Read Online FULL MARKS FOR TRYING by BRIGID KEENAN - Free Book Online

first we thought the flap was because swimming there was not allowed, but then we understood what was happening – the men were caught in a current and were being sucked towards a giant pipe, presumably the one that took the water to the town. We were hurried away and later told they had been saved, but from what Tessa and I remember we are not convinced that was true.
    Soon the profound political changes that were taking place in India began touching even us children’s lives though of course we didn’t understand what was making everyone so worried and uneasy.
    The British prime minister, Clement Atlee, had announced in February 1947 (a couple of months after we’d got back there) that India was to become independent of the British who had ruled it for some two hundred years. Lord Mountbatten, a British statesman with connections to the royal family, was appointed Viceroy of India with the task of organising Indian independence, and, as well, implementing a controversial plan: the partition of India into two countries, a new one called Pakistan to be a homeland for Muslims, alongside a slightly reduced India.
    In June that year Mountbatten announced that all these extraordinary changes would be achieved by mid-August: that on 14 August 1947, Pakistan would celebrate its creation and independence, while the next day, 15 August, the new India would celebrate its own autonomy. This meant that there were
only two months
in which to work out where to draw the border – nearly 2,000 miles long – between India and Pakistan; two months to prepare for a massive exchange of populations when twelve
million
men, women and children would move countries: Muslims from India to the newly formed Pakistan; and Hindus, living in what was about to become Pakistan, to India. There were only two months for the British to hand over the vast subcontinent and prepare for their departure; two months to reorganise every single aspect of the administration of India, from the government departments, to the railways, to the police and the army.
    For Tessa and me, most of this was way over our heads, though we knew about Indian independence because ‘
Jai Hind!
’ (‘Victory to India!’) was the catchword of the day: it was ‘
Jai Hind!
’ when you met people, or passed them in the road; ‘
Jai Hind!
’ on flags, on posters, in graffiti, on matchbox labels – and we were as excited about Indians getting their independence as they were. But every day, it seemed, events took place that upset my parents: one afternoon my father came home and told my mother that the Indian Army, as well as the Indian police force, were to be divided, with Muslim soldiers and policemen going to Pakistan and Hindus staying in India. My mother was appalled and bewildered; she didn’t believe such a thing was possible: the world she was so familiar with was falling apart.
    The old India hands – people like my parents who had been born there and lived there all their lives – were shocked at the very short amount of time Mountbatten had allocated to achieving the handover of power and a peaceful division of the country. They considered him spoilt and privileged, overambitious and lacking in knowledge about India, making fateful decisions without any real experience of the place. Dad referred to him as the Fairy Prince, and a joke undermining Lady Mountbatten went the rounds: in India Girl Guides were called Girl Guides, but for obvious reasons, the Brownies were called Bluebirds. The story was that Lady Mountbatten had opened a Guides rally, absent-mindedly saying: ‘It is wonderful to be with all of you young Guides and little Blackbirds today.’ I have no idea if this is true or not.
    My parents and their friends talked about the traumatic events that were happening all around us, and snippets of their conversations seared into my mind – for instance, in 1947 when two