On the 14th January 1961 we set sail on the Anchor Line ship RMS Caledonia from the Liverpool Landing Stage at Birkenhead destined for Bombay (now Mumbai). Three weeks on board ship with expats returning to work, embassy officials and missionaries soon opened our eyes to what life in India would be like. Within weeks of arriving in Calcutta (now Kolkata) Angela and I were invited to become members of the Calcutta Cathedral Choir. I subsequently ran the Readers Guild and was a member of the Cathedral Vestry Committee.
We both worked every Tuesday morning, including Advent, in a large Bustee area (shanty town) of Calcutta as part of the cathedral team bringing milk and broken biscuits (provided by a local biscuit company) to the ‘untouchable’ children living there, as well as medical aid for the entire community by expatriate doctors. Some weekends we supervised improvements by the residents to their ‘open drainage’ sanitation system!
The Diocese of Calcutta, established in 1813, was the first Anglican diocese in India. It became the Metropolitan See of the Church of India, Burma and Ceylon and by 1930 there were fourteen dioceses. After partition it became the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon. The present Cathedral, the first to be built outside the UK, was consecrated in 1847 and could seat 1,000 worshippers.
Advent in Calcutta was always a very special time in the local Anglican calendar. Our Christian community included a large European expatriate population – one of the largest Anglo-Indian populations in the world – who lived a variety of lives that were always nuanced by their being Anglo-Indian, and Christians from South India where there were large Anglican and Catholic communities. We always looked forward to Advent as it heralded the coolest time of the year! By the time Christmas Day arrived the daytime temperature was down to the mid-eighties Fahrenheit.
Advent was a busy time: as members of the cathedral choir we had many choral practices for the annual Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, which was a major event for the Christian community. Advent was also a sociable time: in the 1960s both Hindus and Moslems totally accepted the Christian community and Christmas Day itself was a national holiday. In fact, our Hindu friends would come bearing good tidings and gifts at Christmas and even the Newmarket Bazaar would be festooned with decorations and lights.
On Christmas Day the cathedral would be completely full for morning service and afterwards we would return to our penthouse home with some choir members and other friends for our celebratory Christmas meal. For each of the seven years we celebrated Advent in Calcutta we had to pre-book a telephone call to family in the UK for Christmas Day and then try to remember all we wished to say as we were only allowed five minutes on a rather poor telephone line. There was no Boxing Day; it was back to work at 8.30am the following morning.
