Thomas Gay Waterfield

Thomas Gay Waterfield

NANDITA SAIKIA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 07, 2001

A mention of the British officers of the Raj usually does not necessarily send us into raptures. However, there are exceptions. Thomas Gay Waterfield, affectionately called Dada, who fought to acquire Indian citizenship after Independence, was one of them. He was finally granted Indian citizenship in 1950 and lived in India till his demise on the fifth of this month.

Dada was born in Devonshire, England, 96 years ago and grew up in a luxurious home. He first came to India as a young ICS (Indian Civil Service) officer, as had his father and grandfather before him, in 1928.

He met Barbara, who would later become Mrs Waterfield, while he was in India. They had four children: Roger, Rodney, Hugh, and Susan. When India finally became Independent in 1947, Barbara went back to England along with their children. Dada, however, chose to stay on in India and adopted a number of under-privileged children, whom he brought up as his own. He spent the last years of his life in a riverside home at Warje with Asha, one of his adopted children.

After Independence, Dada worked as a journalist, a ghostwriter, a film consultant and as a teacher at the Mayo College in Ajmer, Rajasthan. He knew Marathi perfectly well, worked with the late renowned litterateur P L Deshpande and translated Marathi classics into English. He also wrote a book of short humorous stories, which was published in 1962 under the title 'Androcles and the Tiger'.

Thomas Gay Waterfield also spent several years at Pratibha Advertising in Pune, which was then a part of the Kirloskar Group. It was there that I was first introduced to him as a young child several years ago. The only thing that stands out in my mind of that first meeting is a large bowl of water and some chhapatis on his windowsill, kept there for birds.

That Dada was an ardent nature-lover was the first in a long series of things I was to learn about him. In those years, he often took me for walks. He taught me one of the most important things I have ever learnt: to take time off to appreciate the wonders of nature which surround us all the time, but which we often fail even to notice.

He was deeply interested in wildlife and wrote a book on Indian butterflies. Dada also tried to do everything possible to eradicate the superstition that surrounds snakes. I remember an incident he once narrated to me describing how he convinced villagers at a small peripheral village in Maharashtra that the green tree snake does not kill people by landing on their heads from tree-tops. In fact, it cannot do so: its head is soft and feels like rubber.

Nature was not Dada's only interest, though. He was also an avid philatelist and numismatist. He often said, "When you collect coins or stamps, you learn a lot about history, geography, art, and culture. All countries represent the best of themselves when they design their stamps and coins."

Dada freely shared his hobbies with children and seemed to be able to bring those inanimate objects to life. He was the only person I have ever come across who could talk about Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit with just as much ease as he could discuss classics in Greek. He was interested in music and had an extremely large collection of classical music, which he often listened to along with audio recordings of Shakespeare's plays. However, it was not the variety of Dada's interests and his knowledge that made one admire him. It was his character.

When I visited him some time ago, I met a lady called Monica at his house, who is expected to come to India in a short while because of Dada's demise. Prior to Independence, Monica was an orphan. "I met Dada on the Deccan Queen. It was a very different train in those days.

There were separate sections for the Indians and the British. Dada treated me in the dining car. After that he often came to visit me and brought me presents," she recalls. "Dada was planning to adopt me, but, after Independence, we somehow got separated and I had to leave without even saying good-bye to him, although he had been so kind. I came across his name entirely by chance more than 50 years later and I thought he might have forgotten me. When a mutual acquaintance mentioned my name, he said nothing for a few moments and then pulled out the page of his diary wherein he had described our first meeting."

When I met Monica, she had come to see Dada in his time of need. The wheel had come a full circle.

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