The havildar was astonished by the boy’s command of the language, and through Vijay was able to explain that the Engineers were surveying the proposed line for the railway which was to pass just to the south of the village. When that was done, in a few months the army would need labourers, and were looking for able-bodied men.

A couple of days later the havildar returned, this time accompanied by an English officer. The village crowded round; most of them had never seen an Englishman before, and this one was a small man with flaming red hair. Vijay was called for and had a conversation with the officer. The villagers gathered round listening to the incomprehensible language, proud that Vijay had such learning. Later, according to the headman, the officer had said “extraordinary” at least five times.

Vijay not only became official interpreter during the railway construction, but developed a lifelong passion for railways. In his memoirs, the English officer, Major Wellington de Vere (1825–1900), recalled that first meeting with Vijay: “he was a small, skinny boy, like thousands like him all over the Province. His eyes, though, were alive and bright with sparkle and a thirst for knowledge.” De Vere made arrangements for Vijay to be educated in Lucknow at an English medium school for Indians. His passion for the railways was recognized by the Headmaster, John Fitzherbert (a friend of Lockwood Kipling), and Vijay was encouraged to join the Indian Railway Service as this was one of the few ways in which young Indians of no social standing could advance themselves. During these years Vijay must have picked up Hindi. After completing his schooling he was apprenticed to The Great Trigonometric Survey of India; here he had a thorough grounding in all aspects of the laborious and exacting task that was to take over a hundred years to complete. At the age of about twenty-five Vijay Padurachee joined the survey and engineering section of the Darjeeling Himalaya Railway and was fortunate enough to work under Herbert Rumsey at Kurseong.

All went well for a time, but then the great good fortune that had played so prominent a role in the young Indian’s life deserted him. He was described at the time as a quiet, serious man who spoke English with the prolixity of someone who had learnt the language from novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There are no known likenesses of him, but he must have been good-looking, for Ishbel Rumsey fell madly in love with him. As soon as her parents became aware of what was probably no more than a one-sided teenage infatuation, Vijay was summarily transferred away from Kurseong back to Tinharia in what was, in effect, a demotion. His section manager there was Captain Treducq, second-in-charge was Lieutenant McTosh.

Vijay was demoralised, realising that—through no fault of his own—his future in the railway service was blighted. McTosh had told Vijay about Clach Mhòr, the remote and obscure estate in the North West Highlands of Scotland. Not surprisingly, Vijay had read about the Highlands and—knowing that Scotland was a small country—assumed that Clach Mhòr was neighbour to Balmoral. The two men became fast friends, united by a passion for the two-foot gauge. When McTosh inherited the estate in the 1880s it was only natural for him to try to persuade his friend to come over to Scotland with him, and it was only natural for Vijay to accept.

Vijay, with his dark good looks, was an exotic import to this land of fair-skinned and freckled people. He soon realised that Clach Mhòr was more remote from Balmoral than Darjeeling was from Calcutta, and so his hopes that he might meet the Queen were dashed. However, he soon had other social obligations in the lively, lissome form of Maree Morrison, a housemaid at the Lodge and daughter of one of the Kinlochbervie Morrisons. After a few months Maree, although still lively, was becoming noticeably less lissome. Vijay was a man of honour and said that he must make the journey to Kinlochbervie and confront her parents. Like most peasants from Central India, Vijay had a deep mistrust of the sea and preferred to make the overland journey of three days to Kinlochbervie rather than face an uncertain ocean crossing of just a few hours by fishing boat. He need not have worried—Maree’s mother just smiled indulgently and said that nobody ever counted, that was just the way things were done round here. Her father, Hector Morrison, looked “more sheepish than his flocks” as he shook the young man’s hand.

Vijay found peace and happiness in Clach Mhòr, and seldom left the estate. The locals found the name Padurachee difficult to pronounce. As there were already dozens of “Paddy”s employed in the railway building, he became known as Archy. Archy and Maree had just one child, a son, Murdoch, born in 1890.

And so they lived their quiet, contented lives, their focus always on Murdo. He was encouraged to learn Urdu and the folklore of India by his father and his mother, gentle Maree, taught him to love the countryside, the mountains and glens that made up his home. Maree died in 1908, followed within three months by her devoted husband. He had never shown much interest in religion, and the parish priest at the time shocked some parishioners by allowing Vijay to be buried in the north west of the cemetery next to Maree. “He was a good man,” said the reverend, “and are we all not God’s children?” Here you can still (1925) see the foreign name V.J.Padurarchy (sic) engraved on the stone.

In spite of his parents’ best efforts, Murdo was a wild boy, preferring the hills and crags to his schoolwork, occasionally in trouble with the estate manager for stealing birds’ eggs, and for being the first person to have a race with the railway over the whole network and win. It was in climbing the unnamed windswept mountains round his home that Murdo found his passion, and in due course he became a guide for the wealthy tourists who were making their way up to this remote corner to enjoy a brief communion with nature. Later, Murdo survived the nightmare of the Western Front and returned home to become almost reclusive among the crags and glens, coming to realize that he might prefer his father’s stories of the heat baked plains to the wilds of the Highlands. In 1923 he applied to join the ill-fated Mallory and Irvine Himalayan expedition, and he was hired as an interpreter. There were many in the estate happy to see him go.

And so Murdo Padurachee returned to the foothills of the Himalayas in 1924, almost thirty-five years after his father had left. Now he could match his father’s descriptions of the foothills of the Himalayas and relive the excitements and enthusiasms of previous generations as the expedition took the narrow-gauge railway as far as they could go.

Murdo Padurachee died in an avalanche sometime towards the end of May, 1924, at the age of twenty-seven. There is no-one else of Indian ancestry left in Clach Mhòr, the Highland home of the Padurachees for almost forty years.

My thanks are due to the Manager and staff of the Darjeeling Himalaya Railway, and the kindness shown last year on my visit to Clach Mhòr Estates. In both locations I rode on their wonderful two-foot railways.