A Sentimental Journey Back To India

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31801, 4 October 1968, Page 2

A Sentimental Journey Back To India

Although she is convinced that India will never be prosperous, the progress there during her absence of 18 years has most impressed Mrs Isobel Abbott, of Christchurch, who has just returned from a ‘‘sentimental journey” back to the country where she spent 18 years with her husband, Colonel Bruce Abbott, who died last year.

Most of her time In India was spent at Abbott Mount (named after her husband’s family) in the foothills of the Himalayas, near the Tibetan border, and it is the northern part of India that most interests her. She has written a book about her experiences In India, entitled “Indian Interval,” published in 1060. Agriculture was improving tremendously and the crops this year were better than she had ever seen, although

this had not been a record year for growth, she said.

Tractors were taking the place “of those wretched dying animals” with which the Indian farmer used to plough his fields. For as little as five rupees an acre (NZ35c) the farmer can have his land cultivated by these Govern-ment-supplied tractors. Cattle were still sacred but because they were not bred in such large numbers any more they were not such a drain on the land, said Mrs Abbott.

The average villager Is aware of his increasing prosperity. “One in every five adults in northern India owns a watch and one in every 10, a bicycle. “But India will never be prosperous. I doubt if she will ever get to the stage where she can completely feed herself. She Will live on the verge of semi-famine until she can reduce her birth rate.” Birth Control Birth control was not really attractive to the average Indian (the villagers who make up 70 per cent of the population) as their religion commended big families and lots of sons. "There are dreadful little placards on the roadsides offering Indian men as much as 50 rupees if they will have an operation to make them sterile."

But It was only the more prosperous Indians who appreciated the necessity of limiting their numbers, said Mrs Abbott. “Something which has increased tremendously since I left is the army. Now all Indian, it has retained so much of the old British Army traditions, they almost regard them as their own. “Wherever I went in northern India there seemed to be

large encampments and where they had a large encampment or settlement the conditions of the village had Improved,” said Mrs Abbott Good Influence The army left a good impression and had a definite influence for good. It had not completely abolished the caste system, although it was more progressive in this respect than other institutions. Her old home in the Himalayas was just as she had left it almost 20 years ago, although a road had been built right up to the Tibetan border, making it very much easier for the pilgrims to visit a shrine at Badrlnath. But the same road caused much uneasiness as it gives the Chinese very easy access. Her husband won himself a reputation as a hunter and Mrs Abbott still has the skins of two man-eating tigers he shot in the 19305. One of these was known to have killed 150 persons, mostly women, and it had a price on its head—a dollar for every recorded killing it had made. Like most of the killer tigers Mrs Abbott is aware of, this one was a female, just past its prime (these tigers live to 35 yean). It had a eub, as did the other notorious killer which her husband shot These tigen roamed within an area about 50 miles square and terrified the villagers. When Mn Abbott returned to her home, the villagen still remembered her and her husband. They were sorry to hear of her husband’s death and wondered if she could send out her oldest son to shoot another killer tiger which was terrorising the people. The photograph shows Mn Abbott with her four-year-old Labrador, Penny.